The Aesthetic Exception

Tony Fisher is Reader in Theatre and Philosophy at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London

'Fisher is meticulous in discussing and describing the categories thatconstitute political art in the twentieth century: state, government, revolution,and power.'The European Journal of Theatre and Performance'Starting with a seemingly simple question ‘Can art be political?’, this book opens a Pandora’s box that reveals the paradoxical nature of the relationship between art and life, the impossibility of taxonomy of political theatre, on the one hand, and its potential as a hermeneutical tool, on the other, and when it comes to postdramatic theatre and theory – nothing is anymore as it seemed before … The depth of analysis is impressive, whenever we feel we have reached a conceptual stable ground, Fisher probes further and invites us to question deeper!'Silvija Jestrovic, University of Warwick'Fisher is a joy to read! He writes with clarity and urgency but without oversimplification and gratuitous polemic. He draws on the whole toolkit of interdisciplinary thought and covers a vast terrain in contemporary theatre, but he never relies on jargon and avoids any form of superficiality … with cautious optimism, [he] takes the lead of key artists and heads out towards new horizons of possibility, en route, he has revitalized our understanding of both politics and aesthetics.'Nikos Papastergiadis, University of Melbourne

• Introduction The horizon of the aestheticPart I The aesthetic exception1 The paradox of the aesthetic exception2 Crossing the threshold3 The institution of art: critical and theoretical reflectionsPart II Political art after the communicative turn4 The classical debate revisited: Sartre, Brecht, Adorno5 Art of the communicative turn: Habermas and the political6 What is the proper way to display a US flag? – the work of “dissensual speech” in artPart III Taxonomy of the political theatre7 Foundational problems and problems of foundation8 Displacement effects: Althusser’s “Brecht” and the theatre of the conjuncture9 Activist theatre of the conjuncture: the case of Janam and the street theatre in India10 The “closure” of the political theatre and the critique of post-dramatic reason11 The political theatre redefined12 The theatre of the planetary conjuncture: Milo Rau’s Congo Tribunal13 On taxonomic strategiesIndex