Alexandra Grieser
,@alexandragrieser
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Dear all, dear Andreas,
many thanks for this interesting and stimulating discussion, it is exactly what we initially hope for that it would happen on this platform.
Also thnks for focussing the discussion on two questions:
1) Was this a symptom of a desire to move pass phenomenological approaches to atmospheres. OR,2) Was it because atmosphere was rarely the primary analytical, empirical and/or theoretical focus?
First of all, there is a long history of philosophical phenomenology as an approach in the Academic Study of Religion that distinguishes discourses, for example from anthropology and the problems of the fieldworker. There is the pseudo-phenomenology of the 1920s that claims rather theological experiences (R. Otto etc.); but also Boehme, Schmitz at al. focus on some a-historical “experience” and elaborately problematise the old problem how we can access the experience of others and what kind of data we have when we do what our “objects” do.
The AoR approach aims at a meta-perspective in which phenomenology is but one epistemological option to access the network of social structures, collective bodies, historical conditions, the physical preconditions of both bodies and environment. What is often left behind in these phenomenological musings about “feeling what they feel” is the possibility to analyse
a) what exactly is going on in perceptive and cognitive processes (and what specialised knowledge might help us with this analysis; see the work of Hubert Mohr: how cultural and biological “filters” are established; or the “Aesthetic Field Record” by A. Koch in the Handbook, 293, which has let to excellent analyses of dance movements, Lina Aschenbrenner, for example). Mohr’s and Brunotte’s work in particular shows that AoR goes beyond the experiential fieldwork problem and proves fruitful for cultural-historical analysis as well.
b) The analysis is just as much interested in what characterizes the “atmosphere” in terms of the physical conditions of the environment. Terms from different knowledge areas are not only used as a metaphor, but as models for analysis: to go back to the “source domain” of the term, atmospheres emerge from air pressure, temperature, humidity, sound waves, colour. There is an impact to be described that becomes clear when we look at extremes, such as creating absences, fainting, desired moments of fear, or release of emotions. The relationship BETWEEN individual and environment is, thereby, problematised and open to the questions we want to answer. It is no longer the question of whether the effects of atmospheres are individual OR universal; it is self-evident for an AoR approach that it is the processual interaction that creates the possibility of cultivating expectations, creating perceptual orders, but also undermines such orders within larger communities and systems of world-construction. “Mediation” is one concept that can be used, yet it does not explain as much as what we can say about the role of, e.g., joint speech in relaxation (Koch) or the role of height or narrowness in a Gothic Cathedral or a Capucian cloister cell.
As a stimulation for the working group: My impression is that we have not done the work to specifically roll out “atmosphere” as a key term for the AoR (as we did with the publication on another contested term: “imagination”); yet much of the work some of us have done could easily be exploited to add to the current discussion of the notion of atmosphere. Especially concrete analytical tools can be offered for analysing how atmospheres are being created and perceived (attention to factual elements and how they are combined and presented, what demands and expectations are being linked, what wider history and political implications they carry). It is the culture-historical and the explanatory claim we make that reaches beyond the “feeling what they feel” approach (own body as a medium).
We can also ask whether “atmosphere” is rather an umbrella term (again: metaphor or model?) to be broken down into analytical categories or an analytical category in itself? What is the relationship between imagination (as a process, using humans’ ability to perceive through their senses what is not actually there) and atmospheres? As the interaction between bodies, perceptual orders, cultivated expectations, physical conditions it can help, I’d argue, to explain why a male Brazilian wheelchair user and a distressed Swedish women might experience something different in a hot yoga class yet use the same language to describe the outcome of this class and why they are committing to it, and how certain constellations (“atmospheres”) are being searched for in a time that fears or favours dogmatics and beliefs. Another example would be the work on Atheism, or my own work on Science as a worldview: how rational arguments are linked to the creation of a worldview (“the magic of science”, use of awe-inspiring imagery).
Perhaps, this debate stimulates our initial idea to collect possible “key terms for an AoR”, and to build subgroups who start writing, using the work on “aesthetic subjects” and the epistemological starting points discussed over the last years …
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Dear all, very interesting topic, and I had a few thoughts to add to this. I realised, however, that the comments on the sputnik site are populist, to put it mildly. Sputnik is a Russian news agency, which is described as promoting “alternative news”. I am not willing to engage there, but maybe people in this group who have read Esther-Maria’s piece and the comments can make use of the thoughts, so I post them here.
Was in dieser Diskussion zu kurz kommt ist die Tatsache, dass die Proteste nicht vom Untergang der Welt kuenden; das Label wird ihnen angeheftet. Was sie addressieren ist die Zerstoerung des Oekosystems Erde. Weltuntergangssekten leben von einem Heilsversprechen (meist an nur wenige Privilegierte, die gerettet werden), das den Untergang voraussetzt; sie verkuenden ihn, und versuchen NICHT, ihn zu verhindern. Wo argumentieren ExReb in dieser Weise? Welcher Prophet des Weltuntergangs versucht, die Politiker zu ueberzeugen, dass sie ihre selbstgesetzten Ziele einhalten?
Es geht hier um Formen des zivilen Ungehorsams, die keineswegs eine Oekologie- und Friedensbewegung ausschliessen. Sie zeigen lediglich auf, dass diese nicht verhindern konnten, wie es nun steht: mehr CO2 statt weniger; und weit entfernt von Paris und seinen Zielen.
Die Erfinder des gewaltlosen Widerstands und des demokratischen zivilen Ungehorsams haben sich zum Teil auf spirituelle und religioese Konzepte berufen. Wer findet, die spinnen (oder andere Perlen der Debattenkultur wie in den Kommentaren), der muss damit leben, dass Mahatma Gandhi und Martin Luther King dann ebenfalls zu “radikalen Sekten” zu rechnen sind.Anstatt die Rolle von Religion in der derzeitigen Krise zu untersuchen, wird hier Religion als Waffe gegen demokratische Protestformen in Anschlag gebracht. Die Aesthetik dieses Vorwurfs – ExReb, oder die protestierenden Jugendlichen seinen “apokalytisch” oder “Sekten”, wiederholt also das Dominanz- und Abwehrgebaren der sich als eigentliche Wahrheit gerierenden Position und verweigert sich der guten alten Ueberlegung Kants, dass die Freiheit des einzelnen dort ended, wo die Freiheit des anderen beginnt – inklusive SUVs. Es geht ums gerechte Handeln und Verhandeln, nicht um Heilsversprechen; und um eine Situation, in der Argumente ignoriert wurden, und daher performative Mittel eingesetzt werden – um Reaktionen zu provozieren, die zu einem solchen Verhandeln fuehren. Die Toten von Jonestown haben sich umgebracht; ExReb versucht zu verhindern, dass wir uns umbringen. Was ist daran apokalyptisch?
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