Dewey, Foucault, and the Value of Horror: Transformative Learning through Reading Horror Fiction

IF 0.4 4区 社会学 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION Pub Date : 2020-04-22 DOI:10.5406/jaesteduc.54.2.0075
Lorraine K. C. Yeung
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Abstract

Abstract:This article advances an account of the nonhedonic values of horror fiction (including film). It is motivated by cases in which consuming horror fosters what theorists of education call "transformative learning" in adult students, brought to my attention through teaching a course titled "Horror Film and Fiction." Transformative learning refers to the process by which students' critical consciousness is activated in a way that they examine, question, and revise certain existing perceptions shaped by their experiences. The process is more a shocking and disturbing experience than pleasurable. In this article, I focus on two cases in which two students underwent such a transformation on studying Roman Polanksi's Repulsion (1968) and Tod Browning's Freaks (1932), respectively. In the first case, the student's experience of madness is modified, while, in the second, the student's experience of abnormality is disrupted. To give the transformation in question a philosophical underpinning, I draw on Dewey's concept of "aesthetic experience" in Art as Experience, Foucault's concept of "experience book," and O'Leary's approach to the value of fiction developed in his Foucault and Fiction and contend that the works of horror effectuated what O'Leary calls "transformative experience" in the students. In the second half of the paper, I extend my account beyond the classroom context by offering a close reading of Robert Bloch's Psycho (1959), with the aim of demonstrating that it has the potential to transform the everyday experience of madness of the American readers in Bloch's times, and probably the experience of normality of the worldwide readers thereafter.
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杜威、福柯与恐怖的价值:通过阅读恐怖小说进行变革性学习
摘要:本文探讨了恐怖小说(包括恐怖电影)的非享乐价值。我之所以这么做,是因为在讲授一门名为“恐怖电影和小说”的课程时,我注意到了一些案例,在这些案例中,对恐怖的消费促进了教育理论家所说的成年学生的“变革性学习”。变革性学习是指学生的批判意识被激活的过程,通过这种方式,他们检查、质疑和修改某些由他们的经验形成的现有观念。这个过程与其说是愉悦,不如说是令人震惊和不安的经历。在这篇文章中,我将重点关注两个案例,其中两个学生分别在学习罗曼·波兰斯基的《斥力》(1968)和托德·布朗宁的《怪胎》(1932)时经历了这样的转变。在第一种情况下,学生的疯狂体验被修改了,而在第二种情况下,学生的异常体验被打乱了。为了给问题中的转变提供一个哲学基础,我借鉴了杜威在《作为经验的艺术》中的“审美经验”概念,福柯的“经验书”概念,以及奥利里在《福柯与小说》中对小说价值的研究方法,并认为恐怖作品在学生中产生了奥利里所谓的“变革经验”。在论文的后半部分,我通过对罗伯特·布洛赫的《精神病患者》(1959)的仔细阅读,将我的叙述扩展到课堂之外,目的是证明它有可能改变布洛赫时代美国读者对疯狂的日常体验,并可能改变此后全世界读者对正常的体验。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION
JOURNAL OF AESTHETIC EDUCATION HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-
CiteScore
0.50
自引率
20.00%
发文量
0
期刊介绍: The Journal of Aesthetic Education (JAE) is a highly respected interdisciplinary journal that focuses on clarifying the issues of aesthetic education understood in its most extensive meaning. The journal thus welcomes articles on philosophical aesthetics and education, to problem areas in education critical to arts and humanities at all institutional levels; to an understanding of the aesthetic import of the new communications media and environmental aesthetics; and to an understanding of the aesthetic character of humanistic disciplines. The journal is a valuable resource not only to educators, but also to philosophers, art critics and art historians.
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