Karen Simecek: "Oppositional Aesthetics and Responding to Injustice in Art"

Karen Simecek, University of Warwick: "Oppositional Aesthetics and Responding to Injustice in Art"

Abstract
In a recent article, Daisy Dixon argues for artworks to act as counterspeech in order to respond to injustice found within art. In making her argument, she demonstrates the ways in which artworks can perform ‘illocutionary speech acts’ in a similar way to what we can do with words. As examples, she offers the Colston statue that commemorates Edward Colston (who is known for his role in the slave trade in the UK) and so can be said to perform the speech act of celebrating and commemorating. In her paper, she advocates for two strategies in responding to such immoral works of art in the form of spotlighting and blocking. In this paper, I wish to propose an alternative strategy, oppositional aesthetics, inspired by the work of bell hooks and her theory of the oppositional gaze. The strength of Dixon’s proposal is the metaphysical destruction of such immoral works (using the strategies she proposes, she argues, will neutralize the illocutionary force of the artwork thereby rendering it a different work). This might seem a reason to prefer Dixon’s strategies to oppositional aesthetics since the latter will not destroy the (target) immoral work. However, I will argue that the better strategy for responding to works that contribute to social injustice is to not engage with the perspective they offer but to offer an alternative that is free of the oppressive frameworks and perspectives that perpetuate such oppression