Denna uppsats diskuterar Julia Kristevas begrepp det semiotiska i Pipilotti Rists audiovideoinstallation Tyngdkraft, var min vän, som visades på Magasin 3, Stockholm konsthall, 2007. Verket består av ett rum med upphöjda mattskulpturer där betraktaren kan ta av sig skorna och lägga sig ned för att ta del av två filmer som visas i taket ovanför matthögarna. Största delen av filmerna utspelar sig under vattenytan där en kvinna och en androgyn man utforskar ett universum fyllt av sinlighet, närvaro, lekfullhet, kropp, drifter och lugn -ett paradis fyllt av växtlighet och där tyngkraften ibland minskat. Bilder i starka färger och ljus, kaleidoskopiska formationer och ett till viss del uppbrutet bildspråk, möter åskådaren. Det semiotiska beskrivs av Kristeva som den driftsmässiga dimensionen av språket som är kopplat till ett förspråkligt stadium hos det preoidipala barnet innan det hunnit utvecklats till ett eget subjekt. Med detta menar hon den värld nära moderskroppen som barnet befinner sig i och där en icke-språklig kommunikation sker mellan mor och barn. Dock står denna värld inte helt utan lag och ordning eftersom modern (och barnet) alltid befinner sig under en viss språklig och kulturell lagbundenhet, kallad den symboliska ordningen, vilken kommer in även i det semiotiska. Det semiotiska och det symboliska är därför nära kopplade till varandra och kan inte existera utan varandra. Det semiotiska lever kvar även efter att det lilla barnet utvecklats till ett subjekt och trätt in i den språkliga, symboliska ordningen. Detta visar sig som semiotiska spår i bland annat konsten, och när det kommer till språket ser vi det främst i poesin, som är ett mindre lagbundet språk som rör sig i gränslandet mellan det semiotiska och det symboliska. Eftersom Tyngdkraft, var min vän inte innehåller något talat eller skrivet språk görs i uppsatsen en koppling mellan detta verk och det semiotiska genom utforskandet av olika element i verket. Dessa element är tyngdkraften, jorden, vattnet, bildspråket, upprepningen, rytmen, moderskroppen, paradiset, affekterna och drifterna samt gränslandet natur och kultur.

In this essay, an interdisciplinary group of researchers sets out to address the period 1780–1840 in Sweden in a new way, by placing nature at its centre. With the help of ecocritical and transcultural theory, combined with renewed attention to the Swedish fine arts, learned discourses, and practices, we suggest a new approach to these revolutionary decades. The perceived dissonance, the interplay between climatic conditions and cultural template in early modern and modern Sweden, has not been fully addressed in current research, despite the fact that the relationship between humankind and the environment is a central issue in contemporary society and scholarship. Representations of nature situate the nation, they negotiate the relationship between a sensed reality and an ideal, between human and more-than-human beings. We suggest a focus on the unpredictable space created by negotiations of nature in Swedish representations during this crucial period, and, furthermore, on the ways in which this creative space is charged with utopian possibilities in the early Anthropocene. This is the background and the driving force of the planned research project ‘Cool Nature: Utopian Landscapes in Sweden 1780–1840’. 

«Le problème de la parole» est l’un des premiers cours que Merleau-Ponty a donnés au Collège de France : il fait suite aux leçons sur le «Monde sensible et le monde de l’expression» et aux «Recherches sur l’usage littéraire du langage». Tenu entre décembre 1953 et avril 1954, il est bientôt suivi des cours sur «L’institution et La passivité». L’ ensemble fait partie d’un projet global qui vise à élucider les rapports entre le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression. La composition du cours témoigne de l’ampleur et de l’importance de la question du langage pour Merleau-Ponty. Le problème de la parole est constitué de trois parties. La première se consacre aux apports de la linguistique à la pensée du langage – Merleau-Ponty y examine en particulier la linguistique de Saussure et de ses disciples Charles Bally et Joseph Vendryes. La deuxième porte sur l’aphasie et l’acquisition du langage chez l’enfant – Merleau-Ponty y interroge notamment les travaux d’André Ombredane, Roman Jakobson, Kurt Goldstein et Françoise Dolto-Marette. Le cours propose enfin, en un troisième moment, une lecture détaillée de l’œuvre de Marcel Proust. Il ne s’agit donc pas seulement pour Merleau-Ponty de formuler une théorie du langage, il s’agit plus fondamentalement de voir dans la parole l’expression même du monde et de l’être. La linguistique, la pédagogie et la psycho-pathologie du langage, tout autant que la littérature telle qu’elle se déploie avec Proust, révèlent ce pouvoir d’expression de la parole, manifestent les pouvoirs du langage à l’égard du monde sensible.

