Aesthetic democracy
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
Print Book, English, 2006
Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 2006
xix, 185 pages ; 24 cm
9780804751889, 9780804751896, 0804751889, 0804751897
61859699
The colonial condition of criticism. On prejudice and forgelling
On urgency and emergency, or, Deconstruction not reading politics
Declining the West
The potential of aestheticism. Aesthetic education and the demise of experience
The passion of the possible
Potential European democracy
Sovereign democracy. The ethics of hypocrisy
Machiavelli and modernity
Aesthetic democracy