The project of this thesis is to investigate how the category of the aesthetic can be recuperated to qualify perceptual aspects of display culture. This thesis argues that, in addition to functioning as a complex product of discourse, "the aesthetic" constitutes an experiential process entailing apprehension. I focus on how cultural studies describes, and may be extended to encompass, a concept of the aesthetic as a connective category which accounts for the performative mediation of display contexts. My argument emerges out of readings of recent museological literature, but addresses the lacunae of agency in deconstructive approaches by accounting for creative process in display culture. Thus, as distinct from analyses which consider museums solely in terms of their determinant aspects, I posit museums as potential sites of enunciatory agency which can be enacted architecturally, curatorially or artistically.;This thesis inquires into the epistemological stakes of the aesthetic--as a way of knowing--while at the same time elaborating and employing a conjunctural aesthetic theory as a methodology for the study of museums, collecting and art practice. Interdisciplinary in scope, this thesis brings together the literatures of feminist aesthetic theory, cultural studies, media studies, postcolonial inquiry, the anthropology of the senses, the sociology of art and the fields of art history and criticism. The thesis deals with three areas of inquiry. First, I recuperate and revise the aesthetic as a relational category. Second, I identify how the aesthetic may be mobilized in relation to the museal through the analysis of key museum sites, representations and uses. Finally, I ground the theoretical findings of the thesis in relation to the aesthetic engagements of both women collectors and artists.
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