This article examines Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ontological investigation of language in his recently published course notes Sur le problème de la parole of 1954. In the course notes, Merleau-Ponty approaches the relation between being and language: if our ontological thinking is thoroughly conditioned by the means of expression provided by our proper language, how are we then to understand its claims of universality? The article argues that the course notes elucidate the linguistic turn in Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology. In particular, this article stresses that the course notes show that Merleau-Ponty undertakes an ontological inquiry into language before his investment into Heidegger’s philosophy. Furthermore, the course notes elucidate the continuity between Merleau-Ponty’s earlier investigations into expression and the ontological inquiry into language in his later texts.

I den här artikeln undersöks vittneslitteratur från Gulagarkipelagen skriven av västerländska återvändare under åren 1946-1953. Hemlighetsmakeriet kring Gulagsystemet gjorde att författarna förväntade sig att bli misstrodda och ifrågasatta. Den misstro författarna själva föregriper aktualiserar frågan om vad det innebär att vittna i avsaknad av bevis, inför en omvärld som ibland är ovetande och ibland politiskt obekväm med den verklighet som omskrivs. Syftet med den här artikeln är att visa hur vittneslitteratur förutsätter en ömsesidig tillit. För att vittnesmålet ska kunna tas emot krävs det att läsaren litar till författaren. Omvänt krävs det att författaren litar till att läsaren har både viljan och förmågan att ta emot vittnesmålet för att berättandet ska vara möjligt.

This article discusses the role of Gulag literature in connection to testimony, literature and historical documentation. Drawing on the thoughts of Jacques Derrida and Hannah Arendt, the article examines the difficulty of witnesses being believed in the absence of evidence. In particular, the article focuses on the vulnerability of the Gulag authors, due to the ongoing Soviet repression at the time of their writing. It examines the interplay between the repression and the literature that exposed it. The article contends that the fictionalization of Gulag literature enabled the authors to go further in challenging Soviet repression. Focusing on the fictional accounts written by Varlam Shalamov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, it argues that the fictionalized Gulag literature makes the experience of the camp universe possible to imagine for those outside, allowing readers to believe in an experience that otherwise seems incredible.

In this article I examine Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the relation between literature, being and perception. I focus especially on two of Merleau-Ponty’s courses at Collège de France: the first course, Le monde sensible et le monde de l’expression, and the unpublished course Sur le problème de la parole. In the former Merleau-Ponty presents a new understanding of perception, according to which being is expressed in perception through the style of movement of the perceived phenomenon. In the latter he advances a notion of literary writing as an expression of the being that is itself expressed to us in perception. Through a reading of Proust’s work, he discusses how the literary writer makes his experience expressive by means of a stylization of what is experienced. Hence, literature expresses perception through an enhancement of the expressiveness that it already contains. This capacity of literature will be the main focus of my investigation. 

I den franske 1900-talsfilosofen Maurice Merleau-Pontys efterlämnade föreläsningsmanuskript återfinns hans studier av språk och litteratur. Med frågor om konstens förhållande till verkligheten närläser han Proust, Stendhal och Valéry, och granskar även storheter som Cézanne och Malraux.

Several hundred Swedes emigrated to Soviet Karelia in the beginning of the 1930s. Many of them remained there when the Great Terror began, and they became targets of repression. As of now, there is no coherent public narrative in Sweden that acknowledge the Swedish survivors; most survivors never talked publicly about their experiences, let alone wrote about them, and the few who did, did so reluctantly. This article discusses four memoirs written by Swedish survivors of the Soviet repression and the silence that still surrounds these memoirs. The narratives themselves, as well as the reception of the narratives, bear witness to the difficulty of narrating experiences that have not yet been publicly acknowledged. Based on the Swedish witness accounts, this article aims to examine 1) the difficulty of testifying in the absence of a public narrative, and 2) the ability of witness literature to challenge and change established historical narratives.

