reclaiming the expressive subject: deviance and the art of non-normativity

Abstract

Situated within the theoretical and philosophical frameworks of Romanticism and expressionism in the arts, the present exposition argues for conceptual renewal in the study of deviance, specifically entailing a reclamation of the expressive subject of deviance. In particular, it is argued that many forms of deviance can and should be understood as fundamentally artistic, embodying creative, expressive, emotive, symbolic, and communicative elements characteristic of art. The emergence of expressionism in the arts is described as issuing from the more general Romantic ethos, characterized through its critique of transformations brought by modernity by an affirmation of the creative, expressive dimension of being human. It is argued that many forms of deviance, at least analogously, embody characteristics of this Romantic ethos. The paper concludes by discussing the need for renewed attention to human subjectivity in the study of deviance, drawing in part from existentialism as a contemporary sociological counterpart to the Romantic ethos.