On Aesthetic Truth and Norman Rockwell (Content Minded Ep.108).

[00:00:01][music] [bell] [bell] Hello and welcome back to a new episode of Content-Minded.

[00:00:23]I am your host, the man they call ghost.

[00:00:26]No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. You know, it's very tragic what happened to Ghost.

[00:00:32]He finally got what he wanted, which was to just have a political talk show and not an entertainment troll show. Those remember True Capitalist Radio.

[00:00:44]But anyways, I am your host, the man they call Gopenetti, and we have another exciting edition of Content-Minded where I am going to talk about aesthetic truth. the many virtues of it and the many problems with it as well. I've been out of action for the month of June, attending to uh attending to some uh personal family matters while I had to help my girlfriend. My girlfriend had surgery and uh you know it was she's all right now. She's doing pretty good, but you know, I had to be there and you know what I mean. So anyways, everything's cool and hopefully I'm getting back on the saddle. And I wanted to talk about something again like the last episode with the Gatai movement. I wanted to talk about something that I have many thoughts on and I haven't gathered all of my thoughts on this subject of aesthetic truth, but it's certainly something that I've talked about and I've written about for quite a a while now, really years, almost 10 years. So hopefully with a number of sources that I'm going to pick from, I'm not going to read an extensive exhaustive article. I'm going to really there's one article I've been meaning to review for a very long time that I'm getting through. It's in the book Life After Postmodernism.

[00:02:08]It's called Aesthetic Alienation: Haidiger and Adorno uh on truth and the work of art. That is an essay written in the 1980s which is uh a very foundational essay but I'll probably save that for another episode of content-minded or maybe even digital archipelago because it's very long and very drawn out and requires a lot of careful examination and also I promised all of you another episode on the work of art specifically the work of art in relation to the landscape.

[00:02:45]this idea of had comparing and contrasting these two essays. One is on the work of Paul Saison and the other is on written by Aldis Huxley on the works of Elgreco and the relation to metaphysics and human meaning and also the presence or lack thereof of the landscape. So that's going to be a very exciting episode. But now I just wanted to talk about aesthetic truth.

[00:03:15]And before we get on, please like, share, subscribe, click the bell, all that good stuff on all the audio platforms. Tell your friends, and consider subscribing to either my Patreon or my Substack starting at only $5 a month. All links are below for the full version of this because the full version of this episode, I'm going to have a let's say a a vicious attack on Norman Rockwell and the aesthetics of Americana. And so it's going to be and I'm also going to talk about the problems of aesthetic truth in the latter half of this podcast as well. So, it's going to be very spicy. I'm going to lay bare my critique of Norman Rockwell and how he became the kit king of Americana and the problems with it and the problems with the rights obsession uh the conservative and and right-wing obsession with Norman Rockwell. So, hopefully you enjoy that.

[00:04:22]uh if you don't uh like this more philosophic discussion on aesthetic truth. So it's very fun stuff. Uh please forgive me if I have some indulgences with that. But let I wanted to begin this program with a recent blog post which is very short. It's only a paragraph that was translated by my good friend of the show Stephanie Wakefield who I will have on again. She's great. She's lovely. Uh she's brilliant. Someone said that a a a longtime follower of the show commented that Stephanie looks like my sister. I'm an only child. But now that like now that a follower of mine said it, it's like I can't unsee it. We kind of do look like brother and sister. She kind of does look like uh my older sister.

[00:05:16]But anyways, very funny. Uh, but yeah, she's great.

[00:05:22]She's great. I'm gonna have her on the show again hopefully soon. But this is from Georgio Gambin July 6, 2026 this year. It's called A Way Out.

[00:05:33]In the widespread awareness that we are living through the end of culture, there often arises the need or the hope for a new beginning. Namely, that after the collapse of a long tradition, a new and more vital one will sooner or later come into being. against this naive expectation. And by the way, when I talk about Norman Rockwell, I'm also talking about the end of the last 10 years of politics under Trumpism, or rather approaching a sort of way point of the last 10 years, the spectacle that is MAGA and the politics of the post2010s and like the latter half of the 2010s till now. And so hopefully you appreciate uh my thoughts on that. I was listening to a recent interview with Tim Dylan on Joe Rogan where he's talking about this. Uh so I think it's a good refresher here with what a Gambin is saying not just when it comes to the politics of MAGA or the politics of the past 10 years in general but the greater culture as it intersects with politics and this concept of aesthetic truth. I want you all to think about that while I read this. So he's saying that for the hope for a new beginning, namely that after the collapse of a long tradition, a new and more vital one will sooner or later come into being. He could have written this 10, 15, 20, 30 years ago with the dawn of postmodernism, right? Or at least that was the expectation that a new vibrancy in culture and politics and in daily life would come about. uh you know after the wall fell and when certain uh socopolitical and cultural signifiers and econo types sort of went by the wayside in the collective unconscious in the sort of collective new sphere of man of western man or western people.

[00:07:38]A new and more vital one will sooner or later come into being against this naive expectation. We must remember that what we need is not a new beginning but a way out.

