Tactical Irrelevance: Art and Politics at Play (original) (raw)
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Aesthetics, Politics, and Art’s Autonomy: A Critical Reading of Jacques Rancière
This paper considers Jacques Rancière's influential theory of the relation between aesthetics, politics, and art. First, it synthesizes Rancière's theory. Second, it offers a critical perspective of Rancière's conception of the autonomy of art in relation to his theory of politics and aesthetics. In doing so, the purpose is to work towards the development of a theoretical base in which we may follow Rancière's theory of the relation between aesthetic experience and politics whilst avoiding compliance with his relatively fixed and structural notion of the autonomy of art as an attribute of what he calls the aesthetic regime of art. Drawing a distinction between the autonomous experience of the work of art and the ideology of the autonomy of art, this paper argues that the prior comes about both within and in opposition to the latter: the autonomy of art hinges on a relative and relational production of a singularity, not on a structural and defining separation of art from the world of habitual aesthetic experience.
This article explores the force and limitations of Jacques Rancière's novel attempt to rethink the relationship between aesthetics and politics. In particular, it unravels the paradoxical threads of the fundamental contradiction between two of his steadfast claims: (1) art and politics are consubstantial, and (2) art and politics never truly merge. In taking Rancière to task on this point, the primary objective of this article is to work through the nuances of his project and foreground the problems inherent therein in order to break with the "talisman complex" and the "ontological illusion" of the politics of aesthetics in the name of a new understanding of the social politicity of artistic practices.
Beyond the Politics of Reception: Jacques Rancière and the Politics of Art
Continental Philosophy Review, 2017
Jacques Rancière's work has become a major reference point for discussions of art and politics. However, while Rancière's negative theses (about what "political art" is not) are becoming widespread and well understood, his positive thesis is still poorly understood, owing partly to Rancière's own formulation of the issue. I first clarify Rancière's account of the links between politics and art. I then explore a gap in this account; Rancière has stuck too closely to a politics of art's reception. I argue for a politics of art production, which would expand the possible engagement between politics and art.
South African Journa of Art History, 2021
Few contemporary philosophers have reaffirmed art’s political import more elaborately than Jacques Rancière. This article critically engages with Rancière’s proposal for a “different politics of art” which is articulated in a number of texts published around 2010, and which brings out the concrete implications of his political-aesthetic theory for contemporary socially engaged art. Rancière’s alternative is situated in relation to his critique of the, in his view, two dominant paradigms of political art since the 1960s, geared toward consciousness-raising and activist interventions. Apart from Rancière’s own criticisms of conscientising art and the social efficacy of these paradigms, I detect another potential concern here. Based on Rancière’s general dismissal of traditional pedagogies and his commitment to equality and self-emancipation, I argue that an unequal, anti-emancipatory relation between critical artists and their marginalised subjects could be seen to underlie the conventional political art models. In interpreting Rancière’s general formulations of his different politics of art and its exemplification in two artworks, I then contend that a key difference concerns the assumedly more emancipatory interaction between critical artists and their “poor”. Scrutinising Rancière’s alternative model, I first question a core premise of his critique of the dominant critical art models concerning the poor’s existing knowledge and agency. I further argue that Rancière’s presumption of an aesthetic community between artists and their “poor” glosses over profound asymmetries of knowledge, experience and skills, undercutting the emancipatory potential of his alternative. I also problematise Rancière’s somewhat resigned attitude toward directly engaged art’s always uncertain social impact, and compare his dismissal of such art to standard conservative criticisms. While Rancière’s alternative politics is thus found wanting, his outright rejection of pedagogic and activist political art strategies is regarded as untenable and unproductive for devising a robust, oppositional art practice.
