What Is (Not) Aesthetic Education?

ABSTRACT

The article, of essayistic-bibliographic character, seeks to reflect on the uses, powers and meanings of the term Aesthetic Education in scientific research, starting, firstly, from approaches on the concept of aesthetics from the texts The Problem of Content, Material and Form in Literary Creation, by Mikhail Bakhtin and Malaise dans l’ésthetique, by Jacques Rancière, to then mobilize, from a Latin American perspective, its relations with the field of education in dialogue with Latin American authors. The text is constituted as a theoretical-methodological exercise to think the Aesthetic Education from angles and prisms still little investigated in the current literature on the subject.

KEYWORDS:
Aesthetics; Education; Bakhtin; Rancière

RESUMO

O artigo, de caráter ensaístico-bibliográfico, busca refletir sobre os usos e sentidos do termo Educação Estética, abordando, primeiramente, o conceito de estética a partir dos ensaios O problema do conteúdo, do material e da forma na criação literária, de Mikhail Bakhtin e Mal-estar na estética, de Jacques Rancière, para, então, mobilizar, desde uma perspectiva latino-americana, suas relações com o campo da educação. O texto se constitui enquanto exercício teórico-metodológico para se pensar os rumos do que se concebe hoje por Educação Estética sob ângulos e prismas ainda pouco investigados na literatura vigente sobre o tema.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Estética; Educação; Bakhtin; Rancière

A (Non) Introduction

The present article, of essayist-bibliographic nature, is the fruit of our uneasiness with the term Aesthetic Education, used in different research fields to name practices, procedures, and theories under dispute. The aim of the article is to reflect on the uses and meanings of the term Aesthetic Education based on Bakhtin’s and Rancière’s conception of aesthetics, to establish connections with the field of education from a Latin-American perspective.

To that end, we propose in the first section, a dialogue between two texts by two authors who are situated in distinct chronotopes concerning both their geographical/social context of intellectual production and the approach to aesthetics used in their writings. The first text is The Problem of Content, Material and Form in Verbal Art, by Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975), written in 1924 and published in Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays¹ (a collection of essays written between 1924 and 1941, organized by the author in Moscow but only published in 1975, after his death; published for the first time in Brazil in 1988). The second text is Malaise dans l’ésthetique² by Jacques Rancière, published in France in 2004 and recently translated into Portuguese/in Brazil. In this section, we bring the writings of Bakhtin and Rancière into contact, discussing excerpts of the theoretical subject under investigation to reach “consensus,” obviously one that is never completed or depleted.

Next, in section 2, by approximating aesthetics and education, we aim to discuss the term Aesthetic Education in its delimitation and so-called traditional belongings to indicate possibilities of a more decentralized expansion of the term. The latter should allow its conception as a theoretical-methodological device connected to different fields of knowledge, of language and of life. Hence, the second part is dedicated specifically to the unfolding of the contributions by both authors (Bakhtin and Rancière) in connection with other studies on the subject, especially in Latin-America, in order to expand the debate on the central issue of this article without providing a unilateral or categorical answer.

The discussion on aesthetics developed by Bakhtin in the 20^th century Russia takes as principle the dialogical relations with concepts such as ethics, value, axiology and exotopy, among others. Bakhtin’s entire work related to what is called the Circle (Bakhtin and the Circle) moves through the dialogism intrinsic to his own text production, deeply rooted in the relationships between the authors in the Circle, its aims and searches in a world yearning for change and revolution, typical of a time historians like to call modernity. It is noteworthy that Bakhtin’s discussion does not springboard his intellectual efforts directly into the field of Aesthetic Education. Indeed, his texts are concerned with social life, with the interaction between subjects and the dynamics of language that existed in different times and spaces, including those of an educational nature. In the latter, these phenomena become, more than present, they are hues to depict the workings of ways of living, being and acting in community.

Rancière’s contributions to aesthetic studies have become prominent in contemporaneity. Crossing a time (our own) still nameless from a historical point of view, and based on a considerable repertoire, the author is legitimately interested in discussing the aesthetic character of life, its relations with politics, art, and other cultural domains of sociability. Among his writings, it is possible to notice criticism to certain debates on what is possible to claim as an Aesthetical Education or not, based on the distinction from the concept of aesthetic experience, as we shall discuss further on. Although Rancière’s reflections comprehend the education field, his work comes from and moves toward philosophy. Somehow, this minimizes his contributions to the debate of the specificities we are proposing: the term Aesthetic Education.