[00:07:48]Well, that's very important. He's he's talking about the outside, right? Even assuming that a new beginning was possible, everything would simply begin again as before, perhaps with different ideas and projects, but still within the furrow of a historical epoch and a tradition in some way homogeneous with the preceding one.

[00:08:12]After the collapse of the history of the west, the last thing we can want is a new historical epoch. What we want rather is to be done with epochs or to ex exit once and for all and not simply to begin a new or again exit towards what we cannot say. But this is a but this is good. Our silence is more precious. And the chatter about the features of a possible future or an imposs improbable one. A chatter that betrays its solidarity with the past by repeating stale formulas such as new humanism, posthumanism, or transhumanism.

[00:08:54]As the ape says in a report on to an academy, having become something radically other. quote, "I do not want freedom, only a way out." Only a way out that we want. Which is very interesting.

[00:09:11]And it seems that a lot of what is on offer is sort of a repeat of the past or how shall I say a logical conclusion or a raification of already existing concepts or motifs or signifiers.

[00:09:29]And there's become I think an awareness among people in terms of discourse of trying to imagine uh new ideas and new political systems or rather frustration of imagining anything new in terms of the culture and in terms of politics and in terms of commerce. even you know uh it seems the far left and the far right are content to quabble over repeated instantiations of more of the same. I think that's what a gambin is saying from the Marxists to the reactionaries. It seems that what is on offer is more of an intensification of the same or more of a reversion towards a previous iteration of ideology or a previous iteration of a cultural moment. And a lot of people, I think there was a period, especially during uh the clown Vidian era, you know what I mean? The KOF where nostalgic content was the zenith of everything. Now we're getting into a critical mode of that nostalgic impulse. But that relates that that leads us to I think to take this uh quote from a gambid this mini blog post leads us to this sort of concept of aesthetic truth in that we find this malleability of meaning and we as some people have said we're sort of approaching a post literate society where the image reigns Supreme as the form of meaning making that the image encompasses both an immediate gut reaction. You can say on one level which is obvious but also the analytical element of expressing ideas or cultural artifacts or even political concepts that they sort of you can see this in memes. this interplay of conglomerations of memes that have this sort of visual process of appreception, meaning that you have to know existing meme structures to comprehend a new one that's a conglomeration of these other ones. And then also you have like there's text and there's an implied meaning but this meaning is also subject to a form of malleability or perspectival uh perspectival nature that you garner meaning from it given your perspective on things and it seems to be much more conducive to the sharing of information and a shared cultural space in the digital age Then the sort of like let's say 19th to 20th century literate society where you have the birth and the prominence of the novel you have print media being the most dominant form of media.

[00:12:41]Now we have something beyond that, right? But also what Agamein mentions at the end there uh a report to an academy for those who don't know it's a short story by France Kovka about an ape who is uh put in captivity by these poachers to I'm assuming sell off to a zoo. And while he's on a ship in captivity, he learns to mimic the behaviors and language of his captors who are human. And then he all of a sudden develops a form of cognition.

[00:13:17]And he's giving a report to this academic panel and he says that it wasn't a desire to be human that you know eventually they freed him and it wasn't a desire to be human but rather through mimmesis and through a sort of creation of a new identity was to maintain his fundamental physical freedom. So he said he only had uh this is from the Wikipedia article. Nothing is needing to escape a situation. He studied the habits of the crew and imitating them with surprising ease. He reports encountering particular difficulty in learning to drink alcohol. Uh throughout the story, the narrator reiterates that he learned his human behavior not out of a desire to be human but only to provide himself with a means of escaping his cage. Upon his arrival in Europe, the ape realizes he is faced with a choice between the zoological garden or the music hall and then devotes himself to becoming a human enough to become an able performer. He accomplishes this with the help of many teachers and reports to the academy that his transformation is so complete that he can no longer properly describe his emotions and experiences as an ape. In conclusion, the ape expresses a degree of satisfaction with his lot analysis.

[00:14:38]The uh Walter Herbert socal suggested the story speaks to a conflict between quote internal and external continuity in the ape's existence. Uh the preservation of life of the protagonist is dependent upon his casting off memory and identity. Only by achieving the end of the internal identity could or achieving the end of the internal identity could actual biological life be maintained. Thus for the ape identity is performance. It is not a static essence a given but a constant reenacting and self representation. And this was published in uh first of all in Martin Booer's magazine called the uh well what his ethnicity identity is I can't say it on YouTube but also his parallels to um a certain political project which I won't go too much into detail but apart from the political context of that France Kafka short story I think it's a very good exercise in demonstrating the possibility of this approach towards identity that is fundamentally malleable and perspectival and is everchanging in that rather than a conscious project.

[00:15:56]This arrives out of sheer necessity and it's something I think we can all feel nowadays that the human condition that we find ourselves in in the 21st century forces us to adopt these very uh let's say looser definitions of truth and identity and purpose than ever before and the act of forgetting still is very painful. A lot of people think this is exciting and like you know particularly a lot of like leftist academics have this whole thing about the aesthetics of being but now it seems even by the political left there's a calling into question of this fundamental malleability as it relates to politics and as it relates to this question of truth and uh media literacy and the various forms of cultural creation be it content, works of art, productions In the culture industry, there seems to be a reversion to this very uh narrow analytical approach to examining these things as it relates to one's beliefs and identity and view of the world in general. There seems to be a pulling back from this, right? But at the same time, through the sort of uh angels of the present, shall we say, there is a necessity.

