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So if you disagree with "taste-as-a-measure-of-quality-within-a-genre" do you disagree with the concept works of art can be better than other works of art (with

by fsloth 5y ago

So if you disagree with "taste-as-a-measure-of-quality-within-a-genre" do you disagree with the concept works of art can be better than other works of art (within a genre) or do you just disagree this non-numerical measure is called 'taste'? What would you call it instead?

pyrale 5y ago
I believe Bourdieu's point is that this ability to rank art within a genre is an attribute of belonging to a cultural group. As such, this cultural knowledge you have will be valued depending on the social importance of that group. Some groups will speak highly of a genre while other will despise it. Cultural knowledge will be a more useful capital if it is associated with a more prominent group. Within the group, the extent of your knowledge will help you distinguish from others. The point is that the way this taste (but also the artist's skill) is acquired is highly correlated with social belonging: your appreciation of a specific piece of work is informed by your past experience within your social environment. Even though you may produce an autonomous opinion on a specific piece of art, this opinion is formed using knowledge that is socially acquired. To expand a bit with examples: * if the genre you're into pays a lot attention to technical skill, you will probably need, and focus on distinguishing the technicality of the art piece. People unable to tell the difference will be seen as uneducated. * if it focuses more on the relevance of the art piece in its time context, what others would consider a crude piece will be seen as a clever way to remind the spectator of the zeitgeist and how subtly references are made to other work. People who think too much about the technical details will be seen as unrefined.
- fsloth 5y ago
  Please, we can discuss art theory without political dimension. Hackers like to build and respect people who build cool things without getting political. Similarly classical art can be appreciated from the point of view of pure craftmanship. Is Doom more impressive piece of software than a Javascript "Hello world"? I claim it is. Similar claims can be applied to specific art genres without political dimension if you know the genre. I find Bourdeaus analysis to be - frankly - a form of navel gazing that has nothing of merit to give to politics, or art. Yes, everything people do have a political dimension. But one should be able to discuss art theory without confusing it with class warfare. While everything can and will be weaponized as an instrument of oppression, I don't see the added value of starting from the point of view. It's like a silly action movie trope, only applied to a political context. I.e. in a fancy restaurant - that's a nice steak knife you have there - it would work really well in a combat setting. Really?
  - etage3 5y ago
    >Please, we can discuss art theory without political dimension. Bourdieu discusses this very point in the Preface of The Rules of Art. "(...) countless are those who forbid sociology any profaning contact with the work of art. (...) I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why they are so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational, understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the 'work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence." A scientific understanding of art doesn't or negate or lower it. On the contrary : "(...) scientific analysis, when it is able to uncover what makes the work of art necessary, that is to say, its informing formula, its generative principle, its raison d'être, also furnishes artistic experience, and the pleasure which accompanies it with its best justification, its richest nourishment. Through it, sensible love of the work can fulfill itself in a sort of amor intellectualis rei the assimilation of the object to the subject and the immersion of the subject in the object, the active surrender to the singular necessity of the literary object (which, more often than not, is itself the product of a similar submission)." It's a short but dense 5 page read.
    - fsloth 5y ago
      (The below is with an intent of explaining my view of Paul's essay and is written with the tone of a devil's advocate) Sorry I prefer quoting Feynman - art theory is about as usefull for enjoying and doing art as ornithology is for birds. The original quote was "Philosophy of science is about as useful for science as ornithology is for birds." Note! This does not denigrate the "useless" fields as such - but the point of view is that their usefulness for the field they claim to study is at most limited. As a trained physicist and hobbyist artist I can pretty much agree with this. Doing physics and doing art is so friggin hard that while focusing on them, human cognition has no space for analysis in any other domain. Want to analyse a classical painting? Well, there is a very good technique for this but it requires a huge amount of labour - replicate it. I realize this is a very technical point of view, but having a hands-on experience, it's very hard to convince me any other way would offer superior understanding of the core issues at play. I must repeat that I am not discounting analysis - but they are only secondary in importance to the ding an sich. Sorry. This is getting a very long winded way of expressing my point of view. I read Paul's essay from this very specifically technical point of view that acknowledges the inherent complexity in the chosen domain (classical art) and hence takes it obvious that there are some works 'better' than others. But there is no numerical metric we can use to gauge paintings - hence we must refer to an intuitive understanding of the quality of a work. Paul calls this 'intuitive understanding of quality' taste. I think the whole point was to point out that some things can be considered rationally better than others, even though we don't have an objective numerical measure for this goodness.
- claudiawerner 5y ago
  One interesting point I saw in in a paper on fan cultures was about how taste can serve to continue existing relations with media. That there are people who can understand taste and pick out what's good and worth enjoying, and others cannot. The paper in question applied this to dynamics within the My Little Pony fandom (and Bronies in partciluar). When the self-identified Bronies were questioned about their enjoyment of the show and its relation to the author's intent, many of them were quite happy to denigrate or take a paternalistic view toward girls' (and children's) entertainment in general. The authors of the paper pointed out that the narrative of taste (reflected in, say, how the fans described the animation style, voice acting, themes) of the TV show allowed the adult (predominantly male) fans to continue society's general disparagement of childrens' and girls' TV. The adults, the narrative goes, are the ones with taste, who can identify and select what's good, and the girls - the intended audience - have no input. Some paternalistic attitudes involved the idea that the show would teach young girls critical thinking skills, other responses said that the show's quality would teach young girls to appreciate higher quality TV (implicitly, the kind of TV that adult fans approve of, with messages they approve of). Ironically, this also extended to the author of Season 1 of the show, Lauren Faust - who herself has said that she wanted to create a show that was a break from the typically low quality of girls' entertainment as she saw it. Taste (and community policing of who has it or can have it) can be a force for exclusion and maintaining hegemony. I think fandom can become a microcosm of what we see play out in a larger scale with highly educated (typically rich) people deciding what media is good and what's bad for the poor.