The title of this article demands the reader’s attention: What is (not) an Aesthetical Education? The “not” in the parenthesis and part of a question is deliberate for they may trigger an inquisitive and reflective academic reading as well as a sign of a genuine research question about the subject, embedded in the uncertainties that move this article and give rise to a kaleidoscope of possibilities. Perhaps the title itself can justify the theoretical and the methodological choices to construct the present work, which assumes in its writing the risk of absence of dialogue with the expected theoretical sources and with a certain academic tradition regarding Aesthetic Education (that prefers to affirm rather than deny or inform and, therefore, we deem less adequate at the present).

1 What Do (Not) Bakhtin and Rancière Tell Us about Aesthetics?

To avoid misunderstandings, we shall provide here an exact definition of technique in art: by the technical moment in art, we mean everything that is absolutely necessary for the creation of a work of art in its natural-scientific or linguistic determinateness (this includes the entire makeup of a finished work of art as a thing), but that does not enter immediately into the aesthetic object - is not a component of the artistic whole. Technical moments are factors of the artistic impression, but they are not aesthetic valid components of the content of that impression, i.e., of the aesthetic object (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 295).³

Aesthetics is present in Bakhtin’s thought⁴ and in his project of a search for a theory of romance. The strongest proof of that presence are the theoretical claims (which, indeed, deserve further investigation) on a literary aesthetic in different texts, from his early to his most mature writings. The presence of a concern with the aesthetic in the works of Bakhtin and his colleagues seems to enable the outline of aspects that guide the uses and the meanings of aesthetics by that group of Russian intellectuals.

In The Problem of Content, Material, and Form in Verbal Art, from 1924, Bakhtin hints at a possible definition of aesthetics not only in the literary field. By joining aesthetic and art, he argues for a notion that conditions (guides) aesthetics upon art (“the aesthetic realizes itself fully only in art”) (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 26). ⁵ According to the author, it is not possible to dissociate theorizations on aesthetics from philosophy, which somehow delimits the works of scholars aimed at expanding the concept and the connections proposed by the academic-historical tradition.

It is true that aesthetic is in some way given in a work of art itself - the philosopher does not just invent it. But only systematic philosophy with its methods is capable of developing a scientific understanding of the distinctive nature of the aesthetic, of its relation to the ethical and the cognitive, its place within the whole of human culture, and, finally, the limits of its application (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 259).⁶

Introducing the reader to the field of aesthetic works, here, as a statement of a certain aesthetic property of art and philosophy in the intellectual realm. Therefore, to understand the work and the mobilization of aesthetics in life, in the world, in culture, according to the author, it is necessary to master the artistic and philosophical principles outline that can be conceived as aesthetic. It is noteworthy that due to the on-going expansion of terms and their uses in the Humanities, Social and Language Sciences, this notion seems to diverge from the movements of theoretical understanding constructed in the academia, according to which, tradition is associated to decentralized perspective of a hegemonic and ruling knowledge. Historically built authorization then granted to the world of art of philosophy to define thus far what aesthetic is (or is not) is one of the first issues we propose to approach in this article. Bakhtin tell us that:

The concept of the aesthetic cannot be derived in an intuitive or empirical manner from a work of art: the concept would be naïve, subjective, and unstable. For a confident and exact self-determination, it needs to determine itself in mutual relation to other domains within the unity of human culture (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 259-260).⁷

At a glimpse, the author would seem contradictory in those two excerpts chosen for the present discussion. However, in both fragments, the place of human culture is stated in its diversity and it is through the understanding of that place that what could be the set of indicators the author uses to face theoretically the notion of aesthetic is mobilized. Without a categorical definition (a considerable feature in works of the Circle), Bakhtin offers clues to understand that the concept is only possible when discussed from the perspective of interaction and dialogue, that is, when an aesthetic analysis is realized. The approach to the theme of contemplation is, in that regard, a particular case that we take as an example, one the author himself names content of the aesthetic activity directed toward a work - the aesthetic object (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 267).⁸

Bakhtin suggests (without imposing) three tasks for an aesthetic analysis which complete each other in the sense of searching for an idea of the composition of a work (of art). Although Bakhtin concentrates more on the understanding of aesthetics in literature, his approach can be applied to distinct fields, since one of the interests of the Circle was to broaden and expand what was understood at the time as culture and art.

