Aesthetics and Its Discontents

Jacques Rancière is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris (St. Denis).

"Riveting. In short compass, Rancière provides a razor-sharp critique of the anti-aesthetics of postmodernism. His ear for the substitution of political substance by empty moralism ? call it: the sublime, the unpresentable, the other, the Shoah ? is unerring. His dissections of Badiou, Lyotard, von Trier's Dogville, and a Christian Boltanski installation are pitch-perfect. For a pointed defense of the role of aesthetics for a radical politics: begin here." Jay Bernstein, New School for Social Research "Jacques Rancière's Aesthetics and its Discontents mounts a subtle and spirited defense of modern aesthetic thought, from Schiller to Adorno. Aesthetics is not philosophy seeking to dominate art, as its modish detractors claim. Rather, it is the attempt to think through the artwork's paradoxes and contradictions. In a forceful critique of rival thinkers such as Lyotard and Badiou, Rancière shows that abandoning aesthetic discourse does not mean respecting the integrity of art. Instead, art ends up being reduced to the vehicle of a remorseless ethical demand, or to the cipher of a transcendent truth."Peter Dews, University of Essex

• Introduction Politics of AestheticsAesthetics as PoliticsProblems and Transformations of Critical ArtThe Antinomies of ModernismAlain Badiou’s Inaesthetics: the Torsions of ModernismLyotard and the Aesthetics of the Sublime: A Counter-reading of KantThe Ethical Turn in Aesthetics and Politics