Aesthetics and ideology: communicational perspectives

Abstract

The “ideology” notion has been decontextualized from its critical function to be employed as a discrediting maneuver that disregards debate. This article posits ideological analysis within the basic idea of a critical theory to point out the problems inherent to its dependency to the modern subjectivity paradigm. After
discussing two attempts to preserve some form of ideological analysis by means of
a reconsideration of the aesthetical, we claim the pertinence of a communicational
interpretation of the critic, ideology and aesthetics notions, which refers them to its founding and normative dimension in the very constitution of the self and its community.