Introduction: Emancipatory technique, the Avant-Garde and 'Alter-Realism'

Charnley, Kim (2023). Introduction: Emancipatory technique, the Avant-Garde and 'Alter-Realism'. In: Roberts, John ed. Art and Emancipation. Historical Materialism (301). Leiden - Boston: Brill, pp. 1–22.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004686878_002

Abstract

This text is the introduction to the book 'Art and Emancipation', a collection of essays by art theorist and cultural philosopher Professor John Roberts.

The text gives an account of Roberts' understanding of the relationship between art and emancipation. It explores Roberts' writings since the turn of the millennium, focusing on the account these writings give of the relationship between the avant-garde, realism and modernism. Roberts has argued consistently for the avant-garde to be understood as a 'research programme', which through its artistic product, produces a distinctive kind of reflective knowledge of the contradictions that shape subjective experience within capitalist society. The text explores this claims and situates it (1) within wider the resurgence of Marxist art theoretical debates since the turn of the millennium and (2) within a longer history of Marxist aesthetics, and its attempts to account for the emancipatory role of art in capitalist society.

John Roberts is a noted art theorist with an international profile and this introduction is one of the first to reflect on the place of his work in Marxist art theory.

Plain Language Summary

This is the introduction to the book 'Art and Emancipation', a collection of essays by art theorist and cultural philosopher Professor John Roberts. It explores how the idea 'emancipation' ought to be understood in Roberts' art theory and philosophy.

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