The first step in an aesthetic analysis, then, is to understand the aesthetic object in its distinctiveness, which means seeing the object in its purely artistic structure. The vision of the “whole” of the work in its exclusiveness/particularity is called by the author the architectonics of the aesthetic object. That suggestion enables the conjecture of different spheres for its effective application.

A number of questions become urgent, in our understanding, regarding the possibility of moving the discussion onto other fields: where is (is there) the aesthetic in the world? Is it necessary for the realization of an aesthetic experience the existence of a work of art as materiality? Who determines what is (not) susceptible to aesthetic analysis in contemporary society? How to conduct analyses on what we conceive as artwork nowadays, better yet, how to recognize the aesthetic in an experience in which the work itself may not be artistic or literary?

Let us return to Bakhtin’s suggestions.

A second task would be to address the work in its primary purely cognitive givenness “[…] the aesthetician must become a geometer, a physicist, an anatomist, a physiologist, a linguist, just as the artist must to some degree” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 267).⁹ It is an understanding of a phenomenon of language, related to the scientificity of the purely linguistic material. As an analytical task, this could be supported by the necessary delimitation or section of an object that, in this case, is the work itself by becoming the analyst’s work material or, in Bakhtin’s words, the aesthetician’s.

A third task is connected to the understanding of the external material work as that which actualizes as the technical apparatus of aesthetic execution (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 267).¹⁰ This third task presupposes that one has already cognized and studied both the aesthetic object in its distinctiveness and the material work in its extra aesthetic. This task cannot ignore the founding principles of the Bakhtinian thought: dialogue.

It is the notion of dialogue that supports the invitation to Rancière into the discussion. In his Malaise dans l’ésthetique, published in 2004 in France and translated into Portuguese in 2023 (Rancière, 2004),¹¹ the author teases readers, the ones used to discussions on aesthetics, especially in the fields of philosophy and arts, as well as the beginners or students who approach his work with no pre-conceptions, to think of a complex and unfinished concept. In his work, Rancière discusses very specifically the relations between art and aesthetic, and he refuses somehow to situate the concept of aesthetics in a sectioned temporality. In other words, neither modernism or post-modernity nor any other nomenclature convey a notion of aesthetics delimited or enclosed in a specific time-space.

In the Introduction to the work, Rancière proposes to bring forth again a background for such speculations¹² (Rancière, 2004, p. 14) conveyed by the term aesthetic, especially in time when political fields must be marked to reinforce democracy. Pointing out a certain bad reputation of aesthetics as a concept, the author tracks the path of theoretical dispute on which doubt is intrinsic to limits and possibilities of scientific construction on the subject. If ‘aesthetic’ is the name of a confusion, this ‘confusion’ in fact allows us to identify the objects, the means of experience and the forms of thinking of art that we intend to isolate to denounce” ¹³ (Rancière, 2004, p. 12).¹⁴

In the author’s approach, aesthetic and politics are intertwined in a weaving that binds practices and discourses, from a tradition that places the belle-arts in a privileged place compared to popular and community expressions to the understanding of the ways in which the affirmation (or, as we see it, the denial) of the legitimacy of the work of the aesthetic experience in the current machinery of power.

The author gives a primary and important warning in the fact that aesthetic needs to be seen through the lens of relations: a relational approach that rejects any assumption of self-sufficiency of art, as well as the dreams that life can be transformed by art at the same time it believes in the construction of subjective webs that can reshape in a material and a symbolic way the territory of the common. Therefore, the acceptance of shifts and un-specification of instruments, materials or devices in the different arts in favor of occupying places in which bodies, images, spaces and times can converge as an artistic idea, surpassing, for example, the very expression “contemporary art,” which according to Rancière, does not mean that “in any way a common tendency that characterizes the different art of today”¹⁵ (2004, p. 35).¹⁶ Hence, art is not a common concept able to unify different arts, but it could be a device to make them visible.

