Guilty Wonder. An Exploration of the Aesthetic, Affective, and Political Implications of the Wondering Gaze
Guilty Wonder. An Exploration of the Aesthetic, Affective, and Political Implications of the Wondering Gaze

Summary/Abstract: Wonder’s affective neutrality and perceptive firstness have led to its connotation with innocence and naïveté. This paper challenges the perception that wonder is a value-free stimulus. Instead, it explores wonder’s potential to unveil, expose and denude—thus playing on the difference between norm and exception. Wonder’s history is loaded with othering’s cruelty, the spectacularization of difference, and the libidinous entanglement of voyeurism, leading to the question, to what extent wonder is comprised of guilt? Subsequently, this paper supplements the notion of guilt with a differentiated account of indebtedness, following the hypothesis that wonder can also be conceptualized as a politically mobilizing affect if taken seriously.

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