User:SnorlaxBD/A. W. Eaton

= A. W. Eaton = A.W. Eaton is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois Chicago. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in both philosophy and art history in 2003. She works on topics in feminism, aesthetics and philosophy of art, value theory, and Italian Renaissance painting. Her special interests include the epistemological and ontological status of aesthetic value, the relationship between ethical and artistic value, feminist critiques of pornography, representations of rape in the European artistic tradition, and artifact teleology. Professor Eaton was a Laurence Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton's Center for Human Values in 2005-6. She is the editor of the Aesthetics & Philosophy of Art section of Philosophy Compass.

Critique on the Female nude
In her essay, "What's Wrong with the (Female) Nude?" from the book "Art and Pornography: Philosophical Essays", Eaton argues that just as erotic art and in particular the female nude makes male dominance and female subordination and objectification sexy, it also eroticizes the traditional gender hierarchy and in this way is a significant part of the complex mechanism that sustains sex inequality. To support this claim, she offers a close analysis, supported by a long list of examples, of the different ways in which artworks belonging to the genre of the female nude can be sexually objectifying. She also lends precision to the concept of the male gaze, and addresses two serious objections to her particular feminist approach. Firstly, if visual representations typically trade in tokens, not types, then the question arises how a picture can objectify women in general, and secondly, since many consider objectification to be a normal and even healthy part of human sexuality, one might wonder what may be wrong with sexual objectification in the first place. This chapter concludes by underlining a significant difference between pornographic works and the traditional female nude: the latter not only eroticizes but also aestheticizes the sexual objectification of women, and does so ‘from on high’, art's venerated status investing the traditional nude's message of female inferiority with special authority, making it an especially effective way of promoting sexual inequality.

Eaton's methodology involves using the approach that takes seriously that there might not be anything at all wrong with the female nude. She first presents the basic formulation of the feminist critique, whereby women’s subordination has several sources and components - one of the most significant being the sexualization of traditional gender hierarchy, namely the way in which dominance and related active traits are eroticized for males, whereas the contraries are eroticized for females. Insofar as it makes male dominance and female subordination sexy, the female nude is one important source of this eroticization and in this way is a significant part of the complex mechanism that sustains sex inequality. On the female nude, Eaton states that eroticization of gender hierarchy lies at the heart of women’s subordinate position in society, and that in particular, people’s—both men’s and women’s—experience of sexual desire and standards of sexual attractiveness have been systematically shaped in a way that renders women’s subordination and men’s dominance sexy.

Selected publications

 * Peterson, Charles, and A. W. Eaton. “Exploring Beauty and Truth in Worlds of Color: An Introduction to the JAAC Special Issue on Race and Aesthetics.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 77, no. 4, 2019, pp. 363–66, https://doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12676.
 * Eaton, A. W. “Robust Immoralism.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 70, no. 3, 2012, pp. 281–92, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2012.01520.x.
 * Noe, Alva. “Art and Entanglement in Strange Tools: Reply to Noël Carroll, A. W. Eaton and Paul Guyer ” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 94, no. 1, 2017, pp. 238–50, https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12360.
 * Eaton, A. W. “Reply to Carroll:  The Artistic Value of a Particular Kind of Moral Flaw.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 71, no. 4, 2013, pp. 376–80, https://doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12036.

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