Dr Alison Ross

Alison Ross is Senior Lecturer in Critical Theory. She has a BA (Hons) in Philosophy from Macquarie University and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sydney. Prior to commencing her appointment at Monash in 2001 she held positions as Assistant Lecturer (University of Sydney, 1997) and Lecturer (Australian National University, 1998-2000) in Philosophy. She specialises in Aesthetics and European Philosophy. She is on the Editorial Board of the journal ‘Derrida Today’ (EUP) and is the Aesthetics Editor for the journal ‘Critical Horizons’ (Acumen). At Monash, she is a member of the Research Unit in European Philosophy (RUEP).

Research

My main research interests are in Kantian and post-Kantian Aesthetics. I have studied the different ways that the conception of aesthetics in the Kantian tradition provides the grammar for conceptions of ontology and social criticism in European philosophy. From Kant comes the influential view of aesthetics as the finding of orientating meanings in the reflection on sensuous forms. In my published work I have looked at the diverse ways that the cogency of the activity of criticism (especially in Marxist and post-Marxist political theory) as well as the articulation of ontological theses (Heidegger, Nancy) can be critically located in the schema and concerns of this aesthetic tradition.

My current research project excavates and analyses the role aesthetic experience plays in moral persuasion. This project (funded by the Australian Research Council) is being undertaken with Professor Andrew Benjamin (Monash) and Professor Krzyzstof Ziarek (State University of New York, at Buffalo, USA).

The working hypothesis of this project is that aesthetic experience (i.e., the reflection on sensuous forms) has a determining role in the process of persuasion to moral standpoints, these latter understood in the broad sense of reflective self-determinations. The evidence for this hypothesis can be found in canonical texts in the history of modern moral philosophy, although its presence there often contradicts the stated aims of moral theories, such as Kant’s. In more general terms, I believe that this type of reasoning can also be seen in the attachment people have to certain intellectual positions and traditions as much as it can be used to explain the attraction of counter-cultural lifestyles and activist networks. This project is an interdisciplinary one, which draws on work in sociology (Bourdieu and Luhmann), philosophy (Kant, Nietzsche and Foucault) as well as aspects of the modern literary canon (Musil, Flaubert, Kleist) and literary theory (Jauss). In particular, the project combines the insights of studies in rhetoric and meaning formation (Blumenberg and Nancy) to forge a new way of considering the elements involved in moral position taking. Recently, I have been working on a series of related articles on the allegorical role that references to theatre and performance play in forging persuasive paradigms for action in contemporary critical theory.

Selected Publications