The Aesthetic Category of Habitus: Openness and the Not-Yet of Art

Abstract

In a previous work, I proposed the concept of habitus as an aesthetic category capable of articulating both the nature of the work of art and its process of creation, in line with classical notions such as poiesis, praxis, and mimesis. Inspired by Deleuze (Difference and Repetition), habitus integrates thought, action, and perception, as well as a singular temporality that intertwines past, present, and future. In this way, it makes it possible to build a bridge between traditional and contemporary forms of art and the emerging epistemologies of the cognitive sciences. Far from constituting a repetition of the same, habitus entails a generative repetition, an insistence that opens up new fields of experience. In this paper, I focus on its temporal dimension, understood not as linearity or as a fixed archive, but rather as an active reorganization of the past that projects the present toward an indefinite aim. Thus, habitus configures a form of immanent revolution, without transcendent direction or predetermined purpose. This conceptualization enters into dialogue with those readings of the work of art as openness and counters idealist or finalist views of creation. In doing so, it contributes to broadening our understanding of aesthetic cognition as a process of constant rewriting and transformation.