Hva innebærer det å skrive virkelighetsbasert litteratur? Hvilke krav kan vi stille til den? Hva sier den om det livet den hevder å skildre? Diskusjonen om sannhetslitteratur handler om grensen mellom virkelighetsbasert fiksjon og selvbiografisk skriving. En filosof som mer enn noen annen har utforsket dette spørsmålet, er Simone de Beauvoir. Hun undersøker både fiksjonens grenser og den selvbiografiske skrivingens mulighet for å forvandle den gjennomlevde erfaringen. Hele Beauvoirs forfatterskap kan ses på som én sammenhengende streben etter å prøve å forstå hva det er å være menneske – gjennom fiksjon, memoarer, essay og filosofiske tekster, og gjennom å tilbakeføre filosofiens abstrakte teorier til vår konkrete erfaring med verden.

On comprend mal la philosophie de Merleau-Ponty si l’on ne comprend pas le sens philosophique qu’il accorde au langage, à l’écriture, à la littérature. On lui reproche, séduit parfois mais prudent, voire réticent, son style, son écriture, ses métaphores. On ne voit pas que réside cependant là le sens de sa philosophie, le sens de la philosophie telle que Merleau-Ponty cherche à la penser et telle qu’il la pratique dans l’ontologie du Visible et l’invisible.« Parce qu’ayant éprouvé en lui-même le besoin de parler, la naissance de la parole comme une bulle au fond de son expérience muette, écrit Merleau-Ponty, le philosophe sait mieux que personne que le vécu est du vécu-parlé, que, né à cette profondeur, le langage n’est pas un masque sur l’Être, mais, si l’on sait le ressaisir avec toutes ses racines et toute sa frondaison, le plus valable témoin de l’Être, qu’il n’interrompt pas une immédiation sans lui parfaite, que la vision même, la pensée même sont, a-t-on dit, “structurées comme un langage” [J. Lacan], sont articulation avant la lettre, apparition de quelque chose là où il n’y avait rien ou autre chose ».

In this talk, I will address aspects of temporality in poetics. I will argue, that temporality characterizes a certain use of poetics that seems to be the opposite of poetics as it ap- pears for example in literary theory. I will argue, however, that while feminist criticism sometimes use poetics as a means to oppose encompassing theoretical frameworks, it nevertheless integrates the traditional use of poetics since self-reflexivity is an important aspect here. In this regard, poetics rather emerges as a framework for thinking than a framework that defines thinking. In this sense poetics takes place in the contemporary, that is, in the making of theoretical and artistic practices. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss how the self-reflexive aspect unfolds in relation to the rejection of encompassing theoreti- cal frameworks in feminist criticism. In the second part of the talk, I will address the Ameri- can poet Lyn Hejinian’s notion of a poetics that is characterized as ”a thinking on”. This characterization is based on the stress on form in poetic language that Hejinian traces back to Russian formalism. I will claim, that this is another example of the temporal aspect of poetics, as this ”thinking on” takes place in the contemporary.