[00:17:20]There is a demand on us to find an exit, to find an escape.

[00:17:25]An escape from ourselves, an escape from previous political ideologies, uh, cultural contexts, an escape from the like postwar consensus of liberal modernity.

[00:17:39]And this manifests in different ways depending on your, you know, political or identity persuasion. And so I think it's what Agambin is saying here is something very uh interesting in that it's not even a desire to work towards this other grand apocalle project whether it be in the realm of politics or in the realm of culture or as it pertains to civilization itself. It's rather just finding an exit in general and even embracing a sort of postmodern ambiguity. Right. And I think this whole notion of aesthetic truth aims to that in a weird way. But I still think in hindsight there is a lot of uh problems with it that I'll get into later on in this podcast. Suffice to say though, when people refer to aesthetic truth, they're really referring to a vibe about something or a gut instinctual pull towards the meaning of a particular presentation within the work of art or with certain interpretations of events or concepts.

[00:18:54]And I think that this pull towards the ultimate uncertainty with such things through this obsession with media literacy is something that people on the fringes have tried to counteract for a while. And I'll get into my critique because like I said, I was a I I was and still am to an extent a proponent of this thesis of aesthetic truth delivering an immediate and sensuous uh pull on the senses and on the inner self, if you will. It's almost as if certain things or certain concepts or interpretations pull at you on a very gut instinctual level. They almost tug upon your soul and insist upon a certain interpretation that even violates the interpretation of the author, the writer, the the creator or the body or apparatus.

[00:19:59]Let's say in terms of ideas even the uh thinker or I don't know uh what would be a good term even like the thinker or media apparatus that is giving you a certain interpretation of things they can even be misguided and how events play out can determine this gut instinctual vibe that you and and the way that either works of art or literature or even ideas or philosophic concepts are purported to be how they have a certain curated meaning that is then called into question by this other meta level of in what we call the instinctual truth or the aesthetic truth of something. So you could say that aesthetic truth refers to like an emotional resonance or relatability.

[00:21:05]And this media literacy thing is really a form of verification.

[00:21:09]It's relying upon a sort of let's say older epistemology where you have to and and I'm not saying that again I'm not saying that all of this is wrong that there is such a thing as authoral intention coming into play there is such a thing as the conceptual gestalt around a work of art or around a concept or around a cultural production that ultimately determines the meaning of such a thing because a work of art is inherently relational.

[00:21:47]It responds either consciously or unconsciously to the world around it.

[00:21:51]Even if and some people disagree with this, but I still think that there's something to be said about it because nobody creates within a vacuum. Nobody thinks within a vacuum. nobody speaks or events do not take place within a sort of perfect veil of ignorance if you will. And so this is why there will always be this debate over aesthetic truth versus more of let's say a verificationist model of truth. a sort of warranted belief given the context and the subtext of a certain thing, a certain cultural production, a certain work of art. And this leads on to what we say as aesthetic truth being almost like a vibe, right?

[00:22:42]uh something that you feel something that when people say for example a thing is spiritually true even like they say this about certain conspiracies it may be spiritually true meaning that there is a deeper meta storytelling narrative there that we that that hearkens back to a sort of collective unconscious understanding of something. It has an archetypal or econoypal relationship to a greater cosmos of truth. Even if materially events don't play out that way or they may not have played out that way, but they might as well have played out the way that like a conspiracy or an alternative heterodox interpretation of certain events or certain ideas that are promoted in society that you you know what I mean that there is a greater spiritual truth to something but in this sense it's dragging the interpretation of the work of art or to ideas or to literature down to almost a materialistic level of the way that you verify the truth of a work of art or the truth of a philosophic concept or the truth of a work of literature is well we can't really verify it because it's inherently subjective and perspectival but the closest approximation that we can get is a conglomeration of facts about the creation of the work the intentionality of the work and also the greater social surrounding of that work and especially if that work is politically advantageous to a given interpretation.

[00:24:24]You know, like that famous infamous meme, you know, my favorite cape [ __ ] superheroes would agree with me, you know, my favorite cartoon would agree with me politically. It's the same that's like um a very like you know bad faith vulgar interpretation of the media literacy obsession but there's nevertheless it's true right so let me read to you I wanted to uh read a little bit from this essay about gatimer in truth and method he talks about the aestheticization of truth but I really wanted to read this journal entry this academic journal that talks about the aesthetic truth thing. But before we get to both those things, I just wanted you to you the listener, the you know the fan or whatever person listening to this, I want you to keep in mind that the question of aesthetic truth does bring in a lot of greater epistemological and ontological questions about how we are given meaning, right?

[00:25:28]How we can know what is true within not even just the work of fine art or fine literature but even the works of art and illustration and the sort of entertainment that presents itself to us in everyday life in a given basis to which I also include you know what I'm doing right now podcasts right so we're we experience we have aesthetic experiences every single day unless you're living under some rock. You know, even if you're a gamer, you're having an aesthetic experience.

