Abstract:

In the field of contemporary Western literary and artistic aesthetics, two closely related theoretical paradigm shifts with international impact have drawn significant attention in recent years: the atmospheric turn and the affective turn. Many scholars have noted the critical importance of atmospheric aesthetics, even regarding the atmospheric turn as an integral part of the affective turn. Thus, the“atmosphereaffect”nexus constitutes the problematic of this dual-paradigm shift: the atmospheric turn has given rise to atmospheric aesthetics, represented by German scholar Gernot Böhme and Italian scholar Tonino Griffero, while affect studies, driven by the affective turn, have been regarded by renowned American literary theorist V. B. Leitch as a frontier domain of 21st-century literary theory. Atmospheric aesthetics emphasizes intersubjectivity and bodily presence, attaches importance to scenario-driven affect, and contains an understated critical potential. This dual-paradigm shift highlights the dialectical relationship between atmosphere and affect, possessing interstitial aesthetic characteristics that transcend existing boundaries and open up innovative spaces. In terms of its critical potential, it reveals three main orientations: the critique of the“aesthetics of judgment”prevalent in mainstream Western aesthetics; the critique of aesthetic politics and fascist aesthetics;and the critique of the aesthetic economy and digital media.

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