Abstract
The present chapter discusses the notion of “Political Art,” one of the main concepts that emerged from theoretical reflection on the so-called social turn in art during the 1990s. One of the problems identified as stemming from such reflection is that the concept places excessively narrow normative constraints on notions of artistic practice, often to the detriment of less explicitly utilitarian works. The intention is to bring to light the presuppositions and clarify the rhetorical indeterminacy underlying contemporary conceptions of “Political Art” by contrasting it to the concept of “Politics of Aesthetics” as theorised by Jacques Rancière.
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Bilbao Yarto, A. (2017). Rethinking the Social Turn: The Social Function of Art as Functionless and Anti-Social. In: Bonham-Carter, C., Mann, N. (eds) Rhetoric, Social Value and the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45297-5_4
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