{"id":276625,"date":"2026-06-08T13:28:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T18:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/residence-numerique\/esthetique-et-politique-peut-on-sauver-la-pedagogie\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T08:24:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T13:24:53","slug":"aesthetics-and-politics-can-pedagogy-be-saved","status":"publish","type":"residence-numerique","link":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/digital-residencies\/aesthetics-and-politics-can-pedagogy-be-saved\/","title":{"rendered":"Aesthetics and Politics: Can Pedagogy Be Saved?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In this essay, written as part of his digital residency in collaboration with \u00c9rudit, the author analyzes contemporary forms of the politicization of art in the early 21st century. He examines how the relationships between art, criticism, and political engagement are articulated today, particularly through a critique of the concept of the \u201caesthetic regime\u201d as formulated by Jacques Ranci\u00e8re.<\/strong>
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When Esse published its issue on democracy in 2018, I was just beginning to work on my doctoral dissertation on the contemporary issues of politicizing art.1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - Louis Boulet, \u201cEnjeux politiques des expositions photographiques contemporaines en France: une \u00e9tude du Jeu de Paume (2004\u20132020),\u201d PhD dissertation, Universit\u00e9 du Qu\u00e9bec \u00e0 Montr\u00e9al, 2025, accessible online<\/a>.<\/span>  I was very interested in the issue, therefore, and was particularly struck by Konstantinos Koutras\u2019s article.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Konstantinos Koutras, \u201cDemocratic Art,\u201d Esse 92 (Winter 2018): 14\u201318, accessible online<\/a>.<\/span>  Here, I would like to return to contemporary forms of politicizing art and images in the early twenty-first century\u2014a period during which, as Koutras emphasizes from the outset, there was a renewed interest in political art.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
In this essay, I focus on regimes of contemporary political engagement, especially in Qu\u00e9bec, in a body of work that spans the first two decades of the twenty-first century. As Koutras suggests in his article, I pay particular attention to the unique resonances of the French philosopher Jacques Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s ideas in the archives made available by Esse<\/em> and \u00c9rudit, and especially to the politicizing art regime that he advocates and that I will call the poetical regime. I will review the issues specific to this regime, which in general hinges on politicizing the art form itself, and then show its limitations and possible ways of surpassing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Over the years, Ranci\u00e8re has developed a particularly dense and cohesive reflection on art and politics whose influence is well established. According to the young researcher Umut Ungan, writing in the magazine Espace<\/em>, he embodies the \u201cphilosophical endorsement\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Umut Ungan, \u201cPratiques du dissensus: notes sur l\u2019esth\u00e9tique conflictuelle,\u201d Espace<\/em> 125 (Spring\u2013Summer 2020): 15, accessible online<\/a> (our translation); see Oliver Marchart, Conflictual Aesthetics: Artistic Activism and the Public Sphere<\/em> (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2019), 13\u201314.<\/span> of the implicit ideology widely shared in the art world today. This ideology exists to varying degrees in the body of work that I examine, whether or not it is explicitly associated with Ranci\u00e8re, and I can summarize it broadly in three points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, this regime is radically, and at times virulently, opposed to modernist politicization\u2014that is, \u201can explicitly political art.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Ungan, \u201cPratiques du dissensus,\u201d 15 (our translation).<\/span> This idea comes up in the work of the French philosopher Marie-Jos\u00e9 Mondzain, who, for example, describes photojournalism as \u201cobscene\u201d and denounces \u201cthe ambition to show everything,\u201d which would be \u201cdismally [trivial].\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Michaela Fiserova, \u201cImage, sujet, pouvoir: entretien avec Marie-Jos\u00e9 Mondzain,\u201d Sens public<\/em> (2008): 17, accessible online<\/a> (our translation).<\/span> Similarly, in issue 51 of Esse<\/em>, Aline Caillet criticizes the artistic social engagement, the certitudes, and the overbearing character of the avant-garde.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This rejection of modernist certainty leads to the second characteristic of the regime: a rejection of pedagogy, which Ranci\u00e8re often expresses through the metaphor of the \u201cstraight line\u201d and identifies with \u201cthe logic of the stultifying pedagogue, the logic of straight, uniform transmission.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, The Emancipated Spectator<\/em>, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2009), 14.<\/span> A trace of this is found in the writing of Caillet, who denounces the avant-garde\u2019s naive belief in the \u201cinstant translatability between aesthetic experience and political action.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Aline Caillet, \u201cFigures de l\u2019engagement, esth\u00e9tique de la r\u00e9sistance,\u201d Esse<\/em> 51 (Spring\u2013Summer 2004): accessible online<\/a> (our translation).<\/span> Such criticism of the pedagogy of art is Koutras\u2019s main argument; he asserts, in a manner in keeping with Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s writing, that pedagogical logic ends up perpetuating the inequality it is trying to abolish: \u201cTo the extent that it traffics in pedagogy, then, critical art is opposed to democracy.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Koutras, \u201cDemocratic Art,\u201d 16.<\/span> This rejection of critical art is based on a radical idea of democracy developed as an \u201cequality of intelligence\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Ranci\u00e8re, The Emancipated Spectator<\/em>, 1.