We will explore two theories of art proposed by Louis Althusser, one that situates a spontaneous critique of bourgeois idealism, and the other that manifests a Marxian consciousness. Both these versions of art however, despite Althusser’s assertion of their different forms of agency leave art on the side of naïve idealism for the former and as an aesthetics of crisis of the latter. An image that is art, therefore can never extend beyond the reach of capitalist subject formations.

Addressing the possibility for a political and theoretical practice for art, we will begin to ask if these determinations for art are accurate: Is art always already fated to subjective idealism, from above or below? Does this reading misperceive the structure and content of art? Or, is this work just philosophically insufficient? These questions will be woven through some analysis on contradiction, the genesis of consciousness and the question of meaning beyond the capitalist formation of ideology from neo-pragmatism, but also by working through a recent video work, Map of the Bomb, 2022, in which the work wagers new propositions to the these very problems.