Megan Craig

Shadows Everywhere: Color and the Antagonism of Language

This paper investigates the ineffable quality of color and its aesthetic/ethical implications. Color names are among the first words children master, and yet color itself remains defiantly resistant to verbal articulation. Color names are, at best, gross approximations. At worst, they become static replacements for the living experience of color in its luminosity and complexity. The names themselves alter and weaken perception. From Newton’s articulation of a spectrum of seven primary colors onward, philosophers and theorists have devised increasingly reductionist accounts of color and color perception (despite the fact that artists have consistently challenged such theories). Color lies in the margins between theory and practice, frustrating their seeming distinction. The ambiguity, singularity, and idiosyncrasy of our experiences of color render it one of the most enigmatic, yet pervasive, aspects of embodied life. This paper draws on a variety of sources including Wittgenstein, Goethe, James, Kandinsky, Josef Albers, and Agnes Martin to demonstrate the intrinsic and necessary resistance of color to any single name. I also employ Kristeva’s account of a “signifying failure” and Levinas’s concept of “le dire” to explore the emotive, poetic undercurrent of language itself and the degree to which expression is always excessive or lined with the ineffable.

Sample Paper: Craig – Deleuze and the Force of Color

Presentation date and time: 11:45am-1pm, Saturday May 3rd, 2014.