Justice as Pleasure: Fighting for a Beautiful World

• In Event: What Are the Aesthetics of Justice?

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the idea of justice as pleasure. Working on a different register than the Rawlsian language of justice as fairness, my claim is that an enhanced aesthetics of justice can help us cultivate a shared sense of wonder and pleasure that encourages us to imagine a future that not only is more just but promises new forms of joy, delight, and satisfaction. The paper begins by discussing the aesthetic appeal of an unjust world. In popular culture, an unjust society is often depicted with images of luxury, beauty, and lavish abundance for an elite few. By contrast, a more just world is often characterized by depictions of equality and a lack of ornamentation—through images of simplicity and sufficiency for all. An improved world is often suggested by absence (a world without guns, a world without war, a world without obscene disparities of wealth, a world without racism/sexism/homophobia). Environmental justice means becoming less consumer-oriented (more recycling, fewer and smaller cars, shorter showers, less air-conditioning, less stuff). But subjects who have seen growing disparities of wealth make their lives more precarious, where neoliberal policies of austerity have robbed them of public resources, need a vision that is about more than equality and the removal of the pleasures currently on offer. What will replace the pleasures we are being asked to relinquish? A just future can’t appear only correct or fair—it needs to sound beautiful, delicious, and exciting; to capture the popular imagination, it needs to be a vision of pleasure, wonder, and joy. Drawing on the work of Russ Castronovo, Jane Bennett, and Nikolas Kompridis, the paper turns to examples from our past and present to analyze three examples of justice as pleasure as enacted through the built environment: the Federal Art Project of the New Deal era, the Supertrees in Singapore’s Garden by the Bay that opened to the public in 2012, and the contemporary practice of urban agriculture, guerrilla gardening, and farmer’s markets.

Author

• Cristina Beltran, New York University