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In general, the concept of propaganda refers to a method as well as the symbolic object mobilized by it. Propaganda equally constitutes a particular type of communication that involves not only the mobilization of objects, but also of discourse, places, acts, and rituals. This essay employs the writings of Max Weber, Paul Ricœur, Jacques Ellul, and Jacques Rancière to analyze propaganda as a particular type of symbolic political dispositif linked to a specific performance and utterance context. I examine humanitarian songs as a propaganda tool in democracy, and show the conditions and the limits of their mobilization through their contextualization. I argue that the link between music and propaganda could be defined as the willingness of a particular power or organized opposition to control the symbolic and emotional dimension of musical works. Through giving the music a meaning in this way, they try to impose a certain social order or to invalidate other possible political configurations of reality. I discuss the contradiction between the specific polysemy of musical works and the fictional construction of reality produced by propaganda, and conclude that the political dimension of music should not necessarily be reduced to the propaganda dispositif. These musical works require consideration of the possibilities offered through fiction in contexts of specific representation, as well as the political dimension of collaborative musical practices.

Many theoretical writings on aesthetics and politics rely on hard distinctions between what is and is not art, and what is and is not political. In this article, I draw on the work of theorists, knitters, and fiber artists to argue that hand knitting provides a lens through which to unsettle some of these distinctions. I illustrate some of the ways in which aesthetic theory relies on hard distinctions between art and not-art and politics and not-politics, with particular focus on the work of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Rancière. I explain how knitting is often seen as falling clearly outside the definitions of art and politics, and explore the surprising ways in which knitting shows the instability of these categories and expectations. I show that common social traditions and practices that often go unanalyzed can provide insight into the limitations and complexities of prevalent theoretical assumptions.

An appreciation of the tension between the predicate, "to curate," and the subject, "the curator," is essential to understanding the convergence of creation, criticism, and administration in the graphic arts of our time. Curators were ideally positioned to step to the fore when the idea-versus-object dichotomy began to collapse in the work of Duchamp. The roots of activist curating can be found in Western Classical culture. The prevalence of conceptual art at the end of the twentieth century, combined with the explicit denigration of physical craft by artists, created a void into which activist curators moved. The curator's role as educator and referee in artistic style wars needs to be reexamined in light of contemporary analyses of the nature of power. Our understanding of the nexus of art-making, criticism, and curating is profoundly compromised by our skill in suppressing the many pious fictions upon which these activities are founded.

An appreciation of the tension between the predicate, "to curate," and the subject, "the curator," is essential to understanding the convergence of creation, criticism, and administration in the graphic arts of our time. Curators were ideally positioned to step to the fore when the idea-versus-object dichotomy began to collapse in the work of Duchamp. The roots of activist curating can be found in Western Classical culture. The prevalence of conceptual art at the end of the twentieth century, combined with the explicit denigration of physical craft by artists, created a void into which activist curators moved. The curator's role as educator and referee in artistic style wars needs to be reexamined in light of contemporary analyses of the nature of power. Our understanding of the nexus of art-making, criticism, and curating is profoundly compromised by our skill in suppressing the many pious fictions upon which these activities are founded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last forty years or so, authorities across the globe have appealed to the notion of decorum to justify authoritarian policies of urban control. Such a notion is distinctly aesthetic insofar as it deals with good taste in matters of appearances and behavior; decorum is about what we should or is appropriate to see and do in public spaces. When considering how deeply discussions and policies of decorum shape our daily lives, it is surprising that aestheticians have largely ignored the city as a subject of inquiry. In this paper, I examine the heretofore largely overlooked link between the city's decorum, as a key notion in political discourse, and the discipline of aesthetics. At a general level, I show that the urban landscape is a domain where politics and aesthetics merge. More specifically, I argue that street art should be conceptualized as a subversive response to the authoritarian aesthetics that is embedded in political discourse about decorum. Street art injects into the urban landscape a dose of spontaneity. In doing so, it turns upside-down the exclusionary strictures of dominant politics of decorum that admits as appropriate, and perhaps beautiful, only the authorized and the sanctioned. By creating temporary zones of spontaneity, street artists invite us to imagine alternative ways to use the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many theoretical writings on aesthetics and politics rely on hard distinctions between what is and is not art, and what is and is not political. In this article, I draw on the work of theorists, knitters, and fiber artists to argue that hand knitting provides a lens through which to unsettle some of these distinctions. I illustrate some of the ways in which aesthetic theory relies on hard distinctions between art and not-art and politics and not-politics, with particular focus on the work of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Rancière. I explain how knitting is often seen as falling clearly outside the definitions of art and politics, and explore the surprising ways in which knitting shows the instability of these categories and expectations. I show that common social traditions and practices that often go unanalyzed can provide insight into the limitations and complexities of prevalent theoretical assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does politics have to do with aesthetics? Surely, both politics and aesthetics are concerned with imagining, envisioning, and even creating, yet aren't the kinds of things these fields of inquiry imagine, envision and create greatly disparate? Jacques Rancière argues that what is at stake in politics, just as it is in aesthetics, is the distribution of the sensible, and that politics happens not only through the disruption of a certain aesthetic organization of sense experience but through the eruption of a distinct aesthetics. Here I elaborate the Kantian foundation for Rancière's conception of the kind of aesthetics that politics must disrupt, drawn primarily from the Critique of Pure Reason. Yet I also look to Kant's Critique of Judgment to pave the way for the kind of aesthetics Rancière understands as synonymous with the political event. With this gesture, my intention is, first, to provide further support for Rancière's call for a distinct aesthetics by elaborating upon how such a distinct aesthetics may be both possible and realizable. Yet my intention is also polemical. Rancière is highly critical of the political potential to be found in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, namely due to the onus placed on the project of 'becoming-imperceptible,' a notion which, Rancière claims, leads politics to a dead end. Is not the Deleuzian turn towards imperceptibility a move altogether away from any aesthetics? Here, I argue that it is vital to identify Deleuze's notion of the imperceptible, like Rancière's politics, as situated in an engagement with Kantian aesthetics. It is only through attention to Deleuze's reading of Kant's Critique of Judgment that it becomes evident that the 'imperceptible' for Deleuze is also the 'percipiendum': that which must be perceived but cannot be perceived according to the delimitation of sense experience in the sensus communis. Through attention to Deleuze's own Kantian interlude, then, a political voice can be discerned in his philosophy in spite of Rancière's reservations. If we care about Rancière's 'Politics of Aesthetics,' we should care about this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]