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DAVID CLOWNEY, Savoring Disgust: The Foul and the Fair in Aesthetics by korsmeyer, carolyn, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 70, Issue 2, May 2012, Pages 233–235, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2012.01515_2.x
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korsmeyer, carolyn. Savoring Disgust: The Foul and the Fair in Aesthetics. Oxford University Press, 2011, 194 pp., b&w illus., $99.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.
Carolyn Korsmeyer's latest book is as remarkable for its simultaneous focus and breadth as for its vitality. She targets what she calls “aesthetic disgust … an emotion appropriately aroused by certain works of art—and by other objects as well—that signals appreciative regard and understanding” (p. 3). The book's breadth comes from the other questions raised by this relatively nonstandard topic in aesthetics. For while there have recently been many analyses of disgust by scientists, philosophers, and artists and much deliberately disgusting art, the standard aesthetic theories pay little attention to this emotion. They tend to reject it as a visceral response that cannot form part of an aesthetic experience unless transformed into something else. Korsmeyer, by contrast, thinks disgust functions aesthetically in a wide variety of ways. It often maintains its immediate, visceral character within an aesthetic experience, providing unique insight and intensity. Her extended argument for this conclusion is supported by a wealth of examples from the arts, popular culture, cooking, and other sources. Along the way, she revisits a number of standard problems in aesthetics and engages aesthetic theorists from the past and present, moving comfortably between “analytic” and “continental” authors. She is a generous critic, with an appreciative understanding of the authors she discusses. However, she also shows their accounts of disgust to be inadequate. This reveals other vulnerabilities in their theories.
