Aggressive Reader and Submissive Spectator
A Revision of Self-Redescription
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3970944 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Xuelian He (0000-0002-6462-9911, Communication University of China, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 154-166 |
| Publication date | 2020-02-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The European Legacy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10848770.2019.1665916 |
| OpenAlex | W2979022410 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
Both Richard Rorty and Siegfried Kracauer considered the question of self-redemption in an ideologically shelterless age; both thinkers realized that the spontaneous state of daily life is beguiling and that one needs to break out from it; and both sought to break the bond between Being and Thought. For Kracauer, redemption came from the strangeness of concrete physical reality presented by films. For Rorty, redemption stood for the strangeness of imaginative self-redescription achieved by reading books. Based on the analysis of Rorty’s aggressive book reader and of Kracauer’s submissive movie spectator, this article aims to answer the question: how can Kracauer’s redemption of physical reality contribute to Rorty’s self-redescription? Self-redescription paradoxically sustains the abstractness it fights against. The ironist’s flippant attitude toward language leads to the nonchalant and traumatic attitude toward life. Kracauer’s from-bottom-to-top approach to the redemption of physical reality can benefit Rorty’s self-redescription in three concrete ways: as a possible description, as a possible method, and as a possible attitude to life. The theological core of Kracauer’s redemption of physical reality enlightens Rorty’s ironist through the desubjectivized stance: to encounter existence in its purity, free of personal subjectivity, and thereby to find a de-anthropocentric world-view
Aesthetics · Anthropocentrism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Subjectivity · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Science, and History · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Psychology · Wittgensteinian philosophy and applications
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |