Transformations of the everyday. The social aesthetics of childhood

Abstract

One of the differences between art and everyday life as generally conceived at least in the West is that while art tends to strive towards novelty, uniqueness and individuality, the aesthetics of the everyday is characterized by familiarity, anonymity, or even the prosaic. In this paper I want to contribute to everyday aesthetics by tentatively exploring an area which bridges art and the everyday in evident, yet under-theorises ways, namely the activity of play. Children play, but they are by no means unique in this, and while my examples will mostly come from childhood I empahsise the broader significance of play as a resource in human life. Play is, like art, an area of active imagination, and the "mimetic dimension" is important in a number of ways. Here I discuss play with and emphasis on its performative aspects: on what goes on and what is done in the fundamentally social, as I argue, activity of play.

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