num_pages: 328
description: How aestheticsunderstood as a more encompassing framework for human activitymight become the primary discourse for political and social engagement. These essays make the case for a reignited understanding of aestheticsone that casts aesthetics not as illusory subjective or superficial but as a more encompassing framework for human activity. Such an aesthetics the contributors suggest could become the primary discourse for political and social engagement. Departing from the critical stance of twentieth-century artists and theorists who embraced a counter-aesthetic framework for political engagement this book documents how a broader understanding of aesthetics can offer insights into our relationships not only with objects spaces environments and ecologies but also with each other and the political structures in which we are all enmeshed. The contributorsphilosophers media theorists artists curators writers and architects including such notable figures as Jacques Rancire Graham Harman and Elaine Scarrybuild a compelling framework for a new aesthetic discourse. The book opens with a conversation in which Rancire tells the volume's editor Mark Foster Gage that the aesthetic is about the experience of a common world. The essays following discuss such topics as the perception of reality; abstraction in ethics epistemology and aesthetics as the first philosophy; Afrofuturism; Xenofeminism; philosophical realism; the productive force of alienation; and the unbearable lightness of current creative discourse. ContributorsMark Foster Gage Jacques Rancire Elaine Scarry Graham Harman Timothy Morton Ferda Kolatan Adam Fure Michael Young Nettrice R. Gaskins Roger Rothman Diann Bauer Matt Shaw Albena Yaneva Brett Mommersteeg Lydia Kallipoliti Ariane Lourie Harrison Rhett Russo Peggy Deamer Caroline Picard Matt Shaw Managing Editor
language: English
title: Aesthetics Equals Politics: New Discourses across Art, Architecture, and Philosophy
publisher: The MIT Press