Aesthetics and class interests: Rethinking Kant

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Third Text, 28(2), 137 - 148, 2014, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09528822.2014.890788.Immanuel Kant's philosophy of the aesthetic is typically celebrated by bourgeois critics as a transcendence of the social, an interpretation largely accepted by anglophone Marxism. This article rethinks Kant's concept of ‘interest’ around the question of social compulsion. The ‘pure judgement’ involved in aesthetic production and reception is understood as providing an institutionalized space for reflection on and not merely reflection of social determinations. Drawing on Kojin Karatani's reading of Kant, the article stresses the communicative dimension of the aesthetic in relation to a universal that is not given. The Kantian aesthetic can be read as one which inscribes the classed other into its very form. The novelty of this reading is highlighted by comparing the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Rancière. The article argues that their respective sociological and philosophical positions do not adequately assess whether practices are identical to their immediate conditions of existence

Beyond Linear Fields: the Lie-Taylor Expansion

The work extends the linear fields' solution of compressible nonlinear magnetohydrodynamics~(MHD) to the case where the magnetic field depends on superlinear powers of position vector, usually but not always, expressed in Cartesian components. Implications of the resulting Lie-Taylor series expansion for physical applicability of the Dolzhansky-Kirchhoff~(D-K) equations are found to be positive. It is demonstrated how resistivity may be included in the D-K model. Arguments are put forward that the D-K equations may be regarded as illustrating properties of nonlinear MHD in the same sense that the Lorenz equations inform about the onset of convective turbulence. It is suggested that the Lie-Taylor series approach may lead to valuable insights into other fluid models.Comment: Submitted to Proc Roy Soc