On “the Ethical turn of Aesthetics and Politics”

On “the Ethical turn of Aesthetics and Politics”, Jacques Ranciere

The essay is starting with the definition of “ethical turn” which has crucial importance for the paper. As a summary ethical turn is, the crossing point of first; evaluating the judgments before the power of the law and radicality of that law that is stemming from other things. That is to say, indistinction between fact and law, and as a result dramaturgy between evil, justice and redemption. (p. 28) Actually I didn’t understand what are all these means exactly and I have asked my friend to read from French original and she also said she didn’t understand the meaning of this first definition. But later on the writer explains his point as some kind of suppression on moral division. Society somehow consists of moral divisions, politics, under the name of humanism, this divisions getting lost into some kind of consensus. This is what the writer calls ethical turn.

The second definition that is used in the book is the definition of “politics” as the division of violence, morality and right. What he means I think is the politics, is a struggle between two system of value systems, violences, morals. Therefore, what we call politics is not a distinction between two sides, but the opposition, the struggle of two different violences, or morals. The writer uses two movies to explain his concepts; Dogville(von Trier, 2002) and Mystic River (Eastwood, 2002). Dogville is a politic fable for the writer; it is a clash, a struggle of two different violences and morals. I will go far ; the situation of injustice, become politic because of the change in the value system of the protagonist. The violence gets divided differently. And this is exactly the reason why the movie was scandalous; it was offering a justice against injustice, which is totally contrary common sense of Cannes Jury.

The writer also criticizes humanism after giving the example of Antigone and Oedipus. Humanism is a way of suppressing the difference between guilty and innocent. The term infinite justice is taking the form of humanism that is erasing the divisions. Than the writer explains it through the movie Mystic River, which is a moral fable. There is no more guilty or innocent, things has reasons in the nature of being human. The difference between fact and the right has dissolved.

Than the writer explains this situation in the international level, which is disappearance of right itself. The right lost its meaning because of the existence of victimhood. If you are victim you have right to do everything. “It implies constitution of a right beyond all rights, the absolute right of the victim” as Ranciere stated. After the collapse of Soviets there was a optimistic expectation of international right based on human right but new ethnic conflicts existed immediately, human right become a weapon of governments on each other. In this point I have a critic about Dogville; it seems to me what the writer stating is not different than the example of Dogville. The victim was using this absolute right of the victims to put violence on. Therefore the movie Dogville is staying in the exact place that the writer stated in the international level of the ethical turn.
In the second chapter of the essay, Ranciere is searching for the effects of this ethical turn in art. The art yesterday was “a monument against the other”, however now, for art anonymous people are “specimens of humanity” that means there is no opposition between monuments. Before art was pointing out the contradictions, conflicts, exploitations; world was more heterogeneous. But now, art is much more in the place of archiving and “bearing the witness to a common world.”

In the first part of the article what Ranciere puts is a lot similar with the approach of Frankfurt School and later the post modern theory. If we recall the Baudrillard, in the world of simulations there exist no event. We can read this in the sense of Ranciere, as the distinction between oppositions doesnt exist anymore, but a consensus; a horizontal world of simularks. The difference between fact and right has lost its meaning as all other differences does in other ways. Also it seems to me the state of artist as bearing the witness can be generalized to all society. Now we are just witnessing to the world, in which all the solids are vaporising. There is a theater of consensus in every corner, which is changing its ingredients but covering more of our moral and political judgments. On the other hand Ranciere warns us cleverly: “the simplistic opposition of the modern and the postmodern prevents us from understanding the transformations of the present situation”, that I totally agree, Baudrilards theory of simulation doesnt have this concern at all.

Ozan Kamiloğlu