The Practice of Persuasion: Politics and Paradox in Art History

This sequel to The Practice of Theory stresses the continued need for self-reflective awareness in art historical writing. Offering a series of meditations on the discipline of art history in the context of major elements in contemporary critical theory - semiotics, feminism, queer theory, postcolonial studies and deconstruction - Keith Moxey addresses such central issues as the status of the canon, the nature of aesthetic value and the character of historical knowledge. The chapters are linked by a common interest in, even fascination with, the paradoxical power of narrative. Moxey maintains that art history is a rhetoric of persuasion rather than a discourse. Each chapter in the book attempts to demonstrate the paradoxes inherent in a genre that - while committed to representing the past - must inevitably bear the imprint of the present. In Moxey’s view, art history as a discipline is unable to recognize its status as a regime of truth that produces historically determined meanings and so continues to act as if based on a universal aesthetic foundation. His book should enable art historians to engage with the past in a manner less determined by tradition and more responsive to contemporary values and aspirations.