1: Introduction: The Importance of Aesthetics for Art, Art History, and Philosophy
Christopher Menke, “Preface,” Force: A Fundamental Concept of Aesthetic Anthropology (Fordham University Press, 2013), ix-xii
Michael Kelly, “Preface,” A Hunger for Aesthetics: Enacting the Demands of Art (Columbia University Press, 2012), ix-xx.
Mario Perniola, “Introduction,” Aesthetics and Feeling,”20th Century Aesthetics: Towards a Theory of a Feeling (Bloomsbury 2013), 1-3
2: Aesthetic of Contact: Touch and Gesture
Giorgio Agamben, “Notes on Gesture,” Means Without End: Notes on Politics, trans. Vincenzo Binetti and Cesare Cesarino (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press), pp. 49-60.
Jean-Luc Nancy, Noli me tangere: On the Raising of the Body (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 3-54
Jean-Luc Nancy, “58 Indices on the Body,” Corpus, trans. Richard A. Rand (Fordham University Press, 2008), pp. 150-160.
3: Aesthetics of Very Late Capitalism, or, Coping with Neo-Liberalism
Lauren Berlant, “Introduction,” Chp.6: After The Good Life, an Impasse,” and Chp. 7: “On the Desire for the Political,” Cruel Optimism (Duke University Press, 2011), pp. 1-21, pp. 191-22, and pp. 223-263.
Sianne Ngai, “Introduction,” Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting, pp. 1-52 and pp.245-261 (endnotes) and “Interview with Susanne Ngai by Adam Jasper in Cabinet (Fall 2011) http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/43/jasper_ngai.php
4: Ontology and Aesthetics
Emanuele Coccia, Sensible Life: A Micro-ontology of the Image (Fordham University Press, 2016), pp. 43-97.
5: Inorganic Aesthetics
Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, Through Vegetal Being (Columbia University Press, 2016), pp. 3-8, pp. 74-102, pp. 112-115, pp. 184-216.
6: Force and Feeling (Against Representation)
Mario Perniola, “Aesthetics and Feeling,” 20th Century Aesthetics: Towards a Theory of a Feeling (Bloomsbury 2013), pp. 109-133.
Gilles Deleuze, “The Round Area, The Ring,” “Note on Figuration in Past Painting,” “Body, Meat, and Spirit, Becoming-Animal,” “Painting and Sensation,” “Painting Forces,” “The Painting before Painting,” “The Diagram,” “The Eye and the Hand,” Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel W. Smith (London: Continuum Press, 2003), pp. 1-7, pp. 8-11, 20-26, pp. 34-43, 56-64, pp. 86-98, pp. 99-110, pp. 154-161.
J.M. Bernstein, “In Praise of Pure Violence (Matisse’s War),” in The Life and Death of Images (Cornell University of Press, 2008), pp. 38-55.
7: Realism and Speculative Aesthetics
excerpts from Graham Harman, Art and Objects (Polity Press, 2018)
N. Catherine Hayles, “Speculative Aesthetics and Object Oriented Ontology,” Speculations: A Journal of Speculative Realism V (2014): 158-179.
8: Distributions of the Sensible and Figural
Jacques Ranciere, “Aesthetic Separation, Aesthetic Community,” The Emancipated Spectator, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso Press, 2009), pp. 51-82 and “Divided Beauty: Dresden, 1764,” Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art, trans. Zakir Paul (London: Verso, 2013), pp.1-20.
Boris Groys, “The Logic of Equal Aesthetic Rights,” Art Power (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2008), pp. 13-22.
Georges Didi-Huberman, “People Exposed, People as Extras,” in Spheres of Action: Art and Politics, eds. Eric Alliez and Peter Osborne (The MIT Press, 2013), p.33-44.
9: The Aesthetics of Dark Ecology
Levi Bryant, “Black,” Prismatic Ecology: Ecotheory Beyond Green, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2013, pp. 290-310.
Eugene Thacker, “Prayers for Darkness,” Starry Speculative Corpse: Horror of Philosophy, vol. 2 (London: Zero Books, 2015), pp. 17-61.
Maurice Blanchot, “The Outside, the Night,” Blanchot: The Space of Literature, trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), pp. 163-170.