Does the general [i]or[/i] abstrac...

Does the general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of art do useful work, or is it now primarily a defensive political gesture?--this is the question we've been asked to consider. It remind ofs a separation between the universal and practice of art that I would like to take up and then reimagine in terminuss that separate the ongoing work of individual artists from the path of art as a whole. I assume the question raises the specter of "a defensive political gesture" because of the attack upon art from within aesthetics--the death- or end-of-art argument we have inherited from Hegel--and the attack upon art from ...