Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.81 (989 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B071SDF4SF |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 324 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-11-20 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
We need a way of disrupting the existing order that can energize radical democratic action rather than reinforcing the status quo. The state of emergency, thinkers such as Carl Schmidt, Walter Benjamin, and Giorgio Agamben have argued, is at the heart of any theory of politics. Interpreting works of art that aim to propel us into absent emergencies, Zabala shows how art's ability to create new realities is fundamental to the politics of radical democracy in the state of emergency that is the present.. Building on Arthur Danto, Jacques Rancière, and Gianni Vattimo, who made aesthetics more responsive to contemporary art, Zabala argues that works of art are not simply for an elevated consumerism or the contemplation of beauty but are points of departure to change the world. In this provocative book, Santiago Zabala declares that in an age where the greatest emergency is the absence of emergency, only contemporary art's capacity to alter reality can save us.Why Only Art Can Save Us advances a new aesthetics centered on the nature of the emergency that characterizes the twenty-first century. Radical artists create works that disclose and demand active intervention into ongoing crises. The former are a means of cultural politics, conservers of the status quo that conceal emergencies; the latter are disruptive event
Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. . He also writes opinion articles for publications including the New York Times, Al Jazeera, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the author of The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat (Columbia, 2008); The Remains of Being: Hermeneutic Ontology After Metaphysics (Col
Today, the real emergency we face is not so much the populist emergencies of media spectacles that confront us ad nauseum day in and day out; rather, it is the emergency that arises from concealing the destruction and oppression that neoliberal democracy, militarism, and global capitalism inflict. Zabala's extraordinary book strikes at the very heart of our spiritual predicament. Its main claim is that the possibility of art lies in its aesthetics of emergency. Although we live in a time of social, political, and environmental emergencies, Zabala makes the convincing case that we tend to repress the emergencies we live in. (Christine Ross, author of The Past Is the Present; It’s the Future Too: The Temporal Turn in Contemporary Art and The Aesthetics of Disengagement: Contemporary Art and Depression)Santiago Zabala's new book is a timely and provocative exploration of art in the age of emergency. Why Only Art Can Save Us is a major contribution to