Monday, December 15, 2025
HomeBooksBooks: The Emancipated Spectator by Jacques Rancière

Books: The Emancipated Spectator by Jacques Rancière

The theorists of art and film commonly depict the modern audience as aesthetically and politically passive. In response, both artists and thinkers have sought to transform the spectator into an active agent and the spectacle into a communal performance.

In this follow-up to the acclaimed The Future of the Image, Rancière takes a radically different approach to this attempted emancipation. First asking exactly what we mean by political art or the politics of art, he goes on to look at what the tradition of critical art, and the desire to insert art into life, has achieved. Has the militant critique of the consumption of images and commodities become, ironically, a sad affirmation of its omnipotence?

Caden Manson (Editor In Chief)
Caden Manson (Editor In Chief)https://contemporaryperformance.com
Caden Manson is Editor In Chief and Curator of Contemporary Performance Network and co-founder and artistic director of Big Art Group, a New York City performance company founded in 1999.
RELATED ARTICLES

Sponsor

- Advertisment -spot_img

Most Popular