Carnal Aesthetics

Art today is an increasingly multifaceted phenomenon, encompassing transgressive works that intervene in war, inequalities, ecological disasters, and revolutionary changes in technology. Carnal Aesthetics is a fascinating new examination of this aspect of contemporary visual culture. Employing recent theories of transgressive body imagery, trauma, affectivity and sensation, it provides a fresh look at the meeting point between the politics of representation and the politics of perception, through the prismatic lens of feminist theory.Acclaimed scholars, including Griselda Pollock, Vivian Sobchack, Laura Marks, Erin Manning, Jill Bennett, and Martine Beugnet, analyze seminal case studies coming from different media: digital photography, video, film and multimedia art. They explore a number of transgressive movements that significantly reconfigure the relationship between the body and the image, challenging also the primacy of vision.