The art of democracy: constitutive power and the limits of dissensus

This article engages critically with the normative framing of socially engaged/collaborative art as a consensual/dissensual dichotomy, whereby consensual practices are equated with political abdication. This way of framing such practices gives rise to three significant problems: one concerns the passive positioning of viewers/participants relative to the authorial autonomy of the artwork; the second concerns an inadequate understanding of power; and the third is an apparent inability to think consensus and dissensus together as features of the same arena of practice. The article argues for a more open approach to studying the relationship between politics and aesthetics, thereby avoiding the trap of using artistic practices as illustrative cases in support of conclusions that have been reached before the analysis has even commenced.