tailieunhanh - Aesthetics and the paradox of educational relation

I am encouraged in arguing for such a view by a trend that seems to characterize some recent anthropological and philosophical literature, a trend towards recognizing that aesthetics may be usefully defined independently of art. The anthropologist Jacques Maquet, for example, has argued repeatedly (. 1979: 45; 1986: 33) that art and aesthetics are best treated as independent. Among philosophers, Nick Zangwill (1986: 261) has argued that ‘one could do aesthetics without mentioning works of art! Sometimes I think it would be safer to do so.’ And T. J. . | Journal of Philosophy of Education Vol. 35 No. 1 2001 Aesthetics and the Paradox of Educational Relation CHARLES BINGHAM and ALEXANDER SIDORKIN The paper establishes the principle of back-formation of artistic creation the process by which artists realise in their work a theme or motif that had not been previously intended but is brought into being as the work comes to fruition. The authors suggest that teaching also should be guided by this principle. To solve the inherent problem of power imbalance in teaching they appeal to Bakhtin s recourse to aesthetical judgment in addressing relational issues. Gadamer s rehabilitation of prejudices shows that not only is an ethics of relation worked out as an aesthetic practice but also that aesthetic practices are worked out within an ethics of relation. In his poem Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror John Ashbery comments on the artistic process likening it to the game where a whispered phrase passed around the room ends up as something completely different. It is the principle writes Ashbery . . . that makes works of art so unlike What the artist intended. Often he finds He has omitted the thing he started out to say In the first place . . . . . . that there is no other way That the history of creation proceeds according to Stringent laws and that things Do get done in this way but never the things We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately To see come into being. What Ashbery highlights in these lines is what might be called the back-formation of artistic creation the reverse process by which an artist realises in her work a theme or motif that had not been previously intended but is brought into being as the work comes to fruition or as it is received by the other. In the artistic process back-formation creates an unexpected autonomy in the life of the work. While education has long been described by some as an endeavour that is more art than science educators have not yet taken to heart the The Journal of the .