{"id":677,"date":"2015-05-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/?p=677"},"modified":"2018-09-13T15:01:04","modified_gmt":"2018-09-13T19:01:04","slug":"diaby-kant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/2015\/05\/01\/diaby-kant\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: ‘Red Kant: Aesthetics, Marxism, and the Third Critique’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u00a9<\/a>
\u00a9 Bloomsbury Academic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MICHAEL WAYNE.<\/strong>
\n Red Kant: Aesthetics, Marxism, and the Third Critique<\/em>.
\nLondon: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. <\/strong>240 pp.<\/strong>
\n$112<\/strong>
\n9781472511348.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Screen media scholar Michael Wayne\u2019s new book, Red Kant: Aesthetics, Marxism, and the Third Critique<\/em>, offers a cogent and valiant defense of the necessity for sophisticated thinking about aesthetics in our contemporary moment. As with Wayne\u2019s previous work, particularly on cinema and media, Red Kant<\/em> focuses on the relationship between Marxist social theory and contemporary aesthetics. But unlike his earlier books\u2014Political Film: the Dialectics of Third Cinema\u00a0<\/em>(London; Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2001),\u00a0Marxism and Media Studies: Key Concepts and Contemporary Trends <\/em>(London; Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2003), and Marx\u2019s Das Kapital for Beginners<\/em> (Hanover, NH: For Beginners, 2012)\u2014Red Kant<\/em> extends Wayne\u2019s range into eighteenth-century philosophy and its influence on subsequent Marxian thinkers.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In this new book, Wayne illustrates how a turn to Kantian aesthetics \u201c[in] the twilight of reason\u201d can provide novel means of understanding today\u2019s troubled socio-economic landscape (1). While the ever-expanding category of \u201cthe aesthetic\u201d has enjoyed a critical resurgence in the last two decades \u2013 especially in regards to its political potential \u2013 much of the discussion has focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the work of Isobel Armstrong and Jacque Ranci\u00e8re are influential examples of this trend. [1]<\/a> Both Armstrong and Ranci\u00e8re consider the political and socio-cultural dimensions of aesthetics, the same connection Red Kant<\/em> attempts to elucidate. Michael Wayne however, reasserts the importance of the eighteenth century in the history of philosophical aesthetics, and forges a link between Immanuel Kant\u2019s oeuvre and contemporary aesthetics and politics. As scholars of the Frankfurt school have influentially maintained, Kant is often assumed to shy away or even deny \u201cthe material\u201d and \u201cthe political\u201d in his aesthetic theory. [2]<\/a> Wayne, on the other hand, affirms the third Critique<\/em>\u2019s social situatedness and tackles some of Kant\u2019s most \u201cidealistic\u201d concepts with a historical materialist framework, believing them to be \u201canticipations of what would later become key concepts in Marxism\u201d (8). Most of the chapters are concerned with either these Kantian\/Marxist connections (e.g. \u201cKant\u2019s First Critique <\/em>and the Problem of Reification\u201d) or with Marxist explications of Kantian philosophy (\u201cIn the Laboratory of Kant\u2019s Aesthetic\u201d).<\/p>\n

While ranging in their degrees of persuasiveness, Wayne\u2019s analyses of beauty, the sublime, and Kant\u2019s philosophical system as a whole offer important contributions to this rich field of inquiry. The book\u2019s large intellectual ambit ensures that Red Kant<\/em> will be a useful text in many fields. Literary theorists, for example, may find an engaging political take on metaphor in the chapter titled \u201cOn Marxism and Metaphor.\u201d Additionally, scholars of art history may be able to contextualize present day activist art within the history of philosophical aesthetics. Moreover, almost every chapter features a helpful pr\u00e9cis of the contemporary critical discourse concerning the aesthetic, disclosing the conceptual relationship among a variety of contemporary thinkers including Kojin Karatani, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Lyotard, and Steven Shaviro. There are, however, a few factors that cause his argument to appear detrimentally overdetermined. One is Wayne\u2019s ostensible expectation of the word \u201cbourgeois\u201d to do a lot more conceptual work than it can. It may refer to a specific historical formation of the eighteenth, nineteenth, or twentieth century, and at other times it operates as either a pejorative or only descriptively as \u201cnon-Marxist.\u201d Assuming this term possesses a self-evident definition may not detract from the book\u2019s argument, but it can lead to confusions that may lessen that argument\u2019s persuasiveness.<\/p>\n

