The Powers of Art. Aesthetic experience, emotion, knowledge, behavior. – PDA

The affective turn, a move away from formalism and reception theory all invite reconsideration of the role of emotions in the process of artistic creation and reception. Furthermore, current research on emotions deriving in particular from analytical philosophy, cognitive science and reception theory allows us to think about how the work, as considered and as act, is specific to literature and art, in as much as they are able to access the complexity of human experience and to offer a means of interpreting and humanising abstract knowledge and moral values.
This project aims then to encourage the appropriation of recent research into the affective sciences developed from revisiting the heritage of textual analysis passed down from literature and philosophy as well as through explorations in new perspectives in the analysis of aesthetic emotions. Our shared ground is the desire to integrate both cognition and affect where the theoretical interests of researchers from literature and plastic arts on concepts such as anger, shame, empathy, crying etc; join together with the interests of philosophers who seek to give back to the arts all their cognitive and behavioural effectiveness. More broadly, such an interdisciplinary project calls on all areas of the humanities that address aesthetic emotions and their psychological and social effects.

This project has three principal objectives :

a) The organisation and publication of coordinated research outputs on the relationships between art, knowledge and behaviour. These are organised by both the exploration of key notions such as empathy, censorship or catharsis and on historical work (the classical world) or artistic subjects (literary fiction, film) and modern theories on aesthetic emotions which help to reconfigure.

b) The publication of a generalist book, Pouvoirs de l’art by éditions Armand Colin which aims to give broad coverage of the field at large and a detailed analytic vocabulary of aesthetic emotions.

c) The online publication of a bibliographic and documentary resource on artistic emotions including a collection of key texts and digital versions of a selection of work undertaken during the project.

Embracing an international dimension (participation of scientific researchers at the Centre national Suisse on affective sciences and the organisation of three overseas colloquia), these undertakings, necessarily collaborative, build upon a substantial preparatory research developed over several years by interested research groups. They will be directed by two philosophers (Carole Talon-Hugon, project director, University of Nice, Sandra Laugier, University of Paris 1) and two literature specialists (Alexandre Gefen, University of Bordeaux 3 ; Martine Boyer-Weimann, University of Lyon 2). This project is supported by an academic committee constituted of French and worldwide specialists recognised internationally for their research on the links between art and affects, linking in to a much broader network of interested researchers who assure its organisation.