RADICAL HISTORY & THE POLITICS OF ART
New Directions in Critical Theory
New Directions in Critical Theory
Amy Allen, General Editor
New Directions in Critical Theory presents outstanding classic and contemporary texts in the tradition of critical social theory, broadly construed. The series aims to renew and advance the program of critical social theory, with a particular focus on theorizing contemporary struggles around gender, race, sexuality, class, and globalization and their complex interconnections.
Narrating Evil: A Postmetaphysical Theory of Reflective Judgment, Mara Pa Lara
The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy, and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory, Amy Allen
Democracy and the Political Unconscious, Nolle McAfee
The Force of the Example: Explorations in the Paradigm of Judgment, Alessandro Ferrara
Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence, Adriana Cavarero
Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World, Nancy Fraser
Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory, Axel Honneth
States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals, Jacqueline Stevens
The Racial Discourses of Life Philosophy: Ngritude, Vitalism, and Modernity, Donna V. Jones
Democracy in What State? Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Daniel Bensad, Wendy Brown, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancire, Kristin Ross, Slavoj iek
Politics of Culture and the Spirit of Critique: Dialogues, edited by Gabriel Rockhill and Alfredo Gomez-Muller
Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics, Jacques Ranciere
The Right to Justification: Elements of Constructivist Theory of Justice, Rainer Forst
The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment, Albena Azmanova
The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics, Adrian Parr
Social Acceleration: The Transformation of Time in Modernity, Hartmut Rosa
The Disclosure of Politics: Struggles Over the Semantics of Secularization, Mara Pa Lara
Radical Cosmopolitics: The Ethics and Politics of Democratic Universalism, James Ingram
Freedoms Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life, Axel Honneth
Imaginal Politics: Images Beyond Imagination and the Imaginary, Chiara Bottici
Alienation, Rahel Jaeggi
The Power of Tolerance: A Debate, Wendy Brown and Rainer Forst, edited by Luca Di Blasi and Christoph F. E. Holzhey
GABRIEL ROCKHILL
RADICAL HISTORY & THE POLITICS OF ART
Columbia University Press / New York
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright 2014 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-52778-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rockhill, Gabriel.
Radical history & the politics of art/Gabriel Rockhill.
pages cm. (New directions in critical theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-15200-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-15201-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-52778-1 (e-book)
1. AestheticsPolitical aspects. 2. HistoryPhilosophy. 3. Critical theory. 4. Radicalism. I. Title. II. Title: Radical history and the politics of art.
BH301.P64R63 2014
701'.17dc23
2013046212
A Columbia University Press E-book.
CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at .
Cover design by Noah Arlow
References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
To Finley
CONTENTS
I would like to express my deep gratitude to all of those who have contributed to this book. First and foremost, I would like to thank the friends and colleagues who read and commented on earlier versions of the manuscript: Amy Allen, Avi Alpert, Esteban Buch, Nadir Lahiji, John-Patrick Schultz, Julian Sempill, and dm Takcs. I would also like to express my gratitude to all of those who have provided crucial feedback on various stages of this project, including Roei Amit, Richard Beardsworth, Bruno Bosteels, Walter Brogan, Eric Carlson, Pierre-Antoine Chardel, Andrs Claro, Jean-Pierre Cometti, Tom Conley, Mladen Dolar, Thomas R. Flynn, Nancy Fraser, Alfredo Gomez-Muller, Solange Gunoun, Nathalie Heinich, Alexi Kukuljevic, Marielle Mac, Todd May, Eric Mchoulan, Jairo Moreno, Stephan Packard, Jean-Michel Rabat, Jacques Rancire, Zach Rockhill, Philip Roussin, Pierre Rusch, Natacha Smolianskaia, Jan Spurk, Annika Thiem, Philip Watts, and Yves Winter. The Machete Group members and our various collaborators deserve particular mention for the opportunity to work together on sundry projects in an extra-academic setting and test some of the ideas advanced in this book.
This work owes a special debt to all of the institutions and research centers that provided me with the opportunity to present various aspects of this project, which include the Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage (CRAL) at the CNRS and the EHESS, the Collge International de Philosophie, the Centre Franco-hongrois en Sciences Sociales at Etvs Lornd University in Budapest, the Institut Franais in Budapest, the Slought Foundation, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Marginal Utility Gallery, the University of Giessen, the Jan Van Eyck Academie, the IWAB in South Korea, the University of Pennsylvania, Duquesne Universitys Philosophy Department, DePaul Universitys Philosophy Department, Proekt Fabrika, and the National Center for Contemporary Arts in Moscow.
I would like to extend a special thank you to Villanova Universitys Philosophy Department, which has provided ideal working conditions for completing this manuscript. Annika Thiem deserves special mention for her assistance with German translations as well as for the opportunity to co-teach a graduate seminar with her on critical theory in which I presented some of the ideas in this book. I am also grateful to the students in this seminar, who provided extremely useful input.
The Office of Research and Sponsored Projects at Villanova University was particularly supportive of this project, and I would like to express my sincere gratitude. Their Summer Research Fellowship and Research Support Grant were essential to the completion of the final version of the manuscript. Villanova University also deserves special mention for the generous support provided in the form of a semester sabbatical, as well as for the financial support administered by the Board of Publications for covering the costs of a professional indexer. I would also like to thank the Collge International de Philosophie and the CRAL for their material, institutional, and intellectual support.
