Communities of Sense

Beth Hinderliter et al (Editors)

Description

Communities of Sense argues for a new understanding of the relation between politics and aesthetics in today's globalized and image-saturated world. Established and emerging scholars of art and culture draw on Jacques Ranciere's theorization of democratic politics to suggest that aesthetics, traditionally defined as the "science of the sensible," is not a depoliticized discourse or theory of art, but instead part of a historically specific organization of social roles and communality. Rather than formulating aesthetics as the Other to politics, the contributors show that aesthetics and politics are mutually implicated in the construction of communities of visibility and sensation through which political orders emerge.The first of the collection's three sections explicitly examines the links between aesthetics and social and political experience. Here a new essay by Ranciere posits art as a key site where disagreement can be staged in order to produce new communities of sense. In the second section, contributors investigate how sense was constructed in the past by the European avant-garde and how it is mobilized in today's global visual and political culture. Exploring the viability of various models of artistic and political critique in the context of globalization, the authors of the essays in the volume's final section suggest a shift from identity politics and preconstituted collectivities toward processes of identification and disidentification. Topics discussed in the volume vary from digital architecture to a makeshift museum in a Paris suburb, and from romantic art theory in the wake of Hegel to the history of the group-subject in political art and performance since 1968. An interview with Etienne Balibar rounds out the collection.Contributors. Emily Apter, Etienne Balibar, Carlos Basualdo, T. J. Demos, Rachel Haidu, Beth Hinderliter, David Joselit, William Kaizen, Ranjanna Khanna, Reinaldo Laddaga, Vered Maimon, Jaleh Mansoor, Reinhold Martin, Seth McCormick, Yates McKee, Alexander Potts, Jacques Ranciere, Toni Ross

Sujets

• History of art

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 18 septembre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822390978
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

COMMUNITIESOFSENSE

BETHHINDERLITER ,

WILLIAMKAIZEN ,

VEREDMAIMON ,

JALEHMANSOOR , AND

SETH MCCORMICK ,

CommunitiesofSense RETHI NKI NGAESTHETI CSANDPOLI TI CS

Duke University Press

editors

Durham & London 2009

∫2009 Duke University Press All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by C. H. Westmoreland Typeset in Arno with Magma Compact display by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

Contents

Acknowledgmentsvii introduction1

PARTONE Rethinking Aesthetics Contemporary Art and the Politics of Aesthetics 31 jacques rancière The Romantic Work of Art 51 alexander potts

From Classical to Postclassical Beauty: Institutional Critique and Aesthetic Enigma in Louise Lawler’s Photography 79 toni ross Technologies of Belonging:Sensus Communis111, Disidentification ranjana khanna

PARTTWO Dada’s Event: Paris, 1921 135 t. j. demos

Citizen Cursor 153 david joselit

Partitioning the Sensible

Mass Customization: Corporate Architecture and the ‘‘End’’ of Politics 172 reinhold martin

PARTTHREE The Limits of Community Experimental Communities 197 carlos basualdo and reinaldo laddaga Précarité,Autorité,Autonomie215 rachel haidu

Neo-Dada 1951–54: Between the Aesthetics of Persecution and the Politics of Identity 238 seth mccormick Post-Communist Notes on Some Vertov Stills 267 yates mckee

Thinking Red: Ethical Militance and the Group Subject 294 emily apter

Bibliography Contributors Index359

337 355

INTERVIEW 317with Étienne Balibar

Acknowledgments

This volume has its origins in a conference of the same name presented at Columbia University in April 2003. The editors would like to thank the participants in this conference: Susan Buck-Morss, T. J. Demos, Tom Gunning, Branden Joseph, Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Pamela Lee, Reinhold Martin, Stephen Melville, Molly Nesbit, Alexander Potts, Arvind Rajaga- pol, and keynote speaker Jacques Rancière, as well as our faculty spon- sors, John Rajchman, Rosalind Krauss, Benjamin Buchloh, and Jonathan Crary. We would also like to thank Barry Bergdoll and Hillary Ballon and the Department of Art History and Archaeology, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University for supporting the conference. Thanks go to Ken Wissoker and Mandy Earley at Duke University Press for their editorial help. Finally, we would like to give a special thanks to John Rajchman for bringing our editorial group together and for providing crucial encouragement during the early stages of this project.

Introduction

COMMUNI TI ESOFSENSE

BETHHI NDERLI TER , WI LLI AMKAI ZEN , VEREDMAI MON , JALEHMANSOOR , AND SETHMCCORMI CK

The essays collected inCommunities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politicsare grounded in recent theoretical thinking on aesthetics, poli- tics, and the problem of community within globalization. Over the last several decades, cultural production has often been described using terms such aspostcriticalandpostideological. These terms suggest that the ways in which the relationship between aesthetics and politics has been formulated since the 1960s are no longer viable in the current political climate. At the same time, they foreclose the investigation of the immanence of aesthetics and politics to each other. Following Jacques Rancière’s theorization of democratic politics, the contributors here argue for a new understanding of the relations between politics and aesthetics by suggesting that aesthetics, traditionally defined as the ‘‘science of the sensible,’’ is not a depoliticized discourse or theory of art, but a factor of a specific historical organization of social roles and communality. Rather than formulating aesthetics as the Other to poli- tics, the essays that follow show that aesthetics and politics are im- bricated in the constitution of specific orders of visibility and sense through which the political division into assigned roles and defined parts manifests itself. This collection seeks to locate Rancière’s relevance to contemporary art theory and practice in what might be called the hidden vanishing point of both avant-garde art and Rancière’s political philosophy: