Vitalistic Aesthetics: From Deleuze to Rancière

Abstract

Abstract: Deleuze and Rancière's project of representational criticism redefines artistic autonomy in the context of vitalism, reflecting on the connection between popular artistic autonomy and representation, and replacing organic poetics with life poetics. Deleuze introduces the concepts of “Life” and “becoming,” arguing that works of autonomy are blocs of pure sensation. Literary creation liberates the virtual from its actualizations and assumes a validity of its own, leading to a fundamentally new type of narration. Rancière builds upon Deleuze's thoughts on vitalism, but questions Deleuze's approach of proposing a metaphysics of literature against representational poetics and transferring the self-regulation of works of art to self-regulation of life within the aesthetic regime. He points out that the structure of modern novel is a dissensual figure that superimposes different blocs of sensations, and the modernist poetics of life is a contradictory poetics where in sensations coexist.

Key words: autonomy of art, representation/anti-representation, pure sensation, aesthetic regime of art, dissensual figure

Zheng Haiting. Vitalistic Aesthetics: From Deleuze to Rancière[J]. Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art, 2023, 43(6): 183-192.

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