Another issue is Wayne\u2019s apparent presupposition that Kant\u2019s Critique of the Power of Judgment <\/em>limits its scope to aesthetic <\/em>judgment. In Wayne\u2019s reading, \u201cThe Critique of Judgment<\/em> investigates the principles by which we can respond in the register of the aesthetic to the world\u201d (8). While Kant does concern himself with \u201cthe register of the aesthetic\u201d in the Critique<\/em>\u2019s first part, the text culminates in a discourse on the human capacity for teleological judgment in the face of mechanical nature. For Kant, the aesthetic poses an immensely important problem to solve on his way to finish his critical project, but it is not the culmination of the system. To contend that the third Critique <\/em>foreruns key Marxist concepts through its aesthetic<\/em> principles overplays the role of \u201caesthetics\u201d in the book itself. Kant\u2019s ultimate conclusions about nature, theology, and autonomy may be much harder to reconcile with Marxism than his aesthetics.<\/p>\n

Regardless, these minor criticisms do not detract from Wayne\u2019s project of disclosing, through Kant, the relevance of the aesthetic for a critique of global capital and its injustices. By noting the thorny and often self-contradictory nature of the third Critique <\/em>(and Kant\u2019s philosophical system as a whole), Wayne uses its structural aporias to make a compelling case for the political potential of Kantian aesthetics. This book therefore offers a valuable resource on the relationship between Kant\u2019s philosophy and Marxist critical theory. Red Kant<\/em> reaffirms the radical political power of the aesthetic; and Wayne\u2019s reading of Kant goes a long way towards repairing this \u201cbourgeois\u201d and \u201cidealist\u201d philosopher\u2019s reputation. Such a project has been, I think, long overdue.<\/p>\n

Bakary Diaby<\/h3>\n

____________________<\/span><\/p>\n

Endnotes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>[1] Isobel Armstrong, The Radical Aesthetic<\/em> (Oxford, UK; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000<\/span>). Armstrong indeed contends with the reception of Kantian and Hegelian ideas, but her actual \u201caesthetic\u201d examples are from the nineteenth century and beyond. Further, part of her project is to re-evaluate the \u201cnineteenth century idealist aesthetic\u201d \u201cexposed\u201d by anti-aesthetic criticism and theory. For Ranci\u00e8re, see major works on literature focusing on Flaubert and Mallarm\u00e9, written and published throughout his \u201caesthetic turn.\u201d Jacques Ranci\u00e8re, La parole muette: essai sur les contradictions de la litt\u00e9rature<\/em> (Paris: Hachette litte\u0301ratures, 1998) and Politique de la litt\u00e9rature <\/em>(Paris: Galile\u0301e, 2007). See also Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art<\/em> (London; New York: Verso Books, 2013<\/span>) where only one scene (out of fourteen) occurs in the eighteenth century.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[2] For extended background on this trend (and where Wayne got the title of his book), see: Robert Kaufman, \u201cRed Kant, or The Persistence of the Third \u2018Critique\u2019 in Adorno and Jameson,\u201d Critical Inquiry<\/em>, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Summer 2000): 682-724.<\/p>\n

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MICHAEL WAYNE. Red Kant: Aesthetics, Marxism, and the Third Critique. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. 240 pp. $112 9781472511348. Screen media scholar Michael Wayne\u2019s new book, Red Kant: Aesthetics, Marxism, and the Third Critique, offers a cogent and valiant defense of the necessity for sophisticated thinking about aesthetics in our contemporary moment. As with Wayne\u2019s previous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":926,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions\/926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}