TY - JOUR
T1 - Acrobats and ascetics
T2 - Peter Sloterdijk and the aesthetics of verticality
AU - Danta, Chris
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - In his 2009 work You Must Change Your Life, Peter Sloterdijk proposes an anthropology of the acrobat. 'Whoever looks for humans will find ascetics,' Sloterdijk declares programmatically at one point, 'and whoever observes ascetics will discover acrobats.' This essay shows that the topological shift Sloterdijk traces in You Must Change Your Life from asceticism to acrobatics indicates a shift from a religious to a decidedly creaturely experience of verticality. The acrobat, for Sloterdijk, figures the nonchalance with which humans conquer the downward force of gravity. But in developing this vertical metaphor of the human-as-acrobat, Sloterdijk ignores what the author wants to call the topology of affect - the sense in which humans respond emotionally to their topological orientation. To demonstrate Sloterdijk's insensitivity to the emotional implications of the vertical orientation of humans, the author re-examines two of the main sources of his acrobat metaphor: the tightrope walker scene in Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Franz Kafka's 1924 short story about an eccentric trapeze artist, 'First Sorrow'. When we re-examine these texts in light of their treatment of verticality, we notice that they are actually both about the physical, metaphysical and emotional experience of falling.
AB - In his 2009 work You Must Change Your Life, Peter Sloterdijk proposes an anthropology of the acrobat. 'Whoever looks for humans will find ascetics,' Sloterdijk declares programmatically at one point, 'and whoever observes ascetics will discover acrobats.' This essay shows that the topological shift Sloterdijk traces in You Must Change Your Life from asceticism to acrobatics indicates a shift from a religious to a decidedly creaturely experience of verticality. The acrobat, for Sloterdijk, figures the nonchalance with which humans conquer the downward force of gravity. But in developing this vertical metaphor of the human-as-acrobat, Sloterdijk ignores what the author wants to call the topology of affect - the sense in which humans respond emotionally to their topological orientation. To demonstrate Sloterdijk's insensitivity to the emotional implications of the vertical orientation of humans, the author re-examines two of the main sources of his acrobat metaphor: the tightrope walker scene in Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and Franz Kafka's 1924 short story about an eccentric trapeze artist, 'First Sorrow'. When we re-examine these texts in light of their treatment of verticality, we notice that they are actually both about the physical, metaphysical and emotional experience of falling.
KW - Affect
KW - Anthropology
KW - Franz Kafka
KW - Friedrich Nietzsche
KW - Metaphor
KW - Peter Sloterdijk
KW - Topology
KW - Verticality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84954155981&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13825577.2015.1004918
DO - 10.1080/13825577.2015.1004918
M3 - Article
SN - 1382-5577
VL - 19
SP - 66
EP - 80
JO - European Journal of English Studies
JF - European Journal of English Studies
IS - 1
ER -