Abstract
This introductory chapter will introduce the rationale for this project, through an examination of the relationship between aesthetics and politics as conceived by philosopher Jacques Ranciere. For Ranciere, politics takes place along an axis of a distribution of the sensible: what can or cannot be seen, what can or cannot be heard, what can or cannot be said. When the terms of the system become fixed, a police order is established, whereupon politics is then said to effect a redistribution of the sensible. Dealing with the sensible (that which involves the five senses), all art forms are, to a large extent, political. Rancière’s definition of politics as a redistribution of the sensible thus provides the basis for the way the essays in this collection investigate the relationship between art and politics. To this end, the introduction will include a brief evaluation of how each of these essays participates in the political.
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Notes
- 1.
Can-Seng Ooi, “Political pragmatism and the creative economy: Singapore as a city for the Arts,” International Journal of Cultural Policy, Vol. 16, No. 4, November 2010, 403–417.
- 2.
“MDA has classified the film ‘To Singapore, with Love’ as Not Allowed for All Ratings (NAR),” Media Development Authority, 10 September 2014, www.mda.gov.sg/AboutMDA/NewsReleasesSpeechesAndAnnouncements/Pages/NewsDetail.aspx?news=639
- 3.
Steven Corcoran, “Editor’s Introduction” in Jacques Rancière (2010) Dissensus on Politics and Aesthetics, edited and translated by Steven Corcoran (Continuum International Publishing), pp. 1–26, 3.
- 4.
Jacques Rancière (2010), 139.
- 5.
Rancière 139.
- 6.
Interview with Wernmei Yong Ade and Lim Lee Ching.
- 7.
Robert Yeo “Catherine Lim and LKY,” The Independent Singapore News, September 9, 2013. http://theindependent.sg/catherine-lim-and-lky/
- 8.
Fook Kwang Han, Warren Fernandez and Sumiko Tan (1998), Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas (Singapore Press Holdings), 126.
- 9.
Tom Plate, “The S’pore way: the way to go?” first published in The Straits Times, April 6, 2013. http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/the-spore-way-the-way-to-go
- 10.
Ibid.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Ho, in this volume.
- 15.
Ho, in this volume.
- 16.
Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” Public Culture 15 (1): 11–40, 15.
- 17.
Ibid., 15.
- 18.
Ibid., 40.
- 19.
Ibid., 16.
- 20.
Ibid., 15.
- 21.
Ibid., 14.
- 22.
Julia Kristeva (1982), Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez (Columbia University Press, New York), 2.
- 23.
Rancière, 139.
- 24.
Terry Smith, “Introduction: The Contemporary Question” in Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity eds. Terry Smith, Okwui Enwezor and Nancy Condee (Durham and London; Duke University Press, 2008) 9.
- 25.
Rajendren in this volume.
- 26.
Shawna Tang (2012), “Transnational Lesbian Identities: Lessons from Singapore?”, Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship and Mediated Cultures, edited by Audrey Yue and Jun Zubillaga-Pow (Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong), pp. 83–96, 84.
- 27.
Monica J. Casper and Lisa Jean Moore (2009) Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility (New York University Press, New York & London), 15.
- 28.
Roberto Esposito, 145.
- 29.
Casper and Moore, 3.
- 30.
Owens in this volume.
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Ade, W.Y., Ching, L.L. (2016). Introduction. In: Ade, W., Ching, L. (eds) Contemporary Arts as Political Practice in Singapore. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57344-5_1
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