Political Theory (TCPS 5505h)

The Politics of Aesthetics

Doug Torgerson

Term: Winter

Time: Wednesday 2 - 4

Aesthetics comes as an afterthought, if at all, in conventional approaches to political theory.  For two major figures at the forefront of contemporary debates, however, aesthetics emerges as part of the very conception of the political.  For Jacques Rancière and the late Hannah Arendt, the aesthetic is not something marginal, a mere source of potential insight or some decorative fringe, but is necessary condition for politics. Despite sharp differences between them, both of these figures conceive politics in ways that trouble mainstream understandings that guide liberal democratic theory. By staging a “debate” between Rancière and Arendt, this course will confront their differences, but also will attend to the ways in which they both emphasize the aesthetic dimension of political appearance as being crucial to politics.  The main texts in the course will be drawn, in whole or in part, from such works as Rancière’s Disagreement, The Politics of Aesthetics, Hatred of Democracy; and Arendt’s Between Past and Future, The Human Condition, On Revolution.

 

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