At this point, it falls upon politics¹⁷ to reshape the sharing of the sensitive (aesthetic experience) that could define the common of a community, making visible what was not. Rancière names this movement as a “work of creation of disagreement”¹⁸ (Rancière, 2004, p. 39).¹⁹ This work is responsible for the constitution of an “aesthetic as politics,”²⁰ thus resulting in the suspension of coordinates that define or not a sensorial experience and enable it in different spheres, whether artistic or not. This is possible because this signature (of what can and cannot be called art) is much more dependent on the forms and the deals that involve and distinguish a community than the very nature of art, which is better connected to the universe of tradition and restrictions in access: “Art and politics are connected, then, beneath themselves as forms of presence of singular bodies in a specific space and time”²¹ (Rancière, 2004, p. 40).²²

Bakhtin and Rancière, despite not being consecrated in the current literature as authors of reference in the field of aesthetic, leave important reflections to expand the conceptual armoire on the subject and reach unexplored horizons in science. Their contributions, connected here through the idea of dialogue, are particularly effective when they propose to intertwine, rather than to assert, aspects and facets of a concept for which there is no consensus, not even among the great scholars that have investigated the theme in greater depth. Let us move forward to a not less intriguing connection: that between aesthetic and education.

2 Aesthetic Education: What Must (Not) We Define?

Discussing the connections between aesthetic and education is not the same as talking of Aesthetic Education, therefore, this is always a task of hard affiliation and theoretical construction. It is necessary to consider that, historically, the studies in the area still concentrate, in great part, on those turned to education in art with a Northern orientation (the most cited and used authors represent mostly European epistemologies). Notwithstanding, the field of philosophy still makes great efforts (which are legitimate from a certain perspective) to preserve aesthetics under its domain, in other words, to certain approaches, only philosophers are invited and accepted to think about aesthetics in its relationship with science.

To the purposes of this article, which is more of a denial of limits or sections than the development of a conceptual network, we chose to search, in works of Latin-American authors, for possible meanings to ask questions that may articulate the term Aesthetic Education from a broader perspective, and even opposed to approaches that lean toward the centralization of ideas and knowledge about that issue. Let us begin by introducing the notion of aesthetic of re-existence discussed by Adolfo Albán Achinte (2014). That author claims that:

The aesthetics of re-existence are those of decentering, those of escapes routes that allow us to see distinct, divergent, disruptive life scenes, against the narratives of cultural, symbolic, economic, socio-political homogenization, those located in the borders, where it’s harder for institutions to co-opt the autonomies constructed in those spaces in which power is fragmented and shows the clefts in the impossibility of realizing itself fully (Albán Achinte, 2014, p. 117, our translation).²³

The author attributes the mission of rethinking society to the aesthetics of re-existence to enable the existence of diversity and, through it, of other notions. As a consequence, the notions of beauty and creativity would be able to rebel. Underlying that movement are the acts of making room and making visible in education narratives on the everyday, which would be turned into pedagogical devices for the development of new symbology and pluralities in contemporaneity.

From this perspective, in his reflections regarding an educational historiography of aesthetic and sensitivities in Latin America, the Argentinian Pablo Pineau (2018) shows, for example, a direct relation between school aesthetic and school culture:

Aesthetics is conceived as a register that permeates the school life not limited to specific spaces that were deliberately dedicated to it. It can be intentional (“art classes,” “hygiene and presentation,” “education of the body”), or present itself in the other dimensions of the school (material culture, curricular propositions, teacher education, etc.) (Pineau, 2018, p. 10, our translation).²⁴

For the author, school culture has its own aesthetics which:

(...) implicates a relation of production of meanings between certain sensoria stimuli and a subject - individual or collective - which produces a particular interpretation about them - the ‘sensitivity’ - that involves necessarily its present, past and projections of the future (Pineau, 2018, p. 11, our translation).²⁵

As we have seen, despite Pineau’s affirmations, it is possible to situate Aesthetic Education in a position of, not denying the artistic definitely, but, in some aspect, not depending on it to exist. Defending the term Aesthetic Education from a perspective, which surpasses the subject of art classes, at school or any other educational settings, would be a remarkable advance when there are teachers who still believe aesthetic experiences are only possible in outdoor activities, visits to museums, conservatories and theaters, or only when art comes into educational spaces. From the present perspective of analysis and discussion, understanding the aesthetic nature of educational life means granting the concept independence regarding the connection between Aesthetic Education and what we call artistic experience.

