Re: [-empyre-] Bare Life

[Aliette <aliette@criticalsecret.org>]

Dear all,

>From my part entering " the heart of the matter ": what disrupts me a lot,
it is that the proposition coming from dokumenta under Agamben's reference
" bare life " forces us (as turning us into "homo sacer" ourselves in some
place of thinking) to separate one of the terms of Agamben's dialectic
between the power and the people from which he extracts the contemporary
"homo sacer" from, in his work (1998).

In a certain sort unfortunatly this option of the concuring titlle of the
event acts as a revisionism of Agamben's proposition (which is yet
attractive but not so sympathic) by extracting the power out of the question
that is What is openly unacceptable?or no more fight could be relevant.
Because it returns to a certain conception of "natural" (even resulting from
the power) to  " homo sacer" that personnally I cannot accept.

I know for example that Christoph Winkler has made the best of this
inspiration, but if all is possible in a matter from static to dynamic
Artistic performances and creations (Winkler being now the famous
choreographer whe know of after having experiment a lot of contemporary art
and music fields?and pop fields? in an integrated destiny), the same mental
action is not possible in matter of reflecting philosophy. That is exactly
the difference between Arts and Philosophy, the frontier, when philosophy
tributes to the collective as ethic. Bio-politic is exactly the domain
realizing philosophy in ethic, after the separate fields they were.

It is not a question of doctrine it is really a question of ethic at the
base of the relevant capacity of reasoning in each human knowing a maternal
language, can be the language of the environment without "bare" mother.

But obviously having reached this situation of all frontiers can being over
passed in matter of thought to the life, there is no more means to create an
event or bare life itself as real?as real criticism of the theory by the
event of the life as No art: coming after the radical object of Body Art ?as
ultimate Art. 

>From this point of view besides abstracting " homo sacer " out of its
structural context of reference as a concept from Agamben, that
unfortunately can inform a revisionism to this philosophy (by installing a
"natural" conception of "homo sacer" that makes nonsense regarding Agamben
?even lightened by Gadamer? whatever of God or no God), which installs
toward the domination of power the question of "nature" as fate?even social
heritage of education?superiority of certain humans being able to be
executive on other humans.

In other words return before the dialectic of the master and the slave at
Hegel's. But more it makes moving the word toward the sense of the antique
Roman conception that tells "homo sacer" in singular symbolic situation to
be killed without a crime by whatever one self?more or the power
itself?regarding a special allow over passing the protection by the law to
the one is in danger to be murdered without punishment.

So ontologically (regarding the phenomena of the collective live west
culture) and philologically (regarding the history of the concept and of the
phenomena of collective humanity from west culture) being impossible to
reject the question of institutions and of sovereign power outside of the
term of "homo sacer", the same as "bare life" resulting of the condition of
"homo sacer", I do not expect where "bare life" can make sense all alone or
by a total deregulation of the traditional and original progressive
philosophic device from which it is extracted; that installs a critical
collapse absolved from the philosophy.

(Of the iconoclast crisis of philosophy absolved from the modern philosophy
whatever of Dokumenta, we are involving a schism. Can be "bare life" from
Dokumenta in this special disposition to produce the multi semantic sign of
a the total redistribution of the references after the Human rights?having
become totally obsolete as sense at the horizon of current practice outside
of the law by more laws effected by the new power (the same of global as
local or micro-local). At this point: the representative power of the
democracy represents itself as collective citizen itself able to claim at
the act "homo sacer" to the part of human genre not being the power, by
generalizing the use of murder not being a crime.

The last post political emergent question which results is this one: in
which arrangement to save himself all on one's own, or by the other means
(then which one?) is "homo sacer" settled by such a deregulation of the law,
of the power, of the society?

Otherwise the leak or the social boycott - and consequently the repression?

Thus we would really be in war against the power and against the
representative law even democracy in particular and generally. But the war
not being dialectical: how to win safe toward the current condition of homo
sacer?

As homo sacer is not a missing human condition. Homo sacer is not of another
genre. He is the basic human condition as collective condition of the one,
it appears.

What of the secret?unknown but predictable? force of "homo sacer" in danger?

Reflecting this question may be open "bare life"?


On 9/07/06 4:29, "Gianni Wise" <gana@iinet.net.au> probably wrote:

