Contemporary Aesthetics (Jan 2008)
"The People Are Missing"
Abstract
It is through the ideal of a sensus communis that Aesthetics has offered to Philosophy an articulation to Politics. I will question the idea of an "aesthetic sociability" through the concept of "régime esthétique" (aesthetic regime) proposed by Jacques Rancière to define the 18th century fundamental change carried by Aesthetics in order to think art and sensibility together. One question will be the central core of my essay, which is how to understand nowadays Deleuze’s assertion that art should be "contributing to the invention of a people." Consensus and dissensus are two reefs between which art and philosophy navigate at sight, two sources of attraction of which probably none should be favoured.
