Claire Bishop responds to Nicolas Bourriaud's theory of relational aesthetics - in which artists abandon the art object for a focus on fostering interactions and relationships between viewers and themselves. Bishop basically kicks Bourriaud's ass, suggesting his theory overindulges certain artists' claims to "democratic" art . She instead proposes an aesthetics of antagonism, in which the tensions that arise between artists, their "populations," and a supposedly objective observer, are welcomed rather than denied.

Read it and weep: here.