[00:26:04]So, we don't really think of those things as given towards a certain worldview or purporting a certain truth about the world or about our own inner experiences. Some people do, but the vast majority of people are sort of like passive consumers.

[00:26:25]But to call into question of what you're passively consuming on a literally on a daily or hourly basis, there's some people I mean I'm no um I I'm I'm not without sin in this regard. There's some people that always need constant stimulation about something, right? That need to consume something in front of them or to participate in something.

[00:26:46]So I think when we talk about the world of images, the world of the work of art, of illustration, of literature, of things that we experience passively. We don't really think of it that way as well, I can for example, I can listen to a podcast or I can listen to a news reel or I can read something about a current event or I can read something in a scientific journal or I can learn a fact about something on Wikipedia or whatever.

[00:27:24]We have a sort of analytic mind when it comes to those things. But when it comes to the things that we're passively consuming on a daily basis, most people don't really think of it like you know it comes up I think in like television and movies and even to a certain extent in literature obviously where if a work is like inherently political for example then we'll start to think about okay they're obviously imparting a worldview on us but even something that doesn't appear so still is creating a body of knowledge.

[00:27:58]a body of facts about the world unless it's like you know pure somatizing kit but you know even things that are pure somatizing kit have a to some extent comment on a reality about the world and about ourselves so I think a lot of people don't really think of it that way but you do have to think of this as the work of art the work of entertainment the cultural production they do have an inherent truth that they're trying to con that it's trying to convey and there is a dialectic there. There is an a sort of interpretation. There is a humanics there. There's a hermeneutics of truth within that work that can be interpreted or felt a certain way. And this complicates a lot of the traditional sources of knowledge. And we'll get to that with the Gatimer essay where contrast is stacks and sides. But this is a paper from 2012.

[00:29:00]This is again Canadian. Uh I think the Gatimer paper is also from Canada. But here's the Canadian Journal of Communications, the CJC Journal, which I have I think I cited when I was in university for something. This is by Michael Lick Gao. Defying the news, new aesthetics of truth in pop culture. I'm just going to read you a few excerpts.

[00:29:20]So here is the abstract aesthetic manifest the aesthetics manifest a rationally ambiguous category of meaning that encompasses both relational and representational dimensions of communication. In this paper I argue that one truth claims have onlogical consequences bound in the social uh commitments and obligations generated through expressive choices and interpret interpolated audiences.

[00:29:44]So your reaction to the work of art, this is the basic assertion of the audience completing the work. You are just as much a part of uh work of art or literature or culture industry production as anything else. And two, ontological implications entangle discourses of truth in the constitution of knowledge in ways that extend beyond rational argumentation into aesthetic experiences.

[00:30:11]And three, reinterpretation of contean aesthetics offers a framework for understanding how aesthetics experiences influence the organization and relations of power. Uh this person also mentions Michelle Fuko, but let me read you I'm going down from the uh introductory paragraph uh initial paragraphs. So my argument in the paper addresses this tension in two ways uh the tension between truth and aesthetics. first by asserting that pre-cognitive events of aesthetic experiences extend well beyond traditional notions of beauty and emotions to encompass rationally ambiguous categories of experience that emerge from both the relational and symbolic dimensions of communication.

[00:30:54]And secondly, in making the claim that by overlooking these categories of meaningfulness, we overlook an important opportunity for understanding in clearer terms how power moves through, organizes, and is organized by communicative acts. And then that is important the second part is important to uh the concept in Michelle Fuko called hermeneutic or uh epistemic rituals which I'll I'll get to but the first part is very important here of course that aesthetic experiences entail a sort of instinctual immediacy that grasps grasps onto a specific meaning. you know, obviously tempered by one's dispositions, one's ideas, one's place in the world. Many different things influence this instinctual or rather this immediate perception of a truth within the work of art. But even though many things influence that, there still is something that pulls you towards a given interpretation that even violates the interpretation of the author. So then he goes on, I should clarify at the onset that what I refer to truth, what I mean is a truth claim, an intention on the part of an author/creator to represent what they believe to be indexical and referential presentations of the world. My inquiry is not concerned with the fidelity of that representation to an extent real world, but rather with how these intentions are realized through communicative acts and in particular the way in which certain kinds of rationality and rationally ambiguous experiences fundamentally inform textual outcomes intended to be true. As such, my analysis is primary concerned with understanding strategies engaged in the creation of truth claims that is not with their effects and more specifically truth claims within the frame or family of texts and textual practices in general and genre journalism. So he also talks about how and you got to realize this is 2012. This is like before the Trumpian post-truth era. He was talking about how journalism as reporting about facts in the world as an objective metric of reporting or an objective benchmark of warranted true belief about the world had been severely called into question at the dawn of the internet age. Uh it's a good essay. Maybe I'll I'll return to it uh soon or another day. But here he's talking about uh not just a notion of like what is beautiful in the aesthetic but also what is true in general or what is an interpretation that can be verifiable uh that that can't easily be verifiable outside of these other metrics such as authoral intention that are used to verify how a work of art purports to represent the world or claims to hold a truth about things, right? So yeah, rationally ambiguous categories of experience. Yeah. So again, this whole thing about aesthetic truth implies that there is an ambiguity about the nature of truth in terms of how we experience the work of art, but also how we experience many other things. So let me skip ahead to the part about Michelle Fuko. Then he just talks about journalism. Here we go.

