Another Aesthetics Is Possible: Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War

"Another Aesthetics is Possible argues that, because aesthetic practices can reconfigure how we perceive the world, they can participate in the multidimensional and collective labor of creating and defending another social reality. Drawing on over fifteen years of research, the volume shows how experimental artistic practices-including visual, literary, and performing arts-have been influenced by, and articulated with, left movements, popular uprisings, and social struggles that emerged in resistance to neoliberal capitalism. These include the Zapatista movement, urban social movements in Argentina, struggles against the criminalization and displacement of working-class communities in Los Angeles, and international movements against neoliberal "free trade" and U.S.-led imperialist militarism. By tracing out connections between these collective struggles and art practices that have emerged from them, Another Aesthetics is Possible brings to the fore the vitality and creativity of a contemporary cultural Left whose
Focusing on artists and art collectives in Argentina, Mexico, and the United States, Jennifer Ponce de León examines how experimental artistic practices in the visual, literary, and performing arts have been influenced by and articulated with leftist politics, popular uprisings, and social struggles that resist neoliberal capitalism.
In Another Aesthetics Is Possible Jennifer Ponce de León examines the roles that art can play in the collective labor of creating and defending another social reality. Focusing on artists and art collectives in Argentina, Mexico, and the United States, Ponce de León shows how experimental practices in the visual, literary, and performing arts have been influenced by and articulated with leftist movements and popular uprisings that have repudiated neoliberal capitalism and its violence. Whether enacting solidarity with Zapatista communities through an alternate reality game or using surrealist street theater to amplify the more radical strands of Argentina's human rights movement, these artists fuse their praxis with forms of political mobilization from direct-action tactics to economic resistance. Advancing an innovative transnational and transdisciplinary framework of analysis, Ponce de León proposes a materialist understanding of art and politics that brings to the fore the power of aesthetics to both compose and make visible a world beyond capitalism.