Aesthetic Investigations | Call for Contributions and Guest Editors

Arts, Ontology and Politics
(Guest editor: Jan Bierhanzl, Institute for Philosophy, Prague and Charles University, with Arthur Cools)

The aim of this issue is to explore the social meanings and the critical potentialities of artistic creation today and to discuss the contemporary theories that intend to account for it. We face today a difficult tension between the subversive dimensions of artistic creation and the instrumentalising, moralising and/or controlling dimensions of political activism. The subversive dimension is intrinsic to art’s autonomy but cannot account for its social meaning. Political activism reclames the social meaning of artistic creation but at the cost of art’s autonomy. This tension puts the social and critical potentialities of artistic creation under pressure. What does it mean today to be subversive as a work of art? (How) is art still capable of critically contributing to a (dis)sensus communis? (How) can art reveal truth today? In what ways is art entangled in power relations and in what ways does it become a means of resistance to power relations? In short, how to define the relations between arts and politics? It is clear that the answers to these questions imply each time an understanding of art. However, this understanding is itself part of the debate. We welcome contributions that address the kinds of questions mentioned above and develop them in relation to understanding art today, whether from a continental or an analytic perspective.

For more information, please see: https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/index.php/journal/announcement/view/9 .