Aesthetic citizenship, beauty politics and the state: an introduction.

This introduction situates our approach to the nexus between citizenship, beauty politics and the state, highlighting how embodied aesthetics constitute a central dimension of state-subject relations. We propose 'aesthetic citizenship' to describe embodied aesthetics as a biopolitical field of self-making and a site of disciplining, educating and manufacturing 'proper' citizens through visual and sometimes surgical technologies of surveillance and recognition. In this introduction, we analyse how norms of bodily appearance are related to and shaped by state-led processes of citizenship, first in relation to ideas of nationhood and representation, and secondly in relation to what could be termed the biopolitics of beauty and aesthetic governance. Foregrounding affective, multisensorial and embodied aesthetics, this introduction probes a crucial, yet often overlooked lens with which to zoom in on the dynamics between state images and practices in their interrelatedness and as they are embedded in everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]