Reading Group #3: Critical artistic practices 'as counter-hegemonic interventions' (Mouffe 2007: 5) 

 

Following from the previous group readings and discussions the material forAugust's session consists of an hour long video of political theorist, Chantal Mouffe's, public lecture for Cork Caucus 2005, entitled, Which Public Space for Critical Artistic Practices? (Cork Caucus,NSF 2005) 

[Email borderlinesofthepresent@gmail.com for the link and password to access the video].

We have also included, for consideration and discussion, Chantal Mouffe's article, 2007, Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces, Art and Research, Vol 1, No. 2

 

We would ask that you please view the video clip and read the accompanying article before the group meeting where we will screen the Q & A session following Mouffe's lecture at Cork Caucus, moderated by Simon Sheikh and Ashley Hunt. This lasts approx. one hour and will be followed by discussion.

 

Cork Caucus was 'a major interdisciplinary, international meeting of artists, thinkers, writers, and philosophers, which investigated cultural, political and artistic issues during the summer of 2005, in Cork. It was devised by the National Sculpture Factory, as part of Cork's tenure as European Capital of Culture'.

 

Mouffe's lecture can be viewed in advance (see below) and we are posting a link here to a follow-up paper 'Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces' in which Mouffe contests the idea that art 'has lost its critical power' and instead suggests that artists/activists must construct 'different strategies of opposition' (2007: 1) within the current 'uncontested hegemony of liberalism' (2007: 2). 

 

In separating the notion of the 'social' from 'the political' she presents a 'frontier' between the two constructs.  She frames this frontier as a site of instability which 'requires constant displacements and renegotiations between social agents.' (2007: 2) and is symbolic of an ''agonistic' struggle' (2007: 3) where 'hegemonic interventions' can take place thus revealing 'the very configuration of power relations around which a given society is structured'. (2007: 3) 

 

Although acknowledging the role 'critical' artistic practices have to play in challenging hegemonic political power structures 'by contributing to the construction of new subjectivities' (2007: 5) she cautions, 'It would be a serious mistake to believe that artistic activism could, on its own, bring about the end of neo-liberal hegemony' (2007: 5).  

 

The lecture is available by emailing us at borderlinesofthepresent@gmail.com for link and password access. Many thanks to the NSF for making this material available. 

 

Possible questions for discussion: 

 

Sheikh: "Where then do we find these public spaces if we want them to be agonistic? What will their physical, spatial formation be?" (Cork Caucus, 2005)

 

Verwoert: " . . . given this idea that politics is based on hegemony, would the question be how are these prodecures and agreements enforced?" (Cork Caucus 2005)

 

 

Reading Group #2: Art practice and the nexus of social relations

 

Lane Raylea, 2013, Your Artworld, or The Limits of Connectivity, Your Everyday Artworld, MA: MIT Press, pp 69 - 74

Franco 'Bifo' Berardi, 2012, Introduction, The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), pp 7 - 22. 

 

Raylea asks 'Is the market really the only arena imaginable in which to enact 'free' subjectivity? '(2013: 74). In order to pursue 'sites of contestation' (Bhabha 1994: 2) there is a need to gain a sense of the political conditions of the present and the situation of the neoliberal subject within those conditions.How can we begin to differentiate between a radical form of subjectivity [as supported by Braidotti] and a '"flexible personality" - a form of subjectivation mandated by the New Economy'?

 

Possible questions for discussion: 

One of Raylea's hypotheses is that art practice serves as 'an ideological asset rather than a critique' (73/74). Are there forms of art practice that are inherently oppositional? 

 

How might art practice be reevaluated/reassessed/reproblematised  in order to resist the neo-liberal model that Reylea sets out before us? 

 

Berardi describes a number of elements ‘(techno-linguistic procedures, financial obligations, social needs, and psycho-media invasion’ (2012: 16)) that he sees as ‘framing the field of the possible’, with the implication that this frame is limiting our imagination about the future. Does his proposal that ‘poetry’ (poetics) could function as an emancipatory tool, not only for the individual but for the social body, seem like a viable strategy under current conditions? 

 

How much of our social behaviour and attitudes can we claim to understand and be in control of? Are we 'irrelevant' in relation to Berardi's 'swarm'?

 

Reading Group # 1: Symptoms of crisis and anxiety – the neoliberal subject

 

Homi K. Bhabha, 1994, Introduction; Locations of Culture, The Location of Culture, London: Routledge, pp 1 - 18.

Rosi Braidotti, 2014, Thinking as a Nomadic Subject, Lecture at ICI Berlin, 

 

Possible questions for discussion: 

 

If our subjectivities are not fixed, but mutate in response to the conditions to which we are subjected, then what kind of subjects are we in this situation of crisis and anxiety? How can we produce what Bhabha describes as ‘Innovative sites of collaboration and contestation’ (1994 : 2) when we are subjected to such disturbing conditions? 

 

How might 'modes of cultural identification and political affect' (Bhabha 1994: 6) be recouped by arts/cultural workers and reconfigured within a more reflective conscious mode of understanding?  Who is representing the 'art/cultural worker' and in which fields?

 

Braidotti argues that the task of critical thinking is determining 'where here is'; 'where now is' from 'one's own location'. This involves an acknowledgement of our own accountable position within the system of advanced capitalism where understanding [relational] subject formations 'becomes the task'. How might we begin to address those demands and avoid 'the repetition of formula of revolutionary praxis'? 

 

Braidotti draws on the Deleuze/Guattarian concept of nomadology, a radical form of subjectivity outside of any particular set of conventions. For Braidotti, the melancholy and negativity associated with contemporary critical thought conform to the affective conventions of advanced capitalism. How does her call for an ‘ethics of joyful affirmation’, as a form of radical resistance, sit within an Irish context?