WestminsterResearch http://www.westminster.ac.uk/research/westminsterresearch Artistic practices & democratic politics: towards the markers of uncertainty from counter-hegemonic positions to plural hegemonies Julia Svetlichnaja School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages This is an electronic version of a PhD thesis awarded by the University of Westminster. © The Author, 2011. This is an exact reproduction of the paper copy held by the University of Westminster library. The WestminsterResearch online digital archive at the University of Westminster aims to make the research output of the University available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the authors and/or copyright owners. Users are permitted to download and/or print one copy for non-commercial private study or research. Further distribution and any use of material from within this archive for profit-making enterprises or for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. 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In case of abuse or copyright appearing without permission e-mail [email protected] Artistic Practices & Democratic Politics: Towards the Markers of Uncertainty From Counter-Hegemonic Positions to Plural Hegemonies A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Westminster for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Julia Svetlichnaja May 2011 2 Contents Abstract 5 The Plan of the Work 7 CHAPTER ONE: ANTI-POLITICAL ‘POLITICS’ OF ‘POLITICAL ART’ 13 Relational Aesthetics as a Stabilising Factor 16 When Art Does Not Do Art 26 NGO Art – Art of Consensus 34 Over-Identification as Dis-Identification 38 No Politics, No Art – Just a Machine 39 Dissensus: Politics or Police? 51 Conclusion 57 CHAPTER TWO: CONCEPTIONS OF EMANCIPATORY POLITICS: RADICAL OR DEMOCRATIC? 59 Adorno & Horkheimer: A Great Despair 61 ‘A Great Refusal’ 68 Habermas: A ‘Good Life’ Through Language 76 Rancière’s Disagreement as Politics 86 ‘Back to Hegemonic Struggle’ 94 Capitalism, Culture, Politics 99 Conclusion 100 CHAPTER THREE: TRANSFORMATION OF CAPITALISM – POST- OPERAIST APPROACH OR HEGEMONIC APPROACH? 103 ‘Spontaneous Communism’ 107 Art is Multitude? 112 3 ‘Communism of Capital’ 115 ‘Production of the Self’ 120 The Neo-liberal Political Project 124 Back to the Hegemonic Struggle 127 Post-Fordism: Consequences and New Strategies 130 Conclusion 133 CHAPTER FOUR: AESTHETICAL PARADOX 135 Aesthetics Without Art? 137 Art Without Aesthetics? 142 ‘Obligation to Self-Design’ 145 Rancière’s Aesthetical Cut 148 ‘Being Together Apart’ 153 On Equality 157 Critical Aesthetics – Intolerability of the Image 160 Prigov: Power of the Gaze Destroys the Gaze of the Power 161 The Visual Language of Capitalism 165 Conclusion 167 CHAPTER FIVE: CRITICAL ART IN THE POST-POLITICAL ERA: SELF- PRESERVATION OR COUNTER-HEGEMONIC INTERVENTION? 171 Murmuring of the Artistic Multitude 172 Cittadellarte as a Political Movement of an Alternative Economy 177 ‘Life is More Important that Art’ 182 ‘There is Nothing to See’ 185 Public Space as a Memorial – Articulations That Did Not Occur 193 Conclusion 200 4 CHAPTER SIX: PLURALISING MODERNISM 203 Towards the Markers of Uncertainty 204 New Modernity or Modernities? 210 Translation as the Language 215 ‘Decentred’ Artistic Practice – Decentering Identities 221 Pluralising Democracy? 224 CONCLUSION 227 BIBLIOGRAPHY 234 APPENDIX 245 Figures 1 – 11 245 - 250 Acknowledgements I would like to gratefully acknowledge the critical insights I have gained under the supervision of Professor Chantal Mouffe who remains an inspiration. The research presented in this thesis has been carried out at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Westminster University in London and many colleagues have contributed to the understanding gained. I wish to thank Dr James Heartfield for his friendship and encouragement, Ed Nolfo for his patient corrections and my husband, Mark Latham, for endless support and useful disagreement. Oтдельное Спасибо Дмитрию Александровичy Пригову ДАП: «Ну, интеллектуалы - это не в качестве обзывания, а в качестве некоей такой социокультурной службы, миссии. Это такое специальное существо. Знаете, как собаки, натасканные на наркотики. Интеллектуал натаскан на критику мифов, дискурсов, языков всяких при желаемой такой его собственной незадействованности ни в какой идеологической утопии. Он собственно критик, и у него очень нелегкая судьба, потому что, видите, действительно, у него такое незавидное существование.” Julia Svetlichnaja 14 Nottingham Place, London W1U 5NG [email protected] 5 Abstract Can artistic and cultural practices play a critical role in societies in which criticisms are reflexively absorbed and immobilised