Not America's Nightmare: Hans Urs von Balthasar, Janelle Monáe, and Aesthetic Form
This essay expands Balthasarian aesthetic form, where Hans Urs von Balthasar's "seeing the form" collides dramatically with the varied, even grotesque forms of history. The argument proceeds by way of a dialectic, a scrutiny that proceeds not according to comparison and contrast, but...
| Published in: | Religion & literature |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Dep.
2021
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| In: |
Religion & literature
Year: 2021, Volume: 53, Issue: 2, Pages: 23-45 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Balthasar, Hans Urs von 1905-1988
/ Monáe, Janelle 1985-
/ Forme
/ Aesthetics
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| IxTheo Classification: | CD Christianity and Culture KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This essay expands Balthasarian aesthetic form, where Hans Urs von Balthasar's "seeing the form" collides dramatically with the varied, even grotesque forms of history. The argument proceeds by way of a dialectic, a scrutiny that proceeds not according to comparison and contrast, but by way of subtly building pairs of propositions and counter-propositions, leading to the summit light not of conclusion but of aporia. The black American musical artist Janelle Monáe is the central "form" that the essay "reads." Willie Jennings, Alexander Weheliye, and others provide further theoretical frames for Monáe, underlining her independence from Balthasar as the two draw near. Monáe performs a kind of anamnesis in which she, as a black American, recollects the brutal existence of one end of Jennings's racial scale. She at the same time expresses the depth of yearning that persists in Weheliye's "flesh." In the essay, Balthasar's theo-dramatic collision between Gestalt and Ungestalt become an interpretive key for Monáe's musical apocalypse, and his metaphysical commitments become a metronome by which to note Monáe's escape from the titan's grip and from pure disintegration. These are qualities that Balthasar already possesses, that rest in the fallow fields of his expansive work, re-conceived under encounter with Monáe's work. The possibility of this engagement is the essential effort of the essay. It secures the notion that theological aesthetics cannot remain in Balthasar's original spaces, however rich and broad. |
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| ISSN: | 2328-6911 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religion & literature
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/rel.2021.0001 |