Aesthetic resistance: publicness, potentiality, and plexus

ABSTRACT

This paper explicates the concept of aesthetic resistance (AR) and its connection to sociopolitical change, drawing from resistance studies’ frameworks. Combining semi-structured and integrative reviews of literature on resistance in art and aesthetics across the humanities and social sciences, the paper performs a thematic analysis to identify patterns in AR’s definitions, modes and domains, attributes, and transformative variables. These are synthesized in terms of the evolving resistance studies’ frameworks and an understanding of aesthetics as relating to the sensorium, ultimately revealing three interlocking issues: (1) publicness, (2) potentiality, and (3) plexus. These AR-specific issues contribute to the categorization of resistance, its identification, and the tracing of its network en route to change.

KEYWORDS:

• Art
• aesthetics
• resistance
• aesthetic resistance
• sociopolitical change

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to this special issue’s editors, Mona Lilja and Mikael Baaz, for making this publication possible. I deeply thank two anonymous reviewers and the PoReSo research group for their careful reading and generous comments and suggestions regarding earlier versions of the manuscript. This work was funded by the European Union (ERC, THINGSTIGATE, 101041284). The views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I included literature that originated from non-English publication when a full text English version was accessible.

2. The library catalogs that I cross-searched were those of the University of Gothenburg, the University of Surrey, University College London, and Griffith University.

3. ‘Part of the problem with resistance,’ writes Germanist Linda Schulte-Sasse, ‘lies in the very glamour of the term’ (1998, p. 5). I elaborate Schulte-Sasse’s reflexive space as an AR form later in this paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council [101041284].

Notes on contributors

Tintin Wulia

Tintin Wulia is an artist and senior researcher at the HDK-Valand - Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Her interests include the complex power dynamics of societal and geopolitical borders as interfaces, which she engages with both pragmatically and conceptually. Since 2000 she has published in over 200 exhibitions/publications internationally, including in major exhibitions as early as the 2005 Istanbul Biennial, most recently the 2021 Chicago Architecture Biennale, and a solo pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Her text publication includes a chapter contribution to the award-winning edited volume Migrating Minds: Theories and Practices of Cultural Cosmopolitanism (New York: Routledge, 2022).