Call for papers - English
Materiali di Estetica 11.2 (December 2024) – “Negative emotions in aesthetics and art”
What drives us, in the theater, at the cinema or in front of a painting, to seek out sights that would be painful or frightening in real life? One of the earliest philosophers to ask this question is undoubtedly Aristotle, who in the Poetics notes how images that imitate terrible or gruesome things, such as a disgusting animal or a dead body, can be pleasing. The eighteenth century, then, reflects with particular intensity on negative emotions, wondering about the mixture of pain and pleasure that is at the origin of the feeling that several thinkers of the time call “sublime.” Recalling Lucretius, Du Bos observed that “to watch from the shore a ship struggling against the waves that want to engulf it is thrilling.” And Burke, echoing Du Bos, elaborates a theory of the sublime as “negative pleasure,” a mixed state of terror and pleasure. Hume notes how the pleasure derived from witnessing a tragedy is somehow “inexplicable,” arising from passions that are themselves unpleasant and disturbing. Contemporary aesthetics has not stopped questioning this paradox, offering different solutions to theoretically explain mixed or complex emotions. New research in empirical aesthetics has recently contributed to the inquiry, and its further development could help productively redefine philosophical research. The emergence of new technologies, such as virtual reality, could also contribute to the experimental study of negative emotions. Addressing these new challenges requires, first and foremost, an understanding of the philosophical and theoretical debate on the topic. To this goal this call for papers aims to contribute.
Some examples of themes that could be addressed are:
- Reflection on the difference between negative emotions in reality and in art
- The origin of the debate on “negative emotions” in antiquity and the eighteenth century
- The philosophical analysis of the different facets of “nega-tive emotions” as manifested in art and literature
- Negative emotions in contemporary philosophy, both analytic and continental
- Negative emotions between philosophy and neuroscience
- Negative emotions in music
- Negative emotions and technology (theories and new possibilities)
We accept contributions in Italian, English, French and Spanish. Contributions should range between 25,000 and 40,000 characters (spaces, notes and bibliography included) and should be written according to the journal’s guidelines (available here). Each paper should be accompanied, in addition to a succinct bibliography, by a short abstract of no more than 1,000 characters (spaces included) and four keywords, both in English.
Submission proposals (essay title and abstract of about 1000/1500 characters) should be sent to materialidiestetica@unimi.it by October 1, 2024. The Editorial Board will notify the authors of the receipt of the material and and the coherence with the objectives of this editorial initiative. The contribution will be submitted, anonymously, to two reviewers according to a double-blind peer review procedure.
The process of selection and publication will take place according to the following steps:
Deadline for submission of proposals: October 1, 2024.
Notification of acceptance, conditional acceptance or rejection: November 1, 2024
Deadline for submission of the final version: November 15, 2024.
Issue publication: December 2024.