The title of our paper alluds to a poem by the American writer Adrienne Rich. The poem suggests the sublime capacity of art to effect change, while at the same time acknowledging that art also can be ineffectual in the face of despair. The history of public art is fraught with controversy, and this fact is also addressed by a number of researchers in our field. As the philosopher Hilde Hein writes ”we go to private art, but public art is come upon,” referring to public art as ”unwanted art” (2006, 55). Our project is not concerned with the controversy of public art, but with a topic that we believe is under-theorized in our field, namely how the social and ethical meaning of memorials and public art are reproduced as a discourse. We argue, that there is a Post Witness Art discourse that reproduce the idea that art must bear wittness to catastrophic events, even when the people that are effected by these events opposes the very existence of art. We will argue, that to look at Post Witness Art as part of a discourse that defines art as remembrance and mourning, means that we have to acknowledge that this discourse carries a certain language, words that in themselves manifest power. In our paper we ask, what does claims of democracy and inclusiveness mean when the art world is faced with opposition? What if there are situations were art simply is not the answer, as the title of Rich´s poem suggests? We will address these matters with a specific case in mind, namely Memory Wound. This is a memorial design by the Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg, commisioned by Public Art Norway, in the aftermath of the horrific attacks at the government buildings and Utøya in Norway on the 22 of July 2011. The attacks claimed a total of 77 lives and hundreds were injured. With a ”wound that can never be healed” Dahlberg intended the design to “reflect the abrupt and permanent loss.” Dahlbergs design illustrates the loss in the presence of a cut – like an injury – and has a site/non-site logics that is a recurrent image in many contemporary memorials. In our paper, we will adress the collision between the people that live in the proximity to where Memory Wound were to be situated, and the advocators for the memorial, namely the art world. In an open letter an international group of acclaimed artists and curators appealed to the Norwegian government to ”be brave and allow Memory Wound to become a dignified place of healing”. This letter exhibits what we will adress as a tacit understanding of how public art should function, as a mediator between the private and the public. The arguments in favour of Memory Wound that came from the art world show, that there is an underlying assumption that art has a democratic and healing function, that is reflected by the words that are used. We will discuss the advocator’s arguments in the context of a post-habermasian notion of modernity and a “progressive reading on history” where freedom, autonomy and emancipation will be the result. In this research project we work together as a collaborative duo called arketeg.freyr, and this talk will consequently be presented as a combined effort.

The Enlightenment communication between, on the one hand, natural philosophy preoccupied with causal explanations and empirical adequacy about nature and, on the other hand, aesthetic claims about beauty, has recently gained new attention. The third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), who has been introduced as an intermediary in this context, is frequently claimed to integrate scientific methods, idioms, and problems in aesthetics and ethics. This chapter follows a different tack. I will argue against the current trend and demonstrate why we might benefit from maintaining and improving a focus on Shaftesbury’s disavowal of natural philosophy, rather than erasing differences. I will proceed in three parts. First, I will clarify how Shaftesbury’s science of the self relates to conceptual variations of the terms interest and disinterestedness. Second, I will explain how he unites the moral (human) self with the beauty of physical nature as a self by arguing for a shared fraternity with plants and animals. Third, I will show how Shaftesbury’s science of the self and his critique of natural philosophy are most fully developed in aesthetic claims about disinterestedness and natural beauty in The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody (1709). Though rarely recognised in contemporary environmental ethics and aesthetics, Shaftesbury’s radical claim for an “equal brotherhood” with plants and animals continues to speak to us in the age of global climate change.

At the heart of Michael B. Gill's impressive study of the third Earl of Shaftesbury's theory of beauty is the notion of nature and its moral, aesthetic, and religious ramifications. In this article, I elaborate on one of Gill's primary claims up to a point where I think a weak spot occurs. The claim concerns nature, and the weak spot is the interpretation of Shaftesbury's references to science (natural philosophy). On the whole, Gill holds that Shaftesbury is “no enemy of a rational understanding of nature, no enemy of science” (44). While I agree with the first clause, I find the second problematic. I argue that, for Shaftesbury, a central problem with science is that it disrupts the moral and aesthetic unity of nature, a flaw shared by society's general exploitation of nature and animals.

This volume re-examines traditional interpretations of the rise of modern aesthetics in eighteenth-century Britain and Germany. It provides a new account that connects aesthetic experience with morality, science, and political society. In doing so, it challenges long-standing teleological narratives that emphasize disinterestedness and the separation of aesthetics from moral, cognitive, and political interests.

The chapters are divided into three thematic parts. The chapters in Part I demonstrate the heteronomy of eighteenth-century British aesthetics. They chart the evolution of aesthetic concepts and discuss the ethical and political significance of the aesthetic theories of several key figures: namely, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, David Hume, and Adam Smith. Part II explores the ways in which eighteenth-century German, and German-oriented, thinkers examine aesthetic experience and moral concerns, and relate to the work of their British counterparts. The chapters here cover the work of Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and Madame de Staël. Finally, Part III explores the interrelation of science, aesthetics, and a new model of society in the work of Goethe, Johann Wilhelm Ritter, Friedrich Hölderlin, and William Hazlitt, among others.

This volume develops unique discussions of the rise of aesthetic autonomy in the eighteenth century. In bringing together well-known scholars working on British and German eighteenth-century aesthetics, philosophy, and literature, it will appeal to scholars and advanced students in a range of disciplines who are interested in this topic.

