A01=Tony Fisher
Author_Tony Fisher
autonomy autonomous art
avant-garde
Brecht
Category=ATD
Category=DSG
Category=JP
conceptual art
conjuncture
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Jacques Ranciere
Milo Rau
performance
planetary aesthetics
political theatre
Product details
- ISBN 9781526191151
- Weight: 408g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 03 Jun 2025
- Publisher: Manchester University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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The aesthetic exception theorises anew the relation between art and politics. It challenges critical trends that discount the role of aesthetic autonomy, to impulsively reassert art as an effective form of social engagement. But it equally challenges those on the flipside of the efficacy debate, who insist that art’s politics is limited to a recondite space of ‘autonomous resistance’. The book shows how each side of the efficacy debate overlooks art’s exceptional status and its social mediations. Mobilising philosophy and cultural theory, and employing examples from visual art, performance, and theatre, it proposes four alternative tests to ‘effect’ to offer a nuanced account of art’s political character. Those tests examine how art relates to politics as a practice that articulates its historical conjuncture, and how it prefigures the ‘new’ through simulations capable of activating the political life of the spectator.
Tony Fisher is Reader in Theatre and Philosophy at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London
