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Art as Political Discourse
Open accessAbstract
Much art is committed to political causes. However, does art contribute something unique to political discourse, or does it merely reflect the insights of political science and political philosophy? Here I argue for indispensability of art to political discourse by building on the debate about artistic cognitivism, the view that art is a source of knowledge. Different artforms, I suggest, make available specific epistemic resources, which allow audiences to overcome epistemic obstacles that obtain in a given ideological situation. My goal is to offer a general model for identifying cognitive advantages for artworks belonging to distinct artforms and genres (e.g. satire, visibility-raising artworks, caricatures, and so on), in a way that can account for each artwork’s historical and cultural specificity. More speculatively, however, my account also comments on the ancient struggle between philosophy and the arts as competing modes of persuasion, and expands our notion of legitimate political discourse to include a greater plurality of discursive genres.
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“Second, art has been used for political commentary, becoming a materialization of existing social critique and also a presenter of new visions for the future.”
From AI and Non-Western Art Worlds: Reimagining Critical AI Futures through Artistic Inquiry and Situated Dialogue (2025) · cites this paper as [102]
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“Even art that is not explicitly political still contains ‘propositional knowledge’ i.e. statements about how the world is, or how it ought to be [102].”
From AI and Non-Western Art Worlds: Reimagining Critical AI Futures through Artistic Inquiry and Situated Dialogue (2025) · cites this paper as [102]
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe source backs part of the claim, not all of it — or backs it for a different population, condition or comparison.
In the citing paper
“Art thus is not just a space for aesthetics or a place for technology to change but is a site of asking “critical questions about the world” [102].”
From AI and Non-Western Art Worlds: Reimagining Critical AI Futures through Artistic Inquiry and Situated Dialogue (2025) · cites this paper as [102]
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In the citing paper
“Art can persuade, encourage critical thinking, provide thought experiments.”
From AI and Non-Western Art Worlds: Reimagining Critical AI Futures through Artistic Inquiry and Situated Dialogue (2025) · cites this paper as [102]
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Cites
Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing
Fricker, M. (2007) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198237907.001.0001 · Cited by 9,198
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Cited by
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Qadri, R., Mirowski, P., & Denton, R. (2025) · Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3706598.3714049 · Cited by 12
“Even art that is not explicitly political still contains ‘propositional knowledge’ i.e. statements about how the world is, or how it ought to be [102].”
Metadata
- Authors
- Simoniti, V.
- Affiliations
- University of Liverpool (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Simoniti, Vid
- ORCID
- Simoniti, Vid
- Venue
- British Journal of Aesthetics
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2021-10-01
- Volume
- 61
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 559-574
- ISSN
- 0007-0904 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2842
- OpenAlex
- W3207976042
- Cited by
- 25
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 22.55
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- The British Journal of Aesthetics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Ethics, Aesthetics, and Art
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Visual Arts and Performing Arts › Art, Politics, and Modernism
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Critical Theory and Political Philosophy
- Keywords
- art and politics, political discourse, art as knowledge, satire, caricature, persuasion, art and philosophy, discursive genres, ideology
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