In Derrida’s “White Mythology” the figure of the heliotrope, both flower and gemstone, illustrates the multifaceted nature of French aesthetics. At once a natural beauty and, as bouquet or gemstone, a product of techne, the heliotrope as a figure for metaphor is itself a metaphor, performing the simultaneous presence and absence that Derrida traces. It turns toward the “sun” but its attaining is always deferred. It is significant that the heliotrope stone was thought by magicians to have the power to make one invisible. Philosophy, some would say, is a process of metaphorization, whereby an abstract meaning is progressively separated from its particular sensory origin and thus from the limitations of space and time, losing its specificity yet gaining universality. Hegel describes metaphor as occupying a space between Vorstellung and Begriff as the elevation of a purely sensory content into a properly spiritual one. Yet philosophical aesthetics is concernedwithmoments that interrupt this spiritualizing process, where pure appearance bodies forth. At the same time, philosophy is always attentive to the ways in which meaning both emerges and is concealed with the dominant aesthetics of a period. The term “French aesthetics” covers too broad a field to be generalizable. From the poststructural aesthetics of Derrida and Foucault to the psychoanalytic interpretations of Irigaray and Kristeva, there is no consistent identity to French aesthetics. We could list Beauvoir, Sartre, Camus, Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, Levinas, Kristeva, Irigaray, and Rancière, and not find a common thread that goes through all of them—unless it is a negative one. What is true, as Gary Shapiro has argued, is that the common misperception of French philosophy as a reduction of everything to language is just that, a misperception. At the same time, to the extent that language is a part of the work of art, French aesthetics is striking, from Derrida to Kristeva, because it draws attention to the materiality of language, its polysemic, historically layered signifying capacity and its emergence from unconscious bodily rhythms and preindividuated relationships. This tradition is also notable for the ways in which it engages with classical texts of the history of aesthetics, especially those of Kant and Hegel, complicating the apparent straightforwardness and transparency of their confident theories. Phenomenology, psychoanalysis, feminist critique, structural analysis, all play their part in this shifting network that renders contemporary art protean, and dismissive responses premature. The four articles and the discussion presented here engage with theories of art that emphasize the interstices, the silences, the unprofessed assumptions, and the frameworks that decide what will and will not be perceived or valued in the sphere of aesthetics.

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介绍

在德里达的《白色神话》中，天芥菜的花朵和宝石都描绘了法国美学的多面性。天芥菜作为一种自然的美，作为花束或宝石，是一种高科技的产物，它既是隐喻的象征，又是隐喻，同时实现了德里达所描写的同时存在和不存在。它转向“太阳”，但它的实现总是被推迟。重要的是魔术师认为天芥菜石具有使一个隐形的能力。有人会说，哲学是一个隐喻的过程，在此过程中，抽象含义与它的特定感官起源逐渐分离，从而与时空的局限性分离，失去了它的特异性而获得了普遍性。黑格尔将隐喻描述为在Vorstellung和Begriff之间占据一处空间，这是将纯粹的感官内容提升为适当的属灵内容。然而，哲学美学与那些中断纯属外观的精神化过程有关的时刻有关。同时，哲学总是关注意义的产生和隐藏于一个时期的主导美学的方式。“法国美学”一词涵盖的领域太广，无法推广。从德里达和福柯的后结构美学到艾里格赖和克里斯蒂娃的心理分析解释，法国美学没有统一的身份。我们可以列出Beauvoir，Sartre，Camus，Foucault，Derrida，Lyotard，Deleuze，Levinas，Kristeva，Irigaray和Rancière，并没有找到遍及所有线程的通用线程，除非它是消极的线程。正如加里·夏皮罗（Gary Shapiro）所论证的那样，真实的是，对法国哲学的普遍误解是将一切事物简化为语言，这仅仅是一种误解。同时，在某种程度上，语言是艺术品的一部分，从德里达到克里斯蒂娃，法国美学引人注目，因为它引起了人们对语言的重要性，多义性，历史分层的象征意义以及它的出现的关注。无意识的身体节律和个人关系。这种传统还因其与美学史的经典文本（尤其是康德和黑格尔的经典文本）相结合的方式而著称，这使他们的自信理论的表象直接和透明化变得复杂。现象学 精神分析，女权主义批评，结构分析，都在这个不断变化的网络中发挥了作用，这种网络使当代艺术家泛滥，轻描淡写的回应还为时过早。这里介绍的四篇文章和讨论都与艺术理论联系在一起，这些艺术理论强调了空隙，沉默，未经承认的假设以及决定在美学领域中将被感知或不会被感知或被重视的框架。