The Autonomy of Art and Contemporary French Philosophy

Abstract

Philosophy is often criticized for being metadiscursive in its relation to art, determining its truth from the outside. Today it is self-evident that art must be accorded the immanence of its truth and its autonomy from every metadiscourse, although opposite this bare assertion there exist various ways in which we also conceive of this autonomy and immanence positively. Reproaching usurpation, partiality, externality, and reduction to particular treatments of art is possible only on the basis of the presumed perfection, wholeness, and self-equality of art itself. Contemporary French philosophy (this article primarily deals with Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière) offers other bases for conceptualizing immanence. It understands immanence as a non-whole, as generating an overabundance beyond itself. We can therefore understand the treatment of art as faithful to immanence in that it takes as its point of departure this overabundance that excludes itself from the wholeness of a work of art and cognitive categories, alongside which thought must be reshaped in order to encompass this overabundance. In this sense, a certain externality and partiality in our position regarding a work of art not only cannot be dispensed with, but is what enables the revelation of its immanence and the visualization of its infinitude.