Easing the sublime: Flow, daoism, and being-nature. Issue 1 (June 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Brillenburg Wurth, Kiene
• Is Part Of: Possibility studies and society. Volume 1:Issue 1/2(2023)
• Page Start: 21
• Page End: 28
• Publication Date: 2023-06
• Subjects: comparative literature -- dao -- ease -- flow -- interthing -- the sublime -- WuWei
• DOI: 10.1177/27538699231173344
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2753-8699

Abstract

Comparative Literature brings to Possibility Studies the toolbox to closely read the generative materiality of things, and the resonances between them, from a plurality of cultural, temporal, affective, and critical perspectives. What is the agency of things in making people think and feel "otherwise"? In this article, I try to answer this question with a view to the idea of the sublime. I revise this idea within a Daoist theoretical perspective of wuwei (doing not-doing)—carefully differentiating it from Czíkszentmihályi's idea of flow— and self/no-self: of entanglement. I call this re-vision easing the sublime, and I argue that such easing is crucial to the continued relevance of this esthetic category in Possibility Studies. As I conclude, easing the sublime ultimately boils down to an attitude of a being-at-ease with (without being indifferent to) the eternal transformation of things ( wu hua ).