Appendix to: Aesthetics, or, The Capitalist Production of Cultural Logic  __

I.    The World with its many Rooms and its many Smells:

The World is divided into rooms and each room carries its own aroma. Yet it is not the case we follow the scent that we like into the room of our pleasing. It is not a smell we believe is good, but a simulated appearance for which we merely accept and embrace. Having ideas is adopting them. The Carnival is one such instance of a room with its smells of excessive enjoyment to the point of dis-pleasure and pain (Jouissance?). Its twists and turns turn strange and unfamiliar, provoking nausea and inducing us to coming away feeling uncanny to the point we become frightened of the very thing that’s meant to to do the opposite. Clowns are just another example. They’re exaggeration only highlights the fact their smiles are a cover up for a deeply disturbing world for which they run. The world is a Fun House.

‘Aesthetic pleasure’ is thus a smell with which we accept and assume and take it as emblematic of our identity. We quite literally wear our smells. We are what we stink of! It is an acceptance of an experience we believe what has always already been the case. We are converted and seduced. No! We are proud of our discoveries! The discovery of something ‘new’ is really a finding of something that was always meant to be, of something lost, of needing to be re-found. The saying “I need to find true Love” is not a matter of being without Love, but of accepting the Love of the other that should have always already been present in our lives. Prior to the relationship the other is missing. What I was missing before I met you was not Love itself, but you. ‘Aesthetic Experience’ then, as being gifted or given to us as motive for us to find it is not to fill in the gap of aesthetic displeasure but of persuading us to accept the object of such pleasure as the necessary part that was specifically lost to us prior to our engaging with the art object. Meaning, the art object presented under the Funhouse of Late Capitalist Contemporary Art is providing us with the Love we think we always needed – and yet it turns out to be nothing other than a provisional stimulating simulation. Love in this instance is a lie sold to us so we can buy something else or subscribe some other romantic relationship – maybe adopting, and thus condoning, additional marketing ploys.

The Funhouse of Art sees itself as Destiny providing us with our Fate – the Fate of pleasurable experiences. Something specific has to turn out according to plan… except what? We can never have the capacity to know what Fate has provided for us; we are then left to our own intuition as to whether we accept a particular event as an act of fate or not. We are in charge of our own Fate. Under these false pretenses, it is here, then, that we choose our destiny.