Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

While his philosophical work on neoliberalism gains notoriety, Antonio Negri also poses important questions concerning the nature and meaning of contemporary art. His notions of multitude and immaterial labor found reflections, both in art theory and practice, on the activity of the artist and artistic production, and their position in today’s neoliberal society. However, Negri’s relation to traditional aesthetic concepts is largely absent from those discourses. Yet in ‘Art and Multitude’, questions about the Sublime in relation to contemporary art emerge. In his ‘Letter to Giorgio’ Negri explicitly proposes to reconsider the Sublime by placing Burke and Kant in the context of neoliberalism. As his considerations remain essayistic, I aim to accept Negri’s proposal and relate his questions to Burke’s and Kant’s accounts of the Sublime. Pertinent affinities as well as differences between the three authors’ accounts may be identified, allowing to further define Negri’s notion of the Sublime. The concept that comes forth appears as a key figure in Negri’s thinking about art, and one that solidifies the relation between his view on art and his political theory. In its relation to the omnipresence of immaterial labor, Negri’s Sublime proves to shift to from a reactive to an active notion. Thus reconsidered in relation to neoliberalism, the Sublime becomes firmly rooted in productive ontological praxis where it simultaneously appears to shift art beyond its objects and produce the concept of art as event.