Subjectivity, Play and Difference: Elements for an approach to seriousness in art

This paper addresses the concept of seriousness across its ethical and aesthetic dimensions, exploring the fundamental duality between seriousness and non-seriousness (or playfulness) in artistic expression. It analyzes how discourses uphold their seriousness by establishing bonds with reality, while art, as a performative discourse, tends to break away from naive conceptions of realism. The central objective is to investigate how art navigates the antinomy between seriousness and subjectivity. It seeks to understand how aesthetic experience depends on this tensional relationship, distinguishing the seriousness aimed at social relevance (ethics) from that which pursues poetic authenticity (aesthetics). The research is grounded in Michel Foucault’s post-metaphysical approach to the problem of subjectivity. Additionally, phenomenology is adopted as the primary methodological alternative to specify the mechanisms of subjectivation and the transition from objective to subjective experience through performativity. The findings reveal the coexistence of two distinct regimes of seriousness: ethical seriousness, associated with social commitment and consensus, and aesthetic seriousness, which manifests in the concealment of artifice to reveal the contingency of the real. The paper presents camp sensibility as an emblematic case study, demonstrating how this aesthetic theatricalizes failed seriousness to assert the political power of difference and dissensus. The study concludes that art does not nullify seriousness but rather integrates it into a magic circle where performativity and a commitment to the real profoundly complement one another. Aesthetic experience is defined as the path leading the subject from ethical responsibility to the plenitude of authenticity, preserving a subjectivity that is simultaneously politically dissident and poetically disinterested.