Giovanni Matteucci is Full Professor of Aesthetics at the Department of Philosophy, Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna. He leads Almæsthetics, the University of Bologna research centre for aesthetic studies. His research is centred on philosophical aesthetics and contemporary aesthetic theory, with particular attention to aesthetic experience and the relation between aesthetic forms, subjectivity, and social life. Within the REACT project, he is responsible for Bologna’s contribution to the research on critical aesthetic theory and on alternative models of freedom developed through dialogue between philosophy and artistic practices.
Prof. Giovanni Matteucci
Senior REACT Fellow
Period at the center: January 2027
Research Project: Aesthetic Experience and Non-Sovereign Freedom: Critical Aesthetics and Authoritarian Subjectivation
Email: giovanni.matteucci@unibo.it
WebsiteResearch Project
Aesthetic Experience and Non-Sovereign Freedom: Critical Aesthetics and Authoritarian Subjectivation
The research stay at the Center for Post-Kantian Philosophy is part of Work Package 1 of the REACT project (Reactivating Experience: Art, Culture Industry and Authoritarianism in the Digital Age). The project investigates how contemporary forms of authoritarian subjectivation relate to models of freedom centred on self-possession, self-determination, and control. My contribution focuses on the resources offered by philosophical aesthetics for criticising this model of freedom and for articulating an alternative conception in which receptivity, exposure to alterity, and the capacity to be affected are not opposed to freedom but belong to its conditions. The research will draw especially on Critical Theory and on Adorno’s aesthetics, considering aesthetic experience as a field in which subjectivity can be understood beyond the paradigm of sovereign self-mastery. Particular attention will be paid to the relation between aesthetic experience, non-identity, and forms of agency that do not reduce freedom to domination over oneself or one’s environment. The stay will contribute to the theoretical foundations of REACT.
Selected publications
Articles
“L’expérience esthétique en tant que praxis anthropologique”, in: L’art en pratique, ed. B. Formis, M. Girel. Pour une esthétique pragmatiste (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2025).
“Perceptual Collusion”, in: Co-operative Aesthetics. A Quasi-Manifesto for the 21st Century, ed. G. L. Iannilli (Sesto San Giovanni: Aesthetica 2022).
“On Some Epistemological Advantages of the Notion of ‘Intervenient Aesthetic Field'”, in: Philosophies, 7:1 (2022) (https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/7/1/17) (DOI: 10.3390/ philosophies7010017)
For further publications see: https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/giovanni.matteucci/publications.