THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME AND with the help of a large number of people, some of whom I knew before I ever began to study philosophy and who are probably unaware of the inspiration they gave me. As a “Mädchen aus der Fremde” myself, at home in no particular country, the works of Julia Kristeva (in particular her readings of Louise Bourgeois and Hannah Arendt) gave me a framework for thinking about my own situation, one of philosophizing from out of an indeterminate origin as a foreigner who is also not a foreigner; in the throes of a disorienting melancholia, I was drawn to her discourse about art and aesthetics because it recognizes both the inhibitions and also the potential positive creative force of such a state of mind.
In 2006 I took a trip to Berlin (funded by a Miami University summer research award, for which I am grateful) to study countermemorials, sites commemorating the horrific events surrounding World War II in Germany, in a project that explored the conjunction of memory, loss, and art. That research eventually expanded to include psychoanalysis and the distinction between mourning and melancholia in our relation to the past, and from there to Kristeva, whose articulation of what I came to think of as a melancholic aesthetics seemed to fit perfectly into my earlier project. A 2008 Assigned Research Appointment from Miami University gave me the time I needed for putting together the first draft of the book.
Some of the chapters here began in very different form as invited lectures or essays. Thanks to Jeffrey Bernstein for inviting me to contribute to a special issue of Idealistic Studies an essay on iconoclasm, a subject I would probably never have reflected on otherwise but that ended up inspiring a whole new way of thinking about art. Mary Rawlinson invited me to give a keynote lecture at the Irigaray Circle, where juxtaposing Irigaray and Kristeva’s theories on art gave me valuable perspective and feedback as well as a warm, generous, and challenging interlocutor in Mary herself. Fanny Söderbäck invited me to participate in an amazing roundtable discussion with Sara Beardsworth, Pleshette DeArmitt, Kelly Oliver, and Charles Shepherdson on Kristeva’s The Severed Head at the inaugural meeting of the Kristeva Circle in 2012. Dilek Hüseyinzadeğan and Joe Weiss invited me to give the keynote lecture at the DePaul University graduate student conference in 2008, leading to rich discussion with them, Sina Kramer, and the other graduate students present; the dialogue contributed immensely to my thought process and revisions. Michael Naas, who was also present there and who has been a mentor since my graduate student days, contributed incalculably to the tightening up of conceptual distinctions in my discussion of photography (also the subject of a special issue of the Oxford Literary Review that he edited, inviting me to contribute an early version of parts of one chapter of this book) and pointed out new connections to Proust. I cannot thank him enough for all the inspiration, guidance, and friendship he has so generously given me over the years.
My editors at Columbia University Press, Wendy Lochner and Christine Dunbar, were a constant source of support, precision, care of the writing, and understanding. I am grateful to Lydia Goehr and Gregg M. Horowitz, the series editors, for seeing merit in the manuscript. Kelly Oliver, whose brilliant work on Kristeva gave me a paved road to run down, has been a mentor, supporter, and inspiration for many years; she and Ewa Płonowska Ziarek, the quality of whose work on aesthetics I can only aspire to, read the manuscript meticulously and generously and suggested revisions that made it much better. Sheila Croucher’s encouragement and advice along the way got me through many times of self-paralyzing doubt. Nöelle McAfee helped me with the book submission process.
Rebecca Comay and Angelica Nuzzo are philosophical exemplars that all my work strives to emulate, and I thank them for their encouragement and friendship. My colleagues in the Philosophy Department make both research and teaching a space of intellectual flourishing; I would like in particular to thank Emily Zakin, without whom this entire project never would have entered into my realm of possibility (and who came up with a new title in record time when my first one was rejected), Gaile Pohlhaus, Pascal Massie, Kristina Gehrman, and Keith Fennen. The graduate students in my aesthetics seminars inspired and challenged me, pushing me in directions I needed to grow. Thanks to Daniel Allen, David Atenasio, Christian Black, Sam Gault, Sarah Gorman, Amanda Holmes, Adam Rensch, Chris Schneck, Alex Shillito, Brian Sopher, Ryan Van Nood, and Matt Wester.
My friends helped me through many a rough patch when I thought this book would never finish. Joann Martin, Sheila Croucher, Carolyn Haynes, Emily Zakin, Gaile Pohlhaus, Madelyn Detloff, Kristina Gehrman, Nancy Averett, Jim Coyle, Kelly Oliver, and Mary Rawlinson gave me an intellectual, social, and support network that allowed me to write. Meeting up with the wonderful women philosophers of the Luce Irigaray Circle and philo SOPHIA every year brings back to mind why we engage in this kind of intellectual work in the first place. My dear Woodstock friends spread all over the world, in particular Beth Norford and Elizabeth Webster in memoriam, remind me of the intellectual and emotional loop between past and present. Ferit Güven’s obstreperous intellect was a rock to rage against, often productively. Joel Johnston, Nathan Morris, and Suzanne Hardacre literally made it possible for me to write.
My family was supportive even when they didn’t understand me or my withdrawal into my intellectual work. Thanks to my sisters, Lois Miller and Marjorie McKenna, and to my mother, Susan Miller, for not giving up on me.
Finally, my two brilliant and beautiful daughters, Sofi and Leyla, who will hopefully some day find their mother in language and in art, give me the love without why that makes everything else possible.