Why Only Art Can Save Us: Aesthetics and the Absence of Emergency

by Santiago Zabala

The state of emergency, according to thinkers such as Carl Schmidt, Walter Benjamin, and Giorgio Agamben, is at the heart of any theory of politics. But today the problem is not the crises that we do confront, which are often used by governments to legitimize themselves, but the ones that political realism stops us from recognizing as emergencies, from widespread surveillance to climate change to the systemic shocks of neoliberalism. We need a way of disrupting the existing order that can energize radical democratic action rather than reinforcing the status quo. In this provocative book, Santiago Zabala declares that in an age where the greatest emergency is the absence of emergency, only contemporary art’s capacity to alter reality can save us.

Why Only Art Can Save Us advances a new aesthetics centered on the nature of the emergency that characterizes the twenty-first century. Zabala draws on Martin Heidegger’s distinction between works of art that rescue us from emergency and those that are rescuers into emergency. The former are a means of cultural politics, conservers of the status quo that conceal emergencies; the latter are disruptive events that thrust us into emergencies. Building on Arthur Danto, Jacques Rancière, and Gianni Vattimo, who made aesthetics more responsive to contemporary art, Zabala argues that works of art are not simply a means of elevating consumerism or contemplating beauty but are points of departure to change the world. Radical artists create works that disclose and demand active intervention in ongoing crises. Interpreting works of art that aim to propel us into absent emergencies, Zabala shows how art’s ability to create new realities is fundamental to the politics of radical democracy in the state of emergency that is the present.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics, Essays

216 pages, Hardcover

Published September 5, 2017

About the author

Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is the author of The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy: A Study of Ernst Tugendhat (Columbia, 2008); The Remains of Being: Hermeneutic Ontology After Metaphysics (Columbia, 2009); and (with Gianni Vattimo) Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx (Columbia, 2011), and the editor of several of Vattimo's books, including Nihilism and Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, and Law (2004); The Future of Religion (2005, with Richard Rorty); and Art's Claim to Truth (2008). He also writes opinion articles for publications including the New York Times, Al Jazeera, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Reviews

[Joel Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

// “we will never bring about the changes so urgently needed until our vision is transformed in ways that not only allow but actually require us to act differently. the hour is late — so late that perhaps only an artist can save us now.”

A synthesis of Heidegger, late-Danto and Ranciere — with a tiny bit of submerged Sloterdijk.

Part of an ongoing shift in contemporary art making practices and aesthetics (as the political practice of interpretation and meaning making) away from universalist notions of beauty and truth rooted in the object, piece or performance — and toward existential and social experiences and encounters that challenge us to imagine new ways of living and being with others and in the world.

[Biggus Dickkus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foot note တွေ တအားများတော့ ဖတ်ရတာ သက်တောင့် သက်သာ တော့မရှိလှဘူး
သောမတ်စ်မန်း ပြောတဲ့ "everything is politics" ဆိုတဲ့ aphorism အတိုင်း art ဆိုတာလည်း metaphysics,aesthetics အစရှိတဲ့ နယ်ပယ်မှာ confined ဖြစ်မနေဘဲ deterritorialization သဘောသဘာဝ ရှိတယ် ဆိုတာကို ပြထားတယ်
စာအုပ်ရဲ့ main theme ကတော့ ဟိုက်ဒေးဂါးရဲ့ "absence of emergency"ဆိုတာကို ယူထားတယ်
ကနေ့ နိုင်ငံတကာမှာ ကြုံတွေ့နေရတဲ့ နိုင်ငံရေးအကြပ်အတည်း၊ သဘာဝ ပတ်ဝန်းကျင်ဆိုင်ရာ အကြပ်အတည်း၊ အထိန်းအကွပ်မရှိတဲ့ လွတ်လပ်သော ဈေးကွက်စီးပွါးရေး အရင်းရှင်စနစ်ကြောင့် ဖြစ်ပေါ်လာရတဲ့ စီးပွါးရေးပျက်ကပ် အစရှိသဖြင့် အရေးပေါ်အခြေအနေတွေကို လျစ်လျူ ရှုထား(absence of emergency)ခြင်းကို art အားဖြင့် (intersubjective experience)လှုပ်နိုး လိုက်ခြင်းဖြစ်တယ်
art ဆိုတဲ့နေရာမှာလည်း ဘူဇွာလူတန်းစားရဲ့ ဈေးကွက် (indifferent art) demand ကို ဖောက်ထွက်ပြီး art ရဲ့ hermeneutics ဖြစ်မှုအားဖြင့် သာ status quo ကို ကျော်လွန်နိုင်မှာဖြစ်တယ်။ ဒါကြောင့် art ဆိုတာဟာ metaphysical tradition နဲ့ asthetics ရဲ့ ဘောင်(contemplation)မှာ ပိတ်မိမနေတော့ဘဲ ontological/existential(interpretation) pragmatic ဖြစ်မှု သဘောသဘာဝဆောင်လာတယ်။
ယနေ့ postmodern ခေတ်မှာတော့ art ရဲ့ လှပခြင်း(asthetic value)ဆိုတာထက် ဘယ်လို အရာကို art လို့ ခေါ်နိုင်မလဲ ဆိုတာကို သာ အလေးထား ဆုံးဖြတ်ပါတော့တယ်