To See a World: Art and the I of the Beholder
Like huge successive waves crashing ashore, worldviews succeed one another, and the avant-garde, at its best, were the great surfers of these waves. And now that the postmodem wave is washing on the shore of its own demise, what new waves are forthcoming? What new worldviews surge from the ocean of the soul to announce a new perception?
Kenneth Earl Wilber II (born January 31, 1949) is an American philosopher and writer on transpersonal psychology. Ken Wilber has developed Integral Theory, a systematic philosophy which suggests the synthesis of all human knowledge and experience.
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Ken Wilber
The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology,1997, Vol. 29, No.2Download
“Aperspectival madness” might fairly well describe much of the last two decades of art, art criticism, lit crit, and cultural studies. Irony is one of the few places you can hide in a world of aperspectival madness-s-say one thing, mean another, therefore don’t get caught in the embarrassment of taking a stand. (Since, allegedly, no stand is better than another, one simply mustnot commit-sincerity is death). So skip sincerity, opt for sardonic. Don’t construct, deconstruct; don’t look for depth, just hug the surfaces; avoid content, offer noise-“surfaces, surfaces, surfaces is all they ever found,” as Bret Easton Ellis summarized the scene. No wonder that David Foster Wallace, in a recent essay that received much attention, lamented the pervasiveness of the art of “trendy, sardonic exhaustion” and “reflexive irony,” art that is “sophisticated and extremely shallow.”
But if we do abandon irony and seek to make sincere statements, where do we begin? If we do surrender surfaces and look also for the depth, what exactly does that mean? And where are these “depths” to be found?
Ken Wilber
Kenneth Earl Wilber II (born January 31, 1949) is an American philosopher and writer on transpersonal psychology. Ken Wilber has developed Integral Theory, a systematic philosophy which suggests the synthesis of all human knowledge and experience.