The Cosmopolitical Functions of Art and Theory
Aesthetic-Pedagogic Fictioning Devices
The Cosmopolitical Functions of Art and Theory
Aesthetic-Pedagogic Fictioning Devices
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Description
The Cosmopolitical Functions of Art and Theory proposes that contemporary artworks are devices that generate encounters with cosmopolitical problems and relations. To this end, the volume explores the ways in which artworks combine aesthetics (experimentation with presentation), pedagogy (constructivist modes of study) and fictioning (actualization of worlds or communities) to generate social, ontological and cosmological perspectives that offer alternatives to the legacies of modernism, globalisation and colonialism and the narratives of reactionary and technological futurisms.
Three sections–Worlds, Devices, Communities–structure the book's discussion of art and cosmopolitical themes that include: cosmopolitanism and cosmic orders, environmental politics and nonhuman agencies, the ontological turn in anthropology, the cosmologies of quantum mechanics, partiality and studies of blackness, and concepts of pluriversality. This study draws on the practices of a diverse group of artists including, John Akomfrah, Black Quantum Futurism, Filipa César, Libby Heaney, Lawrence Lek, Pauline Oliveros, Orphan Drift, Katrina Plamer, Lea Porsager, Patricia Reed, Rigo 23 and Larissa Sansour, which are placed in dialogue with the concepts of philosophers, geographers, scientists and anthropologists including Karen Barad, Gilles Châtelet, Stuart Hall, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, Yuk Hui, Elizabeth Povinelli, Milton Santos, Edward Soja, Eduardo Viverios de Castro and Sylvia Wynter.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface: Staying with the Trouble!
Introduction: Against Narrative Monopolies!
Part I: Worlds and Fault Lines
1. Real and Imaginary Spacetime
2. Earth Stories: Territories and Fault Lines
3. A World in which many Futures fit
Part II: Perspectival Machines and Fictioning Devices
4. Spacetime Perspectivist Devices
5. Hybrid and Quantum Perspectivist Devices
6. Ontological Fictioning Devices
Part III: (Non)Humanism and Cosmofictioning
7. Humans after Humanism: Cosmopolitics after Enlightenment Man
8. Not-In-Common Communities
9. Fictioning a Neo-Pagan Academy
References
Index
Product details
| Published | Oct 15 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 9781350476882 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 50 bw illus |
| Series | Alternative | Education |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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