Monique Roelofs's The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic is important because it analyzes the concepts of “address” (as a widespread social phenomenon and a carrier of meaning) and “aesthetic relationality” (relations with people mediate relations with things, and relations with things mediate relations with people) and the connection between them (i.e., modes of address constitute the muscles and joints of aesthetic relationality) in ways that restore the “promise” of aesthetics as a promise of culture. These concepts are vital in aesthetics but also in contemporary feminism, race theory, political theory, and other areas of cultural critique intersecting with aesthetics. Often these intersections are mostly negative and aesthetics has often been left out of the picture. But if we reconceive aesthetics as Roelofs proposes, we will recognize that it is needed for cultural critique and for culture itself – hence the promise of aesthetics. Using a variety of examples from (mostly) contemporary art, Roelofs makes these points clearly and develops the key concepts of address, relationality, and promise in inspired ways.

Michael Kelly, Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (2nd ed., 2014)