Abstract
New aestheticism is a school of literary criticism that emerged in the early twenty-first century. Rather than simply returning to traditional aestheticism, it incorporates insights from multiple theoretical traditions. It critiques social-historical criticism and cultural studies in an effort to downplay the political dimension of literary criticism, instead emphasizing individualized experience and aesthetic pleasure. However, new aestheticism reveals significant theoretical biases and inherent paradoxes. It overlooks the sustained attention that social-historical criticism and cultural studies have devoted to aesthetic questions; it attributes the perceived decline of English studies to the utilitarian tendencies of criticism; and it seeks to free itself from ideological constraints in order to achieve “depoliticization” in critical practice. These contribute to the internal paradoxes of new aestheticism — the methods it advocates align with the underlying logic of neoliberalism, thereby functioning as an extension of consumerism and capitalist power discourse. Although the emergence of new aestheticism may be understood as an inevitable outcome of theoretical and historical development, it fails to clarify the relationship between politics and aesthetics. By contrast, Jacques Rancière illuminates the political potential inherent in the aesthetic configuration of the “distribution of the sensible,” offering a more productive perspective for understanding such relationship.
Keywords
biases, paradox, new aestheticism, politics of depoliticization
First Page
142
Last Page
151
Recommended Citation
Yuan, Fang. 2026. "Biases and Paradoxes: The Politics of New Aestheticism's Depoliticization." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 46, (1): pp.142-151. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol46/iss1/14
