Everyday Aesthetics: Prosaics, the Play of Culture and Social Identities (2007 Ashgate, United Kingdom, 2016 Routledge)
Everyday Aesthetics
Katya Mandoki´s groundbreaking text proposes Prosaics as a subfield of Aesthetics (traditionally confined to the study of art and beauty) dedicated to the inquiry of the aesthetic dimension in everyday life. She argues that in every process of communication, whether face to face or through the media, fashion, and political propaganda, there is always an excess beyond the informative and functional value of a message. This excess is the aesthetic. Following Huizinga’s view of play as an ingredient of any social environment, Mandoki explores how various cultural practices are in fact forms of playing since, for the author, aesthetics and play are Siamese twins.
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