Date of Award
Fall 9-5-2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
Joy Gordon
Abstract
The history of social philosophy is a history of suspicion toward the aesthetic (1). However, since we apprehend social reality fundamentally through its aesthetic appearances, an account is needed of how “the aesthetic” must enter the social-philosophical discourse, particularly in reconstructive models of social critique. I call this account “social aesthetics.” Social aesthetics illuminates how certain social experiences generate normative claims even in the lack of discursive articulation. (2) I argue that the philosophy of recognition, concerned with this relationship between social experience and normative claim-making, contains an unacknowledged aesthetic dimension, which I uncover through a critical reading of Axel Honneth’s work (3). Finally, I demonstrate the connection between negative social experience and aesthetic expression through what I term “mass dandyism”—the practice whereby oppressed groups appropriate upper-class styles as a form of expressively articulating recognition claims, especially when discursive political channels are blocked (4).
Recommended Citation
Alves, Italo, "The Social Aesthetics of Recognition" (2025). Dissertations. 4216.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/4216
