[-empyre-] Response to Virgina Re: Robert's Response on Queer Mésentente
virginia solomon
virginia.solomon at gmail.com
Fri Jul 10 01:53:13 EST 2009
and I didn't correct the type-o...
GI, I think, establishes an archive of a queer avant-garde (the latter term
I use because it was theirs, but also because I think what GI set up carries
many of the problems that we see in the formulation of the avant-garde as a
concept, problems and contradictions that are important both to the
avant-garde's being but also as an indicator of the limits of a certain kind
of understanding under our moment of capital) from Dada and Surrealism
through to their contemporary moment that formalizes queer sociality, queer
relationality.
On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 11:52 AM, virginia solomon <
virginia.solomon at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a general response to Marc's questions, overall, a response which
> deals more with methodology, and then I will do what I can with clarifying
> the others.
>
> I am an art historian. As such, I look to the objects, to the work, to the
> practices to make the theory, not to the canon of continental philosophy and
> theory. To the extent that, as a social art historian, I am interested in
> the texts that inform practices - written texts, but also the whole other
> range of texts - I am interested in continental theory (Butler included),
> but it is not the first place I go in terms of making sense of these
> questions. As a historian, I don't think that there are definitions or solid
> answers for any of the clarifications that you seek. Precisely my work
> considers how these things develop, morph, change over the course of the
> 20th century, and in particular the second half of the 20th century. Words
> come from someplace, and in clarifying what I mean it can be helpful to
> define against what might be a more common understanding (ie Hegel, Kant)
> but really for me the meaning of the terms comes from the practices I
> consider. If we are to take meaning-as-iterative seriously I think it is
> even more important for us to be clear about the terminology that we are
> using.
>
> * what do you mean when you say the avant-garde's "being"? does this refer
>> to the subjectivity of the proletariat?
>>
> I'm not sure I can find where I say "the avant-garde's being." Maybe if you
> give me the sentence? I in any event certainly wouldn't have meant the
> subjectivity of the proletariat because none of the artists I look at think
> of the avant-garde as being of the proletariat. They all understand the
> avant-garde as a formation of bourgeois culture connected to bourgeois
> culture through relations of engagement and disengagement. My research has
> not revealed any of the artists I research after GI considering themselves
> in relation to 'avant-garde,' and GI certainly do it with a sense of irony
> about those who might take the avant-garde as a reflection of the
> subjectivity of the proletariat. Also, if we keep in mind what, for example,
> Julia Bryan-Wilson writes about in relation to art and politics in terms of
> Robert Morris and the Hard Hat Riots of 1970, in connections to general
> developments in cultural politics, the consideration of the proletariat as
> the site of revolutionary politics falls out of favor with the rise of
> working class support for conservative politics in the late 1960s and early
> 1970s. So I'm not sure what I meant in the moment you have in mind, but
> that is my response to the avant-garde as the subjectivity of the
> proletariat.
>
> * what is wrong with a negative assertion? (i.e. is this a reference to
>> Deleuze's Negations?)
>>
>
> Rather than being a reference to Deleuze's Negations, this is a reference
> to historical discussions about building political movements outside of the
> rubric of identity politics that consider the importance of not just
> offering a critique, but also offering an alternative. So not just saying
> bourgeois culture and its notion of subjectivity is bad, but providing a
> space to imagine an alternative. Not provide an alternative, because then
> that gets to the problem of universalism and of identity politics and
> liberal pluralism, but rather a space for imagining, a space of
> possibility. Negation is an important relation but when I used the term
> negative I was not using it with its theoretical connotation. This comes
> from being educated after the critiques of post modernism and earlier
> moments of queer theory's focus only on offering a critique of late capital
> without providing alternatives, and identity politics and
> multi-culturalism's attempts to provide alternatives that really reproduced
> the structures of subjectivity available within late capital but opened them
> up to different bodies. That is my foundation and my framework, and the
> context in which I use negative. Negative versus positive, destructive
> versus constructive. When I talk about thinks not being negative, I am
> thinking outside of that binary system and that's what I'm trying to get at
> with talking about spaces of imagination and possibility.
>
> * how is Nancy's being-in-common-in-difference, as you see it, different
>> from liberal pluralism? in other words, is there room here for a common
>> political project, which is what i've tried to do with Nancy, linking him
>> with Rancière and Badiou (against, by the way, Grant Kester's critique of
>> the "non-discursive" strategies of the avant-garde - which would probably
>> exclude GI)
>>
>
> Nancy and liberal pluralism use entirely different models of subjectivity.
