Environmental Crisis and Aesthetic Experience: Dewey and the vital signs of culture

The swift devastations of climate change have made themselves dramatically known from the Amazon to Alaska, but we have failed to significantly alter our habits in response. The failure is often attributed to the phenomenon known as “cognitive dissonance” between dire climate predictions and the familiarity of our quotidian routine. As a result, there is a widening gap between us and the environment. I argue that the dissonance in experience cannot be resolved through discourses of science, politics, or news coverage alone. In order to catalyze the shift necessary for a democratic and international response, we will need to “have” as well as “know” the threat: we must feel it as qualitatively present, as an aesthetic apocalypse. This paper uses Deweyan aesthetics to read John Luther Adam’s Pullitzer Prize winning composition “Become Ocean” as a vital sign of an ominous alienation.