[00:34:22]In the order of things, uh, yeah, he's talking more about journalism.

[00:34:28]In the order of things, Fuko describes what Hayden White called epistemic rituals, changes in orientations in the collective impulse towards meaning in western thought that had epistemic consequences. These transformations emerge through discourse. The changing social, cultural, economic, and intellectual criteria and events wherein the conditions of possibility for knowledge are considered, established, and played out. It is within these discursive formations that the boundaries and controversies of public knowledge are negotiated through relations of power with some experiences meeting the criteria for knowledge and others being relegated to the notn knowledge categories of folly, falseness, or madness. And you could also to which include this uh other categories such as conspiracy for example. I guess conspiracy would be v you know categorized under madness to like the normal consensus enjoyer person. I guess conspiracy theories would be under madness. The rendering of knowledge its visibility and recognition as such depends on excluding something else. Speaking as White puts it, is a representative act identifiable as a specific form of oppression by the area of experience that it consigns to silence. Discourse formation produces two realms. That which can be known, knowledge, truth, etc., and that which looks at requisite criteria to be called meaningful or what Fuko calls subjugated knowledges. The historical contingency of these categories is all bound in Benol observation. These are at work in Fuko's account in every society.

[00:36:01]Overarching procedures of control, selection, organization, and distribution of knowledge. Modalities of inclusion and exclusion on the one hand, and internal modalities of classification, order and distribution on the other. So in other words, what you exclude and accept and then how you distribute that form of knowledge about something, about events, about works of art, about social values. Even within the categories of inclusion, there are two overarching principles in western terms, reason and truth. Along with their limiting conditions of folly and falseness, this is Fuko from 1986. It is my contention that the aesthetic experience rests on the threshold of rational thought uh of the rational through procedures of definition, criteria, and rituals of prohibition.

[00:36:50]or in other words that aesthetic experience plays a foundational role in the determination of what does and does not count as knowledge with this in so for example you wouldn't say that surrealism is the same as like you know a planer painting of a landscape I mean I don't know they there you could probably write some similarities but you know what I mean right one is trying to record a momentary account of a specific landscape. The other is trying to record an account of the inner antipods of mental faculties or of the imagination or of the workings of the unconscious or the collective unconscious. Right?

[00:37:36]That's a I think a very intuitive distinction between planer painting of the landscape and say surrealism. Right?

[00:37:44]Even if there you know there's certain landscape painters as I've covered on the show that uh venture into the surreal or the surrealist painters that are I think primarily landscape painters like Eve Tong but you know what I mean that's a good distinction with this in mind I return to the question of truth claims in journalism even today and despite his controversies a central mode of apprehension at work is in professional journalism is the notion of objective truth and newsmaking the advent of modern professional forms of news in the late 19th and early 20th centuries links objective credibility with a unity of method rather than aim. In the words of Walter Litman, uh and an approach that emphasized a discipline of verification, an organization of events and evidence in the pursuit of positive fact and which encountered a profession of scientists rather than publicists. So this is basic Fuko 101, power knowledge. what is verified as true, what is perceived as the popular or quote unquote correct interpretation on a work, whether it be like a culture industry, slop production, or even a work of fine art.

[00:38:50]how you interpret something, what is allowed to be a legitimate stream of thinking about things or a discourse around that art object or production or work that is a product of power knowledge. This is Michelle Fuko 101.

[00:39:07]You know the that power creates truth.

[00:39:11]Knowledge is ultimately a creation of the discourses of power that were instantiated by these new sciences, these new forms of knowledge in the 18th and 19th centuries. And so there's much more things to that, but in essence, what this paragraph is doing is it's calling into question our traditional notions of how we interpret a work of art or a cultural production or a sort of cultural uh phenomenon. how we interpret those things versus these other more out there hetererotox interpretations or sources of knowledge that the aesthetic presents us because the aesthetic can be inherently complicated because it is not like a scientific paper. It is not even like literature although there's a lot of ambiguity with literature as well. I mean let's not kid ourselves, right?

[00:40:02]But the point being is that the work of art in general presents a source of knowledge that runs contrary to the machinations of either philosophy or science or even journalism. Although I think most people would exclude that category because journalism has thoroughly disgraced itself as being an arbiter of truth.

[00:40:22]So by bringing up Michelle Fuko, what he means by these epistemic rituals is that there's sort of like a procedure that is unritualized in mass popular consciousness of how you interpret something to be true within the work of art specifically and what is considered a legitimate claim upon the truth of work of art. Is it the author's intention? Is it the way that academics talk about a work of art?

[00:40:53]Uh or is this this gut impulse that drives you to something that even though the meaning is being interpreted in c in a certain way or the intention of a meaning is given that runs contrary to your aesthetic or ideological or philosophic philosophic baggage, you still derive a meaning from it that runs contrary to that. Nevertheless, that is the whole point there. And that is what complicates things because what really is I think and and um uh lit says this here when it comes to uh discourse formation produces two realms that which can be known knowledge truth and etc. and that which lacks the requisite criteria to be called meaningful. So again and similarly to Michelle Fuko's work when you are talking about the notion of aesthetic truth especially nowadays more than anything more than ever it really relies on discourse to form the interpretation this sort of like realm of a perspectival understanding of a work from multiple different angles and perspectives. Discourse is the lynchpin of all of this. Because you have to realize that discourse is the condition by which you think about the world.

