Being online is a very distracting process. Years before, we existed without the consistent need to check things online. But things have changed, and sometimes, I feel addicted to that sensation–of having to check on whatever is happening online. It is unhealthy. It can be a very isolating process as well.
This reminds me of Alexei Penzin’s lecture about two years ago at Former West 2013. He was problematizing sleep and immaterial labor. Our constant presence and performance online and in social media demands our attention 24/7. Do we still sleep? Even as our body is asleep, our presence is now a constant as our online presence never sleeps. This also reflects on the present condition of labor. It is part of the immaterial labor that never stops, an ever-present performance. Sometimes I want to escape this consistent labor, yet at times, I feel like we thrive in it.
But the digital world is just a medium. You may use it to enable a real connection or you may use it as a substitute of such. There were countless times that social media was a means to an end–a means for everyone to catch up and get together in real life, and this still happens. I even have a first hand experience wherein people got together in social media in order to create real change and it worked, though such instances are rare.
Right now, being online feels like a constantly debilitating process. There are always questions on what to post and what not to. There are constant arguments and unhealthy debates that are going on about one issue or another. It is always an option to go off-line, and I assume that some who may read this post would think this, but there are practicalities involved in being online as well. Keeping this blog, for instance. Wherever these thoughts would take me, I would want to put this out there.
Are we constantly performing an immaterial labor for the capitalist condition? Is being online work rather than play? Is our current condition depriving us of sleep and real rest?
The Former West Congress: Documents, Constellations, and Prospects was participated in by around 150 students form all over the world. The levels of engagement in the Congress differed from the particular research focus and interests of the participants. The Learning Place, as programmed by Boris Buden, was focused creating and critiquing the concept of the CV and the civisizing of the art world. There were ten groups with approximately ten members each. This engagement enabled the critique of the concept wherein instead of the creation of a group CV, group projects and critiques were created instead. The lectures were divided into four programs–Art Production, Infrastructures, Insurgent Cosmopolitanism and Dissident Knowledges. Lectures, performances and programs were divided into those open for the public and those that were exclusively for the participants of the Learning Place.
Since my current research focuses on contemporary art, discourse, and criticism and I have programmed by parallel session participation accordingly. The lectures I participated in were Reading Timelines by Société Réalisté, From CV to Time Line: A Workshop on Labor and Social Media by Prof. Dr. Diether Lesage, How to Deal with What is Considered to be Art Today by Keti Chukrov, and Welcome to the “hood” by Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani.
Representation and Performance of the Self in the Contemporary
The contemporary setting redefined the question of the identity and representation of the artist. Reading Time Lines looked into the implication and possible repercussions on the identity and marketability of the contemporary artist. Certain conditions, participations and presentations affected how contemporary artists would be defined and pegged into certain roles. On a critical level, the question on the representation of the artist within the contemporary art world and its existing institutions was tackled.
Prof. Dr. Lesage’s lecture reflected the realities and effects of contemporary art as situated in social media. These echoed in my study of Poleteismo and how social media serve as the platform for discourse and criticism. Lesage also looked into how the artist situates the identity in social media. Appropriating Negri, Lesage saw social media as a constant and permanent performance of immaterial labor. The artist’s performance in social media became part and was anchored in the contemporary role and identity. This also recurred in the Penzin’s lecture on sleep and how the consistency in the performance of social media deprived the rest in this performance. The presence and iteration of performance in social media re-contextualized and re-politicized contemporary issues of representation and identity, particularly of the artist operating within and outside of existing art institutions.
Art Production in the Age of Internet and Social Media
Boris Groys’ keynote lecture on Art Production demystified the concept of the internet as a medium. As opposed to popular figurations, he presented the internet as something observable and finite. It provided potent visibility, accessibility, and transparency. In contemporary art criticism and engagement, the internet democratized but at the same time de-skill. As presented in my previous studies, the internet provided a medium of criticism more accessible as compared to journals, books, and magazines. The key difference in mediation changed the level, depth and speed or artistic and critical engagements.
Dealing with the philosophical readings of the internet, Groys saw the password as contemporary subjectivity and that the hackers may break the code of hermeneutics within such subjectivity. The internet went beyond the panoptic as the cyborg may be the secret of subjectivity. Knowledge of the internet presented the reality that all codes may be broken, and for Groys, true utopia and true subjectivity may only be achieved through an unbreakable encryption. Such encryption, realistically and philosophically, was not yet achieved.
