ENGLISH

Aesthetic Democracy

By Thomas Docherty

Book information

Publisher
Stanford University Press
Year
2006
ISBN
9781503625334
DOI
10.1515/9781503625334
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
1 MB (1545108 bytes)
Pages
192\200
Library
degruyter.com
Time added
2023-08-23 21:59:37

Description

Aesthetic Democracy argues that art and the aesthetic in general are the founding condition of the possibility of establishing social and political democracy. The book examines contemporary criticism and finds that it is historically shaped by colonialism, and that it sets up an opposition of east and west that shapes all contemporary cultural politics. The author argues for a way of outwitting this potentially dangerous struggle of east and west grounded in an aestheticism and a validation of sensory experience. Docherty proposes a new model of cultural critique, based on a revitalized and positively valorized notion of "hypocrisy," whose roots lie in Machiavelli, but whose contemporary strength lies in its potential for an ethical encounter with alterity as such.

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