In this article, we suggest that the notion of “aesthetic cultures of protest” can be understood as designating two broad tendencies in the contemporary field of art and politics: on the one hand, the incorporation of the protest by the art world and, on the other hand, the appropriation of aesthetic traits by social protests. To counteract the ethical immediacy of both, we turn to Theodor W. Adorno’s more dialectical understanding of the relationship between protests and the aesthetic. After being marshalled against art’s internalisation of protest, and the protests’ appropriation of the aesthetic, we assess Adorno’s notion of form and autonomy through an immanent critique that is both conceptual and historical. We argue that Adorno’s aesthetics lacks an understanding of social labour, to which it itself ascribes great conceptual significance, and that recent changes in the global composition of capital and labour has affected the role of social labour in such a way that Adorno’s tendency to identify art’s autonomy with its negativity can no longer be upheld. Finally, we argue that the characteristics, which Adorno ascribes to the work of art has migrated to, and been realised by, a form of protest which reemerged simultaneously with the death of Adorno, namely the riot.

The title of this anthology, Regionality/Mondiality: Perspectives on Art, Aesthetics and Globalization, signals the regional dimension inherent in the globalization of the arts. Rejecting a comprehensive theory of globalization, the texts in this anthology instead circumscribe a situated understanding of the production and interpretation of the arts, which serves to condition cultural translatability. The texts of the anthology argue that cultural translatability should be considered through the concept of regionality, that is, the quality of being both territorially and relationally situated. Bypassing the abstract and politically charged category of “nationality,” regionality addresses human relations in and through the more tangible physical environment in and by which they are configured. As seen in the work on archipelagic thinking by the Martinican writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant, both the cultural and physical aspects of one’s immediate environment are used to articulate a form of self-understanding in the face of cultural and economic expansion, the particular character of which is indicated by the term mondiality. This concept derives from the French word for “world” or “people,” and thus affirms the fundamentally social and cultural character of experiences thought of as global. Each of the eleven contributions in this volume brings its own perspective on arts and aesthetics, producing world-views that still share a keen awareness of their partialness.

The contributors are: Charlotte Bydler, J. Michael Dash, John Drabinski, Martin Svensson Ekström, Anthony Gardner and Charles Green, Christina Kullberg, Lisette Lagnado, André Lepecki, Patricia Lorenzoni, Cecilia Sjöholm, and Terry Smith.

This essay investigates the philosophies and practices of Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum from the viewpoint of their relation to eating. By analyzing them aided by Renée Girard’s theory of mimetic desire, I discuss similarities and differences between Weils and Hillesums work and spiritual development. Entering their thinking through Robert Daly’s notion of a phenomenology of redemption, which describes the form of  mimetic desire that counters, rather than produces, violence, I discuss, guided by Susan Bordo’s work on eating disorders as well as Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, how Weil and Hillesum can be said to engage in this respectively. By contrasting Weil’s decreation with Hillesum's compulsive overeating, or “life-gluttony”, my analysis argues that Hillesum's diaries depict how she copes with violence by practicing a kind of radical self-love, through which she becomes able to reconcile with both herself and her outside world. As for Weil, I argue that the self-destructive ethics that her decreation consists in prevent her from reaching a full reconciliation, insofar as it constitutes only internalized violence, and not a refusal of violence as such. Thus, my conclusion is, Hillesum's philosophy might be said to be an expression of a more complete redemption, as I formulate it taking my departure in Daly's concept, than Weil's.

