Enacting Gifts: Performances on Par with Art Experiences
Given the coterie of philosophers focused on everyday aesthetics, it's fascinating that gift reception has heretofore managed to escape their scrutiny. To enact a gift, recipients begin by imagining its use. On this level, gifts serve as a litmus test. In luring us, we're taken out of our...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Nederlands Genootschap voor Esthetica (Dutch Association of Aesthetics)
2021-12-01
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| Series: | Aesthetic Investigations |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/11775 |
| _version_ | 1797201113832751104 |
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| author | Sue Spaid |
| author_facet | Sue Spaid |
| author_sort | Sue Spaid |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description |
Given the coterie of philosophers focused on everyday aesthetics, it's fascinating that gift reception has heretofore managed to escape their scrutiny. To enact a gift, recipients begin by imagining its use. On this level, gifts serve as a litmus test. In luring us, we're taken out of our normal ways of being to experience a different side of ourselves. Enacting a gift is thus a kind of performance, whose value depends on the donee’s interpretation, just as exhibitions, concerts, staged plays or books are performances of visual art, scores, scripts or texts, whose interpretations demonstrate their aesthetic value. To develop the relationship between enacting gifts and performing artworks, I begin by surveying junctures along the gift-event’s arc: reply, imagination, trust, recognition, transformation and memory. Transformations arising from agonistic gifts strike me as significant because they characterise the way gifts challenge our beliefs, eventually altering our values. That we grow to love gifts, which we originally rejected out of hand, casts doubt on self-knowledge. Enacted gifts handily challenge self-knowledge’s twin features: authority and transparency. As this paper indicates, gift reception helps both to understand ourselves better and to remove the obstacles to what Quassim Cassim calls Substantive Self-Knowledge.
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| first_indexed | 2024-04-11T05:59:42Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-630f50d225f141c8acb529436cd73f08 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2352-2704 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-24T07:42:23Z |
| publishDate | 2021-12-01 |
| publisher | Nederlands Genootschap voor Esthetica (Dutch Association of Aesthetics) |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Aesthetic Investigations |
| spelling | doaj.art-630f50d225f141c8acb529436cd73f082024-04-19T08:52:48ZengNederlands Genootschap voor Esthetica (Dutch Association of Aesthetics)Aesthetic Investigations2352-27042021-12-015110.58519/aesthinv.v5i1.1177511767 Enacting Gifts: Performances on Par with Art Experiences Sue Spaid0University of Dayton, Ohio Given the coterie of philosophers focused on everyday aesthetics, it's fascinating that gift reception has heretofore managed to escape their scrutiny. To enact a gift, recipients begin by imagining its use. On this level, gifts serve as a litmus test. In luring us, we're taken out of our normal ways of being to experience a different side of ourselves. Enacting a gift is thus a kind of performance, whose value depends on the donee’s interpretation, just as exhibitions, concerts, staged plays or books are performances of visual art, scores, scripts or texts, whose interpretations demonstrate their aesthetic value. To develop the relationship between enacting gifts and performing artworks, I begin by surveying junctures along the gift-event’s arc: reply, imagination, trust, recognition, transformation and memory. Transformations arising from agonistic gifts strike me as significant because they characterise the way gifts challenge our beliefs, eventually altering our values. That we grow to love gifts, which we originally rejected out of hand, casts doubt on self-knowledge. Enacted gifts handily challenge self-knowledge’s twin features: authority and transparency. As this paper indicates, gift reception helps both to understand ourselves better and to remove the obstacles to what Quassim Cassim calls Substantive Self-Knowledge. https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/11775giftsreceptionself-knowledgerationalitythe imagination |
| spellingShingle | Sue Spaid Enacting Gifts: Performances on Par with Art Experiences Aesthetic Investigations gifts reception self-knowledge rationality the imagination |
| title | Enacting Gifts: Performances on Par with Art Experiences |
| title_full | Enacting Gifts: Performances on Par with Art Experiences |
| title_fullStr | Enacting Gifts: Performances on Par with Art Experiences |
| title_full_unstemmed | Enacting Gifts: Performances on Par with Art Experiences |
| title_short | Enacting Gifts: Performances on Par with Art Experiences |
| title_sort | enacting gifts performances on par with art experiences |
| topic | gifts reception self-knowledge rationality the imagination |
| url | https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/article/view/11775 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT suespaid enactinggiftsperformancesonparwithartexperiences |