Going Beyond Art and Beauty in Political Aesthetics
Philosophy’s esteem of art and aesthetics has come a long way since Plato. In the – inexhaustive and indefensibly rough – shell of a nut, it went from “these superficial appearances distort the truth of reality and have nothing to contribute of genuine philosophical concern; please step out of your cave with your ideas above your head, sir!”, to “Art with a capital ‘a’ is the only way to escape this cruel existence for blissful yet fleeting moments,” to “yikes, fascists sure seem to use aesthetic strategies in nefarious ways,” to “hey, at least we can counter the ‘aestheticization’ of politics by politicizing aesthetics!”,1 to “there is no reality outside of our representations: reality is what you make of it! (please send help),” to any odd combination(s) of the above.
- New techniques of reproduction, Benjamin argued, such as the tabloids, photography and film, were operationalized to conjure up ‘mass publics’ that thoughtlessly adsorbed their imagery instead of closely and thoughtfully observing it. ↵
