Theory as a place

• Autores: Adrian Rifkin
• Localización: Art bulletin, ISSN 0004-3079, Vol. 78, Nº 2, 1996, págs. 210-212
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Part of a symposium providing a range of critical perspectives on rethinking the art historical canon. The writer discusses the place of theory in art history. He argues that the value of theory is to renounce control over the redefining of the art historical canon and to do this through a politics and an ethics of a radical displacement rather than to assert the supremacy of theory-as-such. He contends that theory provides a site for such a consideration, concluding that theory should be seen as a key to nothing, as a utopian figure for the possibility of noninstrumental thought, as a way of renouncing control, and as an escape from the ambitions of art historians' episteme as from their professional vanity.