Resuming Rancière’s contributions, for whom “there is not always art, even if there is poetry, painting, music, theater or dance” ²⁶ (Rancière, 2004, p. 40),²⁷ we can only reflect on the presence of aesthetics in education in contexts that are not artistic. Can education by itself constitute an aesthetic experience? Or, perhaps, we can ask the question backwards: do education acts contain in its realization aesthetic elements? Such questions are fundamental for yet another point worthy of discussion: to (whom) does (not) the discussion of aesthetics in education belong?

Amidst the studies read for the elaboration of the present article, it is notable and considerable the fact that most of the scholars with an interest in discussing the issue have their education and expertise in the field of arts.²⁸ There is a significant number of texts interested in affirming their belonging to a theoretical-methodological construct or to a specific group, especially, regarding the Latin-American intellectual production.

This verification raises concern with the risk that any insurgence and insistence of reflections on Aesthetic Education continues limited to fields already claimed or identified as traditional, such as the easy and common connection between aesthetic and art (as well as philosophy). We agree with Trezzi (2011), for whom “aesthetics is not limited to the realm of beauty, much less of art, despite closely related to it”²⁹ (Trezzi, 2011, p. 69, our translation). Nonetheless, there is a theoretical and a methodological path to be taken for that understanding to reverberate scientifically since this relation has been established historically. It is also important that art, philosophy and Aesthetic Education can occupy, evidently, the same spaces for knowledge, either theoretical or practical. Limiting or reducing the discussion to determining associations is, as a matter of fact, an exercise dislocated from current demands on the issue.

It is also necessary to think on voices that, somehow, overlap when Aesthetic Education is in discussion. Despite the urgency of expanding the conceptual understanding on that subject, especially due to the decentralization of knowledge that represents contemporaneity, the absence of a local/regional discussion is made evident despite the use of authors, allegedly of reference, who still set the tone, even when voices from a different geographical epistemological axis begin to rise and search for dialogical spaces.

To write this article, the first references to Bakhtin and Rancière, and their notions of aesthetics seek a dialogue still incipient as a Latin-American theoretical elaboration that sees Aesthetic Education through the lens of its own struggles and themes. Perhaps, at this point, the insistence of the present manuscript for a connection between Aesthetic Education and politics finds less space to be realized more objectively. Resuming Bakhtin’s contributions, it seems urgent to think relations and peoples (politics and positions) involved in the debate:

Everything is recognized but not everything is identified in an adequate concept. If this all-pervasive recognition did not exist, the aesthetic object (i.e., that which is artistically created and apprehended) would evade all the interconnections of experience, both theoretical and practical (…). In the same way, artistic creation and contemplation, if they were deprived of any participation in the potential unity of cognition, if they were not penetrated by it and not recognized from within, would become simply an isolated state of amnesia, about which it is possible to learn only post factum, from the time elapsed, that it had occurred (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 287).³⁰

The aesthetic character of the educational experience must be more than stimulated, acknowledged, both by scholars and the communities in which the present of aesthetics is undeniable and clearly visible. What should be said, for example, about the modus operandi of different classrooms in distinct contexts and levels, in schools or not, often made invisible or ignored by routine, methods, lesson planning, schedules and assessment? What is left if teachers and students are asked to account for the total of possible materiality to categorize the selection and application of content regardless of the listening and the contemplation in the field of education?

Silva (2021) prompts reflections on the possibility of an aesthetic pedagogy “that involves a reckoning of the subject and their priorities, and that gives as much as it takes”³¹ (Silva, 2021, p. 9). Hence, the aesthetic work in education should focus more on performances triggered by the rites of education itself, including insight into ways of living, being and acting in and about the world. We also agree with Copatti (2015) whose research investigated a kaigang indigenous school in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. She claims that:

Aesthetic Education considers human beings in the cosmos, aiming at constructing a more human society, which is capable of reconstructing relations with nature, as a fundamental part of that space and which it should respect. In schools, it must be present beyond school subjects, to be experienced in the daily life of students, in the hallways, in the classrooms, in the various activities in that environment. It is a way of approximating teachers as well as students to transform schools, teaching practices and their attitudes (Copatti, 2015, p. 59, our translation).³²

Aestheticizing the educational through resistance seems to be the advent of a springboard to the realization of a different Aesthetic Education - distant from the elitist movement, be it artistic or intellectual, calculated in the realm of the unpredictable as an access card to the experience of subjects who occupy with their bodies-memories the realm of education.

