Adriana Clavel-Vazquez is currently a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford, working on a project on the ethics of imagination. Her research focuses on embodied imagination, the role imagination plays in our social interactions and our engagement with art, and the interaction of ethical and aesthetic values.
A post by Adriana Clavel-Vazquez.
The aesthetic evaluation of human bodies is part and parcel of our everyday lives. Not only do we judge, for example, the elegance of Isaac Hernández as he dances in Le Corsaire, but we take notice of a stranger’s beauty while walking down the street, or even a colleague’s scruffiness as they walk into a meeting. These evaluations concern human bodies treated as aesthetic objects, that is, objects that cause experiences of pleasure or displeasure, that are perceived as having specific aesthetic properties, and that invite certain responses as a result of having these properties. Unfortunately, we find an asymmetry in our aesthetic evaluation of racialized bodies. Take, for example, public attitudes toward Serena Williams. Her body is derided as intimidating, aggressive, and even hyper-sexual; her clothes are criticised as tacky, risqué and distracting. These comments stand in stark contrast to the treatment of Maria Sharapova or Anna Kournikova, whose sexual attractiveness has been repeatedly celebrated.[1]
This treatment of Williams by spectators and the media is part of a broader pattern of racist attitudes impacting our aesthetic evaluation of racialized bodies. Black women, for example, are seen as ugly, aggressive, and intimidating (see, e.g., (Hobson 2003)); and black men as beastly, violent, and brute (see, e.g., (Yancy 2016). As Paul C. Taylor argues, our aesthetic practices have historically racialized beauty. Beauty has been historically defined by the white-European tradition in terms of the physical features white people are considered more likely to have (Taylor 1999, 17–18): the fairer the skin, the flatter and silkier the hair, etc., the more beautiful one is. Whiteness is an aesthetic ideal.
Importantly, this aesthetic disregard for non-white individuals is not trivial. Physical ugliness has traditionally been considered a sign of moral ugliness. Excluding members of a given racial group from positive aesthetic qualities, therefore, is relevant because it carries the implication that their moral value is diminished. Moreover, as Taylor rightly points out, aesthetic evaluations partly determine individuals’ access to social and political institutions, and, ultimately, partly determine their access to social and material goods (Taylor 2016, 115).
The asymmetry in our evaluation of racialized bodies is not simply a problem of aesthetic criteria designed to favour white bodies. Aesthetic evaluations depend on aesthetic properties. That is, how we aesthetically evaluate an object depends on the aesthetic properties we perceive it as having. While Sharapova looks elegant and vulnerable, Williams looks aggressive and vulgar. So, it’s crucial to understand what it means to perceive an object as having certain aesthetic properties.
Aesthetic properties of perceptual objects are perceptual properties that are relevant to an object affording pleasure or displeasure in contemplation. Aestheticians mostly agree with an open-ended list that includes: beauty, ugliness, sublimity, grace, elegance, delicacy, harmony, dynamism, garishness, cheerfulness, crudity, serenity, flamboyance, melancholy, etc. Aesthetic properties depend on low-level, perceptual properties of objects, like colours, lines or shapes. Nevertheless, although they depend on these, aesthetic properties are not inferred but directly perceived, even if we can use non-aesthetic properties as explanatory reasons. We might say that a painting is dynamic, and, when asked, we might explain that it is dynamic because of its brushstrokes or colours, or the distribution of its figures. But it is not the case that we perceive the brushstrokes, colours or figures, and then infer that it’s dynamic.
Aesthetic properties should be understood as gestalt-like properties. For example, Jerold Levinson (2006) characterises them as ways of appearing, as properties that reveal their natures in and through appearances. These ways of appearing are perceiver-relative and condition-relative: they only manifest themselves to perceivers with the appropriate sensory-perceptual-cognitive apparatus, and only in conditions that are conducive to such manifestation. Aesthetic properties emerge when low-level properties are perceived organised in specific ways. They are directly perceived because they are brought into presence in perception when low-level properties are perceived under specific configurations. So, the idea is that: 1) objects have non-aesthetic properties on which aesthetic properties depend; 2) these non-aesthetic properties are perceived under a given structured configuration and under the right conditions; 3) a way of appearing is manifested when non-aesthetic properties are perceived under this configuration; and 4) this way of appearing is the aesthetic property.
Nevertheless, as high level properties, aesthetic properties are not among the properties that feature paradigmatically in perception. As has been done for other high level properties, one can argue that aesthetic properties are directly perceived because perceptual experience is affected by other cognitive processes. Aesthetic properties are brought into perceptual presence, rather than being inferred from low level properties, because there is a change in the phenomenology of our perceptual experience of the aesthetic object. And this change is caused by the intervention of other mental states.