Presenting the shifting roles of an artist, another key idea presented by Groys was that of the artist as a blogger. He saw in the internet the return of the universal spectator and the presence of the artist in the online world revealed himself to the universal. With this paradigm, the presence of the artist to the audience went beyond what was traditionally accepted and assumed in the art world. The exposure to the wider audience with different mediation and filters redefined the planes of engagement with the publics.
The redefinition of the public and artistic planes was also seen in Hito Steyerl’s performance lecture I Dreamed a Dream. If there is an influx in online criticism and engagement that present the issues of democratization and deskilling, the same is true in actual artistic production. She compared the deskilling of art with the deskilling of killing and using firearms. This shift in social order resulted in unique conditions, such as in a production of an artist, as everyone now could identify oneself as an artist.
On a global perspective, Steyerl looked into how the Arab Spring changed the global political paradigm, yet failed in the actual establishment of this shift. This contemporary shift is a contemporary miserable, the spring that keeps us waiting. Her lecture was anchored to the concept of Chasing Spring, an art project that changed the end of Les Miserables, wherein Javert did not die. The presence and performance of online life presented a shift in paradigm, yet upon closer examination brought forward the question of whether or not there was an actual shift.
Such failures were carried over to Franco Berardi Bifo’s lecture, Game Over? Aside from the failures of the Arab Spring, he also saw the failure of the Occupied Movements. Though on the surface, with the help of machines, technology and the internet, it seemed that the shifting paradigms would stabilize. Yet as unraveled in the short few years, such shifting paradigms did not take root. There were fragilization and precarization of human lives and conditions that performed the failure in the European collapse. The empowerment superficially represented in social media, such as FaceBook, does not take a real shift outside of the cyberspace.
Social Change and Transformation
The contemporary is viewed as a shift and period of social change and transformation. Maria Hlavajova looks into the transformative nature of our times, similar to the shifts in 1989, a supposed breaking point for the contemporary. The three key points are–the contemporary moment, the return of religion, and the impact of technology. There points are clear in the 1989 shift and it is re-observed today. The contemporary moment includes symptoms of globalization such as migrations, diaspora, and problems of citizenship. This is particularly true in the Philippine setting as an ever increasing amount of Filipinos move into migration and diaspora, often with the conflict of citizenship. The global phenomenon is unescapable in the contemporary landscape.
The return of religion is also highly observed. Religious extremism is once again paramount in contemporary life, as well as the resurfacing of the debate of good vs. evil. My particular study in the contemporary moment, looking into Poleteismo, a controversial artwork by Mideo Cruz used this paradigm. The artwork became largely controversial due to the use of religious icons. Such icons brought forward the debates on good and evil, right and wrong, and the question of religious offense. The transformative nature of our time, instead of moving forward to religious openness, actually increases and tightens religious debates.
The conflict of Poleteismo is also observed online. The impact of technology in the contemporary art world is largely unexpected. When the controversial issue broke out, the art world was not ready to engage in the discussion and debate that was quickly unraveling online. The internet and social media provided a platform for artistic engagement that the public utilized, but which the art world is largely unprepared to face. This technological development is a platform of the contemporary that the art world is adjusting to and engaging in.
The contemporary defies the conventional fictions of histories. To address this, the Former West Congress looks into a new world order wherein crisis and instability can be a source of knowledge. One of the key lectures in the from of Dissident Knowledges is Christopher Kulendran Thomas and Tom Trevatt’s Art After Spectatorship? Instead of centering the discourse on the artist and the art world, they aimed to look into the spectators and what happened to the shift of spectatorship. They looked into the deregulation of art and the collapse of ideology that supported it. Contemporary art displays an emerging market despite the global financial crisis. They also looked into how interpretation became an external guarantor of contemporary art, removing the reading into form and the discourse of the artist. This lecture is visualized in When Platitudes Beomes Form, featured artworks of Christopher Kulendran Thomas and curated by Tom Trevatt. What they did was to take contemporary artworks from Sri Lanka and reinterpreted it for displayin a Berlin gallery. This gave a practical visual form of their lecture on art and spectatorship.