This thesis is the first interpretation of Benjamin Höijer’s philosophy of art. Höijer (1767–1812), who was a Swedish representative of German idealism, is considered one of the brightest thinkers in the history of Swedish philosophy, although to this day he has been largely neglected. His writings offer one of the first systematic philosophies of art in the history of Western philosophy. In focus are the two themes of metaphysics and politics, and the thesis strives for an exploration of the speculative concept of the absolute – a key term of Höijer’s work. The method is twofold: a hermeneutical one, which concerns a careful reading of Höijer’s text and a contextualisation of his thought, and a more productive one, which seeks an activation of concepts and themes in Höijer. The study underlines the connection of his concept of the absolute to its supposed opposites: the relative, multiplicity, change, sensuality, and the common – the second main term of the thesis. For Höijer, one of the most important manifestations of the absolute in the world is the work of art. The thesis investigates how artistic creation, artworks, and aesthetic experience can be understood in relation to Höijer’s concept of the absolute and considers what new perspectives on art follow from this. Art also has an essential connection to politics, morality, and society in Höijer, and the thesis explores how his reflections can be understood as a profound critique of modernity. The quest for a better society through cultivation is at the heart of Höijer’s philosophical work. By focusing on Höijer as a political thinker, the thesis also offers a political reading of his metaphysics. The organism, a central concept of his metaphysics and philosophy of art, is interpreted in relation to a vision of a free and equal society. By focusing on the concepts of suffering and compassion – essential to the emergence of thought, society, and art in Höijer – the study furthermore reads his metaphysics as relational and sensuous. Thus, in this first interpretation of both Höijer’s philosophy of art and several of his central metaphysical works, a unique idealism unfolds.

We all know what Proust’s novel is about. A tale of quest and long-delayed discovery, A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) is an artist’s novel where the narrator aspires to become a writer and eventually decides to write… an artist’s novel. It takes him a long time to arrive at that point. We have to read close to three thousand pages of Remembrance of Things Past before the narrator finally finds his material - himself and his past life. In the final volume, the grand design becomes apparent. If we look at Proust’s novel from another angle, a different scenario comes into view. We realize that the narrator, as a writer in waiting, must hold back. He must resist. He must delay, postpone, persevere - or else the climax would come early. In volume after volume, he sounds his fears that he’ll never succeed at becoming a writer, much less acquire artistic recognition. As he must. To be sure, some way into the novel he gets a piece of writing accepted for publication in the pages of Le Figaro. When he sees it in print, he is ecstatic; after all, it is his debut as writer.

This article addresses the analogy between language and location, and between travel and interpretation, in the hitherto little-studied poetry ofW.G. Sebald. Its primary example is 'Day Return', a two-part poem from the early 1980s, which describes a train trip through East Anglia to London and back. This poem develops the analogy between language and location in various ways. For one thing, it is a bilingual text: it intersperses a number of English lines among the German ones, evoking the linguistic ambiguity inherent in the experience of the expatriate writer. Moreover, as Sebald's lyrical 'I' passes Ipswich, Romford, Stratford and Maryland on the way to Liverpool Street Station, he weaves these sites together in an intertextual web involving, among others, Dante, Kafka and Samuel Pepys. Finally, the journey is allegorically construed by the poetic voice as a descent into (and return from) the underworld. While many of these themes are familiar from Sebald's later work, the value of his poems does not depend upon their relation to his canonised prose: they are fascinating literary constructs in their own right, deserving of close critical attention.

Artikeln fokuserar på de mer personliga dimensionerna i brevväxlingen mellan Schiller och Körner och fäster särskild uppmärksamhet vid Schillers återkommande rapporter om sitt bräckliga hälsotillstånd. Artikeln analyserar det ”tvång” som enligt Schiller präglar den estetiska erfarenheten, dels genom att sätta det i relation till det motstånd som Schillers sjuka kropp uppreste mot hans eget skrivande, och dels genom att analysera tvångets betydelse för de estetiska och politiska ideal som Schiller framför i sina texter. För att kunna komma till rätta med dessa frågor kontrasteras Schillers estetiska tänkande mot Kants, i vilket den estetiska erfarenheten präglas av lust snarare än av tvång.

This thesis considers Immanuel Kant’s notion of sensibility in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) and Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798). It directs attention to sensibility’s function in Kant’s conceptualisation of aesthetic experience and thereby shows how the central role of sensibility in the third Critique contributes to a deeper understanding of aesthetic experience. This is done through a close reading of two philosophical key terms – Gemüt and Stimmung – and two specific phenomena – laughter (Witz) and hypochondria – carried out in conversation with three works of art: Max Neuhaus’ public sound piece Times Square (1977), Sarah Lucas’ installation Au Naturel (1994) and Nazlı Dinçel’s film work Leafless (2011). Taking departure from the framework offered by Kant’s critical philosophy and his anthropological writings, I argue that the analyzed concepts and phenomena on the one hand call on the importance of sensibility in Kant’s aesthetics, and on the other show that we still need Kant to grasp present questions and central motives in contemporary art.