Cosmopolitanism and the Creative Activism of Public Art

• Published in: The Journal of aesthetics and art criticism 2023-08, Vol.81 (2), p.213-227
• Main Author: Evans, Fred
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Activism; Cosmopolitanism; Creativity; Ontology; Political ethics; Public art
• ISSN: 0021-8529; 1540-6245
• DOI: 10.1093/jaac/kpad014

Abstract Cosmopolitanism seeks a political ethics of world togetherness and a political aesthetics that can contribute to this task critically and imaginatively. Regarding political ethics, I explore the world as a “cosmopolitan mind” composed of “dialogic voices” and threatened by neoliberalism, neofascism, and other nihilistic “oracles.” I also construct a criterion for determining which public artworks (1) resist oracles and (2) help us imagine a “cosmopolitan democracy” and its political ethics. The latter includes the concordance of three ethico-political virtues—solidarity, heterogeneity, and fecundity (creating new voices through the interplay among other voices)—and must appeal to different peoples worldwide. I also examine how this political ethics and aesthetics can be applied to nonhuman life and non-sentient formations in a non-anthropocentric manner; indeed, how the cosmos in its entirety and plurality can also be thought of as voices and participants in the cosmopolitan mind and its artistic expression. Moreover, I contend that my ontology of dialogic voices and proposed public art criterion, like the cosmopolitan mind itself, are “events” or “becomings.” This means that there can never be an articulation of the ontology that is final nor a public art criterion that could curtail the imaginative reach of art.