The emancipated spectator
By: Jacques Rancière ; translated by Gregory Elliott
Publisher: Verso
Published: 2011
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 134
ISBN-13: 9781844677610
Subjects: Aesthetics; Psychology; Arts audiences; Representation (Philosophy); Image (Philosophy); Philosophy; Art appreciation
Work titles: Spectateur émancipé
Description: In this title, the foremost philosopher of art argues for a new politics of seeing. The role of the viewer in art and film theory revolves around a theatrical concept of the spectacle. The masses subjected to the society of spectacle have traditionally been seen as aesthetically and politically passive - in response, both artists and thinkers have sought to transform the spectator into an active agent and the spectacle into a performance. In this follow-up to the acclaimed "The Future of the Image", Ranciere takes a radically different approach to this attempted emancipation. Beginning by asking exactly what we mean by political art or the politics of art, he goes on to look at what the tradition of critical art, and the desire to insert art into life, has achieved. Has the militant critique of the consumption of images and commodities become, instead, a melancholic affirmation of their omnipotence?
Notes: Originally published: 2009.

Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: The emancipated spectator; title: The misadventures of critical thought; title: Aesthetic separation, aesthetic community; title: The intolerable image; title: The pensive image.