<\/span> and a denunciation, recurrent in Ranci\u00e8re, of the link between cause and effect, intention and reception. In Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s view, \u201cdemocracy in literature\u201d corresponds to \u201cthe equality of all subject matter,\u201d to \u201cthe negation of any relationship of necessity between a determined form and a determined content.\u201d10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible<\/em>, trans. Gabriel Rockhill (London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004), 14.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This logically leads us to the third salient point of the poetical regime: the apologia for disconnection, which Caillet sums up as the capacity to \u201cproduce new arrangements\u201d11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Caillet, \u201cFigures de l\u2019engagement\u201d (our translation).<\/span> that can allow critical perception. Koutras also reaffirms that \u201cother configurations of the sensible \u2026 are possible\u201d and establishes Marcel Duchamp\u2019s Fountain<\/em> (1917) as the emblem of truly democratic art in that \u201cit throws some of the very categories that constitute social reality \u2026 into question. It suspends the rules according to which we assign roles and identify spaces.\u201d12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - Koutras, \u201cDemocratic Art,\u201d 17.<\/span> For her part, Mondzain defends the idea that the image itself constitutes an excess, as it eludes power and discourse; through its polysemy, the image allows whoever looks at it to have freedom. Following this logic, Sophie Ristelhueber\u2019s work is given as an example, insofar as it makes one understand the situation in Iraq and Palestine without showing it. In radical contrast to photojournalism, the image can therefore plunge the gaze into crisis: \u201cThere is no knowledge in the image \u2026 For [Mondzain] this is its power and political destiny.\u201d13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 13 <\/a> - Fiserova, \u201cImage, sujet, pouvoir,\u201d 3, 5 (our translation).<\/span> These three authors express positions that, despite their differences, reflect a common regime in which art is the activity that can break through social conformity by establishing symbolic constructions that differ from daily life: \u201cArt\u2019s true politics resides in its complexity, obliqueness, and remoteness from any political practice in the strict sense.\u201d14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 14 <\/a> - Oliver Marchart, Conflictual Aesthetics: Artistic Activism and the Public Sphere<\/em> (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2019), 12.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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These positions are surprising, if not paradoxical. Indeed, the poetical regime discredits socially engaged practices at the same time as it describes those that are farthest away from it as political: \u201cThe common feeling of the art field is that art is truly political only when it is not.\u201d15<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 15 <\/a> - Ungan, \u201cPratiques du dissensus,\u201d 15 (our translation).<\/span> Similarly, the politicization of the works that I have briefly mentioned here is based on a rejection of representation, as Caillet makes explicit: \u201cDescribing does not mean fighting against, representing does not mean capturing, denouncing does not mean resisting, shouting at each other does not mean interacting.\u201d16<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 16 <\/a> - Caillet, \u201cFigures de l\u2019engagement\u201d (our translation).<\/span> In socially engaged art, which usually relies on representation and denunciation, even the aim of the engagement is altered: the point is to attain symbolic change, not \u201cconcrete political action.\u201d17<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 17 <\/a> - Ibid. (our translation).<\/span> This reasoning has its limitations, however, such as its radical criticism of any teaching process, which it systematically conflates with propagandist subjugation. This is the criticism that Mondzain takes up with the idea of an instrumentalization, a mastery of the image that no longer allows viewers to \u201cconstruct what it\u2019s supposed to mean\u201d18<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 18 <\/a> - Fiserova, \u201cImage, sujet, pouvoir,\u201d 17 (our translation).<\/span> for themselves. The fusion of education and propaganda is best expressed by Koutras when he denounces art that tells \u201cthe spectator what to do and how to think\u201d and whose authors base themselves on \u201cthe dogmas of official policy.\u201d19<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 19 <\/a> - Koutras, \u201cDemocratic Art,\u201d 17.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This argument, however, poses serious problems. First of all, a paradox haunts Koutras\u2019s essay, as well as Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s writing: How can one consider pedagogy as something that subjugates, that constantly reproduces the gap between knowledge and ignorance, when one is oneself writing a book to explain it, sometimes in an eminently overbearing manner?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Can one then assume that a straight transmission is possible and acceptable? Furthermore, we might ask what type of methodology would be able to determine whether or not an image is propagandist. For all that, pushing this regime to the limits of its logic leads to shocking conclusions: pedagogy becomes incompatible with democracy, as Koutras claims. Above all, can we so vehemently denounce photojournalism, which Mondzain deems \u201cdoing things any which way,\u201d20<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 20 <\/a> - Fiserova, \u201cImage, sujet, pouvoir,\u201d 17 (our translation). The situation in Palestine comes to mind, but unfortunately, the situation is global.