Perhaps, in assuming the perspective of small crises of Gumbrecht (2006), through which the aesthetic experience is constituted as interruption of the daily flow, could become a possibility for an Aesthetic Education in its most expanded and decentralized conception, at the same time it is connected with the reality of spaces, subjects and times of education. The author helps us to realize that “contents of aesthetic experience present themselves to us as epiphanic, that is, they appear all of a sudden (“like lightning”) and they suddenly and irreversibly disappear, without allowing us to hold on to them or to extend their duration” (Gumbrecht, 2006, p. 307).³³

Through the cracks of a non-stigmatized Aesthetic Education, which does not respond necessarily to the precepts of art or a certain philosophical tradition, it is possible to plead in educational settings for space for new and different experiences, whose focus fall upon life in its dynamicity, strength and narrative. The aesthetic is presented, thus, as means, procedural and never finite. That nuance unfolds into the potential of theoretical-methodological rigor - an essential task in academia - embracing non-discussed issues concerning Aesthetic Education. That reshapes its premises and makes it a device for understanding different contemporary phenomena, situated geographically and semantically at different poles of human experience.

(Non) Final Remarks

Denial is persistent and intrinsic to this article. By insisting on the denial of limits or constraints of a concept, we believe it is possible to make science connected to its own time, space and subjects. The non in the parenthesis in the title of this conclusion also dialogues with the perspective of suspending what is expected of a scientific article: presenting readers with the conclusions of a study, showing novelty and contributions on the subject. Certainly, we do not avoid that convention.

The present text can work as a trigger for the concept of aesthetic and, consequently, the term Aesthetic Education, from a point of view that, by refusing a trajectory of theoretical-methodological affirmation or support of an idea from perspectives that are accepted or validated by previously tested/assessed research practices, comes into this arena of voices with no intent of disputing belonging or placement to/in this or that field of investigation. What we also want to deny from that hypothesis is the fact that it is necessary for Aesthetic Education to be connected to, at least, two factors that have been present in the history of its construction as term/notion/idea: a) the artistic field, since that connection seems to be established continuously and, in some cases, as reinforcement of an inseparable relation; b) a philosophical tradition distant from communities and their local and regional practices, that is, discussions that are theoretically, methodologically and temporally distant from the daily aesthetic experience.

Approaches to aesthetics in the works cited in this article, Bakhtin’s and Rancière’s helped our search for guidance to work a conceptual articulation still little explored in the current literature, by putting in dialogue authors and texts still unrecognized, in the great time, as references on the subject. Both Bakhtin’s manuscript (The Problem of Content, Material and Form in Verbal Art) and Rancière’s (Malaise dans l'esthétique) are complex reflections that could easily find resistance when confronted with some authors and studies on the subject.

The second section of this article, in turn, in dialogue with authors related to distinct epistemologies and/or by deliberately decentralized theoretical choices, aimed at discussing, through a perspective of undefinition, the term Aesthetic Education to provide readers with the possibility of reflection to expand what is (not) known, thus far, about a notion that is at once so dear and so neglected in certain aspects by the field of education, especially given its strength and reach past the intellectual tradition and belle-arts.

A brief radicalism rests its interests, in this article, in a non-supportive approach toward its object. By defending Aesthetic Education free of theoretical-methodological shackles imposed by movements that fail to answer contemporary demands, these (non) final remarks resume the need and the urgency of reassessing what is scientifically conceived as Aesthetic Education. An academic articulation of that nature can only be realized by questions and exercises of denial about some theoretical structures that insist in preserving ancestry in times that claim the forest.³⁴ Movements that develop slowly but strongly amidst confrontations, clashes, struggles, that is, through a responsible dialogue committed to its own time.

REFERÊNCIAS

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• Funding:

  CAPES - PROEX Programas Conceito 7 and CNPq - Grant for Research Productivity Process: 310808/2020-0

• Research Data and Other Materials Availability

  The contents underlying the research text are included in the manuscript.