[00:42:16]Discourses create truth. They create our very perceptions of reality. If enough people talk about a certain thing in a certain way, it then becomes a form of truth.

[00:42:28]It will almost hyperstitially ma manifest itself. So to Michelle Fuko, quote, "A discourse is not just conversation or a piece of text. It is historically conditioned social system of thought and language that produces knowledge, defines truth, and shapes how we perceive and act in the world. It is a system.

[00:42:49]It is what legitimates a certain way of thinking.

[00:42:54]when you converse with others, when you are aware of the thoughts of others, how it operationalizes a form of truth because we rely on discourses in everyday life. To know what is real, to know what is true, to know what is acceptable, to know what is socially valid or invalid.

[00:43:13]That is what discourse is. And so discourse in this day and age when we refer to how the work of art delivers us a form of truth that is again ultimately relied on a form of discourse.

[00:43:29]Even how we interpret a work of art even to just merely express I perceive this interpretation of this work of art. you disagree with me and we're debating over it or I'm calling you slurs or whatever.

[00:43:45]Right? The point being is that discourse informs even that immediate gut instinct of what truth is in a work of art in a in a culture cultural production. Right? This is a very open-ended definition of artwork. Even how you interpret um the ending of a video game or the end of a movie or the end of a TV series ultimately relies upon discourse.

[00:44:09]So it's a combination. So this aesthetic truth concept is a combination of different things. It is an immediate gut impulse towards an interpretation but it's also the discourse around a given interpretation whether it be valid or invalid or why is my interpretation valid or not. Uh let me read you again.

[00:44:27]and I've mentioned him so much on the show. My good friend, friend of the show and Julius on Twitter.

[00:44:33]Follow uh Nova Soloulless on Twitter. N O Vu Soloulless S O L U S. That is his current handle of an This is a great tweet. I retweeted it.

[00:44:45]Intuition is like a dark matter of the standard cognitive model. That which cannot be simply reduced to empirical or rational sources. the sudden flashes of insight that come from nowhere and cause the great leaps forward between the blocks of ordinary thinking. To think about a work of art, the aesthetic truth of a work of art that is similar to intuition, the way that it operates, it has an immediate sensuous impulse and impression upon you. It almost pulls and tugs on your soul. But I will say the criticism is that it can also lead you to sort of uh the aesthetic truth of something can also be very deceptive or it can also be utilized or instrumentalized uh which I'll talk about later on in the podcast towards uh different interpretations of things, right? They can be abused. They can guide you towards even uh very silly conclusions.

[00:45:41]And you have to say which works of art are warranted or or meaningful enough to give and to really hammer home and to viciously debate and and spend a lot of time thinking about which works of art are worthy of an a claim towards aesthetic truth. that is uh you know something that is meaningful enough to give so much intense thinking and debate and discourse over because a lot of things that people claim are you know this attribution is aesthetically true.

[00:46:16]It has an immediate sensuous p. You know, I I can just see the based gigachad in my head or I can see the Marxist dialectic or I can see like all of my prayers being validated even though the author is like not of my particular worldview or philosophic or ideological persuasion. I can see it, man. A lot of people that do that nowadays, they're talking about the the sloppiest of slob. I know that word gets thrown around so much, but they're talking about the lowest common denominator base culture trash. The endless streams of trash, to quote uh Theodore Adorno, I believe he wrote that, not a Horheimer, it was in the dialectic of Enlightenment, the endless streams of trash are what people talk about. And even films that I quite enjoy or think are good. And you know, for a time it was a a good debate, it revealed something about the word of through the act of discourse.

[00:47:17]Debating over the aesthetic truth of something reveals a lot of fault lines in the separation between people and how we all live in our different reality tunnels. The best example was the stupid Starship Troopers discourse that came and went periodically for a few years now. Not the actual book by Heinland, but the I even wrote an article about it. Not the book by Heinland, but the Vorhee film, right? Starship Troopers.

[00:47:46]That was uh I think the the biggest iteration a few was it two years ago or a year ago was sparked by Isaac Young, the uh the writer Isaac Young who had this thread and all these like irony leftists descended on it. And we debated for it seemed like months at the time.

[00:48:03]It was like a whole summer of debating about Starship Troopers. Not even the book, the film. But it did, even though that was kind of stupid, it did reveal a a lot of critical fault lines and fissures or fisuras and lacunas, like huge gaps between people in people's interpretation of reality. So that I think is a ready example.

