Positioned exactly halfway through the course, the birth of modern Aesthetics as a philosophical discipline in the 18th century is indeed the pivot of “Elements of Aesthetics”. Importantly, this “aesthetic turn”, decisively contributing to the slow but steady emergence of modernity in and around that century, has always been inextricably tied to ethics – hence the complex linkages between ethics and aesthetics will also be at the center of the course. Thus, another way to define this course could be “a preliminary glimpse on the ethical side of communication/media theory, from the angle of Aesthetics”. Already briefly touched upon in C&C, race and representation in one particularly relevant contemporary example (The Wire) will trigger an exploration, in the first module, of the interrelationships between representation and power: portraying the world has meant, very often, outlining power relationships, since as early as Ancient Greece and up to our 21st century TV series. With the aforementioned “aesthetic turn”, however, the focus shifts at least partly away from the representation of external objects, to the subjective conditions of possibility of aesthetic experience. By elaborating on this “turn” (among others, throughWalter Benjamin’s concept of “aura”, introduced in C&C already), the second module will also highlight the altogether different ethical attitude that came with it (in short: “intersubjective responsibility”). And as this turn, in the long run, has ended up undermining the anthropocentrism of the West (notoriously informing the key principle of Western visual representation known as “central perspective”), this will be dealt with in the third module (among others, by reflecting on the internet, the freedom it enables and the limits of this freedom, as was also the case in part of C&C too).
