On intersubjectivity in art and everyday aesthetics

ABSTRACT

Certain aestheticians attempt to define everyday aesthetics by describing it as radically private, subjective and nondiscursive. The main aim of this article is to counter this restrictive, isolationist approach to everyday aesthetics by pointing to the role of intersubjective, discursive, institutional arenas in fostering meaningful everyday aesthetic experience. To this end, the first part of the article conducts a historical and hermeneutical exploration of how modern subjectivity was initially constructed, later problematised, and how today it is often reconstructed as intersubjectivity by poststructuralism and the Artworld. I then turn to how this issue is playing out in the current discourse on everyday aesthetics. The second part of the article shows that prominent contemporary aestheticians agree that language has the potential to enrich ineffable aesthetic experience in all walks of life. I extend this broad perspective by arguing that differential discourse is particularly appropriate for this task. In conclusion, I suggest that by demarcating everyday aesthetics as private and as the “other” of the contemporary Artworld – by retrogressively defining it in terms of subjective experience – there is a risk of marginalising this important area of aesthetic interest and of impoverishing both art and everyday aesthetic life.

Key words:

• Everyday aesthetics
• subjective
• intersubjective
• poststructuralism
• art
• Artworld
• discursivity