Articles

Abstract

Art and politics have been related in opposing ways. It is only with the setting free of social and interpretative norms, with the emergence of quasi-democratic conditions, and with Romanticism that the possibility of individual subjectivity emerged creating social participation through dissent, triggering ideals of freedom and progress, rendering art and cultural expressions critical of the status quo, of authority and of normative codes. All other forms of authority and police, which also include religion, have been political in using culture as promotion for the status quo. In this paper I will try to expose the theatrical quality of contemporary art, claiming that theatre since its very conception in antiquity has had an emancipating and communal aspect and that, as claimed by Jacques Ranciere, the politics of aesthetics depends on the juxtaposition of the active and the passive, on distancing and on initiating action. I will then try to show with examples from theatre, from contemporary and modern art, and from the urban quotidian and urban spectacle how the theatrical aspect is what creates the ultimately political.