Aesthetics and Its Discontents
"Riveting. In short compass, Rancière provides a razor-sharp critique of the anti-aesthetics of postmodernism. His ear for the substitution of political substance by empty moralism ? call it: the sublime, the unpresentable, the other, the Shoah ? is unerring. His dissections of Badiou, Lyotard, von Trier's Dogville, and a Christian Boltanski installation are pitch-perfect. For a pointed defense of the role of aesthetics for a radical politics: begin here."
Jay Bernstein, New School for Social Research"Jacques Rancière's Aesthetics and its Discontents mounts a subtle and spirited defense of modern aesthetic thought, from Schiller to Adorno. Aesthetics is not philosophy seeking to dominate art, as its modish detractors claim. Rather, it is the attempt to think through the artwork's paradoxes and contradictions. In a forceful critique of rival thinkers such as Lyotard and Badiou, Rancière shows that abandoning aesthetic discourse does not mean respecting the integrity of art. Instead, art ends up being reduced to the vehicle of a remorseless ethical demand, or to the cipher of a transcendent truth."
Peter Dews, University of Essex
Aesthetics is not a politics by accident but in essence. But this politics operates in the unresolved tension between two opposed forms of politics: the first consists in transforming art into forms of collective life, the second in preserving from all forms of militant or commercial compromise the autonomy that makes it a promise of emancipation. Les mer
Detaljer
- Forlag
- Polity Press
- Innbinding
- Innbundet
- Språk
- Engelsk
- Sider
- 176
- ISBN
- 9780745646305
- Utgivelsesår
- 2009
- Format
- 22 x 15 cm
Anmeldelser
"Riveting. In short compass, Rancière provides a razor-sharp critique of the anti-aesthetics of postmodernism. His ear for the substitution of political substance by empty moralism ? call it: the sublime, the unpresentable, the other, the Shoah ? is unerring. His dissections of Badiou, Lyotard, von Trier's Dogville, and a Christian Boltanski installation are pitch-perfect. For a pointed defense of the role of aesthetics for a radical politics: begin here."
Jay Bernstein, New School for Social Research"Jacques Rancière's Aesthetics and its Discontents mounts a subtle and spirited defense of modern aesthetic thought, from Schiller to Adorno. Aesthetics is not philosophy seeking to dominate art, as its modish detractors claim. Rather, it is the attempt to think through the artwork's paradoxes and contradictions. In a forceful critique of rival thinkers such as Lyotard and Badiou, Rancière shows that abandoning aesthetic discourse does not mean respecting the integrity of art. Instead, art ends up being reduced to the vehicle of a remorseless ethical demand, or to the cipher of a transcendent truth."
Peter Dews, University of Essex