Aesthetico-Political

This study uses new arguments to reinvestigate the relation between aesthetics and politics in the contemporary debates on democratic theory and radical democracy. <br/><br/>First Carl Schmitt and Claude Lefort help delineate the contours of an aesthetico-political understanding of democracy which is developed further by studying Merleau-Ponty Rancière and Arendt. <br/><br/>The ideas of Merleau-Ponty serve to establish a general ontological framework that aims to contest the dominant currents in contemporary democratic theory. It is argued that Merleau-Ponty Arendt and Rancière share a general understanding of the political as the contingently contested spaces and times of appearances. However the articulation of their thought leads to reconsider and explore under-theorized as well as controversial dimensions of their work.<br/><br/>This search for new connections between the political and the aesthetic thought of Arendt and Merleau-Ponty on one hand and the current widespread interest in Rancière's aesthetic politics on the other make this book a unique study that will appeal to anyone who is interested in political theory and contemporary continental philosophy.