Keith R. Haysom Submitted in Partial Fulnllment of the Requirements For
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Keith R. Haysom Submitted in partial fulnllment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia September 1997 @ Copyright by Keith Haysom, 1997 National tibrary Bibliothèque nationafe du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services se~kesbibliographiques 395 Wellington Sbeet 395, rue Wellington OttawaON K1AOW OtCBwa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la National Lîbrary of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, 10- distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/f%n, de reproduction sur papier ou sur fonnat électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. 1 would like to dedicate thh work to Katherine Fieribeck, Greg Py~cz,and especiialy Florian Bail, for their patience, support and dedication. Table of Contents Introduction Chapter One: Artists and Students at the Barricades Chapter Two: The ExÏstentials of Art Chapter Three: The Existentials of Political Reality Conclusion B ibliography In his 1968 book 'Bomb Cul~e",Jeff NuWdesdes the Partisan Coffee House where the anti-nuclear group Operation Gandhi - which involved such liiminaries as Spike Milligan and Bertrand Russell - met in the mid-1950's: 'Vpstairs were 'good' food, coffee and paintings; downstaî~~brute fiiniiture, folk sessions, trad[itional jazz] jam sessions, and political harangues? (1968, p.43) The activists, not surprisingly, met upstairs, and accordiug to NuW, exuded an air of socialist puritanism that set them quite apart fkom the youthfhl patrons of the cafe immediately below. And yet whenever Operation Gandhi, or its successor, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) made its annual march hmAldermaston to London, the rowdier youth "appeared fkom nowhere in their grime and tatters, hammering their banjos, scnunming aggressively on their guitars, blowing their antiquated cornets and sousaphones, capering out in fiont of the march, destroying the wooden dignity of Canon Collins, Jacquetta Hawkes, Sidney Silveman, and other celebrities who were the officiai leaders of the cavdcade. It was this wild public festival spirit that spread the CND symbol through ali the jazz clubs and secondary schools in an incredibly short the." (Ibid., p.46) What interests me about such a situation is not what it says about the CND or the anti-nuclear movement in Britain during the 50fs, nor what it says about the relationship between youth and political organization - at least not directly. What does interest me is the comection it hùits a? between artistic creation - in this case raucous DixieIand jazz - and political protest - a&-nuclear in this case. What is poiitical about strumming a guitar or blowing a hom? How does such activity fit into the context of a serious political action? Or, to abstract nom this particular case, what is the political nature of artistic creation and how might it hction as a form of political protest? More broady, this papa wiU investigate the potentid points of overlap between the world of art and the world of politics, with specific examples of political protest and radicalism serving as case studies in where it is possible to detect such an overlap occuring. The main argument of this thesis, however, will not be Iimited to tracing the contigent comections between art and politics found within the historical record, but rather will invoIve an inquiry into the interconnections between language and symbol, perception, meaning and the world 1 will be concemed here to establish a relationslip between huma.knowledge of the world (as it actually exists in everyday social existence, rather than as it exiçts in theoretical debate, philosophical, scientifk or otherwise) and the world of politics, between the political consciousness of social actors as produced by worldly knowledge and political action as necessarily conditioned by the political consciousness of those actors. This will lead us to a thesis about the nature of political reality, which will in tum lead us to a recognition of the potentially political impacts of works of art, potentials which are inherent to them as workr of art - rather than as mere means by which political acton might accomplish non-artistic ends. More specincaily, it will look to art as an important source of worldly knowledge and therefore to artistic creation as a powerful generator of political consciousness - or the reality of politics as it appears to its participants. It is by drawing such a line hm artistic creation to wddy knowledge to political conxiousness/reality and finaily to political action that 1 hope to establish the beginnings of a political theory of art. This line is admittedly indirect, subtle and likeIy impossible to prove empirically, but, as we shaU see, the historical record does provide us with some notable cases of art quite evidentk crossing the border between its usud reah of existence and that of politics, paaicularly during instances of rebellion and unrest I will focus here on the apparent co- incidence of artistic and political rebeliion during the 1960's and suggest that these two distinct phenomena were iinked mtemaliy, if indirectly, via the relay, suggested above, between artistic creation, worldiy knowledge, poiitical reality and political action. Finally, whiIe the main line of argument here relates directly to the inter-connections between art and politics, the heavy emphasis of such an argument on the concepts of howledge, consciousness, the world and reality, gives to both the mode of its inquiry and the findings of that inquiry an undoubted devance to and consequences for the study of political science epiçtemology, and the methodological debates which inevitably result nom it. These epistemological consequences will becorne clear as the argument proceeds dong its course, and will be discussed in greater detail at the conclusion of the work. In the meantime, however, we should take care to properly introduce the matter directly at hand. -. d Polmcal Protest - Funans of SouStnicmes. 9 First, 1 wish to bnefly address the question of whether or not empirical analyses of the relationship of both art and political protest to the social structures within which they dweli are adequate to the task of accounting for these phenomena Works of art, to begin with, have often been perceived, by scholars, journalists and lay people as reflective or representive of the reality of their surroundings and spirit of their times. Much socioIogical analysis of art, for example, seeks to "understand the production and consumption of art as the effect, reflection or representation of a general social process," a process that is most often conceived (or at least explained) in purely empiricai terms, its meaning deduced f?om social data, an approach than enjoys an obvious affinity wîth much M&st cultural or iiterary theory, which attempt to account for art as determined by the material base of society. (Rifkiq A. in Bottomore/Outhwaite, 1994, p.28) 1 would take issue with such reductionist interpretations of art's social existence, pointhg instead to Simon Frith's observation that "The dficult kick," in understanding the relationship of art to society, "is to do this analysis the other way round, to show how the base produced thliis superstnrcture, to explain why an idea or exphcetakes on this artistic or aesthetic form, and not another, equdy "refiective' or 'representative' of its conditions of production."1 Such an argument has also been made by Albert Camus, who, seekuig to repudiate the realist approach to art, pointed out that a realistic film account of a man's Me would be possible only in imaginary conditions, where one might have a camera focused on the subject ali day and ail night, registering his every move, and that even this would be fa*, since it could not realisticdy depict the lives of those who shaped his We. In short, in order to reaiisticaliy depict reality, we wouid have to have an omniscient view into its every corner. "The ody realistic artist, then, is God, if he exists. AU other artists are, ipso facto, daithful to reality." (1960, p.259) "To t From "Music and Identity " in Questions of Ctrlh~ralïdentity (Hall, Stuart, du Gay, Pad, eds) Sage Pubiications: London. 1996, p. 109 &te," he says in The Rebel, "is already to choose." (1953, p.238) What Camus caiIs style - the distortion of reaüty in its lucid presentation - is unavoidable, and not only for writing, but also for singing, dancing, speaking, painting, etc.. Thus a work of art is the product of artistic choices, choices that, if conditioned by the base, could not possibly be dictated by it. These choices, fiuthennore, produce meanings (for artists and audiences alike) which are not simply reflective of a material base, or dominant mode of production, but in fact make claims to tmth that are seIf- generated. In Frith's analysis of popular music, what this medium - or rather the experience of the medium - provides is "a red experience of what the ideal could be." (in HaIVdu Gay, 1996, p.123) Its creators present to their audience, and through the artifice of their music and the self re-recreation of their public personas, a vision of an irnaginary identity which becomes concretely, and inter-subjectively real, therefore providing "a way of being in the world, a way of making sense of ittf (Ibid., p.