A letter from the editors

Anna and Ellen Ioanes document the changing meaning of the word "aesthetic" reflected in the evolution of Aesthetics Wiki's moderators and users: a practice of identity-making in an era of neoliberalism. From this encyclopedia, we come to recognize a fully realized style when we see it: something that is just so aesthetic.

Abigail Merrick's "wraithcore" describes what it's like to be "nocturnal or insomniac, depressive or moody, predisposed towards isolating oneself socially, to feeling marginal or overlooked, not quite believed or not quite taken seriously as a subject, or more specifically a subject with agency."

Robin James sees corporations monetize liminal space—an eerie vibe and a state of systemic failure—and then sell you a way out of it, turning empty public space into private crises.

In "Promenade," this issue's ekphrasis, Jameson Fitzpatrick responds to one of Chris Antemann's porcelain sculptures, Boudoir (2011), in a poem that meditates on the ambiguities of misaligned desires and the problems of aesthetics.

Shinjini Dey defines the trans-historical aesthetic category of Darjeeling, a place where tourists use cell phone videos and buying power to preserve the colonial imaginary and where local workers constantly, anxiously, recreate that imaginary anew.

Are Crocs ✨aesthetic✨? Tom Martin writes the phenomenology of Crocs—how we see them on other people, and how the world is revealed to us by wearing them.