by fsloth 5y ago

pyrale 5y ago

I believe Bourdieu's point is that this ability to rank art within a genre is an attribute of belonging to a cultural group. As such, this cultural knowledge you have will be valued depending on the social importance of that group. Some groups will speak highly of a genre while other will despise it. Cultural knowledge will be a more useful capital if it is associated with a more prominent group. Within the group, the extent of your knowledge will help you distinguish from others. The point is that the way this taste (but also the artist's skill) is acquired is highly correlated with social belonging: your appreciation of a specific piece of work is informed by your past experience within your social environment. Even though you may produce an autonomous opinion on a specific piece of art, this opinion is formed using knowledge that is socially acquired. To expand a bit with examples: * if the genre you're into pays a lot attention to technical skill, you will probably need, and focus on distinguishing the technicality of the art piece. People unable to tell the difference will be seen as uneducated. * if it focuses more on the relevance of the art piece in its time context, what others would consider a crude piece will be seen as a clever way to remind the spectator of the zeitgeist and how subtly references are made to other work. People who think too much about the technical details will be seen as unrefined.

fsloth 5y ago
Please, we can discuss art theory without political dimension. Hackers like to build and respect people who build cool things without getting political. Similarly classical art can be appreciated from the point of view of pure craftmanship. Is Doom more impressive piece of software than a Javascript "Hello world"? I claim it is. Similar claims can be applied to specific art genres without political dimension if you know the genre. I find Bourdeaus analysis to be - frankly - a form of navel gazing that has nothing of merit to give to politics, or art. Yes, everything people do have a political dimension. But one should be able to discuss art theory without confusing it with class warfare. While everything can and will be weaponized as an instrument of oppression, I don't see the added value of starting from the point of view. It's like a silly action movie trope, only applied to a political context. I.e. in a fancy restaurant - that's a nice steak knife you have there - it would work really well in a combat setting. Really?
- etage3 5y ago
  >Please, we can discuss art theory without political dimension. Bourdieu discusses this very point in the Preface of The Rules of Art. "(...) countless are those who forbid sociology any profaning contact with the work of art. (...) I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why they are so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational, understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the 'work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence." A scientific understanding of art doesn't or negate or lower it. On the contrary : "(...) scientific analysis, when it is able to uncover what makes the work of art necessary, that is to say, its informing formula, its generative principle, its raison d'être, also furnishes artistic experience, and the pleasure which accompanies it with its best justification, its richest nourishment. Through it, sensible love of the work can fulfill itself in a sort of amor intellectualis rei the assimilation of the object to the subject and the immersion of the subject in the object, the active surrender to the singular necessity of the literary object (which, more often than not, is itself the product of a similar submission)." It's a short but dense 5 page read.
  - fsloth 5y ago
    (The below is with an intent of explaining my view of Paul's essay and is written with the tone of a devil's advocate) Sorry I prefer quoting Feynman - art theory is about as usefull for enjoying and doing art as ornithology is for birds. The original quote was "Philosophy of science is about as useful for science as ornithology is for birds." Note! This does not denigrate the "useless" fields as such - but the point of view is that their usefulness for the field they claim to study is at most limited. As a trained physicist and hobbyist artist I can pretty much agree with this. Doing physics and doing art is so friggin hard that while focusing on them, human cognition has no space for analysis in any other domain. Want to analyse a classical painting? Well, there is a very good technique for this but it requires a huge amount of labour - replicate it. I realize this is a very technical point of view, but having a hands-on experience, it's very hard to convince me any other way would offer superior understanding of the core issues at play. I must repeat that I am not discounting analysis - but they are only secondary in importance to the ding an sich. Sorry. This is getting a very long winded way of expressing my point of view. I read Paul's essay from this very specifically technical point of view that acknowledges the inherent complexity in the chosen domain (classical art) and hence takes it obvious that there are some works 'better' than others. But there is no numerical metric we can use to gauge paintings - hence we must refer to an intuitive understanding of the quality of a work. Paul calls this 'intuitive understanding of quality' taste. I think the whole point was to point out that some things can be considered rationally better than others, even though we don't have an objective numerical measure for this goodness.
claudiawerner 5y ago
One interesting point I saw in in a paper on fan cultures was about how taste can serve to continue existing relations with media. That there are people who can understand taste and pick out what's good and worth enjoying, and others cannot. The paper in question applied this to dynamics within the My Little Pony fandom (and Bronies in partciluar). When the self-identified Bronies were questioned about their enjoyment of the show and its relation to the author's intent, many of them were quite happy to denigrate or take a paternalistic view toward girls' (and children's) entertainment in general. The authors of the paper pointed out that the narrative of taste (reflected in, say, how the fans described the animation style, voice acting, themes) of the TV show allowed the adult (predominantly male) fans to continue society's general disparagement of childrens' and girls' TV. The adults, the narrative goes, are the ones with taste, who can identify and select what's good, and the girls - the intended audience - have no input. Some paternalistic attitudes involved the idea that the show would teach young girls critical thinking skills, other responses said that the show's quality would teach young girls to appreciate higher quality TV (implicitly, the kind of TV that adult fans approve of, with messages they approve of). Ironically, this also extended to the author of Season 1 of the show, Lauren Faust - who herself has said that she wanted to create a show that was a break from the typically low quality of girls' entertainment as she saw it. Taste (and community policing of who has it or can have it) can be a force for exclusion and maintaining hegemony. I think fandom can become a microcosm of what we see play out in a larger scale with highly educated (typically rich) people deciding what media is good and what's bad for the poor.