Such decentering of knowledges is also seen in the presentations of alternative histories and archives during the Congress. I was personally thinking these strategies and its possible implications in the writing of contemporary art and histories of the Philippines. Nida Ghouse and Hassan Khan used Khan’s memories of the American University in Cairo. Such memories displayed the shifting social order as the university turned from public to private. Such memories recalled the class formation and the creation of a specific elite, the subculture in the university, and the double alienation felt by the students as they are alienated from the institution and then alienated from Cairo. Another shifting in the formation of history is Rasha Salti’s Alternative Arab Almanac. She also saw the shifts in the Arab world from the 1989 contemporary until the present. She compared this to the difference in the presentation of histories of the United States. She reflected on the history of the Arab insurgencies framed in the different political imaginaries. On a more diasporic movement, Daniel Baker and Ethel Brooks presented A Roma Model/The Cosmopolitan Other. Their performance of claiming and moving forward as a Roma as they formed the concept of camps and encampments at the same time maintaining sustainability was against the accepted paradigm of a nation-state. Their continued movements into different physical spaces yet still being defined as Roma is critical.
These de-centered narratives provides a framework for a Global Agoraphilia as presented by Piotr Piotrowski. Globalization is often represented as the centering of the world into homogeneity. This perspective is critiqued by a global agoraphilia, the formation and critique in the use of public spaces. Artistic instruments enter and participate in the public space, thus shaping and defining public life that does not subscribe to the narrative of globalization. With this lecture, a performance my Aernout Mik was presented wherein he scrutinized the building blocks of the contemporary, creating noise and confusion, pushing and testing the limits of disobedience and non-compliance at the moment of revolt and rebellion. Such de-centering of knowledges to the point of chaos presented the challenges of contemporary art, history, and discourses. Being able to understand the global narrative at the same time critique and question it in the contemporary is critical in the engagement and discourse of the contemporary moment.
Sites of Contemporary Constructions
The experience of the Former West Congress will not be complete without the narrative of Berlin itself. The time for the conference was tight and the best way I found to experience it was to walk with Nina Fischer and Moroan el Sani, the artists. The site of the Congress, Haus der Kulturelen der Welt or The House of World Cultures is already reflective of the shifting paradigms of the history of Berlin and the contemporary. The building has been remodeled and rebuilt numerous times until it reached an iconographic status as the sites of contemporary art and discourse. Nina Fischer and Moroan el Sani, started with HKW and proceeded the small group to walk along Kreuzberg and Mitte, towards the sites and inspirations of their artworks that fought against the centered narratives.
The former Palast der Republik was being reconstructed according to the new narrative desired by the current state. They took us along Lustgarten and other parts of Kreuzberg and Mitte where performances, discos, and parties were conducted at different times to hide from the repressive state. It was never at the same place and the same time and there was no guarantee of finding the party. This served as the narrative in their collaborative work Phantom Clubs. The creation and redefining of art and history within the narratives of the state and the artists showed a continuing shifts and de-centering of discourses in accordance to their formed and preferred realities.
Propositions
Maria Hlavajova’s proposition for the Former West explores the possibilities and the prospects of contemporary art. After 1989, it was initially assumed that art would finally be itself, as it will no longer be used as a tool for emancipation. It was not clear what “art itself” exactly is, but I am currently exploring this as a notion of contemporary art. It is not art for art’s sake, but art for itself, rather than being a means of another’s end. This largely leans on how we think and how we would think critically the discourse and narratives of the contemporary.
There is no simple or linear way in defining the contemporary. The de-centering of discourses, as already mentioned is necessary in this imaginary. There are also various shifts that are needed to look into, in our aspect of formerness. The concept of the “former” is a key to the Former West perspectives. Such western domination is currently being looked into. What is the aspect of formerness that is current, rather than what it is in a linear past. There is now an expansion of fields and consequences, along with shifts in balances and vocabulary. The transformative nature of our time is similar to that of 1989, though it comes to question where our shifts are. There are also the various posts that we need to look into–the post-colonial, post-communist, and in imagining the world other. The Philippines in particular is in a post-colonial present, and though not post-communist, it is also recovering from a repressive dictatorial past. The shifting and tilting balance, as well as the contemporary shifts in vocabulary needs to be addressed in the prospects and propositions of the contemporary.
