Ross Shields: READING THE AESTHETICS OF RESISTANCE

The Aesthetics of Resistance. Already the title demands interpretation. Depending on whether the preposition ‘of’ is interpreted as a subjective or as an objective genitive, it could refer either to ‘the aesthetic position upheld by those fighting for the resistance’ or to ‘the aesthetic aspect of resistance as such.’ As one might expect, Peter Weiss’s novel supports both readings, insofar as it concerns a group of resistance fighters who conceive of art—whether ancient, aristocratic, bourgeois, or proletarian—as closely related to their own political activity: “If we want to take on art, literature, we have to treat them against the grain, that is, we have to eliminate all the concomitant privileges and project our own demands into them.”[1] The aesthetic position of those fighting in the resistance is that art is eminently political. But the first person plural is misleading, and introduces an additional ambiguity concerning the novel’s message: does “we” stand for the unnamed narrator and his comrades in the 1930’s, for Weiss’s milieu in the 1970s, or for the international readership of the perpetually advancing present? „Ross Shields: READING THE AESTHETICS OF RESISTANCE“ weiterlesen