The spectre of radical aesthetics in the work of Jacques Rancière
Unpublished manuscript, 2015
This study aims to determine what is left of the philosophical belief in art’s potential to bring about social emancipation and change early in the 21st century. It does so by critically assessing one of the most elaborate, emphatic and influential contemporary re-assertions of this potential by French philosopher Jacques Rancière. It focuses on three components of Rancière’s writings on aesthetics and politics that are key to such an evaluation. First, his affirmation of an emancipatory core at the heart of Idealist-Romanticist aesthetics, the aesthetic works of Immanuel Kant and Friedrich von Schiller in particular. Second, his reconceptualization of autonomous and heteronomous forms of political art in the modern era. Third, his critical analyses of dominant tendencies within political art from the 1960s until today and his own proposals for a truly emancipatory contemporary art practice. With regard to the first component, the project problematizes Rancière’s return to aesthetics mainly by comparing it with theories recently articulated by other radical Leftist thinkers. It concerns theories that emphasize the contradictory political status of aesthetics as both reactionary and liberating (Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson) or point to a constitutive, original violence at its heart (Dave Beech & John Roberts). Based on this, I argue that Rancière’s redemptive approach toward aesthetics is too one-dimensional, resulting in an overly positive assessment of the emancipatory value of traditional conceptions of aesthetics. In relation to the second key aspect of Rancière’s political aesthetics, I demonstrate how he offers a typically third way solution to the problematic of art’s autonomy and heteronomy. He does so by integrating some of the most complex twentieth century theorizations of both autonomous (Theodor Adorno) and heteronomous positions (Peter Bürger) into a dialectical working model. I argue that, regrettably, Rancière hereby also takes on board deeply tragic views on art’s political potential, resulting in an overcautious stance towards radically heteronomous art practices. Apart from critiquing him on this score, I point to alternative conceptualizations of art’s autonomy and heteronomy more suited to thinking the key characteristics and political potential of contemporary radicalized art. As to Rancière’s critique of recent political art practices and his proposed alternative, I find it to be driven by a misguided attempt at conceiving the radical political potential of art in purely aesthetic terms to the neglect of other functions traditionally taken up by political artists such as representation and activism. I contend that not only can such a purist view on art’s politics not be upheld in fact - which even holds for Rancière’s own, alternative aesthetic politics of art - neither is it desirable if one wants to devise a robust and versatile theoretical framework for thinking contemporary politicized art. I do so by pointing to the radical political value of representational artistic strategies, as well as artistic practices that engage in activities beyond those traditionally associated with art.
Displaced Struggles: On Ranciere and the Art World
Artforum, 2007
WhY might philo,ophet looqo" R,n'"'' hmb<t om, in""'ingly intet""d in ,onttmpomy m, evtn as the art world, in neat symmetry, has become increasingly interested in him? He has apparently followed art for many years, he spoke at the Frieze Art Fair in 2005, and now he has chosen to publish an essa y in and submit to an interview for this magazine-all signs of his confidence that the art world can pro vide a spa ce for his multilayered discourse. Ranciere is not an easy read , yet he is widely read (for a philosopher), largely because he situates himself between disciplines and debates and seeks to banish the di vision between specialist and amateur, obviously a stance with broad appeal. At the same time, his philosophical work can be quite abstract, with paradox intentionally lodged at , its core, Although this embrace of internal contradiction complicates an y discussion of his thoughts on art, might it not also be the reason today 's art world is so interested in his voice? The hothouse of contemporary art harbors its own contradictions, after all. The artist today finds it harder than ever to m eaningfully pose important questions at the very moment that the culture has accorded unprecedented attention to the artist as persona, And in the djfficult task of thinking through this predicament-and seeking a wa y around it-many have turned to Ranciere's writings for insight. One of the more intriguing ideas Ranciere has contributed to art discourse is an insistence that art and politics are simply two forms of what he calls "the distribution of the sensible," The sensible is a sphere in which both art and MARCH 2007 283 LOTTICKENIREPRESENTATlON continued from page 303 Jules Verne yarn rather than a Mallarmean game of "perpetual allusion." Huyghe brings out the opaqueness of signs, oppos ing the suggestions of transparency implied both by mass media images and by many pictures of relatioij,a\ artworks, transforming the nineteenth-century imperialist cliche of the expedition to uncharted lands into a self-reflexive journey to the limits of representation. EXPLORATIONS LIKE HUYGHE'S, however, should not be seen in isolation, as art's time-honored and autonomous bailiwick. Some images of black bloc members in Get Rid of Yourself recall another kind of mask-the niqabs and burkas increas ingly worn by Muslim women in
The Politics of Aesthetics (Jacques Rancière)
The Politics of Aesthetics rethinks the relationship between art and politics, reclaiming "aesthetics" from the narrow confines it is often reduced to. Jacques Rancière reveals its intrinsic link to politics by analysing what they both have in common: the delimitation of the visible and the invisible, the audible and the inaudible, the thinkable and the unthinkable, the possible and the impossible. Presented as a set of inter-linked interviews, The Politics of Aesthetics provides the most comprehensive introduction to Rancière's work to date, ranging across the history of art and politics from the Greek polis to the aesthetic revolution of the modern age. Already translated into five languages, this English edition of The Politics of Aesthetics includes a new afterword by Slavoj Zizek, an interview for the English edition, a glossary of technical terms and an extensive bibliography.