Art, Agency and the Continued Assault on Authorship

Art, Agency and the Continued Assault on Authorship presents a counter-history to the relentless critique of the humanist subject and authorial agency that has taken place over the past fifty years.

It is both an interrogation of that critique and the tracing of an alternative narrative from Romanticism to the twenty-first century, celebrating the agency of the artist as a powerful contribution to the wellbeing of the community. This narrative is developed through arguments based on philosophical aesthetics and cultural theory, interspersed with case histories of particular artists.

Furthermore, the book engages with a second issue that cannot be separated from the first: the question of what the role and purpose of art is in society. This question has become particularly important since the 1990s because of the "social turn" in art, which claims that the only valid role for art is one with explicit social consequences. Art, Agency and the Continued Assault on Authorship argues that a political role for art is valuable, but not the only one that can be envisaged, nor is it the most obvious or important. Art also serves other social roles, such as engendering empathy and community, and re-enchanting a world bereft of meaning and reduced to material values.

The book will appeal to practising artists as well as scholars working in art history, philosophy, aesthetics, and curatorial studies.