The contemporary present is a shifting proposition that are yet to completely grasp. The location and mapping of contemporary art in this continually moving constellation is not easy, yet necessary in the engagement and grasping of the proposition. The realities of the conflicts of the contemporary are changing landscape in the transformative times. As the contemporary undergoes a radical social, political and economic transformation, art is at the shifting point rather than a peripheral tool in such a transformation. The next few years, as the political upheavals, technological and communication advances, and religious and moral debates are resolved, contemporary art will continually engage, ride, and eventually shift and transform the contemporary current.
What is a woman? What defines her? Is she different? How so? These are some of the questions I asked as the strength of my character was challenged and measured today. Things were on track. My paper was working out in its own way. Everything was relatively fine. And then, bam, my month old laptop froze and quick fixes just weren’t working. No other choice but to give it up for repair or even replacement. Two to three weeks, he says. On the last three weeks of the semester, with papers to write and grades to compute. More importantly, with research materials stuck inside that laptop, a laptop that they need to rip apart piece by piece. It will come back in mint condition, but containing nothing of what was placed there.
This concern, my concern, is a middle class concern. Obviously, in some way or another, I managed to purchase a supposed quality laptop. I am writing, an undertaking not open to everyone, especially not to those who are too busy with children to take care of, a household to run or manual labor to exhaust. They can, if they really wanted too, but too often, they just don’t. This particular moment is when I remember a remarkable woman, Virginia Woolf. In a way I have always felt for A room of one’s own, but moments like these in particular would remind you of what she says, “One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well” (Woolf 210). I am fortunate because despite of having to work, I still have the time, energy and capacity to study, contemplate and write, rather than simply being occupied with everyday life. I have my independence, first provided by my family and then supplemented by my own capacity. Again, as Woolf says, “…what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house, and clothing are mine forever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me” (230). This is the independence that she has been given, that I have been given. But, unfortunately, this independence is not given to all women, not even to most women.
Being a single woman in Philippine society is not simple. Even if good circumstances in life bring you independence—society, culture and tradition will make independent living difficult. I for one have been termed a soltera in the most derogatory fashion. Women in ragged clothes with unkempt children, even those borrowing money from the family would express their sympathy for my sorry state in life, being never married. I was 25 when I was first called that. I expected to be at least 30 before being termed such. In a society such as ours, we can go back to the first wave of feminism and witness the same concerns expressed in present time. Society will make you feel like an incomplete woman without a man by your side and without birthing children to carry on the line. Unless of course, if the soltera is useful, such as in educating siblings and cousins, providing money and material things to their family. Living an academic life, teaching and writing, being in the art world, does not count. Being an only child, not having to provide but will in fact inherit—being unmarried is confusing if not downright unacceptable. Society assumes that there is something seriously wrong with you. You are the incomplete woman. This is part of the price to be paid for independence—the independence that you need to study, contemplate and create.
Yet, this independence that I enjoy, despite the challenges of society, is not enjoyed by most women. It is like we never learned, never grew up from the past. I know for a fact that a lot of women now still have no voice. I remember the assertion of Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, “But, if women are to be excluded, without having a voice, from a participation of the natural rights of mankind, prove first, to ward off the charge of injustice and inconsistency, that they want reason- else this flaw in your NEW CONSTITUTION will ever shew that man must, in some shape, act like a tyrant, and tyranny, in whatever part of society it rears its brazen front, will ever undermine morality. I have repeatedly asserted, and produced what appeared to me irrefragable arguments drawn from matters of fact, to prove my assertion, that women cannot, by force, be confined to domestic concerns; for they will, however ignorant, intermeddle with more weighty affairs, neglecting private duties only to disturb, by cunning tricks, the orderly plans of reason which rise above their comprehension” (2). She fights for women’s voice. Despite the grounding of this in the domestic life, which has been a dominant place of the woman for a very long time, her assertions are still relevant in the present time. Though the feminist discourse today veered away from the moralist discourse of Mary Wollstonecraft, she still paved the way for it, and her discourse still hits home. Where is feminism now, if we are still at a time that a universal human right is still widely denied—the provision for women’s health?
