No Accounting for Taste: Aesthesis on the Borders of Philosophy

In the different projects of Walter D. Mignolo and Jacques Rancière, aesthesis has taken on significant currency. Both thinkers present aesthesis as playing a central role in breaking with Western and/or capitalist epistemic structures. Importantly, placed in opposition to aesthetics, aesthesis demonstrates the pervasive impact of taste, sensibilities, and culture preferences on our understanding of the world and political action within it. I argue that both underscore the importance of aesthesis and its relationship to borders but come to different conclusions. For Mignolo, aesthesis allows us to provincialize Western aesthetics, presenting the latter as one option among many, not as a universal truth or touchstone. Similarly, for Rancière, aesthesis allows us to bring out the nature of the link between aesthetics and politics, helping us identify our current distribution (partage) of the sensible and to imagine alternative forms of emancipation. For both, aesthesis is not simply an intellectual activity but rather a way of being-in-the-world, a “sensing” or “feeling,” according to Mignolo, that is central to “re-existing.” Reflecting their different political focuses, both add something to aesthesis: Mignolo emphasizes how a Eurocentric heritage can still operate within aesthesis, particularly through the Kantian notion of the beautiful; Rancière highlights the problem of exclusion in community-formation and the role that aesthesis plays within this. Behind this, I argue that we see two different conceptions of philosophy and its relationship to borders. For both, philosophy has a key role in articulating the borders of our experience. However, for Rancière, these borders are identified so as to be transgressed, whereas for Mignolo, we must retain borders to create a pluriversal and not universal world. While I judge these ultimately incompatible, I argue that they demonstrate the importance of attending to borders and the need for a constant vigilance of borders within our thinking.