From the rear jacket cover of the book: “In this book Christoph Menke attempts to explain art´s sovereign power over reason without falling into an error common to Adorno´s negative dialectics and Derrida´s deconstruction. The error, which appeared earlier in romanticism, is to conceive of the sovereignty of art as a reflection of the superiority of its knowledge. For art entails no knowledge, and its negativity toward reason cannot be articulated as an insight into the nature of reason: Art is sovereign not despite, but because of, its autonomy.”

During this Theory Tuesdays session we will be plunging directly into the 5th chapter of Menke´s book – the chapter titled: “Aesthetic Sovereignty”. Ideally, the ensuing discussion will try to at once outline core elements of Menke´s argument in relation to aesthetic sovereignty, Adorno, and Derrida, and also to “wrestle-out” the possible implications of these ideas with regards to both producing and viewing visual art today.