Icon, Index, Symbol? Theorizing Eco-Aesthetic Encounters across Epistemes
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21792243 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Russell J Duvernoy (0000-0001-5512-1238, Western University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-14 |
| Publication date | 2025-11-12 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative and Continental Philosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1757-0638 • E-ISSN: 1757-0646 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17570638.2025.2565451 |
| OpenAlex | W4416156513 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 13 |
This paper considers the role of aesthetic experience in cultivating existential conditions of paradigmatic ecological change. It takes its impetus from Andrea Brighenti’s claim that ecologically transformative aesthetic experiences cannot be thought through symbols because they presuppose a normative background that must change. The paper argues against this dismissal of the symbol by drawing on Susanne Langer’s conception of artwork as a “non-discursive but articulate symbol[s] of feeling” (1953, 50). Langer’s account shows how aesthetic experience can cultivate, without mandating or coercing, conditions for existential ecological conversion. The paper first situates its problem in the context of the descriptive/normative entanglement of aesthetics and temporal transition between paradigms. It then details the relevant effects of Langer’s account for thinking aesthetic experience in such contexts. It closes by raising remaining tensions in Langer’s insistence on artwork’s operating through a virtual “semblance” distinguished from its material conditions
Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Rhetoric and Communication Studies
| Highly cited | No |
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