American Idiots: Outsider Music, Outsider Art, and the Philosophy of Incompetence

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Long the province of connoisseurs, collectors, hipsters, and eccentrics, the music and art of the margins has begun to find its way into the mainstream. Kurt Cobain took to wearing Daniel Johnston t-shirts before his death, Sufjan Stevens organized a concept album based on the work of Royal Robertson, an illustration by Henry Darger recently sold at auction for more than half a million dollars, The Shaggs' story was turned into a Broadway play. But aside from the ways in which the boundaries of the artworld, music criticism, and even popular taste are being redrawn, it is becoming increasingly clear that the creations of artists and musicians working on the margins may be invested with a particular kind of philosophical significance as well. American Idiots is neither a book of traditional art or music criticism nor an encomiastic work written from the uncritical perspective of a fan. Rather, it argues that outsider art and music pose significant philosophical problems concerning the nature and meaning of incompetence in the arts. It argues specifically that particular tokens of incompetent outsider art may be regarded as staging important aesthetic and ethical problems with regard to the phenomenon of responsibility. Drawing upon figures such as Heidegger, Levinas, and Simon Critchley, American Idiots examines the work of prominent outsider artists and musicians/composers, exploring how in each case their work is invested with a philosophical significance that is tied directly to its deficiencies and shortcomings. In each instance the incompetence on display provides us with key clues regarding the phenomenological structure of obligation and answerability.