ABSTRACT
Art – in its modern, autonomous sense, with aesthetic contemplation as its distinct form of experience – is a product of modern bourgeois capitalism. So are the nation state, and nationalist ideologies. Art and nation have developed in historical parallel over the past two centuries, supporting and constructing each other (not surprisingly, their most important institutions – the museum and the prison – emerge and evolve contemporaneously with one another). But what is the nature of the relation between art and nation today, when capitalism has eroded and distorted the basic values, ideals, and forms of the classic bourgeois age? What does it become, when both art- and nation- forms are said to have reached their historical limits, in popular debates about the “end of art,” or the “postnational condition”? These are some of the issues that this chapter addresses – with its primary concern for what used to be called the “Second” and the “Third world.”
