This volume brings together new essays from distinguished scholars in a variety of disciplines--philosophy, history, literary studies, art history--to explore various ways in which aesthetics, politics and the arts interact with one another. Together the essays demonstrate the need to counteract the reductionist view of the relationship between politics and the arts that prevails in different ways in both philosophy and critical theory. They suggest that the irreducibility of the aesthetic must prompt us to reconceive the political as it relates to human cultural activity.

This book brings together a distinguished group of scholars from music, drama, poetry, performance art, criticism, religion, classics, and philosophy to investigate the complex and developing interaction between performance and authenticity in the arts. The subjects discussed include the experiences of religious and aesthetic authenticity, the performance of music, the link of authority and sincerity and truth in poetry, and the dark side of performance--its constant susceptibility to inauthenticity. Together the essays suggest how issues of performance and authenticity enter into...