Aesthetic International Political Economy
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829816684256 |
| Date | 01 January 2017 |
| Author | Earl Gammon,Claes Belfrage |
| Published date | 01 January 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Forum: The Aesthetic Turn at 15 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829816684256
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2017, Vol. 45(2) 223 –232
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829816684256
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Aesthetic International
Political Economy
Claes Belfrage
University of Liverpool, UK
Earl Gammon
University of Sussex, UK
Keywords
aesthetics, affect, IPE, neoliberalism, financialisation
Introduction
Though aesthetics is commonly understood as the reflection on art, and especially beauty,
it is a broader concern, captured by the term’s etymology in the Greek ‘aisthesis’, refer-
ring to perception and sense impressions. Aesthetics, though, is not simply a passive
process, of how the outer world strikes the mind, but an interactive one, which, through
our selective attention, we attenuate the complexities of reality. Aesthetics is about the
formation of the objects that constitute our social milieu, those we invest in to give
rhythm, order and unity to our lives. Aesthetics is also, vitally, about the formation of the
self, about how we constitute ourselves as objects in relation to the world.
Within International Political Economy (IPE), aesthetics casts a radically altered
view on the complex interplay of wealth and power. Employing an aesthetic approach
to IPE, the prevailing representations of states and markets become less solid and endur-
ing. The performative dimensions of institutions and their contingent material instantia-
tions belie the solvency of representations we commonly employ to map the social
world; in fact, our modes of analysis are revealed as complicit in the aesthetics of the
very subject we purport to understand. An aesthetic approach is reflexive of its role in
reifying institutions and modes of comportment, and aware of the mutability of prevail-
ing aesthetic regimes.
Corresponding author:
Earl Gammon, Department of International Relations, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, Arts
B376, Falmer BN1 9QN, UK.
Email: e.gammon@sussex.ac.uk
684256MIL0010.1177/0305829816684256Millennium: Journal of International StudiesBelfrage and Gammon
research-article2016
Forum: The Aesthetic Turn at 15
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