Jacob’s research explores the historical transformation of the relation between art and critique. Art’s critical potential has been recognized ever since the Enlightenment but has been understood in different ways. For the Enlightenment philosophers, art was an “organon of reconciliation” (Jay). Modernist art, on the other hand, consisted of “practices of negation” (Clark), which the “neo-avant-garde” of the 1960s, 70s, and 80s sought to recuperate (Bürger). With the activist practices of the new millennium art seems to have come full circle, returning to its original mission by aiming to prefigure or effect social reconciliation. Jacob’s research intervenes in the debates sparked by the “social turn” by offering an historical context that is often lacking, thereby enabling a firmer grasp of the emancipatory stakes that are at the heart of the debate.
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