In suggesting a definition of militant art, Alain Badiou proposes: “[a] militant vision of artistic creation is when an art – a work of art – is a part of something which is not reducible to an artistic determination.”1 Badiou’s point is that militant art involves an alignment with other forces, other processes, that cannot be safely contained within the sphere of art. Militant art must necessarily find its way within a more complex political field. It demands an alignment – a commitment – to specific political projects. It would seem to me that this notion of an art that eludes entirely autonomous aesthetic determination can be applied more generally. All manner of forms of contemporary art open up relations to other discursive fields, other modes of action – evident, for instance, in engagement with the everyday or forms of social activism. This suggests, for me, that art obtains a major part of its contemporary relevance in this risking of boundaries, this summoning of awkward, other relationships, this grafting into the flesh of non-aesthetic experience.
- Badiou, A. (2010) “Does the Notion of Activist Art still have a Meaning?”: http://www.lacan.com/thesymptom/?page_id=1580, accessed 31/10/2012. ↩