Vesper No. 6 | Magic | Spring-Summer 2022
Ilaria Bussoni
Understanding
without Knowing. The Aesthetic Construction Site of World-Making
Re-enchantment
seems to be the contemporary premise of any emancipation thought. In the past,
criticism against a state of things had to be based on causality, or on numbers
and measurements; the social theory of change was conceived as an analogy of
the engine, and the predictability of salvation and damnation was calculable;
today, reactions to the present seem to require an altogether different
beginning. It is not surprising that sensible reality is the prime framework
inside which one can recognise the experience of the outside, practices
symbolising the forming of new alliances with living or even inorganic things: overlapping,
mixed alternatives to the prevailing ontology. Radical, but not all-consuming
alterities. It is also not a coincidence that aesthetic judgment – precisely because it establishes
relationships in the effort to know – results in a reversal of the prevalent canon
and in the overcoming of convention. Among gardening techniques, re-enchantment
will flourish not for the ecstasy of perfumes or for the impact of the colours
of flowers, but for the ability to make a world taking as a starting point the sensory
perception of being part of the very same life force.
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