Introduction

This chapter presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book proposes studies of such a dialectic process, examining how systems of aesthetics that are imposed can trigger critiques, which in their turn may become part of official discourse. It does so not with the intention of denouncing or unmasking aesthetics of demagogic, dangerously seductive power or praising aesthetics as protest with a potential of emancipation. Starting with the tensions and ties between the highly regulatory forms of state aesthetics oriented to the production or display of power and practices of dissent or protest, this book ends with a new approach to everyday experiences. In this way, aesthetics can constitute a healthy mechanism within democratic systems, enabling citizens to forge new social meanings of justice or to revise notions of public good or political behaviour, giving rise to the coexistence of plural, even contradictory and opposing systems of aesthetics.