This collection of essays by leading figures within French, Italian and German art, offers a snapshot of current debates about the relationship of politics to contemporary art. Contemporary art is increasingly part of a wider network of cultural practices, related through a common set of references in cultural theory. Within Europe, relations between national theoretical traditions have become more fluid and dynamic, generating an increasingly transnational space of European cultural and art theory.

This book offers a snapshot of recent influential work in contemporary art and political theory in the form of original writings by major representatives of each of the three overlapping national traditions. In France, debates centre on the status and possibilities of the image. Éric Alliez, Georges Didi-Huberman, Elisabeth Lebovici and Jacques Rancière, each adopt a competing approach to the making, undoing and remaking of aesthetic images in contemporary art and their political significance. From Italy, Antonio Negri, Maurrizio Lazzarato, Judith Revel and Franco Berardi each address the ‘immaterial’ situation of contemporary art in a distinctive way. From Germany, Peter Sloterdijk, Peter Weibel and Boris Groys reassess the contemporary legacy of post-war art, demonstrating distinctive appropriations of vitalism, structuralism and deconstruction, respectively.

Peter Osborne is Professor of Modern European Philosophy and Director of the Centre for research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, London, and (since 1983) an editor of the journal Radical Philosophy. Éric Alliez is Professor of Contemporary French Philosophy in the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Middlesex University, London, and a founding editor of the French journal Multitudes.

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