• Reviews

  Due to the commitment assumed by Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso[Bakhtiniana. Journal of Discourse Studies] to Open Science, this journal only publishes reviews that have been authorized by all involved.

• 1
  BAKHTIN, M. M. Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays. Edited by Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov. Translated by Vadim Liapunov. Austin: Texas University Press, 1990.
• 2
  RANCIÈRE, Jacques. Malaise dans l’ésthetique. Paris: Galilée, 2004.
• 3
  See footnote 1, p. 295.
• 4
  Bakhtinian studies or the Bakhtinian thought is the set of theoretical formulations by Bakhtin’s Circle. Despite some researchers’ distinct attributions to the concept, we do not propose a historical and explanatory account; in fact, we use “Bakhtin and the Circle” to refer to the whole of works that convey ideas produced by Russian intellectuals since the second decade of the 20th century such as: “Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975); Valentin N. Vološinov (1895-1936); Pavel N. Medvedev(1891-1938); Matvei I. Kagan (1889-1937); Lev V. Pumpianskii (1891-1940); Ivan I. Sollertínski (1902-1944); M. Iúdina (1899-1970); K. Vaguinov (1899-1934); B.Zubakin (1894-1937)” (BRAIT, 2012).
• 5
  See footnote 1.
• 6
  See footnote 1.
• 7
  See footnote 1.
• 8
  See footnote 1.
• 9
  See footnote 1.
• 10
  See footnote 1.
• 11
  See footnote 2.
• 12
  In French: “l’horizon de leus spéculations.”
• 13
  In the original: “Si ‘esthétique’ est le nom d'une confusion, cette ‘confusion’ est en fait ce qui nous permet d'identifier les objets, les modes d'expérience et les formes de pensée de l'art que nous prétendons isoler pour la dénoncer.”
• 14
  See footnote 2.
• 15
  In the original: “n’est en rien une tendance commune qui caractériserait aujour d'hui les différents arts.”
• 16
  See footnote 2.
• 17
  It is important to stress that such is not a partisan politics, but politics as a broad concept that in the implications of its own complexity establishes relations with the domains of the possible and of the common.
• 18
  In the original: “travail de création de dissensus.”
• 19
  See footnote 2.
• 20
  In the original: “esthétique comme politique.”
• 21
  In the original: “Art et politique sont ainsi liés en deçà d'eux-mêmes comme formes de présence de corps singuliers dans un espace et un temps spécifiques.”
• 22
  See footnote 1.
• 23
  In the original: “Las estéticas de re-existencias son las del descentramiento, las de los puntos de fuga que permiten visualizar escenarios de vida distintos, divergentes, disruptivos, en contracorriente a las narrativas de la homogenización cultural, simbólica, económica, socio-política, las que se ubican en las fronteras donde a la institucionalidad le cuesta cooptar las autonomías que se construyen y en esos espacios liminares em que elpoder se fractura y deja ver las fisuras de su propia imposibilidad de realizarse plenamente.”
• 24
  In the original: “La estética es entendida como un registro que impregna la totalidad de la vida escolar no limitada a los espacios específicos que a propósito le fueron dedicados. Puede ser intencional (‘enseñanza de las artes’, ‘aseo y presentación’, ‘educación del cuerpo’), o presentarse en el resto de las dimensiones de lacto escolar (cultura material, propuesta curricular, formación docente etc.).”
• 25
  In the original: “implica una relación de producción de significados entre determinados estímulos sensoriales y un sujeto - individual o colectivo - que produce uma interpretación particular de ellos - la ‘sensibilidad’ - que involucra necesariamente su presente, su pasado y sus proyecciones sobre el futuro.”
• 26
  In the original: “il n’y a pas toujours de l'art, même s'il y a toujours de 1a poésie, de la peinture, de la sculpture, de la musique, du théâtre ou de la danse. ”
• 27
  See footnote 2.
• 28
  For the sake of exemplification, we suggest reading Santos (2019) and Moraes (2018).
• 29
  In the original: “a estética não se prende à dimensão do belo, muito menos à arte, embora tenha estreita relação com esta.”
• 30
  See footnote 1.
• 31
  In the original: “que passa por um acerto de contas do indivíduo com suas próprias prioridades, e que oferece a ele tanto quanto retira.”
• 32
  In the original: “A Educação Estética considera o ser humano no cosmo, tendo em vista a construção de uma sociedade mais humana, que seja capaz de reconstruir as relações com a natureza, sendo parte integrante deste espaço e ao qual precisa respeitar. No contexto escolar, precisa inserir-se para além das diferentes disciplinas, sendo vivenciada no cotidiano dos alunos, nos corredores, nas salas de aula, nas diversas atividades que ocorrem no ambiente. Constitui-se como uma forma de aproximar tanto alunos quanto professores a fim de transformar o ambiente escolar, a prática docente e a postura de ambos.”
• 33
  GUMBRECHT, Hans Ulrich. Aesthetic Experience in Everyday Worlds: Reclaiming an Unredeemed Utopian Motif. New Literary History, vol. 37, n. 2, 2006, p. 307.
• 34
  It is noteworthy that in article dedicated to the issue of Aesthetic Education, the proof-reading to conclude the text was conducted in the middle of the Amazon Forest, in the facilities of the Faculdade de Educação of the Universidade Federal do Amazonas (Manaus/AM - Brazil), by occasion of the 41a Reunião Nacional da ANPEd - Associação Nacional de Pós-Graduação e Pesquisa em Educação [41st National Meeting of the ANPed- National Association of Post-Graduation and Research in Education].

