Towards a Productive Aesthetics
Contemporary and Historical Interventions in Blake and Brecht
2022
First Published
248
Number of Pages
Part of Series
In Towards a Productive Contemporary and Historical Interventions in Blake and Brecht, Keith O'Regan mobilises a constellative approach to compare the political-aesthetic strategies of William Blake (1757-1827) and Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956). O'Regan traces two similar trajectories in each author's an exploration of how capitalist domination defines conjunctures, and an investigation of how historical figures, themes, and terrains illustrate past failures or losses that can be cleaved open for radical possibilities in the present. Brecht and Blake posit an "oppositional aesthetics of the now" that articulates a theory of experience under capitalism, while counter-posing an oppositional form of existence.
