martes, 29 de noviembre de 2011

Does all beauty calls for intervention?


If romanticism was a champion of contemplative beauty, modernity and in particular materialism provided its criticism. It showed that it often hides power relations as in the contemplation of god mediated by ecclesiastic rituals. Indeed, the geography of production and consumption, even for beauty, is a geography of power. But are all of these relations preceded by asymmetric power? Does romantic attraction resembles pollen flowers or, instead, carnivorous plants? Biological relations are open to interpretation and evolution; consumption is yet another form of production. If the imperative of materialism is to become god –the ultimate producer–, even god gave away his power over our will in order to contemplate its creation. What is the meaning of production? isn't contemplation? In order to contemplate you have to give away, you have to jump into the pit, you have to give your life or part of it to the others. If all beauty calls for intervention, what is then the intervention for which the dawn is calling upon us? for the mythological believer is god, for the materialist perhaps an hegemonic narrative. But beyond gods and will for power? Does other animals feel contemplative beauty? Is contemplative beauty a recent evolutionary feature? Perhaps contemplative beauty is very tied to the emergence of what we call conscience. Contemplative beauty and contemplative memory (not self-critical memory which is an intervention) might share a common evolutionary origin. They both share this seemingly mysterious absence of intervention call. Let me just give an hypothetical and poetical answer. I believe the call is upon life; to survive to see another dawn, to compensate alienated struggle with epic memories. In the end alienation is the key word, nature has provided us with absurd beauty in order for us to accept an alienated life. It is absurd because it has to be open to the unreachable will and challenges of those systems which produce beauty and consume power.

PD. A bit delusional.

No hay comentarios: