Bureau/Division/Agency
Library
Files
Download Full Text (21.5 MB)
Document Type
Text
Broad Creation Date
2025
Language
English
Location
Portland
Abstract
This study investigates the trait of Negative Capability, defined by John Keats as a giving up of one’s capacity to control a situation through grasping after facts and reason, where uncertainty, doubt, and mystery are present. Using art and philosophy, this dissertation argues that investigating the trait of Negative Capability, expressed through modalities of automaticity, openness, and resting-in-uncertainty, provides understanding of how new types of knowledge may emerge during times of doubt, mystery, and uncertainty. Demonstrating Negative Capability is especially important in our current fast-paced global culture in which artificial intelligence and uncertainty are at the forefront, and where stakeholders of knowledge clammer to claim hegemonic objective knowledge for capitalistic gains as well as for the understanding of daily life. This dissertation introduces two new concepts: (part)ticipant and part(o)cularity. A (part)icipant is an observer who, through action, experiences a transformation from observer to (part)icipant. The (part)icipant recognizes they are part of something larger. This recognition occurs through intra-action and inter-action. Part(o)cularity is formed by removing “I,” symbolizing the ego, from “particularity” and making it an o, a circle, symbolizing the enormity in which the Other (part)icipates. The o subsequently changes particularity to part(o)cularity, reminding that our vision is incapable of completely envisioning the Other. Referencing several philosophers in the line of Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, including Henri Bergson and Isabelle Stengers, each modality of Negative Capability presents Whiteheadian vii events during which processes speed up and slow down when rational knowledge leaves the conscious self. The phenomenological philosophy of Jean-Luc Marion, which follows the methodological line of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, emerges as part of this process.
Key Terms: Negative Capability, (Part)icipant, Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, Jean- Luc Marion, Part(o)cularity
Disciplines
Art Practice | Philosophy | Reading and Language
Publisher
Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts
City
Portland ME
Recommended Citation
Eller, Melanie Vennes, "NEGATIVE CAPABILITY—THREE MODALITIES OF PRACTICE: AUTOMATICITY, OPENNESS, RESTING-IN-UNCERTAINTY" (2026). Academic Research and Dissertations. 76.
https://digitalmaine.com/academic/76
Rights Statement
In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).