Final Call for papers for a special issue on aesthetics and phenomenology for the Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology (2024).
Final CFP: special issue on aesthetics and phenomenology
This is the final ‘call for papers’ for a special issue of the Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology, due for publication in November 2024. The focus of the special issue is the relationship between aesthetics and phenomenology. What is it about the two subjects that makes their relationship a necessary or fruitful area for philosophical investigation?
Aesthetics and phenomenology are both areas of philosophy that admit of many different territories and interpretations. The former can be the philosophy of art, beauty and the senses, as well as the embodied nature of being in the world. With the latter, one should strictly refer to ‘phenomenologies’ as the different ontological and methodological commitments made by thinkers working in the field lead to distinct philosophical positions. One thread binding the phenomenologies together, it could be argued, is that they all deal in some way with the structure of experience, but even then, any prospect of bringing unity to the field is limited by the various ways this structure is understood. Then there is the question of what aesthetics can bring to the idea of the structure of experience.
The issue aims to bring together a range of articles that represents the breadth and variety of ways in which aesthetics and phenomenology implicate one another. It is anticipated that this might involve a reassessment of the concepts’ historical meanings, analysis of the ways in which the concepts are brought together in the writings of specific thinkers, and the identification of new paths of enquiry formed between aesthetics and phenomenology. Possible areas for exploration include:
- the place of the aesthetic within the phenomenological articulation of the structure of experience;
- how aesthetics, as the philosophy of sensitivity, lends itself to the phenomenological project of describing the immediate content of experience;
- the importance of art for phenomenology;
- how phenomenology helps to redefine aesthetics;
- aesthetics as a philosophy of writing or description, and its significance as such for phenomenological method;
- responses to Günter Figal’s thesis, in Aesthetics as Phenomenology (2010), that aesthetics ‘is essentially phenomenology’, in the sense that it seeks to grasp appearance as the act of appearing and not the appearance of something (2015 translation; p. 3).
The guest editor for the special issue is Clive Cazeaux, Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales, UK. Authors who would like to contribute an article to the special issue are invited, in the first instance, to send a 1,500–2,000-word extended abstract or outline paper, formatted for blind review, to Clive Cazeaux at [email protected] by 5 June 2023. From these initial submissions, a selection will be made by a panel of reviewers, and these authors will be invited to submit a final, 6,000–8,000-word article, again for blind review, by 4 March 2024. From this second submission, a final set of articles will be selected by a panel of reviewers for publication in the journal.
The timeline for submission, feedback and production is:
5 Jun 2023: Deadline for long abstracts/paper outlines (2,000 words).
3 July 2023: Completion of review of long abstracts. Authors notified regarding ‘proceed or decline’ decision.
8 Apr 2024: Final, full paper submission deadline
7 May 2024: Authors informed of accept, revise or reject decision.
5 July 2024: Deadline for final revisions, including adherence to journal style guide and securing copyright and print-quality images, if required.
Jul–Oct 2024: Typesetting and production.
Nov 2024: Publication
Submission guidelines for the Journal of Aesthetics and Phenomenology can be found here: https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=rfap20
Further enquiries should be sent to the guest editor, Clive Cazeaux, at [email protected]