Dr. Giulia Zerbinati

Research Project

The Non-Conceptual Aspect of Experience: The Aesthetic Dimension as a Reactivation of Dialectical Critical Thinking

Giulia Zerbinati will join the Center for Post-Kantian Philosophy (CPKP) at the University of Potsdam to conduct research within the framework of the Horizon Europe MSCA Staff Exchange Project “Reactivating Experience: Art, Culture Industry and Authoritarianism in the Digital Age” (REACT). This project examines how the dynamics of the contemporary culture industry and digital capitalism expose the crisis of contemporary liberalism, reshape subjectivity, and foster authoritarian tendencies. She will contribute to the theoretical foundations of REACT by addressing the intertwining between the non-conceptual aspect of experience, conceived as an aesthetic dimension, and the possibility of reactivating dialectical critical thinking. In doing so, she will investigate the operative potential and non-ideological implementation of aesthetic practices within the social context of consumerist culture and digital capitalism. Her research draws on the conceptual and methodological tools of Critical Theory, focusing particularly on Theodor W. Adorno’s understanding of the aesthetic. In the Adornian framework, the aesthetic can be understood as that aspect of experience which, being strictly related to the dialectical driving force of non-identity, can counter the widespread erosion of Erfahrung in its emphatic sense. By re-evaluating the dialectical significance and the emancipatory power of aesthetic experience, her research aims to outline potential pathways for cognitive and practical resistance against modern forms of alienation, bridging critical philosophical perspectives with contemporary socio-political challenges in order to offer new diagnostic tools for a highly digitized era.