> Hi everyone...
> 
> enjoying the way this discussion is going. It occurred to me that
> there has been a range of quite strong responses to the (im)
> possibility of an art practice that can deal with or engage with
> 'bare life'. This maybe true given that by Agamben's critique bare
> life refers to body¹s simply the state ?vegetative¹ being, separated
> from those qualities, the social and historical attributes that
> constitute individuality. The stateless refugee. And that artist as a
> cultural producer - even if he or she is working out their own poetic
> sensibility or some political engagement. Art is still cultural
> production. Bare life is raw and means for some the point at which
> you are starving or losing your humanity.
> 
> I saw this in a few faces in the streets in Chile when I lived there.
> I produced art there and felt completely useless against the
> overwhelming sadness of the victims within the family I lived with. I
> kept making work ad hid it away.  Yet somehow  by the very action of
> producing something that was not obviously "dealing with the horror"
> as Conor so eloquently puts it I still was able to keep my humanity
> and I knew inside of me that the work would feed back into the
> foodchain - into the cultural bloodstream - and in some small way
> would give something back.  I think it was Susan Sontag who said art
> only becomes 'real' or 'true' as it changes or reconfigures the field
> (the culture). It will always do that even in some small way.
> 
> And Ana ... a late response. Yes l would so love any translation from
> your Swedish discussion forum on
> Castoriadis and his work. Too much work?!  I could email you.
> 
> Gianni
> On 09/07/2006, at 1:55 AM, Christina McPhee wrote:
> 
>> [This message was received in rich text format so it's been
>> converted to plain text--cm]
>> 
>> Hi All
>> 
>> Sorry for my late arrival to the debate, problems with internet cafes.
>> 
>> I was fascinated with the debate of New Orleans and sorry I missed
>> the flow of the debate. I briefly visited there a few years back
>> and it struck me as a very unamerican city, that is a city that
>> doesn't fit in with this idea that we are receiving, particularly
>> as Europeans, of what America stands for today. Even then it was a
>> surprise what happened. In recent times I think of what has been
>> happening in the US as a slipping of the mask, guantanamo, Kathrina
>> every time a little bit more of what made America great slips away
>> and we're face to face with  bare life in the US empire.
>> 
>> When GH says he doesn't believe bare life has anything to do with
>> art I'm inclined to agree. Art is a poor refuge faced with illness,
>> death, disasters, prison camps but at the same time  wa are close
>> to bare life these things are never very far from us and perhaps
>> today closer then ever. If art matters and is not
>>  a diversion (divertissement) or
>> entertainment. It is not about teaching (didacticism) or the
>> marketing of high priced objects for the idle rich.
>> 
>> 
>> it must deal with these things. Still it's not easy. I grew up in
>> the 70s in Ireland during the troubles - what we called a 30 year
>> war the T word was almost never used which is why we can now deal
>> with the combatents from both sides - there was much art made about
>> it most of it failed in any attempt to deal with the horror of what
>> was going on. This is the problem, we need to deal with bare life
>> but its very hard.
>> 
>> hope to particiapting more frequently and more fully next time
>> 
>> Conor
>> 
>> On 7/7/06, G.H. Hovagimyan <ghh@thing.net> wrote:
>> I don't believe that bare life has anything to do with art.  We are
>> all on the edge of a potential tragedy.  Since I am of a certain age
>> people around me are succumbing to various diseases. My brother-in-
>> law is lying in a hospital bed in a stupor from a brain aneurism.  My
>> poor sister is suffering terribly. One day everything is fine, the
>> next you are confronted with your fragile world as it collapses.
>> 
>>   I live eight blocks north of the world trade center. My windows
>> face the buildings. I saw the planes crash into the buildings as I
>> was doing my morning exercises. I saw the people jumping from the
>> burning buildings. No it was not on videotape for me it was "bare
>> life."
>> 
>> I have a second home in northeastern Pennsylvania.  Huge rainstorms
>> and snowmelts have flooded the Delaware River as well as many creeks
>> and streams in the area.  People lose their homes. One teenage girl
>> in Livingston Manor became paralyzed with fear and could not jump to
>> safety as her home was swept away by the floodwater.  The floods are
>> classified as one hundred year floods but they have occurred three
>> times in the last three years.
>> 
>> I consider myself lucky.  The World Trade Center didn't collapse on
>> me, I am not yet in a hospital dying and I still have a home.
>> 
>> It is almost impossible to make art about the WTC attack.  It is an
>> enormous physical disaster as well as an information event. The same
>> may be said of the New Orleans disaster that is still unfolding. The
>> psyche of America is disturbed. It is now operating on a believe
>> system that has no basis in reality. This narrative and its larger
>> reality make a fitting subject for art.  The reduction to bare
>> essentials, to mere survival, does not create the conditions for
>> art.  If anything the art makes a counter proposition. For example,
>> concentration camps are mentioned in the original Bare Life,
>> question.  How does one make art about concentration camps?  I can
>> think of several examples, Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus or Mel
>> Brooks comedy film and Broadway play The Producers or Liliana
>> Canvani's 1974 film The Night Porter or the 1960's TV sitcom Hogan's
>> Heroes. I'm sure there are many more but these are the ones that come
>> to mind.  They are not documentaries. They do not bear witness to the
>> events. What they do is process a collective trauma and re-balances
>> the human psyche.   This then is the true nature and value of art and
>> the artist. The artist makes it possible to continue living in spite
>> of a shattering event.  Make no mistake; art is not social work or
>> psychoanalysis. Most of all it is not a diversion (divertissement) or
>> entertainment. It is not about teaching (didacticism) or the
>> marketing of high priced objects for the idle rich.  True art does
>> not make one comfortable. What it does is reorder our sense of the
>> world and our internal narrative.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> G.H. Hovagimyan
>> http://nujus.net/gh/
>> http://post.thing.net/gh/
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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