From Art to Politics: challenging representation

• GELAPE, Lucas; FEITAL, Thiago Álvares. From Art to Politics: challenging representation. Human Rights, Rule of Law and the Contemporary Social Challenges in Complex Societies: Proceedings of the XXVI World Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Belo Horizonte: Initia Via, 2015. p. 2211–2232.

Abstract:

The 20th-century witnessed two convergent movements. The first assumed the form of an aestheticization of the politics and the second of a politicization of the art. Paradoxically, still nowadays the common sense propagates a romantic vision of the artwork, in which art assumes the character of an instance in between the transcendental and the humane. Isolated from the world, the artist, herald of the sublime, would see its works advance according to the inspiration and endowment, notions so naïve as dangerous. Separated from the art by a deep and seemingly unfathomable cleavage, and bound to the materiality of the world, it is found the field of politics. Looking back to the tension which delineated the Modernism throughout its history (during the period of the 1930s to the 1980s, approximately), it is found and increasingly close relation between State and Art first, and big companies and art institutions later. The relevance of the problems offered by the Modernism derives partially from the manner that they were placed. Definitely, the 20th-century art went beyond the geometric space of the art galleries, and its inevitable result ricocheted on the politics of representation, and the political representation. Whether through the reorganization of artworks in a permanent exhibition room, or the recapture of issues related to minority rights, or the search for new ways to exercise political participation, the task of what has been conventionally called postmodern leaves a challenge for law, arts and politics. In the field of politics, from Nadia Urbinati’s three perspectives on Representative Democracy, the political representation faces challenges similar to those faced by post-modernism. After the collapse of juridical and institutional perspectives, the representation, this “operative term within a political process that seeks to extend visibility […] [to] political subjects […]”, in the words of Judith Butler, is questioned under the sieve of the deconstruction of the subject; the constant tension between emancipation and regulation, proposed by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, sets thetone of the contemporary law, crossed by organized movements with different ideologies, that fight (or bargain) their rights in the stage of civil society. The questions which Modernism proposed itself on the 20th-century are still without answers. Those are the political questions that the 21st-century is trying to respond. Between arts and politics, where is the emplacement of representation in the contemporary world?