Another Aesthetics Is Possible

Jennifer Ponce de LeÓn is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

“One of the most significant areas of new research in socially engaged art concerns the ways in which this work both challenges existing aesthetic paradigms and calls upon us to develop new ones that can account for its unique complexity as both artistic practice and political praxis. Another Aesthetics Is Possible breaks new ground in this endeavor, offering a materialist concept of the aesthetic, rooted in Marxist theory and anticolonial resistance, along with nuanced readings of key projects developed in the Americas over the past two decades. Sure to be required reading for classes in activist and engaged art as well as postcolonial studies.” - Grant H. Kester, coeditor of (Collective Situations: Readings in Contemporary Latin American Art, 1995–2010) “Rather than thinking about art as a response to oppressive political moments, Jennifer Ponce de LeÓn points us to artistic practices that force us to read against the systems of domination that authoritarian regimes and liberal ideologies uphold. Another Aesthetics Is Possible makes a profound intervention in fields interested in the intersection of art and politics, serving as a model into the future for anyone interested in truly ameliorating social and economic circumstances for people across the Americas. Engaging and thoroughly provocative.” - Laura G. Gutiérrez, author of (Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage) "The role of criticism is to enable this impact, to keep the aesthetic practice alive for one, two, three generations afterwards so it persists as a resource for building another world. Another Aesthetics is Possible is an exemplary model of performing this role." - Michael Dango (Lateral) "With Another Aesthetics is Possible, Ponce de LeÓn raises the bar for cultural critics, particularly those on the left, by arguing that they should register and study people’s innovative ways of resisting oppression within the framework of collectively lived experience rather than the fantasy of the narcissist individual." - Fouad Mami (Cleveland Review of Books) "A vital intervention this book makes is to challenge the notion of the arts as an autonomous production separate from world-defining social struggles. . . . Another Aesthetics Is Possible, like the movements and artists it examines, contributes to the collective work of reorienting our aesthetic frameworks so that we can materialize a livable world beyond the demands of totalitarian neoliberalism." - Josh Rios (Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture) "Ambitious and often riveting. . . . Thanks to this theoretical intervention, and buttressed by its thorough case studies, Another Aesthetics is an important contribution to scholarship exploring the relationship between art and capitalism, between aesthetics and politics, and between contemporary art and history." - Niko Vicario (Hispanic Review)

• Acknowledgments  ixIntroduction  11. Through an Anticolonial Looking Glass  292. Historiographers of the Invisible  803. Reframing Violence and Justice: Human Rights and Class Warfare  1264. State Theater, Security, T/Errorism  192Conclusion: Another Aesthetics-Another Politics-Is Possible  247Notes  251Bibliography  279Index  303