We keep on going back, remembering the first wave of feminism, “Moralists have unanimously agreed, that unless virtue be nursed by liberty, it will never attain due strength- and what they say of man I extend to mankind, insisting that in all cases morals must be fixed on immutable principles; and, that the being cannot be termed rational or virtuous, who obeys any authority, but that of reason” (Wollstonecraft 164). Unlike the time of Wollstonecraft, feminists broke away from the moralist tendencies. In fact, the fight for women’s rights goes against the grain of the traditional moralists. The fight for the RH Bill is raging. The sexist patriarchal Philippine society is rearing its head. A law that provides gender equity, freedom of choice and education is barred by moralists as something evil and demonic. It is a different world from which Wollstonecraft came from but we still have the same problems, the same concerns.
“The State recognizes and guarantees the exercise of the universal basic human right to reproductive health by all persons, particularly of parents, couples and women, consistent with their religious convictions, cultural beliefs and the demands of responsible parenthood. Toward this end, there shall be no discrimination against any person on grounds such as sex, age, religion, sexual orientation, disabilities, political affiliation and ethnicity.
Moreover, the State recognizes and guarantees the promotion of gender equality, equity and women’s empowerment as a health and human rights concern. The advancement and protection of women’s human rights shall be central to the efforts of the State to address reproductive health care. As a distinct but inseparable measure to the guarantee of women’s human rights, the State recognizes and guarantees the promotion of the welfare and rights of children.
The State likewise guarantees universal access to medically-safe, legal, affordable, effective and quality reproductive health care services, methods, devices, supplies and relevant information and education thereon even as it prioritizes the needs of women and children, among other underprivileged sectors. The State shall eradicate discriminatory practices, laws and policies that infringe on a person’s exercise of reproductive health rights.”
Current feminist discourse keeps falling into the trap of post-modernism, the trap of non-difference. How can we look forward without seeing that the earliest feminist concerns are still unrealized? We had two female presidents; the first was a hero-worshipped weakling and the second was a demonized political leader. The society still admires the woman that is weak and is afraid of a woman that shows strength. What we now see is the death of feminism, its status as a ‘post’, yet in reality, we have not yet fully enjoyed the fruits of feminism. Amelia Jones say in Postfeminism, Feminist Pleasures, and Embodied Theories of Art, “The recent resuscitation of this patriarchal fantasy by the right under the guise of ‘family values’ is a symptom of the massive anxiety of the patriarchal system, signaling a reaction formation against the threatening incursion of women into the work force and, more recently, the political arena” (384-5). A grieving widow is a hero and a fighting leader is a demon, that is how we still see women in the political arena and this is still the country’s model.
The fighting, screaming voice of feminism is now made to be tame if not silenced. I find this incredibly sad, frustrating even. The work, the ideology is not yet done, yet it’s already starting to ebb. The fire is dying a slow painful death as feminism is appropriated in a non-different post-modern world, “The strategic appropriation of feminism both radicalizes postmodernism and simultaneously facilitates the silencing of the confrontational voices of feminism–the end result being the replacement of feminism by a less threatening, postfeminism of (non)difference” (Jones 388). Where is the woman then? Where is her voice?
How can women gain the power and dominance of her voice? In finding the women’s voice and place, it is interesting to look into the French feminists. They look into the personal aspect of relationships and breaks down the sexism of psychoanalysis. Simone de Beauvoir deals with this in The Second Sex, “Today the combat takes a different shape; instead of wishing to put man in a prison, woman endeavours to escape from one; she no longer seeks to drag him into the realms of immanence but to emerge, herself, into the light of transcendence. Now the attitude of the males creates a new conflict: it is with a bad grace that the man lets her go. He is very well pleased to remain the sovereign subject, the absolute superior, the essential being; he refuses to accept his companion as an equal in any concrete way. She replies to his lack of confidence in her by assuming an aggressive attitude. It is no longer a question of a war between individuals each shut up in his or her sphere: a caste claiming its rights attacks and is resisted by the privileged caste. Here two transcendences are face to face; instead of displaying mutual recognition, each free being wishes to dominate the other” (51). This struggle of the heteronormative relations is still present today. In the more traditional curve of Philippine society, this is the struggle of the male and female. As a woman, I know my voice and I want to express it. I have no sovereign; I have no wish to be dominated. Looking in the bigger picture of the society in which I belong, my struggle is simply not right.
