Political psychology as social aesthetics

Abstract

In this paper it is proposed that political psychology, included critical social psychology, presents the problem of being a too rational discipline as it takes language and discourse as a model of reality. Because of that it is not very able to understand social reality in order to transform it. Within that context, this paper proposes a “social esthetics” as a mode of political and social psychology consisting in the consideration of society not as a discourse or text, but as a form expressed in social styles, whose content is affective. Then, it is argued that the global contemporary society presents a mechanical form, whose main characteristic is the exclusion of meaning, and the exclusion of the observer, and whose outcome is the current feeling of isolation and meaninglessness. Therefore, the argument favoring a form of society that includes the subject as participant is also argued. That is the form of a game. It is concluded that a political psychology is that taking knowledge as a game.