Poetic-Political Encounters: The Aesthetics of Dissensus in 'Letters from the Street'

• In Event: Aesthetics, Storytelling, and Reason, and Justice in Contemporary Political Thought

Abstract

Sometimes referred to as the ‘aesthetic turn,’ an emergent critical arts-based disposition in international relations and the political sciences decisively reframes questions of representation and alterity, democratic futures and, more conceptually, ‘the political’ through analytical encounters with the performative arts, photography, film and cinema, and other textual practices in literature and poetry. The central thread of my research looks at how Jacques Ranciere’s concept of dissensus features in scenes where homeless people use textual, visual, oral and enactive registers to make critical claims, acknowledge injustices, and stage themselves as ‘activist citizens’ (Isin, 2009) in the world. Because it would be impossible to map the various ‘aesthetic surfaces’ of homeless people here, I want to evaluate one, more accessible example where we can articulate dissensus in effect: in cardboard signs that comprise a series of art installations curated by Dallas artist Willie Baronet and titled “We Are All Homeless.” This essay argues for an aesthetic approach that (i) identifies dissensual effects of written accounts - 'letters from the street' - that defy proper comprehension in official archives; (ii) maps out the traces of‘kynicism' in the content of their statements; and (3) centers the representation of a first-personal plural 'We' in an effort to rethink the politics of homeless people from a ‘radical cosmopolitical’ perspective.

Author

• Eric J. Adamo, McMaster University