Date of Award
2006
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program
Theory and Criticism
Supervisor
Dr. Jan Plug
Second Advisor
Dr. Elias Polizoes
Abstract
This thesis is concerned with the connections between physical and artistic taste, and eating and thinking, and subjectivity. The first chapter focuses on the relation between eating, art, language and speculative thinking as forms of sublation in Hegel’s work and their connection to his attempt to incorporate or abject any excess or waste. The second chapter elucidates how Huysmans’ novel Against Nature utilizes a Hegelian conception of sublation in the consumption of art and experiences the problem of waste from the first chapter, demonstrating the possible limits of thinking about consumption in a Hegelian manner. The third chapter examines how assimilation, taste, disgust, forgetting, relation between the body and * consciousness are used in Nietzsche’s work to critique Hegel and provide an alternative a new conception of taste. The conclusion of this thesis brings the issues of the three chapters together through Nietzsche’s notion of decadence.
Recommended Citation
Collins, David B., "“THE TONGUE IS AN EYE”: PHYSICAL AND ARTISTIC TASTE IN HEGEL, NIETZSCHE, AND HUYSMANS’ AGAINST NATURE" (2006). Digitized Theses. 4657.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/4657