Modernism and Modernity: Art / Work. On the relation between modern aesthetics and labor

New forms of so-called postfordist labor in the information society and service economy bear a remarkable resemblance to the ways the artist and artistic processes have been understood in aesthetic discourse since the 18th century. This course explores the relation between art and labor from two angles. 1) A historic overview of the development from ancient concepts of leisure to a modern understanding of work as anthropologically crucial and the role played by art and aesthetics. 2) Contemporary theories of new capitalism, forms of subjectivity and discourses of creativity in connection to literary texts.