The Positive and Negative Provocativeness of Transgressive Art As a Manifestation of Its Multimodality

Abstract

Feelings such as moral disgust, protest and antipathy are increasingly understood as the most important aspects of cognitive processes in moral psychology and reveal the complex structure of human nature and culture. Transgressive fiction, cinema or visual arts which are characterized by a graphic representation of violence and different traumatic experiences, are a strong ethical stimulus. In this article, transgressive art is viewed through the prism of its multimodality. The article examines both the positive and negative roles of transgressive art in the constitution and the confirmation of the boundaries and limits of social acceptability. By acknowledging the risks of aestheticization of violence that can expand the ethical boundaries of a person as a witness, this study also elicits that transgressive art offers a safe environment for exploring taboos without consequences for the audience. Although transgressive art depicts various violations of moral norms, it does not deny the boundaries of what is permitted, but only confirms them.
 Keywords: transgressive art, multimodality, transgression, moral norms, public morality, ethical boundaries, screen violence