About the Lecture: 

The reactions against the cultural turn: the new materiality. Can a turn to materiality avoid materialism? Yes, via the theory of iconic consciousness. Meanings are socially created and dispersed not only via discourse but via the aesthetic experience of material objects. (The contributions of Burke and Kant.) Such objects, however, are dual, composed of both surface and depth. The surface is an aesthetically formed organization of matter that generates a sensuous, aesthetic experience, via one or more of the five sense. The depth is the conventional social meanings that a given society, at an historically specific time, attaches to these sensuous experiences and objects. Social actors experience surface and depth simultaneously, via the process of immersion and the dialectic of subjectification (taking material objects in) and objectification (take internal feelings "out"). Illustrations from icon-research: Giacometti's sculptures; celebrities; vinyl records; breast and breastleness.  

About the Speaker: 

Jeffrey C. Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University. He is the founder and Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology (CCS). Jeffrey Alexander works in the areas of theory, culture, and politics. An exponent of the “strong program” in cultural sociology, he has investigated the culture codes, narratives, performances and icons that inform diverse areas of social life.