Dear Professor Lars,

Right now, my idea is to write a paper that focuses on the role of aesthetics in politics by drawing
on the new materialist and communist perspectives in contemporary democratic theory. In order to
streamline the focus of my project, I'd lie to narrow aesthetics down to the category of film and art,
with a slight digression into musical territory if time and space permit. !he thiners that I'll lie to
mae reference to in particular include Ranciere, "i#e, $assumi, Panagia and %adiou. !his list is
obviously pretty e&tensive, but I believe it will give me a broad base from which to ju&tapose the
communist and new materialist perspectives. I'll try to elaborate a bit more during tomorrow's class,
but as for now, I would appreciate it if you can give me an idea as to whether or not my essay falls
within the scope of the course. 'nd of course, any further guidance would definitely be welcome as
well. !hans(
)enlig *ilsen,
Daniel
+ote, %efore chopping down or attacing any perspective, should allow that perspective to shine
forth or be presented in the best possible light first. If not it's just polemics, not argumentation(
!he aim is to thin thereotically about social conditions.
Roadmap
- Introduction -. what is 'esthetics/ Definition and establishment of essay boundaries
Disarticulation in a new materialist way, compared with a revolutionary dissensus ind of way, plus
0irculation of images 10onnolley vs Dean2
D -. circulation more important than content
- 'elitist' and 'naive' belief in artistic disruptions

'rt and words are not reducible to one or the other, but only mae sense in relation to one another
- however, there is an underlying e&cess that contains some ind of revolutionary potential
Disarticulation without circulation is not interesting, and vice-versa
3udith %utler 4. redefining the frame of what we see
5&amples,
- 5&it through the gift shop
- !he 6ire
- !he Ring
- !he 7reatest $ovie 5ver 8old
'esthetics as a site of resistance and then focus on how they fuction as such
"i#e on 'esthetics and 'rchitecture,
- %y taing something away you literally create more 1more for less2. !he same logic abounds in the
consumerist realm, albeit in an inversion that be9ueaths less for more
- !he very renunciation of pleasure turns into the pleasure of renunciation. In the same way the
regulation of pleasure eventually turns into the pleasure of regulation
$assumi,
:!he second point of view is the creative, or aesthetic. 5&cept that the creative is not a point of
view. It is not a perspective on the game or on anything. It is amidst. ' dynamic midst. !he being of
the collective middle, belonging in becoming. Perspective is the sign of a separation from change. It
is a mar of codifying capture, a demarcation of the space of interruption. ' perspective is an anti-
event-space. 3ust as transcendence becomes a productive element of the mi& to immanence, the
anti-event space of perspective becomes a productive element of the event-space;.
Ranciere,
- Over the past several years, Rancieres work has gained currency among philosophers and art
theorists as a means of using aesthetics in the service of progressive politics. The two felds,
Ranciere claims, are inextricably bound, for the uestion of what society can see and hear is a
fundamentally political one. !nd that is not "ust a uestion of legislation#what is or is not
allowed$ but a sociological one also#what, in a given social context, can come into existence,
what are the limits of the seeable. %n making this argument, Ranciere shifts what we think of as
politics from the event itself to the conditions that allow it to happen. &'ower is not so much in
the spectacle itself,( Ranciere says, &as in the racket that it authori)es.(
'anagia*
+ %n Political Life, 'anagia, a professor at Trent ,niversity and a student of Rancieres,
investigates the political import of sensation, arguing that certain aesthetic experiences can
&break fresh ground( and alter how we perceive the world. -e takes as his starting point &the
radical democratic moment( in .ants Critique of Pure Judgment # the disarming aesthetic
experience that estranges us from our ability to determine whether something is formally
beautiful. !ccording to .ant, this is the transcendental moment in which we are overcome by
the immediacy of experience, and elevated to a plane of en"oyment beyond anything
uantifable. /hile these moments can take a variety of forms ++ listening to a street performer
rap or walking into a Romanesue cathedral are two examples ++ the afterimages are always
the same* a powerful sense of complete and unanticipated en"oyment. %n these moments, in
which art brie0y transforms our relationship to the world, 'anagia glimpses the possibility of
democracy # the event that disrupts hierarchies of knowledge and reinstates the fact that
before we are political animals, we are frst sensory beings.
Okay after reading some secondary literature % think % have a slightly clearer idea of 'anagia is
driving at. 1irstly. % agree with you 2imone, that 'anagia 3he completely separates
disarticulation4perception and meaning4reconfguration3. !nd % think there are two reasons
why he does that.
5. -e begins with an assumption that &the frst political act is also an aesthetic one, a
partitioning of sensation that divides the body and its organs of sense percep+tion and assigns
to them corresponding capacities for the making of sense3 61rom 'olitical 7ife of 2ensation8.
/ith this in mind, political re0ection becomes a matter of attending to the ways in which
individuals constitute themselves as sub"ect of perception.
2. In order to attend to the 'world of appearances', Panagia makes a distinction between RECOGNITION and
ADMISSION. Recognition alone, he says, is not enough because the encounter of appearances is also an event of
sensation, which disarticulate regimes of perception that establish identity. Panagia's solution therefore is admission -
where an appearance advenes upon us and we admit to it (PLS)
To address your question as to why Panagia "ignores the meaning-making capacities of words and the content of
images, in order to only focus on the technologies of images and our organs", I think the reason is because he wishes
to challenge the dominant NARRATOCRACY - the privileging of narrative as a genre for the exposition of claims and
ideas in contemporary political thought. Therefore, instead of making everything readable, Panagia focuses on
SENSATION and its disarticulation of subjectivity and perception, which to him comes before fguration and the
meaning-making capacities of words.
