Why does art exist? If the real is rational, as Hegel maintains, then we should be able to provide an objective account for the production of particular works of art in particular moments. The very existence of the aesthetic as an identifiable realm means that it provides us with a unique kind of knowledge or mode of apprehension, one that is unavailable through other social practices. To put it differently: that art is autonomous–that it provides the criteria for its own meaning–is entailed by its very existence: If its meaning or goal is elsewhere, it isn’t art.

Allegory is one possible route into the mode of knowledge unique to art. This route was taken up by Fredric Jameson, who revised previous considerations of allegory–most notably those of Walter Benjamin and Paul De Man–to posit it as a mode of knowledge that allows us to perceive totality through the particulars of late postmodernity.  For Jameson, Allegory is uniquely adapted to that task under late capitalism through its positing of four incommensurable narrative registers (the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical), which allows art to juxtapose the heterogeneous, seemingly disconnected realities into which individual lives are inserted. 

This seminar seeks to interrogate Jamesonian allegory, articulating its strength but also entertaining objections to it. For example, does contemporary art, irrespective of global context, affirm or challenge Jameson’s assertion that all art today is allegorical?  Or, do today’s contexts (economic, political, or cultural) require that we revise Jameson’s famous (or infamous) argument about the epistemological advantage of national allegory in the periphery of capitalism, compared to the cultures of the capitalist core? Or, in a more philosophical vein, does allegory affirm or violate the autonomy of art, given that for Jameson, for example, historical situations are also structured allegorically? And finally, what is the relationship of allegory to politics? Does the allegorical work of art articulate a utopian impulse distinct from existing political positions? Or does allegory remain trapped within what’s articulable in politics in general?

We invite papers on topics such as:

Allegory and aesthetic theory

National allegory in the periphery of capitalism

Nationalism and allegory

Allegory’s politics and the politics of allegory

Artistic autonomy and allegory

Capitalism and allegory

Allegory and figurations of collectivity