How far can we go?
Subtitle: pain, excess and the obscene
By: by Maddalena Mazzocut-Mis ; translated by John Coggan
Contributors: Coggan, John (Translator)
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Language: eng
Number of pages: 175
ISBN-13: 9781443836432
Subjects: Modern Aesthetics; Philosophy; Art; History
Work titles: Senso del limite
Description: The public does not desire horror, yet enjoys it in art and suffers it in life. When we deal with the monstrous marriage of the abject and the sublime, the consequent thrill of enjoyment is never appeased, always problematic, often unresolved and finally borders on physiological if not pathological narcissism. The public is well acquainted with this 'rhetoric of effects'; rhetoric of extreme effects, which transforms the spectator into voyeur or victim, into an apathetic torturer, whenever cruelty is shown without respite. A look of horror greets the enjoyment of extremes and enjoyment to the extreme as well; the Eighteenth Century teaches us that lesson. The century of good taste elaborates a sense of the limits, since representing horror means choosing not so much to domesticate it as to render it more enjoyable. It is a game of limits that are not limits anymore, as we can allude to an infinity that often shows the features of the sublime.
Notes: Originally published in Italian: Il senso del limite. Milano : Le Monnier università, 2009.

Includes bibliographical references.

Translation from the Italian.