Communities of Sense

Beth Hinderliter is Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Buffalo State College. William Kaizen is Assistant Professor of Aesthetics and Critical Studies at the University of Masschusetts, Lowell.Vered Maimon is a full-time lecturer in the Art and Design Department at Northeastern University. Jaleh Mansoor is Assistant Professor in the School of Art at Ohio University.Seth McCormick is a Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University.

“[A] provocative and wide ranging exploration of Jacques Ranciere’s (2006) controversial assertion that ‘politics is aesthetic in principle’ (p. 58) Although focusing largely on the discipline of art history, Communities also has a broad appeal for those interested in the connections between aesthetic philosophy, social theory, and art practices. Bookended with provocative essays by Ranciere and Etienne Balibar, the collection offers new insights into contemporary art, aesthetic theory, global citizenship, postcolonialism, architecture, and film studies. Just as Ranciere’s own writings encourage interdisciplinary hybridization that challenge canonical divisions between disciplines, so too the form of Communities embodies this fundamental political and scholarly commitment.” - Tyson E. Lewis, Teachers College Record “. . . . the editors and contributors are to be commended for engaging with a dynamic and much-contested approach to art, and doing so at an early stage of its reception in the Anglophone world. The editors’ introductory essay is a helpful positioning of this perspective, explaining how it relates to debates regarding modernism, postmodernism, relational aesthetics and other attempts to rehabilitate notions from the aesthetic tradition. . . . And RanciÈre’s essay is one of the best introductions to his recent work on the import of the history of aesthetics and the logics at work in contemporary art.” - Joseph J. Tanke, Parallax “A smart and timely consideration of the work of Jacques Ranciere in the context of contemporary art.”-Stephen Melville, co-editor of Vision and Textuality “The essays collected here are more than timely. They speak to the blurring of aesthetic and political conflict that we are witnessing in the world at large. Both an aesthetic and a political object, Communities of Sense will be a reference work for the new directions in art criticism.”-Tom Conley, author of Cartographic Cinema “[T]he editors and contributors are to be commended for engaging with a dynamic and much-contested approach to art, and doing so at an early stage of its reception in the Anglophone world. The editors’ introductory essay is a helpful positioning of this perspective, explaining how it relates to debates regarding modernism, postmodernism, relational aesthetics and other attempts to rehabilitate notions from the aesthetic tradition. . . . And RanciÈre’s essay is one of the best introductions to his recent work on the import of the history of aesthetics and the logics at work in contemporary art.” - Joseph J. Tanke (Parallax) “[A] provocative and wide ranging exploration of Jacques Ranciere’s (2006) controversial assertion that ‘politics is aesthetic in principle’ (p. 58) Although focusing largely on the discipline of art history, Communities also has a broad appeal for those interested in the connections between aesthetic philosophy, social theory, and art practices. Bookended with provocative essays by Ranciere and Etienne Balibar, the collection offers new insights into contemporary art, aesthetic theory, global citizenship, postcolonialism, architecture, and film studies. Just as Ranciere’s own writings encourage interdisciplinary hybridization that challenge canonical divisions between disciplines, so too the form of Communities embodies this fundamental political and scholarly commitment.” - Tyson E. Lewis (Teachers College Record)

• Illustrations Acknowledgments viiIntroduction 1Part One. Rethinking Aesthetics Contemporary Art and the Politics of Aesthetics / Jacques RanciÈre 31The Romantic Art Work / Alexander Potts 51From Classical to Postclassical Beauty: Institutional Critique and Aesthetic Enigma in Louise Lawler's Photography / Toni Ross 79Technologies of Belonging: Sensus Communis, Disidentification / Ranjana Khanna 111Part Two. Partitioning the Sensible Dada's Event: Paris, 1921 / T. J. Demos 135Citizen Cursor / David Joselit 153Mass Customization: Corporate Architecture and the "End" of Politics / Reinhold Martin 172Post-Communist Notes on Some Vertov Stills / Yates McKee 197Part Three. The Limits of Community Experimental Communities / Carlos Basualdo and Reinaldo Laddaga 215PrÈcaritÈ, AutoritÈ, Autonomie / Rachel Haidu 238Neo-Dada 1951-54: Between the Aesthetics of Persecution and the Politics of Identity / Seth McCormick 267Thinking Red: Ethical Militance and the Group Subject / Emily Apter 294Interview with Étienne Balibar 317Bibliography 337Contributors 355Index 359