| This dissertation examines the critical role that expressions of judgment play in the everyday negotiation of social and political belonging. In the sociopolitical thought of Immanuel Kant, judgments of taste provided a way of asserting one's presence and contesting one's place in society, through a unique kind of claim for status as a judge embedded in those judgments. Through engagements with Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Ranciere, and others, I argue that Kant's theory of taste makes possible a radically egalitarian rethinking of some of the most foundational institutional boundary-markers of belonging - including state citizenship, social class, and national identity - by relocating the social bases for political membership. |
