Dr Tom Baker, ‘Can I Art Too? Aesthetic Injustice and the Demarcation Problem’

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Sharing something you find aesthetically interesting and valuable with another can be a vulnerable experience: stating that some, perhaps niche, artwork is one that is meaningful and valuable is an invitation for another to engage with and understand the work, thereby understanding you and your aesthetic sensibility; it is also like revealing part of your soul for the other to pass judgement over. In the case of a friend or significant other, we are more likely to persist with that which is recommended to us even if, at first, we don’t ‘get it’. However, we surely owe a certain amount of trust to non-significant others when they offer up an aesthetic artefact, just as we owe them trust in their non-aesthetic testimony. What do we owe to others in such cases? What is the nature of our obligations, here, and how far do they go?  The aims of this paper are three-fold. First, I briefly outline a problem with many popular definitions of art: namely, that they fail to successfully deal with borderline cases. I suggest that the exclusion of certain aesthetics kinds from the concept of art is likely the result of historical prejudice. Second, I outline cases of epistemic injustice in art discourse and explore the relationship between aesthetic, epistemic, and ethical considerations therein. I argue that dysfunction in, at least, two of these can result in an unjust exclusion and an aesthetic injustice: aesthetic counterpart to epistemic injustice; a harm to an individual (or community) as aesthete(s). Finally, I explain why this matters and I provide some practical and theoretical suggestions concerning how we should move forward as art appreciators and theorists.