Afterall Issue 10 Foreword: Art and Free Imagination

Charles Esche's foreword to Afterall Journal Issue 10 (published November 1, 2004) argues that art uniquely enables the free imagination necessary for political resistance under global capitalism. Drawing on Spinoza's concept of imagination as a faculty of freedom, and Negri's idea that there is no outside to the imperial system, Esche contends that art offers a space for proposition and transformation. He suggests that emancipatory politics, as per Alain Badiou, makes the impossible seem possible, and that art achieves this through deliberate self-deception—a knowing delusion that allows resistance. Esche posits that the visual arts field is the primary location for exercising free imagination and its implications for social change, even if art is not overtly political. The foreword references Spinoza's Ethics, Badiou's Ethics, and Negri's Time for Revolution.