by the prevailing hegemony? And, if yes, what kind of political order can they aspire to, given the ‘post-utopian’ nature of the human condition? How do we approach the tortuous question of the destiny of both the project of modern democracy and that of aesthetic modernity? There is no agreement on this issue. We are told that there is no alternative to the existing liberal democracy and capitalist pluralism without risking yet another dystopia – the dilemma that in the artistic realm is sometimes articulated as the opposition between modernism and postmodernism. What might progressive art look like in such times when the ideas of progress and modernity are viewed with great suspicion? The most popular positions concerning artistic and cultural practices’ critical dimension revolve around the idea that with the post-Fordist transformation and the bankruptcy of the Left, the paradigm of power has really changed. This is reflected in the radical character of contemporary artistic practices, which desperately struggle to constitute subject at the expense of themselves. However, the question is: can these practices be both radical and democratic? This depends on our understanding of emancipatory politics, the nature of aesthetics and post-Fordist transformation. We will examine the different approaches to these subjects influenced by the Frankfurt school and post-Operaist theories to argue that neither Theodor Adorno’s and Max Horkeimer’s analyses based on the Fordist model, nor Antonio Negri’s and Paolo Virno’s post-Fordist appropriation of the significance of art in the new forms of production provide a useful framework with which to grasp the nature of the changes and challenges that face our society. Such novel ideas as ‘immaterial labour’ and ‘spontaneous communism’ or exodus and ‘communism of capital’, despite their new vocabulary, are a dangerous inversion of the Frankfurt school’s idealism and inability to grasp that social reality is hegemonically constructed 6 through the practices of articulation that temporarily and incompletely ‘fix’ the meaning of social institutions. Neither politics nor post-Fordism should be considered through the matrix of culture, but in terms of hegemony. What is at issue is to grasp the nature of the democratic and aesthetical paradoxes and envisage how the two could be applied to contribute to progressive changes in power relations. Judgements must be made – we have to be able to distinguish between who belongs to demos and who does not; however, how we judge, which is the subject of aesthetic critique, is at the core of democratic artistic-political practice. One way in which artistic practices can be critical is a counter-hegemonic intervention that acts against the position of supremacy of any hegemonic order and shows that any fullness exists because there are gaps, but judges this lack in a way that resists the totalisation of the sensible. However, perhaps the way to weaken the centre is not just to expose its flaws, but to pluralise hegemonies. In this way, the idea to pluralise modernism in the era of globalisation could help us to redefine modern democracy in the post-political era and outline the positive vision of the ‘hegemonic trap’. Could the evolution of artistic-political practice be envisaged as the radicalisation of ‘oppositional identities’, which undermine the hegemonic forms of subject articulation into compository or shimmering identities, making such supremacy impossible? Can art become a symbol of emptying ‘democracy’ and thus construct many ‘democracies’, answering our tortuous question by producing plural answers? 7 The Plan of the Work In the following we look first at the most influential conceptions of what constitutes the political element in contemporary art to understand what is at issue. Attending to a number of questions raised by theories such as ‘Relational Aesthetics’, ‘Immaterial Labour’, ‘Artistic Machine’ or The Art of Over-Identification’, we will argue that, despite their new vocabulary, their ideas correspond to the same old scenario that, to be politically effective, artistic practices must produce entirely new models of functioning. As discussed in the first chapter, artistic practices pay little attention to the aesthetic transformation of the selected materials; rather, they concentrate on the transformation of the practice of art as such, which is envisaged as a critical intervention in itself. This art is seen as radical because it engages in different ways of doing art – i.e. direct action, publicity stunts and creating ‘transversal alliances’. While artists are often radical in their actions, they are often reactionary in their thinking. Considered as an action,