Performative Beauty: A Pragmatist and Somaesthetic Account

This book develops an original theory of performative beauty by reconsidering and reworking Deweyan pragmatic aesthetics through the lens of somaesthetics, contemporary embodiment theories, and philosophies of play.

While philosophical aesthetics has traditionally focused on beauty as a property of external objects, this book explores beauty as an enacted experience that emerges through our own actions and somatic practices. The author draws on his own experiences with Argentine tango and other somatic practices to challenge conventional Western epistemological distinctions between subject and object, agency and patiency, and artist and audience. Through an exploration of concepts such as somaesthetic awareness, unity, aesthetic presence, objectivization, transaction, playfulness, and consummation, the author constructs a comprehensive framework for understanding beauty as a sentient enactment of playful transactions between the human being and their environment. This pragmatist approach responds to our contemporary moment, where beauty is regaining epistemological, existential, political, and economic value across diverse domains of human experience.

Performative Beauty is a valuable resource for researchers and advanced students interested in philosophical aesthetics, pragmatism, somaesthetics, and performativity studies, as well as practitioners interested in the aesthetic dimensions of dance, yoga, and other somatic practices.

Falk Heinrich is a professor of participatory aesthetics and artistic research at Aalborg University, Denmark. Before joining academia, he worked as a theatre actor, director, and installation artist. He studied dramaturgy and wrote his PhD on interactive digital installation art. He is author of A Somaesthetics of Performative Beauty: Tangoing Desire and Nostalgia (Routledge, 2023), Performing Beauty in Participatory Art and Culture (Routledge, 2014), and the editor of The Journal of Somaesthetics.