Two Opposed Models of Approaching the Relationship between Art and Society and the Proposal of “Social-Aesthetic Constructs” as a Possibility of Mediation

摘要

The objective of this article is to investigate two opposed models of approaching the relationship between art and society. The first one—that of Jacques Rancière—stresses the idea of aesthetic autonomy as a result of a historical process that began with Kant’s style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:12px;">Critique of Judgement style="font-family:Verdana;">, reaching its most developed form in contemporaneity, and the second model, represented here by Richard Shusterman (inspired by John Dewey pragmatist aesthetics), focuses on the deep roots that artistic phenomena have in society and culminates with his analysis of the hip hop culture. Taking into account as well their respectively fruitfulness as some of their limitations and inspired by Theodor style="font-family:"font-size:10pt;background-color:#00FF00;"> style="font-family:Verdana;">Adorno, I propose the concept of “social-aesthetic construct”, which is meant to be a mediation between the aforementioned opposed models.