Introduction: Art, ‘Enclave Theory’ and the Communist Imaginary

Abstract

This article looks at developments in post‐Stalinist communist theory in recent continental political philosophy (Félix Guattari, Jean‐Luc Nancy, Antonio Negri, Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek) and the emergence of utopian ‘enclave’ theory and practices (spaces of autonomous cultural resistance) as they relate to new forms of sociability and criticality in contemporary art. As such it connects a discussion of key notions of the ‘new communist’ theory, such as ‘communist form’ and a ‘communism of the senses’, to the social, political and discursive ambitions of the new relational and post‐relational artistic milieu. The article argues that new forms of social practice engaged with critical notions of community share a political and cultural framework with post‐Stalinist and post‐capitalist notions of community in the ‘new communist’ theory (in particular Nancy).

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