Tilo Reifenstein

Abstract

In seeking to position the Open Arts Journal’s special issue ‘Between sensuous and making-sense-of’ the introduction opens by probing notions of binarity that are instrumental to the commonplace division between affect and meaning, sensing and intelligibility, material and discursive, and sensuous and sense-making. Subsequently, a variety of philosophical approaches that have sought to recognise the metaphysical underpinnings of such oppositionality are presented to indicate why this special issue has sought to explore the shared spaces of these terms as a fruitful arena of enquiry. It is shown how such strategies fit into the historically shifting understanding of knowledge, before a brief sketch of discourses around materiality and précis for all contributions are provided.

Keywords: materiality, sense, writing, oppositionality, meaning, discursivity

Full text: OAJ_issue7_Reifenstein_intro (PDF 1.3 MB)

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2019s00

Biographical note
Tilo Reifenstein is Lecturer in Critical Studies at York St John University. Recent publications include ‘The graphics of ekphrastic writing: Raymond Pettibon’s drawing-writing’ in Ekphrastic Encounters: New Interdisciplinary Essays on Literature and the Visual Arts (David Kennedy and Richard Meek, eds, MUP, 2018) and ‘Drawing the letter’ in Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice (2018).