PROGRAM

The emergence of the so-called "knowledge society" and the role assumed by the idea of information as the paradigm of both knowledge and power are inserted in a universe characterized by atopy and acrony as fundamental characteristics of the social relations mediated by technologies of the virtual world. This brings, among several other consequences, the emergence of a control and surveillance society under a democratic semblance and that of a new narcissistic and depressive subjectivity as well.

Philosophical anthropology of language reconstructed recently the dialogical source of the creative imagination by identifying it to the prosopopeia of W. of Humboldt. The dialogical use of propositions not only makes the human life possible by giving the ability of perceiving and of transforming the world, it is also harmonizing our thought with the world with the help of our faculty of judging. And the happiness of truth that we are enjoying in our dialogical agreements with our addressees is projecting itself with its help into the construction of an happy life. The aesthetics of truth conditions therefore the happiness of our common future as well as our artistic experience of beauty. Philosophical dialogue has to let share this aesthetics of happiness in our worlds as well as in our lifes without needing to edit some moral constraints in order to obtain the desired common happiness in our lives. 

Artistic productions put into action discursive strategies that dialogue with hegemonic narratives in Culture in order to transform them, even if minimally. The tactics used are diverse and it would be fruitless to list them in the broad and poorly delimited field of artistic practices today. We will examine just one of the paths traced in its complex cartography: the one in which the use of parody and pastiche, commonly related to the notion of postmodernism, becomes radicalized as a dismantling of the structure of representation itself. In our reflection around this strategy, we resorted to the notion of delirium as a kind of clinical-theoretical operator, underscoring its clinical performativity in the construction of deviant realities and its concomitant denunciation of the arbitrariness constituting the narrative to which we usually adhere as a perceptual and cognitive reality, naturalizing as undisputed evidence that it consists of a complex web of shared beliefs. The delirious power of deviating from the lines of such weft of rails implies, therefore, a vigorous micropolitical affirmation of singularity. But this does not mean that it cannot be transmitted, as shown by the work of Arthur Bispo do Rosário, in which delirium and art are in complete coalescence, explaining a modality of parody that we call imitation. Far from referring to “crazy” artists or the so-called “Art Brut” or “Outsider Art”, it is an (anti)representative logic that can be explored in works by numerous artists, among which we highlighted Balé Literal [Literal Ballet](2019) by Laura Lima.

Going back to the general thesis that feelings play an indispensable role in the political-democratic dispute, I emphasize first of all that they demand re/presentation (in German “Darstellung”), and furthermore that this re/presentation can be achieved in an excellent way through art and popular culture. In the field of aesthetics feelings are presented, i.e. introduced and envisioned as certain feelings. Art and popular culture (pop music, film, video clips) give birth to feelings. Against the background of the so-called affective turn, Spinoza and Deleuze offer themselves as explanatory instances in philosophy. Spinoza offers good arguments for the fact that feelings have to be transformed and compensated, Deleuze on the other hand for the fact that feelings have to be presented aesthetically. Admittedly, Deleuze is, as always, ambiguous. My plea is not with Deleuze as a theorist of affect, but with the alternative theorist of reason.