YorkSpace
York University's Institutional Repository
    • English
    • français
  • English 
    • English
    • français
  • Login
View Item 
  •   YorkSpace Home
  • Faculty of Graduate Studies
  • Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)
  • Social & Political Thought
  • View Item
  •   YorkSpace Home
  • Faculty of Graduate Studies
  • Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)
  • Social & Political Thought
  • View Item
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Towards a Productive Aesthetics: History and Now-Time in Blake and Brecht

Thumbnail
View/Open
O_Regan_Keith_A_2017_PhD.pdf (1.781Mb)
Date
2018-05-28
Author
O'Regan, Keith A.

Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
This thesis is a comparison of the theory and practice of aesthetic politics in key works of Bertolt Brecht and William Blake. I argue that there are two separate temporal moments that define Brechts and Blakes political aesthetics. The first moment is defined by a more direct engagement with the nowness and relative newness of their capitalist social world. Capitalist social relations bring out in each of the two a more directly engaging oppositional aesthetics. Given capitalisms desire to create a form of experience that not only makes sense for its subjects own subjugation, while while also attempting to negate any possible alterative to itself, Brecht and Blake develop a political aesthetics that exposes and undercuts these dominant forms of experience. Using Walter Benjamin, I argue that Brecht and Blake posit an oppositional aesthetics of the now which takes seriously capitalisms desires and successes in refashioning experience, but provides a means of both understanding this experience while counterposing and making desirable an oppositional form of existence. This political aesthetic response is grounded in contemporary social relations and responds using this as a framework of reference.
The second moment under discussion examines the role of history and historical representation in Brecht and Blake. The central focus is how Brecht and Blake continue the responsive project referenced in the first two chapters by making use of history in aesthetic-political interventions in the present. I argue that they engage historical tropes and use history against the grain in the Jetztzeit (Now-Time), as Benjamin notes. Both repurpose history as a means to produce historical recoveries, making failures or losses in the past open for radical productive possibilities in the present. In this way forms of inherited experience or preconceived truths are placed in a space of contestation. Historical representation is another opportunity to cleave open an oppositional aesthetics and unsettle that which capitalism wishes to make silent.
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10315/34486
Collections
  • Social & Political Thought

All items in the YorkSpace institutional repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved except where explicitly noted.

YorkU LogoContact Us | Send Feedback
Sitemap for search engines

 

Browse

All of YorkSpaceCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

My Account

LoginRegister

Statistics

View Usage Statistics

All items in the YorkSpace institutional repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved except where explicitly noted.

YorkU LogoContact Us | Send Feedback
Sitemap for search engines