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Ranciere Against the Cuts: Activist Demands are Aesthetic

Klee, Steve A. (2013) Ranciere Against the Cuts: Activist Demands are Aesthetic. Third Text, 27 (2). pp. 177-188. ISSN 0952-8822. E-ISSN 1475-5297. (doi:10.1080/09528822.2013.774189) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:31647)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2013.774189

Abstract

This article seeks to challenge and in so doing recalibrate Jacques Rancière’s political aesthetics, my motivation to do so springs from the recognition that his theory has ‘disciplinary’ effects. Specifically I object to the way that artistic commitment is traduced and, ultimately, excluded from his formula of art-politics. I attempt to stretch Rancière’s definition of aesthetic experience so to accommodate the art practice of Agitprop. My claim is that any of the materials or actions produced by a genuinely egalitarian activist group can be strategically read as exhibiting aesthetic properties. Perhaps counter-intuitively the definition of egalitarian politics is drawn from Rancière too. I therefore use one part of his philosophical system to expose what I see as the unnecessary restrictiveness of another. My examples are drawn from the collective practice of Arts against Cuts which formed part of the broad UK anti-austerity activism of winter and spring 2010/11.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1080/09528822.2013.774189
Uncontrolled keywords: Ranciere; Arts against Cuts; activism
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BH Aesthetics
J Political Science > JC Political theory
N Visual Arts > N Visual arts (General). For photography, see TR
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of Arts
Depositing User: S. Klee
Date Deposited: 12 Oct 2012 14:04 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:09 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/31647 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Klee, Steve A..

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