[00:48:34]So just to keep in mind that I think to talk about aesthetic truth is ultimately talking about an intuition, a discourse that is shall I say supper rational or or subrational in the sense it comes before rationality or it violates a typical rational understanding of how you analyze a work of art. the discourse around what is an acceptable interpretation based on authoral intention or based on the context of work of art or why a work of art was made or the various elements within that work of art or literature or production that can be pieced apart and given an interpretation. I mean some some works of illustration art in art and like Hollywood productions for example and literature some just beat you over the head with a meaning. It's like there's nothing there because the meaning is given to you. it's spoonfed to you. And then there's the debate over is that really a meaningful work of art or is that just a work of activism or is that just a work of sloganering or political propaganda? You know what I mean? Even I think maybe it's the distance of time gives us a better perspective on these things. But even propaganda back in the day, you know, even in the 20th century w was done in in such an artistic way with skill that we even look at them today as great works of art. Even though at the time they were just meant as political vehicles, they were propagandistic vehicles for a political message or an ideology. Like you could have um you know various Austrian painter examples that one regime in Germany or you know when it came to the communists a battleship attempt that was a pure work of political propaganda but it was so well done. It was truly an innovative masterpiece of cinema that we considered a great work of art even though at the time its purpose was very limited to being just another piece of political art propaganda. So that's, you know, you have to be very careful about these things. And I think that's a good way of leading to this essay I'm going to read a little snippet of, but I do encourage people to read these sources.

[00:50:48]Uh it's I believe it's a a few sources down on Google. If you uh if you Google aesthetic truth, it's there. But this is an essay about this concept of aesthetic truth uh by Hans George Gadmmer in his book truth and method which is what truly one of the great works of uh contemporary philosophy. Uh when was it written? It was written in the 20th century. Truth and method I think it was written um when was truth and method written? Uh around yeah 1960. There you go. So yeah, pretty pretty recent by the standards of philosophy. Pretty re pretty damn the 1960s are pretty damn recent when it comes to innovations and philosophy. So this is an essay I believe from uh U Montreal, University of Montreal. Well, it's published by U Montreal, but it's by uh Jean Grandin University de Montreal. It's called Gatimer's Aesthetics, the overcoming of aesthetic consciousness and the hermeneutical truth of art. And I highly recommend reading the whole paper, but I'm just going to read the end excerpt from it.

[00:51:57]This is in the Encyclopedia of aesthetics, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998, volume two. And so it's it's, you know, it's a short article.

[00:52:06]It's only nine pages, but it's very meaningful though. So here it talks about how getimer published truth and method and this comes from a 10 volume of complete works where right after truth and method uh around the early to mid70s he started writing about aesthetics more intensely. So let me just read you a little excerpt uh this is page six. The concise title of volume 8 already reveals its intention. uh art.

[00:52:38]So k als art speaks it addresses us in a sense that is something to say in a way no other medium can approximate. What Gimer aims at here is a truth which is experienced like an event of meaning that overwhelms us and in which we only participate. This might sound mysterious but what get describes here corresponds to a basic experience we make when we are confronted with a work of art.

[00:53:03]Something overcomes us, strikes us, makes us rethink, rediscovers our experience. Yet, we cannot perfectly say what it is. Yet, it was convincing and much more so, in fact, than a mere truth statement that could be objectified or objectively verified and isolated. Why is it then that the work of art can be more convincing than a philosophic or scientific argument? A novel, an opera, a poem, a movie leaves an imprint on us and remains in our subconscious memory in a way that no argument can equal. The names of Dustfki, Kofka, Mozart. Oh, funny.

[00:53:40]I didn't read that part. Actually, I I totally forgot he mentioned Kfka, but I guess we started this podcast mentioning the short story by Kfka. Mozart immediately means something to us. They speak to us, revealing an infinite world of experience. This also means of course that we learn something from them. But what it cannot be reduced to specific message, expression or argument. It even suffices to evoke their name to know what I am talking about. Why is it so?

[00:54:06]The work of art does not really argue.

[00:54:08]It makes us see. It opens our eyes in more ways than one. Essentially, intellectually, attentively. But what we see here is something that see that sees us too. What is experienced in a work of art which we cannot be called tr which can be called truth since it reveals something that is there is also a self- encounter an encounter with oneself or with one's selves. This is precisely indicative of the truth experience art can help us rediscover. We are always immediately concerned by the truth which occurs in a piece of art or we are intimately concerned. An artwork with no truth is one that does not speak to us.

[00:54:48]like kind of like catch uh and many clearly don't for whatever reason.

[00:54:54]This hint is precisely because it runs counter to the prevailing model of truth heralded by science for which truth is something that is independent from the observer where our subject our subjectivity does not come into play.

[00:55:08]While this type of truth or might be uh might be applicable in some spheres where objectivity is attained or attainable in the knowledge of nature for instance, it is clearly only of place in the realm of art or out of place in the realm of art and is questions that pertaining to meaning where truth functions like an answer to questions in which we are immersed.

