Eugeni d’Ors’s politics of aesthetics: a revision of his authoritarianism

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s theorization of the aesthetic as a primary domain of experience where political norms and distinctions are configured, this article reconsiders Eugeni d’Ors’ authoritarianism. By reading a wide array of his newspaper columns in both Catalan and Spanish, I first show that d’Ors’s allegiance to Prat de la Riba’s conservative political Catalanism and his support for Primo de Rivera’s and Franco’s dictatorships share common aesthetic roots that put forward an invariable distribution of the sensible. Second, I argue that d’Ors’s grounding of his politics in aesthetic categories opens a space of indistinction that temporarily loosens the strict hierarchies that structured his view of political communities. As seen in his fictional narratives La Ben Plantada and Sijé, as well as in his reflections on Baroque art, these moments of creative disruption, however, fall short of fully articulating modes of perception that break with those privileged in his classical aesthetic theory.