Art and Power - a Social Critique of Politicizing the Aesthetics Thoughts on Walter Benjamin and Pierre Bourdieu
Homo Significans (Fr.) - human, creator of signs. Sounding almost like an ancient formula, the phrase coined by Barthes to describe the ultimate subject of his scientific interest could easily be recognized as an archetype of the imperfect human being trying to achieve the creative power of God. This impulse first of all to name, to produce meanings, then to craft, to make has always been one’s prerogative from time immemorial. In this sense we can synthesize that the human’s creative impulse is strong and has ever been connected to art. And art, argues Bourdieu, is an autonomous product (or at least modern art). It refers to itself, without pointing at its referent. Or in other words - it reaches “the level of the meaning of what is signified”(Panofsky 28). Benjamin turns his sight to the origins of art comparing the original cult practices and the exhibition value and derives the social functions of art as a base of another practice - politics.
