Website: www.bit.ly/rafaelazize.
I am an associate professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Bahia (Brazil), where I was Head of the Graduate Program in Philosophy from 2014 to 2017. I was a Visiting Researcher at Swarthmore College (USA) and at Temple University (USA), and currently at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (Brazil). I lead the research group 'Aesthetics, Subjectivity, Culture, Education' (CNPq), and am a member of the Brazilian Association of Aesthetics (ABRE).
My main area of interest is aesthetics and the philosophy of art and criticism, with an emphasis on the relations between art, subjectivity, culture, and value. Additionally, I'm interested in the philosophy of language, with an emphasis on the relations between pragmatics, the experience of meaning, and the ordinary; and meta-philosophy.
In my current research, I examine a number of contemporary philosophical articulations of what I call uses of art in the life-world, between radical autonomism and reductive instrumentalism. While acknowledging a cognitivist/anti-cognitivist tension stemming from modern discussions of art, there is room for the exploration of the philosophical yield of a further step in a pluralistic, non-reductive, compatibilist direction. What happens when we resist the reductive pull either to autonomist (anti-cognitivist, formalist) or to instrumentalist (cognitivist, message-oriented) views or theories of art, in order to recognize that both form and meaning matter and are intimately related, something that purely autonomist or instrumentalist enquiries prevent us to see?
Education: Ph.D., Philosophy, Unicamp (State U. of Campinas, São Paulo), 2008. M.A., Literary Theory, UFSC (Federal University of Santa Catarina), 2000. B.A., English and French, The University of Lisbon, 1996.
Languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese (active), Italian (passive).
You can reach me at [email protected]