[00:55:31]So the experience of truth is one which implies our questioning selves. No metaphysical self is implied here of course only the notion that we are for ourselves a question to use Augustine's justifiably famous phrase art is the privileged happening of this self- encounter it speaks it addresses us it elicits a response an artwork thus requires participation response imposed arts say an obligatory visit to a museum or corporate season tickets for a concert concert series will always be dreadful this response is what Gata calls reading lesson lesson. There is also here a richness of meaning in the German verb lesson which cannot be perfectly conveyed in English for in German lesson also has the connotation of harvest vintage gathering. At the root of lesson lies the idea that a collection or recollection is taking place very higharian in some ways. This notion of recollection will enable Gatimer to bestow new meaning on the notion that art is a matter of mimicis or reproduction. and no imitation of nature is implied by this ne m ne m ne m ne m ne m ne m ne m ne m ne m ne m nemesimmesis rather the notion that this is reproduction actually taking place in our reading or rereading selves the similarity of this notion with the theory of mimmesis developed by Paul Ror and it's two volume works uh time and narrative which I have read all three in grad school Paul Ror is an incredible writer who doesn't get nearly enough time of day it's pretty striking it also enables us and perhaps for the first time to discover the common hermeneutical ground shared by gat and raor. Such reading is re requisite for all forms of art, not only for literary works. To read a painting is to follow in one's own dialogue uh the lines it only sketches the world it makes us enter into. To read a piece of music is to let oneself be carried by its rhythm.

[00:57:21]Its movement has something repetitive but its unfolding seems to lead somewhere else. Where this goes, no one can tell but it takes us along. But we also read architecture when we walk through the building or a temple and thus get a grasp of its presence of its giving of space to those who partake in this world.

[00:57:40]Uh also the ancient notion of contemplation can also be helpful to describe what is holding us here. We only have to hear the notion of temple that is at the very heart of the event of contemplation.

[00:57:52]When we contemplate, we come to hear or see something in a state of awe, but that we can only read it if we enter in its space and participate in its unfolding and meaning, one that we can never totally grasp. But anyways, that's a great point. I think that uh the German word lesson is very important here where it's it's not that you are simply mimicking something or imitating something rather the experiential nature of that thing to Gatimer and Paul Ror where you have an engagement with a certain work where and this is very important for Paul Ror in time and narrative.

[00:58:38]Uh you gather a sort of temporality around that work. There is a a matter of being in a matter of time.

[00:58:47]uh you reflect on reading a work at a certain time in your life or seeing a painting or no denoting um how you experience each individual element of say a work of literature, a work of painting and you sort of slip into that work and you engage with each element of it and you sort of live in its world a little bit in a way. But the point being is that the way you experience an aesthetic truth of a work, of something, of an event plays into a number of different subjective features because you experience that work on an individual level. I mean, a lot of people can go to a movie theater, but it's still through your eyes and your mind and your soul that you experience a work of cinema or an art gallery.

[00:59:45]And it's not as easily reproducible as say one scientist doing one experiment on one natural phenomenon in say here in Canada or in America and then halfway around the world in China or wherever.

[01:00:05]It's not of that level of quote unquote objectivity. I mean I actually I question that level of objectivity too, but for argument's sake, right?

[01:00:15]And so unlike what we think about the golden standard of determining a warranted true belief about a fact of the world that by definition has to be objective and of course the first half of this essay mentions Emanuel Kant and disinterestedness or trying to approximate aesthetic judgment as objectively as possible but yet the sort of free play of the imagination the understanding are also influenced by it.

[01:00:44]uh which is another topic for another time and frankly I find myself every time I engage in the third critique critique of judgment I have to like you know reread explainers and things of that nature. So, but the point being is that it is paradoxical because it is a form of truth that by definition demands a form of subjective engagement is embedded personally within oneself and a lot of things pretend to have the pretense of that level of objectivity.

[01:01:18]before like the article we read previously, journalism had that pretense, but we all know that that's pretty much a lie, right? Academia, uh, the social sciences, even some of the hard sciences. There's a lot of subjective determinations.

[01:01:34]So I think that in some ways the moment we live in right now is primed for the conveying of truth within the image space for a number of very obvious and some not so obvious reasons in the internet.

[01:01:56]And that still leaves us with how you engage with the world around you and how you engage with uh an idea of the world around you either through about you know ideology or religion or philosophy. And so I think a lot of people experience a form of post- literacy through this reality that the meaning of the written word is conveyed through the image and the image has the text. The text ultimately is a sort of subtrauge for the image and vice versa. And it's not that um it's it's not the sort of traditional critique of oh people are getting dumb and don't people don't read. I mean it's true people are getting dumber and people don't read. But it's more of that kind of like the beginning of this podcast the story about the ape in a report to an academy.

[01:02:59]By necessity, you adapt to the imagistic world through truth being perspectival and experiential rather than objective and beholden to the very precise logic of the written word. And people you will find are transmogrifying almost even physically to this reality of ambiguity.

[01:03:25]But let's take a little bit of a break and then I will go to my blasting excoriation of Norman Rockwell and Kitchen and the limitations of this thesis of aesthetic truth as it pertains to the political and the social. So let's, you know, meet me on the other side. Thank you for listening to the Content-Minded podcast. This concludes the free public version of the episode, but if you wish to view the full version and unlock hours upon hours of content, go to patreon.com/shinerproductions or substack.com/jioscontent corner. Both are only $5 a month and on the Patreon there are different tiers for different things. Of course, catch me every week with my co-host Matt Williams, the credentialist on Digital Archipelago.

[01:04:19]And as well as other extras and shows that I will inform you of. And also, if you wish to purchase one of my artworks, go to giantartproductions.com for all of your art needs. Thank you all for your continued support and viewership. It means the world to me.

[01:04:39]And let's help keep good content