Classics, the Left & the Sublime

This conference addresses the ‘missing’ Marxist/materialist theory of the artistically beautiful. It aims to bring together an interdisciplinary team of philosophers, literary theorists, cultural critics, art historians and classicists to address questions including these: Why has the Left (defined as Marxists/Cultural and Historical Materialists/New Historicists/Postcolonial theorists and some Feminists) evaded concepts of the Beautiful, the Sublime, and cultural/aesthetic Value?  Is the ‘labour’ theory of commodity value inadequate to explain the way that markets operate in relation to artworks, whether literary, musical or material? What attempts at producing a theory of cultural value sensitive to cultural relativism, aesthetic subjectivity and class-determination of taste can be identified and how have they been informed by classical concepts in e.g. Homer, Aristophanes, Gorgias, Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Plutarch, Tacitus and Quintilian? Can the debate be pushed much beyond Lukacs, Benjamin, Adorno, Eagleton, Caudwell, Jameson, Bourdieu, and Zizek, none of whom is truly comfortable with talking about art’s aesthetic impact, pleasure, sublimity and transcendence for fear of being identified as Eurocentric and culturally imperialist? What schools of thought and intellectual models from non-literary disciplines might offer promising avenues to illuminate the problem? Cognitive and Neurological Science? Evolutionary Psychology? Most importantly, How could a better ‘Left’ defence of aesthetic excellence and pleasure help make the case for Arts and Humanities as essential to the intellectual health of universities and societies at large? The Left has allowed the Right to hold monopoly ownership of the concepts of Great Art and The World’s Best Books for far too long.

Proposals of up to 400 words are invited for 30-minute papers to be delivered at this conference, convened jointly by Dr Tom Geue (St Andrews), Dr Henry Stead (OU) and Edith Hall (KCL) at KCL on July 18-19th 2018. Please send them to edith.hall@kcl.ac.uk in the first instance.