This paper analyzes six different ways of articulating the relationship between art and politics. It calls attention to the differences that lurk behind the seemingly simple phrase—everywhere in vogue today—the “politics of aesthetics.” Five of these models are drawn from contemporary discussions regarding the politics of art. The last model is the attempt to develop an account of the politics of aesthetics that is faithful to the diffcult and ambiguous dimensions of the aesthetic experience that were hinted at by the texts of classical philosophical aesthetics. Most notably, this paper is concerned with the idea that the aesthetic experience can be understood as a form of disinterested contemplation—one that is not reducible to cognitive or moral considerations—and with some of the consequences that this entails. It explores some of the political signifcance that can be attributed to this idea of disinterested contemplation, arguing that the aesthetic should be understood as a withdrawal from the world’s pre-established meanings. Unlike some of the other thinkers discussed in this paper, this author doubts that a single, uniform meaning can be ascribed to the aesthetic experience. I thus argue that we need to approach the aesthetic through the networks of textual signifcance that have been built up around it. Throughout this paper, I attempt to explain how the efforts to link art and aesthetics to politics simultaneously give rise to ideas about the nature of the human community. In looking at the sixth and fnal model, what I have called the “anarchical politics of aesthetic ambiguity,” I argue that the aesthetic tradition offers a rather unique way of understanding the relationship between the individual and the community. Here, we see that the aesthetic is prone to a number of paradoxes, central among them the one that makes art the bearer of a solipsistic pleasure in which we nevertheless discover our capacity for genuinely communicating with others, outside of clichés and banalities.

1913년부터 1916년의 기간 동안 예이츠와 파운드는 영국 서섹스의 애 쉬다운 포리스트에 소재한 조그만 카티지에서 함께 겨울을 보냈다. 이른바 “스톤 카티 지 영혼의 워크샵”이라고 명명할 수 있는 이 문학적 공동작업은 모더니즘 운동의 효 시가 되었다. 그들의 문학적 공동작업의 결과 평온한 달의 부드러운 침묵의 산문집 과 해골의 꿈이라는 극이 탄생하였다. 전자는 1925년판 비전의 초판이전에 등장 한 예이츠의 시학의 가장 체계적인 이론서라 할 수 있고, 1917년 판 해골의 꿈은 일본의 니시키기와 같은 노극을 본격적인 모델로 하여 탄생한 것이다. 두 작품 다 예 이츠의 극이론과 시론의 이면에 자리잡은 열린 영혼의 시학의 미학적 선언문을 제시 하고 있다. 니시키기와 모토메주까 등의 노극을 모델로 예이츠는 그의 후기 극에서 “죽은 자의 환몽”의 극적 재현을 창안하게 된 것이다.