Provoking Democracy
Subtitle: Why We Need the Arts (Blackwell Manifestos)
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; Blackwell
Published: October 1, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9781405159265
Subjects: The Arts: General Issues; Art And Society; Arts And Public Policy; Political Science; Art & Art Instruction; Philosophy; Politics/International Relations; Aesthetics; Art & Politics; History - General; Political Ideologies - Democracy; Literary Criticism & Collections / General; Arts and society; Avant-garde (Aesthetics); Democracy and the arts; Social aspects
Description: "Provoking Democracy makes an exciting and compelling new argument: that democracies require art - challenging art - to ensure that they are acting as free societies. In the twentieth century, democratic societies turned to dissenting and unpopular artists such as Jackson Pollock, Bertolt Brecht, D.H. Lawrence, and 2 Live Crew to prove their commitment to freedom from majority rule. Author Caroline Levine shows how artists in the tradition of the avant-garde may once again prove to be effective catalysts for contemporary change." "Moving beyond debates over obscenity, public funding and censorship, Provoking Democracy gets at art's value and purpose in democratic societies, concluding that the freest and fairest democracies need the provocations of art, just as the most rebellious artists need the protection of the democratic state."--Jacket.