'Monumental Construction' Badiou and the Politics of Aesthetics

Alain Badiou offers a thinking of aesthetics geared to the invention of the new, against what he regards as the conformism of contemporary cultural production. His conception of a revived modernism, unafraid of 'monumental construction', challenges the modesty of many contemporary conceptions of art. Badiou remains faithful to the 'modernist moment', at the same time as arguing the need for a re-conceptualisation of the modern. This involves a singular historical periodisation and complicated negotiation with the 'negative' or 'destructive' impulses of modernism, which Badiou claims need to be surpassed by a new 'subtractive' orientation. While undeniably bold, such a re-conceptualisation encounters difficulties in its specification of the new against the background of a capitalism itself dominated by an ideology of production, creation and invention. This difficulty is signalled most prominently by Badiou's refusal to really identify any contemporary forms that would conform to his call for 'monumental construction'. © Third Text (2009).