Since the inception of the avant-garde, questions of the critical effectivity of art have been posed. Art has been variously thought to have revealed the truth about social life, enabled enlightenment concerning social relations, promoted new models of production, fallen into complicity with dominant reorganisations of the world or just failed. Is it conceivable, however, that there is something about art which resists being thought in these ways? This course will review these questions and others concerning the aims and ends of art so that the ways and means of the practice of art may be better comprehended and developed
