Aesthetics of politics: refolding distributions of importance

dc.contributor.authorLabrecque, Simon
dc.contributor.supervisorKroker, Arthur
dc.date.accessioned2014-04-30T20:14:09Z
dc.date.available2014-04-30T20:14:09Z
dc.date.copyright2014en_US
dc.date.issued2014-04-30
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of Political Scienceen_US
dc.degree.levelDoctor of Philosophy Ph.D.en_US
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation engages a very general question: what matters politically? This question is characterized as a point of heresy, as a site through which different political stances differentiate themselves from one another and account for their differences. Building on the concept of aesthetics of politics developed by Jacques Rancière, I seek to free up this concept’s critical and analytical potential by arguing that different aesthetics of politics act as prerequisites to divergent determinations of political importance. More precisely, I argue that significant formulations of how variations in distributions of political importance occur tend to presuppose particular accounts of the relationships between perception and interpretation, sensibility and understanding, or how we sense and how we make sense. While the concept of aesthetics is tied to particular histories of what has been called Western Modernity, I argue that Western political thought has been characterized by a deep concern for questions of perception since its allegedly inaugural texts in Classical Greece, and that the so-called postmodern condition continues to put into play aesthetic terms of political engagement. To test this hypothesis positing that we always already think of politics aesthetically, I map five influential aesthetics of politics: aesthetics of prevalence, aesthetics of emancipation, aesthetics of temperament, aesthetics of friction, and aesthetics of endurance. Each one is already manifold. To make sense of these multiplicities, each aesthetics of politics is studied through a fourfold engagement with the politics of one of the senses of the age-old fivefold of sight, taste, hearing, touch, and smell. The politics of each sense are engaged along a politological, an artistico-political, a polemological and a hauntological folds. I am thereby able to show the intricacies of how the problem of political importance has been and is being dealt with.en_US
dc.description.proquestcode0615en_US
dc.description.proquestemailsimonlab@uvic.caen_US
dc.description.scholarlevelGraduateen_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1828/5332
dc.languageEnglisheng
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.rights.tempAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.subjectAesthetics of politicsen_US
dc.subjectPolitical importanceen_US
dc.subjectPolitical thoughten_US
dc.subjectFoldingen_US
dc.subjectJacques Rancièreen_US
dc.subjectPolitics of aestheticsen_US
dc.titleAesthetics of politics: refolding distributions of importanceen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Labrecque_Simon_PHD_2014.pdf
Size:
2.76 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
license.txt
Size:
1.74 KB
Format:
Item-specific license agreed upon to submission
Description: