Disunified Aesthetics

Book excerpt: Aesthetics is a field still rooted in an understanding of a unified process where small numbers of people produce, commodify, and consume objects called "art." Disunified Aesthetics deconstructs the literary object by invoking the critic's stance toward the written works with which they engage. Lynette Hunter's performative explorations provide a distinctly different way of understanding contemporary creative processes. Disunified Aesthetics takes up twenty-first-century aesthetics through an investigation of recent Canadian writing. The book is both a series of insights into literature and poetics of the last two decades and a story about moving from a traditional view of the relation between the artist, art, and its reception, to a more radically democratic view of aesthetics and ethics. Hunter addresses a range of Canadian women's writing, as well as close studies of the work of Robert Kroetsch, Lee Maracle, Nicole Brossard, Frank Davey, Alice Munro, Daphne Marlatt, and bpNichol. Disunified Aesthetics is a creative, challenging, and original investigation of textuality, performance, and aesthetics by a leading and innovative scholar.