ARH411 Theory and Methods 2022

  "Vessels in room 28, first layer in west end, Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico, 1896" from the Natural History Museum of Utah. Indigenous vessels being categorized and labeled upon excavation. https://nhmu.utah.edu/blog/2016/08/04/cacao-chaco-canyon In chapter 3 of her book Indigenous Methodologies, Margaret Kovach discusses epistemology as it relates to modern research practices in professional western institutions. Epistemology is the “theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion."¹ The concept of modern academia in the United States was born from wealthy, white, protestant Europeans, and the strict methodologies used for research today are still based in those Euro-American cultural values.      How do Euro-American cultural values translate to research and knowledge? This culture highly emphasizes clearly categorized groups with defined boundaries,...

     In this week’s reading, Amelia Jones described French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ideas on phenomenology as it relates to interpreting art. Phenomenology is the study of consciousness and the human experience, and Merleau-Ponty’s model says that we are embodied subjects, meaning our physical bodies not only cannot be separated from our conscious minds, but that we make meaning through how our bodies interact with the world around us. In that way, the world around us is just as important to our understanding and interpretation as our own body-mind - the basis of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of phenomenology is that all we are able to experience and understand is done so through reciprocity with others. There is no human experience - no philosophy, understanding, connection, or meaning - in a vacuum.      So what does this have to do with art? By this point in the semester, we have spent a significant amount of time learning about different ways critic...