The aesthetic exception: Essays on art, theatre, and politics

The aesthetic exception theorises anew the relation between art and politics. It challenges critical trends that discount the role of aesthetic autonomy, to impulsively reassert art as an effective form of social engagement. But it equally challenges those on the flipside of the efficacy debate, who insist that art’s politics is limited to a recondite space of ‘autonomous resistance’. The book shows how each side of the efficacy debate overlooks art’s exceptional status and its social mediations. Mobilising philosophy and cultural theory, and employing examples from visual art, performance, and theatre, it proposes four alternative tests to ‘effect’ to offer a nuanced account of art’s political character. Those tests examine how art relates to politics as a practice that articulates its historical conjuncture, and how it prefigures the ‘new’ through simulations capable of activating the political life of the spectator. Front matter Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: The horizon of the aesthetic Part I: The aesthetic exception The paradox of the aesthetic exception Crossing the threshold The institution of art: Critical and theoretical reflections Part II: Political art after the communicative turn The classical debate revisited: Sartre, Brecht, Adorno Art of the communicative turn: Habermas and the political What is the proper way to display a US flag?: The work of ‘dissensual speech’ in art Part III: Taxonomy of the political theatre Foundational problems and problems of foundation Displacement effects: Althusser’s ‘Brecht’ and the theatre of the conjuncture Activist theatre of the conjuncture: Janam and the politics of the street theatre in India The ‘closure’ of the political theatre (and the critique of postdramatic reason) The political theatre ‘redefined’ The theatre of the planetary conjuncture: Milo Rau’s Congo Tribunal On taxonomic strategies Notes Index