The Body, Unbounded

The fifth chapter uses Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity to offer an in-depth theoretical discussion of the term “proprioceptive aesthetics,” and offers a schematic discussion of the main aesthetic problems of the proprioceptive cinema. Taking Gravity as an exemplar and developing proprioceptive aesthetics in terms of its fundamental aesthetic problems, the chapter argues that in the locution proprioceptive aesthetics, the term proprioceptive is not merely some qualification of a previously understood aesthetics, but a modular adjective specifying a region of aesthetics. Rather, proprioceptive aesthetics entails the sense of aesthetics in which it names how we resonate with the world and attune ourselves to it.