Political Aesthetics

While nowhere near the first to note the connections between art and politics, Sartwell (art and art history, Dickinson College) makes the strong argument that all political ideologies are in fact aesthetic systems, "that the aesthetic expressions of a regime or of the resistance to a regime are central also to the cognitive content and concrete effects of political systems." Following from this, study of the aesthetic features of political ideologies and systems can provide fundamental insights not available by any other method. He pursues this argument by alternating case studies of Nazi Germany, punk, Black Nationalism, and early American republicanism with theoretical explorations of politics as aesthetic environment; aesthetics and anti-aesthetics in the political philosophies of Plato, Confucius, Aristotle, Mozi, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, and Friedrich Schiller; and the "artpolitical" concept of "the distribution of the sensible," derived from the work of Jacques Ranci癡re. Annotation 穢2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)