> Nancy sees identification whereas liberal pluralism structures itself upon
> identity. Why does Nancy preclude a common political project?
>
> * how can "the aesthetic" have a "cultural politics" in and of itself?
>> more importantly, what assumptions are you making about aesthetics if you
>> eschew both Kantian and Hegelian (and by implication, Marxist) philosophy?
>>
>
> My understanding of cultural politics comes precisely from Marxist
> philosophy, which in its own right formed in part in consideration of some
> of the problems of Kant and Hegel. As I mentioned earlier, however, rather
> than go to aesthetic philosophy I am going to General Idea and the artists
> that General Idea bring into the fold in its practice. To be honest to me
> 'aesthetics' is the least important term in what I am trying to trace.
>
> But I set it apart from Kant because he discusses the aesthetic in terms of
> judgment, in terms of an elitist understanding of culture. His aesthetic
> carries with it an understanding of absolutes and universalisms that I think
> is antithetical to the history of artistic practices that formalize queer
> sociability in the context of a world making project based on imagining and
> on possibility, not on a "my way is better" mode of thinking. Also, you
> know, nothing is disinterested.
>
> And I set it apart from Hegel because he too is trying to set a kind of
> definition and a judgment of practices that I don't see in the practices
> with which GI engage, and who I see operating in its legacy - that of
> formalizing modes of queer sociality in the interest of offering a different
> model of understanding subjectivity and thereby engaging in a cultural
> politics of subjectivity.
>
> Aesthetics as such as a general term might not have a cultural politics of
> itself, but I am not entirely interested in aesthetics as a general
> phenomenon. I am interested in the queer aesthetic we see alluded to by GI
> and its political operation as such.
>
> But I toss that back at you - are you invested in maintaining Kantian and
> Hegelian aesthetics?
>
> * what do you mean when you refer to "the limits of a certain kind of
>> understanding under our moment of capital" (from Dada to Surrealism to
>> today) that formalizes queer sociality and queer relationality? doesn't the
>> idea of queer relational/queer aesthetics do that more insidiously than a
>> politicizing position with regard to the social function and production of
>> art - from whatever prevalent theoretical position you may articulate this -
>> i.e. Deleuze, Rancière, Nancy, etc... [my sense and concern is that in
>> wishing to criticize *certain* political articulations, one risks conceding
>> the space to that which one seeks to challenge - academic liberalism
>> supplying the conservative right with criticism of the left - Bourdieu's
>> late political writings and campaigning make a good counterpoint]
>>
>
> I will start by correcting a type-o, that I meant that sentence to read -
> GI, I think, establishes an archive of a queer avant-garde (the latter term
> I use because it was theirs, but also because I think what GI set up carries
> many of the problems that we see in the formulation of the avant-garde as a
> concept, problems and contradictions that are important both to the
> avant-garde's being but also as an indicator of the limits of a certain kind
> of understanding under our moment of capital) from Dada and Surrealism
> through to their contemporary moment that formalizes queer sociality, queer
> relationality.
>
> So the limits of ... do not formalize queer sociality and relationality,
> but rather the queer stuff highlights those limits and opens spaces in which
> we can imagine formations outside of those limits. I think that the
> priveliging of the "politicized position" disavows cultural politics and the
> political operation of positions that do not directly or explicitly address
> themselves to one notion of politics or another. It establishes a hegemony
> of politics itself that negates practics that are very political within
> another framework. But maybe I misunderstand your point?
>
>
> * related to the latter, how do you (following the discussions among
>> Butler, Zerilli/Zirelli, Laclau, Zizek, Rancière, Balibar, Badiou) connect
>> this to the concept of universality and emancipation - or do you, as much
>> postmodern and post-structural theory in the 90s typically asserted,
>> associate all universalizing theory with masculinism, hypostatization,
>> totalization, etc?
>>
>
> I firmly believe that politics is contingent. What is emancipatory in one
> moment and space is possibly, maybe even probably, not in another. This is
> not a postmodern idea. We see Brecht and Benjamin talk about it, we see the
> Panthers talk about it, etc. I follow their lead.
>
>
>
> --
> Virginia Solomon
>
--
Virginia Solomon
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