Manderson on From Aestheticizing Politics To Politicizing Art @ANU_Law

Desmond Manderson, ANU College of Law; ANU College of Arts and Social Science; McGill University Faculty of Law, is publishing Here and Now: From Aestheticizing Politics to Politicizing Art in Sensing the Nation's Law: Historical Inquiries into the Aesthetics of Democratic Legitimacy (Mark Antaki, Stefan Huygenbaert, Angela Condello and Sarah Marusek, eds., Springer, 2018) (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

The nation is not a national construction. It is mediated through representations and particularly through representations with a sensory component. Images therefore are primary means through which a collection identity is established. They serve to constitute myths of belonging; to distinguish friend from enemy, as Schmitt put it. They tell stories; they create models and examples that frame our social existence. But they also generate the icons and symbols whose repetition and familiarity - flags, monuments, even colour combinations - etch habits of feeling and mental associations deep into our psyche.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.