Formatività e performatività. Sull’attualità dell’estetica di Luigi Pareyson

Formativity and performativity are notions arisen and developed within very different philosophical contexts; however, when it comes to investigate artistic phenomena the two concepts can profitably be related to one another. In this paper, I aim to bring together Luigi Pareyson’s aesthetics of formativity and the aesthetics of performativity outlined by Erika Fischer-Lichte. Not only do I intend to stress the relevance of formativity in relation to the most recent philosophical debates; I also claim that Pareyson’s aesthetic theses, when regarded in the light of their sources and legacy, can lead us to very important and radical conceptual solutions. In particular, formativity allows us to conceive of poietic artistic productions in a performative fashion, thus broadening the aesthetics of performativity as a whole. After an introductory section on the notions of formativity and performativity (§2), the paper considers some classic themes in modern aesthetics and discusses them from this twofold point of view. Tackled topics range from artistic production (§3) to the artwork’s activity (§4) and to artistic reception (§5). The combination of formativity and performativity ultimately leads to a non-representative, non-fictional account of art (§6). The artwork is no longer regarded as an object but rather as an event, whose materiality, far from being disavowed, is intended as a never-ending performance of morphogenesis.