But which mental states? I propose that aesthetic properties being brought into perceptual presence requires imaginings with phenomenal character. These imaginings are evoked by aesthetic objects (even prescribed in the case of representational artworks). The phenomenal character of these imaginings interacts with and affects the phenomenal character of our perceptual experience of aesthetic objects. Take, for example, Picasso’s Guernica. We have a wide stock of imagery of the devastation of war, which is evoked by the painting. The phenomenology of these imaginings interacts with and affects our perception of Guernica. We don’t just perceive black and white figures, but we perceive the painting as deafening, violent, and devastating. Imaginings are responsible for providing the configuration under which non-aesthetic properties are perceived in order for aesthetic properties to manifest.
There is, of course, a wide range of aesthetic properties: some are descriptive and some evaluative; some are characteristically aesthetic and some are aesthetic only when understood figuratively; some are affective and some are related to action, etc. There is also a wide range of aesthetic objects: natural and artefactual, representational and non-representational artworks, etc. For this reason I think we need to assume pluralism in regards to aesthetic properties. Nonetheless, I also think there is a story to tell about how and what kind of imaginings are evoked. To conclude, I offer a story about mental imagery and aesthetic perception of racialized bodies.
As we are immersed in given cultural practices, we acquire mental imagery that creates and reinforces racial stereotypes. Crucially for the case of aesthetic perception, we acquire mental imagery of the racialized standards of beauty as we interact with the white-European aesthetic tradition that dominates our cultural practices. Patricia Hill Collins (2002) emphasises the role of controlling images, racist and sexist stereotypical images, in systems of oppression. These are created, sustained and reinforced through popular and artistic representations of racialized bodies.
Artistic representations present their content criterially prefocused, that is, they foreground and obscure specific features as to call for specific responses to their content (Carroll 2003). When it comes to artistic representations of racialized bodies, these are already represented as having specific aesthetic properties: they are aesthetically prefocused. Think for example about the ethereal character of classical representations of white women, like in Francisco de Goya’s Majas. So in our acquired mental imagery, certain aesthetic properties of racialized bodies have already been made salient in our phenomenological experience. The phenomenology of aesthetic properties of bodies in our acquired mental imagery affects and interacts with the phenomenology of our perception of racialized bodies. This is how aesthetic properties of racialized bodies are brought into perceptual presence: the aesthetic phenomenal character of mental imagery interacts with and affects the aesthetic phenomenal character and content of perceptual experiences of racialized bodies.
Of course, we could object to this picture by saying that we don’t in fact experience this mental imagery when we interact with others. How could it be affecting how we perceive aesthetic properties of racialized bodies? Well, mental imagery can be, in fact, unconscious and not available to introspection (e.g., (Van Leeuwen 2011, n. 4) (Nanay 2013, 104–5)). Controlling images work so well in sustaining systems of oppression because they are so pervasive that we might not realize that they are playing a role in our interactions with non-white individuals. There has been a lot said recently in popular media about the importance of representations of non-white folks. While much has been said about the importance of people seeing themselves in available representations, I want to conclude noting that representation matters because our aesthetic practices craft the mental imagery that is available to impact our aesthetic perception of racialized bodies.
[1] For a discussion and examples of racist attacks centred on Williams’ body and fashion choices, see, for example, (Schultz 2005).
References
Carroll, Noël. 2003. “Art, Narrative and Emotion.” In Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays, 215–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hill Collins, Patricia. 2002. Black Feminist Thought. New York; London: Routledge.
Hobson, Janell. 2003. “The " Batty " Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body.” Hypatia 18 (4): 87–105.
Leeuwen, Neil Van. 2011. “Imagination Is Where the Action Is.” The Journal of Philosophy 108 (2): 55–77.
Levinson, Jerrold. 2006. “What Are Aesthetic Properties?” In Contemplating Art. Essays in Aesthetics, 336–51. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Oxford.
Nanay, Bence. 2013. Between Perception and Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Schultz, Jaime. 2005. “Reading the Catsuit. Serena Williams and the Production of Blackness at the 2002 U.S. Open.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 29 (3): 338–57.
Taylor, Paul C. 1999. “Malcolm’s Conk and Danto’s Colors; Or, Four Logical Petitions Concerning Race, Beauty, and Aesthetics.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57 (116'20).
———. 2016. Black Is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics. Black Is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics. Wiley Blackwell.
Yancy, George. 2016. “White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the Aesthetics of Un-Suturing.” In Body Aesthetics, edited by Sherri Irvin, 243–60. Oxford: Oxford University Press.