Traditional Kitsch: The Danger of Burkean Beauty

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What is kitsch? The varieties of phenomena which can fall under the name are bewildering. In this paper, I focus on what can be called “traditional kitsch,” and argue that it turns on a certain emotional effect connected to what Edmund Burke categorized as “beauty” in his 'Philosophical Enquiry.' The precise significance of Burkean beauty, however, is required in order to see what is at heart in traditional kitsch. Numerous early commentators attacked kitsch as a danger to society. Richard Egenter, for example, saw it as a tool of Satan, whereas Hermann Broch, claimed that one who produces kitsch is “an ethically depraved person, a criminal who desires the radically evil.” Now it often seems that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction, and that kitsch can do no wrong. Though I believe that domestic decoration allows for us to see traditional kitsch as resting on natural and even healthy impulses, I argue that the usual cultural function or place of traditional kitsch directs it to dangerous ends.

Stream: Art in Communities

Paper: Flower and the Breaking Wheel, The

My doctoral work, completed after three years of research in Germany, explored the significance of the senses and of formalism in Kant's aesthetics. My first academic publication was a lengthy article on the nature of kitsch and a defense of certain of its forms. Currently, my work focuses on three areas: the question of "high" and "low" culture (or kitsch), 18th-Century German aesthetics generally, and Kant and Herder's aesthetics specifically, though I am also interested in Latin American and especially Brazilian contributions to these topics. I am presently writing about the limitations in Kant's theory of poetic beauty.