Cirrus@Austlit

'This paper proposes and develops a theoretical approach, supported by a creative illustration, to a political aesthetics. It is proposed that, in the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the project of a Marxist or radical Left aesthetic theory may be revived to investigate and also potentially inspire cultural production opposed to capitalist ideology. I draw on the theories of thinkers Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Jacques Ranicère and Alain Badiou to outline one possible development of such a prism. Benjamin, Adorno, Ranicère and Badiou are in many ways very dissimilar thinkers, and their perspectives on art are at times at odds with one another. It is precisely due to their disagreements that I have chosen to combine a number of the key themes of these thinkers’ aesthetics, to advance a more comprehensive, inclusive approach. In the spirit of Marxism’s dialectical Hegelian foundations, it is the aim of this paper to produce an overview of a possible radical aesthetic theory and poetics through juxtaposing and pressurising counterposing perspectives which share an oppositional stance apropos of capitalist cultural hegemony.' (Publication abstract)