Against Morality - by Rosanna McLaughlin (Paperback)

About the Book

Rosanna McLaughlin investigates the consequences of this moralizing approach to creative work. She invites us to rethink the connection between political values and art--and to ask whether a relationship between them should exist at all.

Book Synopsis

Should art be determined by political ideals? In recent decades art institutions have sought to embody liberal values of universal equality and social justice. This move toward greater inclusivity has borne witness to a countervailing trend: artworks are increasingly scrutinized for their political implications, and artists must take care not to transgress particular moral fault lines. Examining contemporary exhibitions as well as works of art and film, and the broader cultural reactions to them, Rosanna McLaughlin investigates the consequences of this moralizing approach to creative work. She invites us to rethink the connection between political values and art--and to ask whether a relationship between them should exist at all. In arguing against morality in the arts, McLaughlin lays the groundwork for a more expansive concept of difference in twenty-first-century art making.

Review Quotes

In Against Morality, Rosanna McLaughlin Critiques contemporary art's obsession with unambiguous, flattening moralism--Oscar Yi Hou "The Whitney Review"

Against Morality is the cri de coeur of a cultural critic who realizes that the presentation of art and its adjacent pursuits, including much art itself, have become the subsidiaries of progressive politics. The results are often reductive, misleading, and repellent to moral complexity.--Franklin Einspruch "The Arts Fuse"

McLaughlin is lucid and sharp, and readers will find themselves impressed even when they disagree . . . The result is a enjoyably provocative challenge to the status quo.-- "Publisher's Weekly"

Against Morality doesn't provide a didactic roadmap, but its expansiveness may be a fecund catalyst for considering art's possibilities beyond virtue-signalling or ideological compliance.--Esmé Hogeveen "Frieze"

About the Author

Rosanna McLaughlin is a writer based in East Sussex. She is the author of two books, Double-Tracking: Studies in Duplicity (Carcanet, 2019), a collection of satirical essays and short fiction, and Sinkhole (Montez Press, 2023), her first novel. Her cultural criticism has appeared in ArtReview, Frieze, Granta and the Guardian, among other places. Between 2021 and 2023 she was co-editor of The White Review.