The pages of Art Monthly are hosting an exchange of letters between the curator Lisa Le Feuvre, Peter Suchin and Sean Ashton on the value (and values?) of the annual cluster of art fairs in London this October (Frieze, Zoo, Origin, others), and which is looking perhaps like suitable critical preparation for them.
Category: Quotations
Posts which comprise of a quotation only.
Adorno and art festivals
Nothing escapes the attention of radically socialized society, which further effects the culture of which it seizes control. This can be illustrated in simple fashion. Sometime ago a small publication appeared, a pamphlet, apparently written for the needs of those who undertake cultural trips through Europe – of whatever use such a brochure could possibly be. It offered a concise catalogue of artistic festivals during this particular summer and the autumn as well. The reason for such a scheme is obvious: it permits the cultural traveller to divide his time and to seek out that which he thinks will be of interest to him – in short, he can plan his trip according to the same principle which lies behind the organization of these festivals. Inherent in the idea of the festivals, however, and of the artistic festival as well, no matter how secularized and weakened it might be, is the claim to something unique, to the emphatic event which is not fungible. Festivals are to be celebrated as they come; they are not to be organized only from the perspective of avoiding overlapping. Administrative reason which takes control of them and rationalizes them banishes festivity from them. This results in an intensification into the grotesque which cannot escape the notice of the more sensitive nerves present at these so-called cultural offerings – even at those of the avant-garde. In an effort to preserve a feeling of contrast to contemporary streamlining, culture is still permitted to drive about in a type of gypsy wagon; the gypsy wagons, however, roll about secretely in a monstrous hall, a fact that they do not themselves notice. (Adorno, 1978, pp.117–118)
- ADORNO, Theodor (1978). Culture and Administration. Translated by Wes Blomster. In The Culture Industry. London: Routledge, 1991. pp.107–131.
Writing as value
I’ve now finished reading the selection of Roland Barthes’ essays published under the title Image, Music, Text. From these I can see how Barthes’ writings straddled both Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, in that they very strongly reveal systems at play in texts, while adding a definite historical context and contingency to those readings.
There were a couple of things which interested me that I’d like to write about. First I wanted to take a quick look at the last text in the book: Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers (Barthes, 1971, pp. 190–215), in which he lays out the distinct roles that these take in relation to the social production and activity of the Text.
Ways of Speaking: Michel Foucault and Other Archaeologies
I’ve just finished The Archeaology of Knowledge by Michel Foucault, and as methodical and ‘cautious’ as it is, I enjoyed its systematic approach to the subject and the accessible style of Foucault’s writing.
The following extended quote seems to encapsulate Foucault’s thinking (both in this book, and perhaps in his writing in general) quite nicely. In it he attempts to go beyond the regions of scientific discourse that he had previously been concerned with (here as well as in the previous works that this is somewhat of a summation and reassessment of: Madness and Civilization1, The Birth of the Clinic2 and The Order of Things3), to outline some archaeologies of other bodies of knowledge. In so doing, I can begin to see where this series of works sits in relation to Structuralism in general, and specifically the thorny issue of the position of the ‘producer’ in relation to their ‘productions’:
. . . I can also see another possible direction for analysis: instead of studying the sexual behaviour of men at a given period (by seeking its law in a social structure, in a collective unconscious, or in a certain moral attitude), instead of describing what men thought about sexuality (what religious interpretation they gave it, to what extent they approved or disapproved of it, what conflicts of opinion or morality it gave rise to), one would ask oneself whether, in this behaviour, as in these representations, a whole discursive practice is not at work; whether sexuality, quite apart from any orientation towards a scientific discourse, is not a group of objects that can be talked about (or that it is forbidden to talk about), a field of possible enunciations (whether in lyrical or legal language), a group of concepts (which can no doubt be presented in the elementary form of notions or themes), a set of choices (which may appear in the coherence of behaviour or in systems of prescription). Such an archaeology would show, if it succeeded in it’s task, how the prohibitions, exclusions, limitations, values, freedoms, and transgressions of sexuality, all its manifestations, verbal or otherwise, are linked to a particular discursive practice. It would reveal, not of course as the ultimate truth of sexuality, but as one of the dimensions in accordance with which one can describe it, a certain ‘way of speaking’; and one would show how this way of speaking is invested not in scientific discourses, but in a system of prohibitions and values. An analysis that would be carried out not in the direction of the episteme, but in that of what we might call the ethical.4
- FOUCAULT, Michel (1961). Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique – Folie et déraison. Paris: Plon. Translated by Jonathan Murphy and Jean Khalfa as: Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. London: Routledge.
- FOUCAULT, Michel (1963). Naissance de la clinique – une archéologie du regard médical. Paris: PUF. Translated as: The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. London: Routledge.
- FOUCAULT, Michel (1966). Les mots et les choses – une archéologie des sciences humaines. Paris: Gallimard. Translated as: The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge.
- FOUCAULT, Michel (1969). L’archéologie du savoir. Paris: Gallimard. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith as: The Archeaology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. pp. 212–213.
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