An Epistemology of Beauty: Situating the Affect of embodied knowledge through the discourse of contact improvisation

Abstract

This thesis is a pursuit of beauty. Not a pursuit of perfection, of ideal form, or even composition, but to find a way of seeing the world that might make space for encountering beauty more often. There are many obstacles between me and the world of the beautiful, our very emergence, as a culture, as a society, myself as a person, has created preconceived notions of reality that make the beautiful something other and foreign that we sometimes are lucky enough to witness. Our previous attempts to understand beauty through rationalizing, measuring, quantifying and objectifying have only taken us further from it. I feel that we have lost something in distancing ourselves, and our field, from beauty. When I think of beauty, I don't think of the golden ratio, or a certain composition of color or shape, but of moments that are somehow greater than the sum of their parts, moments that are somehow enchanting and mystical. In this thesis, I am hoping to find a way to diminish that distance by deconstructing those preconceived notions and stitching together a different way of knowing ourselves and the world around us. Through the mind bending work of Karen Barad and the discourse of contact improvisation, I believe we can begin to situate ourselves in a an understanding of reality where we might encounter, maybe even engage with, beauty in a new way; to know the world where the beautiful might be born.