Dove e quando

Talk by Serena Feloj (University of Pavia)

ABSTRACT
This talk develops a Kantian account of imaginative resistance in order to reconsider whether ethical limits can be normatively imposed on literature. After introducing the contemporary debate—drawing on Moran, Walton, and Matravers—it challenges the standard distinction between fiction and non-fiction and rejects the idea that emotions in fiction are merely quasi-emotions. The analysis then turns to §48 of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, focusing on the limits of artistic representation and the role of disgust as a boundary of imagination. Building on this framework, the paper identifies three key Kantian elements—formality, the intrinsic limits of imagination, and the affective dimension of aesthetic judgment—and applies them to the phenomenon of imaginative resistance. It argues that resistance is not primarily a matter of moral refusal but of imaginative incapacity, arising when form fails to sustain aesthetic illusion. The conclusion is that ethical limits cannot be imposed on literature at the level of content, since aesthetic experience depends on how something is represented rather than on what is represented.