Addressing the sublime: space,mass representation,and the unpresentable |
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| Authors: | Nathan Stormer |
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| Abstract: | Mass representations of the sublime use apostrophe as a mode of address that normalizes a moment of expected failure of discourse. Regardless of whether a viewer experiences “sublimity,” mass representations of what is supposedly beyond discourse embody the expected limits of communication, aestheticizing conditions of impossibility for discourse, and thereby constituting a space wherein the humanist subject may become a recognizable self in a public sense. Constituting a relationship between the spectator as human and the sublime objects as greater than human, a mass reproduced sublime thus helps establish discursive spaces of humanism. Although the aesthetics of the sublime can be exceptionally varied, the essay applies these ideas to popular Ansel Adams photographs, which illustrate the problems of attempting to represent the unrepresentable and the invocation of a particular kind of subjectivity as a commonplace. |
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