(In)aesthetic Theory

This book is a reckoning with the radicalisation of modernist aesthetics that took hold in the mid twentieth century. Through Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory and Alain Badiou's later theory of inaesthetics, it explores art's constant and evolving resistance to the probing of philosophy. When modernist attitudes helped to elude the traditional meanings, techniques and disciplines by which art was understood, they also challenged contemporary thinkers to devise new sensibilities and ways of thinking about art - an opportunity that both Adorno and Badiou took. Considering aesthetic modernism first from Adorno's perspective and then from Badiou's, this comparative, critical reading draws on both thinkers' most influential positions on aesthetic experience. In combination, those ideas argue for the existence of something beyond the regulations and categories that used to define artistic thought. For both of these seminal aesthetic philosophers, modernism helped art to perform one of its essential functions and reshape how we think about reality.