Art’s ethical function is to unsettle, not empower, the perceiving self

Evidence

To me, the only habit worth “designing for” is the habit of questioning one’s habitual ways of seeing, and that is what artists, writers, and musicians help us to do. It’s no accident that in Blindspotting, the moment between Collin and Miles is organized by a photographer, whose work confronts viewers’ “blind spots” with the reality of Oakland residents in all their human fullness. It’s in the realm of poetics that we learn how to encounter. Significantly, these encounters are not optimized to “empower” us by making us happier or more productive. In fact, they may actually completely unsettle the priorities of the productive self and even the boundaries between self and other. Rather than providing us with drop-down menus, they confront us with serious questions, the answering of which may change us irreversibly. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 421

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s method question: Odell’s cross-domain borrowings answer here — art/literature/music carry the ‘habit of questioning habits’. — connects to: Art can perform critique for audiences, letting them consume guilt-free. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 29; Art redeems existence precisely by not striving to attain being; Art’s expression is the non-subjective trace within the subject — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2737 (+9 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Art can perform critique for audiences, letting them consume guilt-free. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 29; Art redeems existence precisely by not striving to attain being; Art’s expression is the non-subjective trace within the subject — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2737 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Beautiful art can transfigure atrocity and thus justify suffering aesthetically #complicates (0.86)
• Art is trapped between utopian longing and the charge of false comfort #complicates (0.71) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 66