<\/span> when reporters are subject to extremely serious threats and when their democratic role seems more important than ever? The selection of artists defended by these authors as emblematic of political engagement can, moreover, be contested: must we really believe that Duchamp\u2019s work has had more impact than that of any other critical artist? Given the work of artists who are deeply engaged in the social struggles of their time, the choice of Fountain<\/em> as a model of political art looks like a provocation.21<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 21 <\/a> - I\u2019m thinking, for example, of Paolo Cirio\u2019s work on state surveillance, for which he was persecuted. See Jean-Paul Fourmentraux, \u201cLa sous-veillance, Paolo Cirio,\u201d Techniques & Culture<\/em> 74 (October 2020): 148\u201349, accessible online<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lastly, the analysis22<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 22 <\/a> - Koutras, \u201cDemocratic Art,\u201d 17.<\/span> with which Koutras concludes his article seems problematic to me: he regards Banksy\u2019s work Balloon Debate<\/em> (2005) as political \u201cbecause it refuses to make a claim over the spectator one way or another.\u201d In addition, as the work was stencilled on the segregationist wall built by Israel in the West Bank, Koutras emphasizes the contrast between \u201csuch a politicized space\u201d and \u201cits ultimate retreat from pedagogy.\u201d True, the work is not didactic or propagandistic in any way, but it is difficult to make its \u201cinsufficient and ineffective\u201d quality the main, or even sole, criterion of its politicization: its location in the exact place of one of the most brutal contemporary conflicts, at the very site where civilians are being subjected to extreme violence, seems to politicize the work more rather than to disconnect it from pedagogy. This disconnection, moreover, needs to be seen in context, as it seems highly unlikely that the image was randomly chosen: it poignantly evokes the situation of Palestinians who are literally locked up in an open-air prison, which today has become the site of real genocide; the girl suspended by balloons therefore represents the impossible desire to escape this seemingly inextricable situation and the terrible toll paid by Palestinian children in the massacre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\"Banksy_balloongirl\"
Banksy<\/strong>
Balloon Debate, <\/em>Palestine, 2005.
Photo: courtesy of Pest Control Office<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
Although Koutras, in agreement with the poetical politicization regime, stresses the fact that Banksy\u2019s work \u201cabdicates any such responsibilities,\u201d it seems far more relevant to me to return to another politicizing regime that takes into account what the images represent or illustrate and that, by drawing on  Sartre\u2019s thinking on the subject, emphasizes responsibility instead. For Sartre\u2014who, in contrast to the positions outlined above, believes that to speak means to act\u2014this responsibility is situated on the sides of both emission and reception: the \u201cresponsibility of the writer\u201d is \u201cto take a stand\u201d23<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 23 <\/a> - Jean-Paul Sartre, Situations, II: litt\u00e9rature et engagement<\/em> (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 13, 16 (our translation).<\/span> and that of the reader is \u201cto collaborate in the production of his work.\u201d24<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 24 <\/a> - Jean-Paul Sartre, What Is Literature?<\/em>, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949), 46.<\/span> In contrast to the absolute freedom evoked by Mondzain to see whatever we want in the image, Sartre insists on its moral value, the political responsibility that it implies: far from being a \u201clicence to do whatever we want,\u201d it is a \u201ccurse.\u201d25<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 25 <\/a> - Sartre, Situations, II<\/em>, 26, 28 (our translation).<\/span> This point seems particularly important today in considering what images represent or illustrate, and it makes me think of the return of documentary work in the 2010s, a return in which Caillet26<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 26 <\/a> - Aline Caillet and Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Pouillaude (eds.), Un art documentaire: enjeux esth\u00e9tiques, politiques et \u00e9thiques<\/em> (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2017).<\/span> participated. This brief reflection leads me to support the position taken by Ungan and Oliver Marchart, who, based on an indiscernibility between artistic and political spheres that Ranci\u00e8re perhaps would not repudiate, defend a \u201crenewed commitment to adversity through conflict\u201d and \u201cthe dissemination of a project that opposes the one led by the dominant powers.\u201d27<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 27 <\/a> - Ungan, \u201cPratiques du dissensus,\u201d 18 (our translation).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Translated by Oana Avasilichioaei<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Links to the articles cited: Konstantinos Koutras<\/a> Umut Ungan<\/a> Marie-Jos\u00e9 Mondzain<\/a> Aline Caillet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":276621,"template":"","categories":[1398,7063],"numeros":[],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[954],"artistes":[2154],"thematiques":[],"type_residence-numerique":[],"class_list":["post-276625","residence-numerique","type-residence-numerique","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acces-libre-en","category-digital-residency","auteurs-louis-boulet-en","artistes-banksy-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/residence-numerique\/276625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/residence-numerique"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/residence-numerique"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276625"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=276625"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=276625"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=276625"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=276625"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=276625"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=276625"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=276625"},{"taxonomy":"type_residence-numerique","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_residence-numerique?post=276625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}