Althusser and Art examines the relationship between Althusser’s political theory and his writings on art.
Althusser and Art examines the relationship between Althusser’s political theory and his writings on art.
Aesthetics, Art & politics, Criticism
Althusser and Art offers a reading of Althusserianism as a meta-mediation on the question concerning the aesthetics of theory. Fardy shows that Althusserian theory is part of a larger genealogy of thought, stretching from Korsch through Laruelle, that has been primarily concerned with the search for a form of theory, an aesthetic of theorizing, capable of transcending the theory-practice dialectic.
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In this impressively concise book calling for a "return to Althusser" through the avenue of Althusserian aesthetics, Jonathan Fardy has accomplished nothing short of the twenty-first century equivalent of Althusser's own call for a "return to Marx" in the 1960s. Readers will certainly learn much from Fardy's demonstration of why encountering the aesthetic form of Althusser's approach to critical theory is necessary for understanding the Althusserian project tout court, but where Althusser and Art shines brightest is in its engagement with the heavy Althusserian influence on Pierre Macherey, Jacques Rancière, and Francois Laruelle. In short, Fardy pries open new ground in the continually deepening intersections of the aesthetic and the political, modelling in the process an eminently readable style of prose that should be the envy of all who write on critical theory today. ~ Christopher Langlois, author of Samuel Beckett and the Terror of Literature
