Aesthetics, Affect, and Educational Politics

This essay explores aesthetics, affect, and educational politics through the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Ranciere. It contextualizes and contrasts the theoretical valences of their ethical and democratic projects through their shared critique of Kant. It then puts Ranciere's notion of dissensus to work by exploring it in relation to a social movement and hunger strike organized for educational justice in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood. This serves as a context for understanding how educational provisions are linked to the aesthetic distribution of perception within the neoliberal city. It also serves as a powerful example of how these orders of perception are resisted and subverted at the local level by aesthetic and affective means. Through the Little Village hunger strike the essay argues that while Ranciere allows us to recognize the aesthetic dimensions of the political, he falls short in addressing tactical and/or affective considerations. The essay concludes by seeking to extend the critical efficacy of Ranciere's dissensus through a rendering of tactical affect within Deleuzian metaphysics.