Everyday aesthetics and Jacques Rancière: reconfiguring the common field of aesthetics and politics

Aesthetics has been a matter of politics and not only of philosophy from the very beginning. Its subversive power has for a long time been explored mostly in the context of artworks. However, it is only quite recently that the discourse of everyday aesthetics has been reaffirming the potential of aesthetics to affect the perception of the sensible. By indicating the ways that enable to redistribute the sensible, everyday aesthetics engages in going beyond the insurmountable divide between the sensuous and the intelligible, once established by Plato. The article intends to provide a theoretical basis for thinking the potential of everyday aesthetics in a political perspective. By questioning the nature of this redistribution in the Rancière’s thinking and indicating its possible configurations and applications in the present world, we intend to explore more extensively its implications for the discourse of everydays aesthetics. Is everyday aesthetics increasingly adopting a thoroughly nonmetaphysical and rather pragmatist attitude towards the ever-changing reality? Is the distribution of the sensible just another way to think the Platonic divide between the sensuous and the intelligible and their constant conflict in our experience? Is the potential of the politics to redistribute the sensible given in the emerging realm of everyday aesthetics. By exploring the connexion between politics and aesthetics, the article demonstrates the potential of Rancière’s theory for launching new explorations in the field of everyday aesthetics