Aesthetic Politics and Political Aesthetics: A Crucial Distinction

Abstract

Much has been written on the relation between aesthetics and politics since Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the aesthetization of politics. In fact, aesthetics has constituted an immensely powerful resource for political use throughout different historical periods in legitimizing regimes, denouncing injustice and persuading or intimidating the population. Yet few have noted that aesthetics and politics connect with each other through two radically different types of articulation: aesthetic politics and political aesthetics, an asymmetric correlation with various social implications. This paper analyses such asymmetry and argues for the necessity to distinguish political aesthetics as the aesthetization of politics to optimize propaganda’s impact, from aesthetic politics as the use of politics to impose a regime of a particular aesthetic ideal. We will examine both articulations, often treated indistinguishably, and highlight their contrasting and decisive social outcomes.