12/17/2019 0 Comments Final Essay on Scott and Greenblatt"The dream of autonomous agency, though intensely experienced and tenaciously embraced, is only a dream." In “Renaissance Self-Fashioning,” and “Better Living Through Criticism,” Scott and Greenblatt conceptualize the relationship between the aesthetic and the social to reveal the importance of autonomous agency in our discussions of identity and culture. While “Renaissance Self-Fashioning” reveals our power to operate within our identities, “Better Living Through Criticism,” provides a concrete and discursive process through which we can exercise that agency within our lives. Throughout “Renaissance Self-Fashioning” and “Better Living Through Criticism,” Scott and Greenblatt discuss the central theme of autonomous agency to provide us with a powerful means of operating within the formations of identity that frame our lives. Throughout “Better Living Through Criticism,” Scott incorporates the theme of autonomous agency by detailing the inherent value of criticism in challenging, affirming, and embracing aesthetic experiences. He describes criticism as “powerful,” indicating its urgency and importance in facilitating agency. In doing so, he reveals that criticism is an effective means by which we can either reject or embrace an authority; if we embrace a piece of art, we are submitting to its authority, but if we reject a piece of art, we are rejecting it as an alien. However, he not only addresses the importance of criticism in facilitating agency but also in understanding the dream of autonomous agency. He explains how subjective universality, the idea that everyone has the same opinions, is controversial because “to suppose that everyone likes the same kind of thing may strike us as a small step away from requiring as much” (Scott 54). According to Scott, subjective universality is seen as contentious because it strips us of the autonomy we crave over the formation of our identity and opinions. This is vital to Scott’s discussions of agency because it reveals that despite the hopelessness of our attempts to achieve autonomous agency, we are still able to exercise agency through criticism. Similarly, in “Renaissance Self-Fashioning,” Greenblatt explains the importance of agency in our discussions of identity by revealing that despite our attempts to self-fashion, the generation of identity is outside of our control. He explains how “the dream of autonomous agency, though intensely experienced and tenaciously embraced, is only a dream,” (Greenblatt 1) indicating that we have no autonomy over the creation of our identities. Although this is a seemingly hopeless premise, Greenblatt later explains how even if don’t have power over the generation of our identities, we do have power over how we operate within them. He painstakingly describes the process of self fashioning, empowering us to better function within that process; through making us aware of our agency, he provides us with the tools necessary to recognize when we are rejecting or submitting to an authority. This relates to “Better Living Through Criticism,” because awareness of our agency allows us to better understand how criticism can be an effective means of exerting autonomy within our lives. Although he never explicitly talks about criticism in his piece, by providing us with the awareness of agency necessary to effectively practice criticism, he empowers us to navigate the structures that shape our understanding of self. Throughout “Better Living Through Criticism” and “Renaissance Self-Fashioning,” Scott and Greenblatt incorporate the central theme of autonomous agency to reveal the ways in which we can exercise agency within our lives. In “Renaissance Self- Fashioning,” Greenblatt describes the process of self-fashioning to reveal that although we have no control over the generation of our identity, we still have some autonomy over our lives. Similarly, in “Better Living Through Criticism,” Scott provides a means by which we can exercise agency within the structures that shape self-fashioning; by describing the urgency of criticism, he reveals that criticism is a vital component to our ability to maintain agency. After reading both Scott and Greenblatt, it’s evident that the continuous struggle to attain autonomous agency underlies the entirety of our readings this past semester.
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