Review I

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review I

The article presents important reflections that analyze the possible places (and non-places) destined to aesthetic education. Based on several authors who discuss the subject from various angles and distinct times, the manuscript answers the questions it poses from a disconcerting and critical perspective. The title, objectives, questions and argument are coherent, which represents the academic value of the writing. Throughout the article, I suggest a number of changes in terms of proof-reading to improve the text. I am favorable to the publication given the relevance of the subject and its relevance to the present. APPROVED WITH SUGGESTIONS [Revised]

• peer review recommendation: accept-in-principle

History

• Peer review received
  25 Sept 2023

Review II

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review II

The article presents an interesting discussion to “reflect on the uses, powers and meanings of the term Aesthetic Education in scientific research, starting, firstly, from approaches on the concept of aesthetics” by Mikhail Bakhtin and Jacques Rancière, to mobilize its relations with the field of education from two guiding axes from a perspective of “decolonial studies.” The text, with very few incorrections in punctuation, is clear and develops its investigation from a denial, which makes the reading rather provocative. Nonetheless, there were aspects that were less clear in my opinion: decoloniality and the issue of use, power, and the meaning of the term Aesthetic Education in scientific research. Despite bringing Latin-American references to think aesthetics and education (especially in school classrooms) it is not sufficient to approximate the manuscript to decolonial studies. Therefore, it is better to focus more on the concept and provide a clear filiation to the decolonial that the author aims to discuss. In addition, the connection between Bakhtin and Rancière works, but it needs better resuming (or cohesion) in relation to the section Aesthetic Education: what must we (not) define? Despite non-compromising restrictions/suggestions, in the attachment, I propose grammar corrections and I suggest proof-reading and adapting (according to the journal guidelines) details such as footnotes, citations, references, etc. APPROVED WITH RESTRICTIONS/SUGGESTIONS [Revised]

• peer review recommendation: accept-in-principle

• Editorial Review

  We request the author to read the reviews and the attachments and make whatever changes are deemed convenient, according to the reviewers’ demands. We inform that both are available to interact with the author through the journal website. The article must be sent back to the journal by 31/10/2023.

History

• Peer review received
  11 Oct 2023

Review III

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review III

The second reading of the article shows the author observed the suggestions in the reviews and added them to the text. Therefore, I am in favor of publishing the article. APPROVED

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  09 Nov 2023

Review IV

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review IV

The author followed the orientations in the review. From the conceptual point of view, the article is ready to publish. Nonetheless, I am still uncertain regarding the journal guidelines considering the spaces between long citations and the paragraphs. I stress that because, perhaps, opening the file in my computer could have caused the differences. Other than that, it is all right. APPROVED

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  08 Nov 2023

Data availability

The contents underlying the research text are included in the manuscript.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  12 Feb 2024
• Date of issue
  Apr-Jun 2024

History

• Received
  10 Sept 2023
• Accepted
  04 Jan 2024