The Aesthetic Subjectivity and Political Agency of Women and Nonhumans in Virginia Woolf’s “The Lady in the Looking-Glass” and “Solid Objects”
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In traditional aesthetics, the subject of aesthetic experience is limited to human beings, and nonhumans are seen as mere objects of appreciation. Recently, however, there has been a growing movement among scholars of speculative realism that questions Kant’s idea, arguing that nonhumans can also have aesthetic experiences and be the subject of aesthetic feelings. Kant’s human-centered interpretation of aesthetics is the most actively challenged and overcome by posthuman aesthetics of Steven Shaviro, Graham Harman, and Timothy Morton. For these thinkers and Virginia Woolf alike, aesthetic experiences operate on an ontological level, not just an epistemological one. Accordingly, this paper aims to explore how the existence of all beings, which interact aesthetically with each other, is forged and altered by their aesthetic experiences in Woolf’s two short stories, “The Lady in the Looking–Glass” (1929) and “Solid Objects” (1920). Additionally, it examines how the boundaries between human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate beings as aesthetic subjects are blurred, and at a deeper level, this aesthetic subjectivity of diverse species symbolizes women’s suffrage, thereby subverting both androcentrism and anthropocentrism. The aesthetic subjectivity of nonhumans and women is closely associated with their political agency, disrupting the society’s hierarchical structures.
Abstract
In traditional aesthetics, the subject of aesthetic experience is limited to human beings, and nonhumans are seen as mere objects of appreciation. Recently, however, there has been a growing movement among scholars of speculative realism that questions Kant’s idea, arguing that nonhumans can also have aesthetic experiences and be the subject of aesthetic feelings. Kant’s human-centered interpretation of aesthetics is the most actively challenged and overcome by posthuman aesthetics of Steven Shaviro, Graham Harman, and Timothy Morton. For these thinkers and Virginia Woolf alike, aesthetic experiences operate on an ontological level, not just an epistemological one. Accordingly, this paper aims to explore how the existence of all beings, which interact aesthetically with each other, is forged and altered by their aesthetic experiences in Woolf’s two short stories, “The Lady in the Looking–Glass” (1929) and “Solid Objects” (1920). Additionally, it examines how the boundaries between human and nonhuman, animate and inanimate beings as aesthetic subjects are blurred, and at a deeper level, this aesthetic subjectivity of diverse species symbolizes women’s suffrage, thereby subverting both androcentrism and anthropocentrism. The aesthetic subjectivity of nonhumans and women is closely associated with their political agency, disrupting the society’s hierarchical structures.
참고문헌 (24)
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