Aesthetic Community

This thesis takes the community thought of contemporary critical theory as the research topic,which focuses on the issue of aesthetic community in the field of contemporary aesthetics.There are five chapters which are biopolitics and the aesthetic dimension of community,the consensus and difference of aesthetic community,subjectivity and de-subjectivity,border and de-border and the criticism of aesthetic community.The research of aesthetic community takes biopolitics as its overall research approach.Through the return of micropolitics and perceptual field,Foucault's biopolitics thought generated different understandings of politics and aesthetics.Contemporary critical theorists reconstruct the connection between contemporary biopolitics and aesthetic community in the perceptual dimension of life experience,by rewriting and surpassing Foucault's study of biopower.Jacques Rancière converts Foucault's biopolitics thought to activate the analysis of the distribution mechanism of sense community,de-identification and heterogeneous perception through the discussion of politics and police.Based on the potential of perception,Giorgio Agamben,Antonio Negri,Micheal Hart,Roberto Esposito and others rethink the tensions between aesthetic perception,subjective experience and community of sense,and construct different biopolitical approaches of critical thoughts of aesthetic community.The ontological issue of aesthetic community is the relation of consensus and difference.Contemporary critical theories develop the deconstruction of the grand narrative,totality and identity within the early and post critical theories.While they does not completely deconstruct difference but build a paradigm of aesthetic community with common feelings and perception on the basis of respect for differences and heterogeneity.By subverting and transcending ontology's reflection on coexistence,they regard the issue of totality as a new kind of ontology and redefine the difference of aesthetic community with the concepts of “whatever singularity”,“the singular plural” and “singularity”.Agamben identifies non-essential difference that cannot be represented with “whatever singularity”.Esposito responds to universality and difference with “munus”.Negri and Hart regards difference as an important mechanism for generating the common and brings it productive potential.The subjectivity expressions of aesthetic community have multiple dimensions,such as perception,experience,language and feelings,constructing different types of desubjective paradigms in the multiple community.“De-identification” is the specific connotation of perceptual life within the aesthetic community.The ethical-aesthetic appeal of life runs through the contemporary critical theories by adhering to Foucault's de-subjective thinking of the art of governmentality in his later years.Rancière regards the part of those have no part as the real emancipatory subject of aesthetic community.Negri and Hart rethink the subject paradigm with production potential based on the perceptual systems of feelings,cognition and aesthetics,so as to form the aesthetic community by accommodating the “multitude”.Agamben uses pure potential as the trigger mechanism of perception,which the communicability of language and art is seen as the de-subjective concrete presentation.“De-identification” is the perceptual expression of the subject with potential of aesthetic community.It has neither returned to the elevated subjectivity during the modernity period,nor has it completely fallen into the post critical theory's comprehensive criticism and deconstruction of the subject.Based on the internal composition of aesthetic community for containing difference and de-subjectivity,its external existence trans.forms from border,entity,and stability to de-border,insubstantial and the fluidity.The crisis of identity and the dilemma of belonging are the core issues of aesthetic community's forms.Esposito presupposes the emergence of a insubstantial sensory community based on the negative characteristics of the immune system,which demonstrates the immune paradigm as a boundary mechanism.With regard to the logic of inclusion and exclusion of perception,Agamben activates his thinking on the boundaries of biopolitics with the refugees.Media,information and technology jointly participate in the construction of aesthetic community.The traditional community paradigm based on natural relations such as blood,clan,and geography is shaken,and a virtual aesthetic community based on fluid feelings and meanings is becoming.The aesthetic community center on sense and perceptual system to establish a new identity value system and extends many different expression paradigms.It also contains the possibility of transformation and dialogue into aesthetic utopias,heterotopia,cosmopolitanism and many other forms.Through the analysis of the aesthetic and perceptual dimensions of the community,contemporary critical theorists construct an aesthetic community paradigm based on containing differences,de-subjectivization,borderless,insubstantial and fluidity.This paradigm not only responses to the totality crisis after postmodern times,but strongly prompts the thinking of the relationship between contemporary aesthetics and politics.Contemporary critical theories manifest distinct characteristics of theory intervention and critical while its intervention is often reflected in the theoretical and philosophical levels.When facing specific issues in the reality contexts,the thoughts of aesthetic community have its limits.On the one hand,there is contradiction of conversion and difficulty in realizing when theories intervene reality;on the other hand,the theory itself has its irreversibility.