Abstract: Following the Utopian tradition characterized by the interaction between aesthetic autonomy and aesthetic criticism, many Western scholars have critical attitudes towards art's border crossings and therefore are pessimistic about the trend of aesthetics. Rancière, through reflections on Lyotard and the whole postmodern "ethical turn" that he represents, tries to activate the political potential within border crossings of art and thereby reconstructs aesthetics' critical dimensions. However, due to the confusion of the "unpresentable" and the "unrepresentable", Rancière does not sympathetically see Lyotard's sublime aesthetics' direction; his route of aesthetic politics also has some limitations. Both his insights and limitations as manifested in Rancière's "critique of Lyotard" help us not only to rethink the relationship between aesthetics and art's border crossings, but also to reflect on the legitimacy and borders of aesthetic criticism.

Key words: art's border Crossings, politics of aesthetics, Jacques Rancière, Jean-Francois Lyotard, the unpresentable