So for Panagia, democracy lies in the aesthetic experience, which (like Deleuze and Ranciere), celebrates immediacy,
indistinction and dissensus!
-i 2imon, sorry for the delay in getting back to you as % was busy over the weekend. /ith
regards your frst uestion, % think this is an excellent point and %9m actually struggling to
answer this. %t is indeed di:cult to fnd a democratic situation that does not involve
recognition in some form. !nd % think 'anagia is not advocating the completely disavowal of
recognition, but rather promoting the use of !;<%22%O= where we allow the aesthetic+political
event to advene upon >>>>>us and reconfgure our perceptual competencies in the process. !
possible example though is the 9pictures of the ?>>@ !bu Ahraib torture scandal9 that 'anagia
refers to at the end of his book, though % have to do a bit more research in this regard myself.
<aybe an email or two to 7ars might help as wellB
With regards to the second point, I understand where you are coming from with the post-structuralist critique, and I don't
think Panagia discounts the idea of disruption of taking place within the structures of something like language, although
I feel that he feels the need for an EXTERNAL STIMULUS, and that is where the aesthetic-political event comes in.
Panagia defnes politics as "when a relation of attachment or detachment is formed between heterological elements: it
is a part-taking in the activities of representation that renders perceptible what had previously been insensible", so the
idea is to frst PERCEIVE before MAKING SENSE, which would explain him downplaying linguistic games (a la
Wittgenstein) in favor of a politics of VISUALITY and SENSATION.
I'm not too familiar with Judith Butler's position sorry, but does seem to provide an interesting point of comparison with
Panagia.
And lastly, I'm not sure if Panagia makes Ranciere's concept of dissensus more radical than what it is, simply because
I'm having trouble fguring out how radical Ranciere would like the concept to be in the frst place haha! What I do think
is that Panagia seems to streamline Ranciere's ideas a bit by showing how the realm of the aesthetic actually provides
a medium and means for political dissensus. One diference between Panagia and Ranciere though might be the fact
that Ranciere continues to distinguish between the character of the dissensual movements created by politics and art.
The diference between politics and aesthetics lies in the character of the dissensual movements they create. The
aesthetic movement of politics "consists above all in the framing of a we, a subject of collective demonstration whose
emergence is the element that disrupts the distribution of social parts." (pp. 141-2) The political character of aesthetics,
by contrast, does not give a collective voice to the anonymous. Instead, it re-frames the world of common experience as
the world of a shared impersonal experience. In this way, it aids to help create the fabric of a common experience in
which new modes of constructing common objects and new possibilities of subjective enunciation may be developed.
(p. 142) https,<<ndpr.nd.edu<news<=>>?@-dissensus-on-politics-and-aesthetics<
Whew, that took awhile to type. Sorry if I haven't answered your questions fully but I've tried my best to do so with my
limited understanding of these philosophers. Looking forward to your reply, especially with regards to the diferences
between Panagia and Ranciere, as I think I will be focusing a lot on these two thinkers, along with Zizek of course.
Cheers!
&government has as its purpose not the
act of government itself, but the welfare of the population, the improvement
of its condition -. mirrors democracy -. sustained by its own discourse
,topian elements are introduced, without fantasy or wish fulfllment, into the construction of the fctive, yet utterly
realistic, events
On Panagia
Drawing significant inspiration from Ranciere's wor, Davide Panagia essentially builds on the wor of
his predecessor, aiming to e&plore a :new political subjectivity; wherein :unrepresentability; is no
longer simply a failure, obstacle or burdenA but rather a :condition for democratic e9uality; 1Panagia,
=??B2. 'ccordingly, he believes it is aesthetic imagery that gives life to modes of representation at the
core of political thought, whilst determining the limits of representation that set out the :conditions of
possibility for critical engagement; 1Panagia, =??B2.
Panagia begins with a primary assumption that :the Crst political act is also an aesthetic one, a
partitioning of sensation that divides the body and its organs of sense perception and assigns to them
corresponding capacities for the maing of senseD 1Panagia, =??E2. 6ith this in mind, political reflection
becomes a matter of attending to the ways in which individuals constitute themselves as subject of
perception. In order to attend to the :world of appearances;, Panagia maes a distinction between
:recognition; and :admission;. !he former alone, he says, is not enough because the encounter of
appearances is also an event of sensation, which disarticulate regimes of perception that establish
identity. Panagia's solution therefore is admission - where :an appearance advenes upon us and we
admit to it; 1Panagia, =??E2. 5ngaging potential sites of dislocation of subjectivity in popular culture
and the occasions of reconfiguration that such dislocations invite.
!he 'esthetic 5&perience
'ccording to Panagia, certain aesthetic e&periences can brea fresh ground and alter the way we
perceive the world.
%efore the breaing of ground, before imaginative acts of reconfiguration, there is the dissensus of
sensation that disrupts our confidence in the correspondence between perception and signification.
Is Panagia's project incomplete/
6hile we have sufficiently established how the The Wire aptly :presents that which is not visible yet
palpable in an appearance;, thereby allowing for a political appearance to advene upon viewers,
simultaneously forcing them to admit and deal with it. Fet the 9uestion still remains as to what sort of
:ethopoetic practice; can result from such an event of advenience. In other words, following admission,
what inds of responses can be stimulated by filmic politics to challenge the dominant narratocratic
mode/ 5vidently, Panagia's philosophical project is not merely a descriptive one. *owever, while
Panagia has done much to delineate the aesthetic and sensory components of political life, he does not
really answer the 9uestion about how these translate into concrete forms and fora of political partaing,
organisation, and action.