MA in Aesthetics and Politics

The School of Critical Studies at CalArts invites applications for a new Master’s Degree program in Aesthetics and Politics. This program embraces an approach that includes many perspectives to the different points at which the aesthetic and the political intersect. First, the MA focuses on what is normally understood as political art – i.e. art-making that chooses to become critical discourse in the public sphere. Second, the program addresses the reverse phenomenon – the famous “aestheticization of politics” that so troubled critical theorists during the twentieth century and that continues to invite further reflection. Finally, the program aims to become a pole of attraction for students, artists, and scholars interested in the type of theorizing – characteristic of continental thought – that contextualizes aesthetic and political phenomena within a dynamic space in which social meanings are generated, renewed and contested. Applicants interested in these fascinating crossroads and increasingly burgeoning fields of study will have the unique opportunity of enjoying the artistic environment and interdisciplinary dialogue offered by CalArts.

The MA is a one-year, full-time year program of study. It will be of particular interest to artists seeking to deepen the theoretical and political elements of their art, and to BA/BFA/MFA graduates who may be considering combining their artistic practice with a scholarly career.

Core courses in the MA in Aesthetics and Politics are taught by distinguished faculty from the School of Critical Studies; students may also take electives taught by faculty from the Schools of Art, Dance, Film/Video, Music and Theater.

Curriculum

A total of 30 credits is required for the completion of the degree. These include:

12 Core Course Credits
12 Elective Credits
3 Contemporary Critique Credits
3 Thesis Credits

Core Courses:

Contemporary Political Thought
Critical Discourse in the Arts
Contemporary Critical Theory
Thesis Workshop

The pool of Elective Courses will emphasize three fields of study:

Critical Theory (aesthetic theory, theories of language and discourse, social and political thought, feminist and cultural theory)
Global Societies and Politics (global, cultural and postcolonial studies, comparative politics, American studies)
Critical Discourse in the Arts and Media (social and political critique in the arts, criticism of and in new technologies and new media)

Contemporary Critique Lecture Series

Students will attend monthly lectures by prominent critics and theorists; these will take place at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in downtown Los Angeles –CalArts’ theater and gallery space located in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex.

Thesis

The MA thesis may assume a plurality of forms, from a traditional 15,000 word/50 page scholarly work to a series of investigative pieces on a relevant topic, a combination of three re-worked and articulated term papers, or a theoretically informed, comprehensive rationale for a work of art.

MA in Aesthetics and Politics: Course Descriptions

Core Courses:

Contemporary Political Thought (Martín Plot)
This course will outline some of the ways in which contemporary political thought has intertwined with aesthetic and cultural theories and thus show the potentially common ontological foundation of their fields of study. As a guiding example, we will start with Hannah Arendt, whose late, unfinished work concentrated on the political reading of Immanuel Kant’s theory of aesthetic judgment. We will thus first reconstruct Arendt’s interpretation of Kant’s aesthetics and then continue by articulating her late concepts with her earlier theory of action. The course will then move, first, to the disagreement between decisionist and deliberative theories and their implicit and explicit understanding of language, aesthetic critique, and political authority; and, second, to the debate between discourse-ethics and post-structuralism on the questions of agency, communication, and conflict. Readings in this second section will include Carl Schmitt, Jürgen Habermas, Jean Cohen, Andrew Arato, Ernesto Laclau, and Chantal Mouffe. During the third part of the semester we will focus on original ways of studying the convergence between the aesthetic and the political by engaging Alain Badiou, Claude Lefort, Judith Butler, and Jacques Rancière’s work.

Critical Discourse in the Arts (James Wiltgen)
In the current visually saturated world how do images function? In what ways do they create densely articulated assemblages with political and ontological impact? How has the poststructuralist critique of representation created new theoretical approaches, and in what ways can a critical reading of the visual be addressed and enhanced? These issues will provide the principle questions for the course, a template for interrogating the construction and interpretation of the image. Beginning with Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory and his analysis of the culture industry, the course will then examine Gilles Deleuze’s time-image and Jacques Rancière’s subsequent critique of Deleuze. This will be followed by Elizabeth Grosz’s analysis of Bergson, with an emphasis on his concept of the pure past and the image. Finally, the work of N. Katherine Hayles will be used to analyze the transition from the analogue to the digital and the implications for political, aesthetic, and ontological issues. The second element of the course will be to focus on the image in contemporary culture, principally through film, and to address the manner in which these images have political frisson: among the filmmakers addressed will be Oscar Micheaux, Stanley Kubrick, Wong Kar-Wai, Claire Denis, and Carlos Reygadas.

Contemporary Critical Theory (Sande Cohen)
This course is a graduate level introduction to some key issues where language is analyzed in relation to aesthetic and philosophical problems. Special emphasis is devoted to art and its discursive treatments-involving such basics as power, representation, and truth. Language is said to be the primary medium of representation, communication, and signification or exchange; it is, today, rivaled by art, which is said to enrich sensory or aesthetic experience. There is a contest between discourse and art. This course will examine their relations and discuss critical models of the dominant Western thinking about language and art. Readings during the semester will include authors such as Tzvetan Todorov, Gerard Genette, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Juila Kristeva, Paul de Man, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault.

Thesis Workshop (Nancy Wood)
This course will be devoted to developing and advancing final thesis projects through a workshop format. Over the course of the semester, each student will have opportunities to present work-in-progress for comment and feedback by the course instructor, the student's mentor and fellow students. The aim will be to produce a detailed thesis outline by the end of the semester.