Like almost every Filipino woman, I am expected to marry and to bear children. This is if I am to belong and if I am to become a complete woman, according to expectations. Helene Cixous’s take in The Laugh of the Medusa challenges this expectation, “There are thousands of ways of living one’s pregnancy; to have or not to have with that still invisible other a relationship of another intensity. And if you don’t have that particular yearning, it doesn’t mean that you’re in any way lacking. Each body distributes in its own special way, without model or norm, the nonfinite and changing totality of its desires. Decide for yourself on your position in the arena of contradictions, where pleasure and reality embrace. Bring the other to life. Women know how to live detachment; giving birth is neither losing nor increasing. It’s adding to life an other” (891). There is nothing wrong in marrying, and giving birth, but there is also nothing wrong in not doing so, or having no desire to do so. It is a matter of the right and freedom of a woman to choose, and not to be judged or discriminated for her personal choices. This basic principle is still denied most women. There is no law for or against it, but for women to live in accord with her society, this is what is expected of her. She is not expected to create, other than that of her own children. Cixous, admirably, tries to break this barrier down and go beyond the psychoanalytic expectations of a patriarchal society, “Beware, my friend, of the signifier that would take you back to the authority of a signified! Beware of diagnoses that would reduce your generative powers. “Common” nouns are also proper nouns that dispar-age your singularity by classifying it into species. Break out of the circles; don’t remain within the psychoanalytic closure. Take a look around, then cut through!” (892).
Going back to Simone de Beauvoir, feminism and the fight for women’s rights is not about denying her a man, if that is what she wants. It is more on the relationship of the woman to her society, to other people, and to end her situation as ‘the second sex’, “To emancipate woman is to refuse to confine her to the relations she bears to man, not to deny them to her; let her have her independent existence and she will continue none the less to exist for him also: mutually recognising each other as subject, each will yet remain for the other an other. The reciprocity of their relations will not do away with the miracles —desire, possession, love, dream, adventure — worked by the division of human beings into two separate categories; and the words that move us — giving, conquering, uniting — will not lose their meaning. On the contrary, when we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the ‘division’ of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form” (De Beauvoir 60). Only in freeing the woman, emancipating her and giving her the rights to live the life she wants, can she truly be capable of art and artistic discourse. There may be few artists who surpassed such odds—Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt for instance, yet there are more to achieve when freed from society’s bounds. Imagine how many more Jane Austen is out there, that lies bound by society. Like Jane Austen, I may never marry nor gain fame in my lifetime, but, I will struggle to study, write and contemplate like she did. But my hope, as in the hope of feminism, is that women will not have to be bound, silenced or pressured to conform.
Being in the academe, a woman is allowed to express more as opposed to her peers. But we have to always be careful of some academic pitfalls. There is still hope in the academe, “Interestingly, then, while the postfeminism of popular culture works to deny the continuing empowerment of feminist discourse and the sexually and professsionally active feminist subject, the postfeminism of academic criticism works simultaneously to celebrate and absorb feminism and feminist theory. Postfeminism in art discourse is precisely this absorptive operation: the incorporation of feminism into postmodernism as ‘post’ (Jones 389). The challenge though, is to translate feminism from an academic and artistic discourse into the discourse of women everywhere. The struggles enumerated by Linda Nochlin in Why have there been no great women artists? still holds true today, “The question “Why have there been no great women artists?” has led us to the conclusion, so far, that art is not a free, autonomous activity of a super-endowed individual, “Influenced” by previous artists, and, more vaguely and superficially, by “social forces,” but rather, that the total situation of art making, both in terms of the development of the art maker and in the nature and quality of the work of art itself, occur in a social situation, are integral elements of this social structure, and are mediated and determined by specific and definable social institutions, be they art academies, systems of patronage, mythologies of the divine creator, artist as he-man or social outcast” (Nochlin online). We cannot enter into the realm of post-feminism, we cannot allow the death of feminism, because the end of feminism has not yet been realized.
Looking into writing, and art production in general, Helen Cixous still resounds in my mind,”I shall speak about women’s writing: about what it will do. Woman must write her self: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies-for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text-as into the world and into history-by her own movement. The future must no longer be determined by the past. I do not deny that the effects of the past are still with us. But I refuse to strengthen them by repeating them, to confer upon them an irremovability the equivalent of destiny, to confuse the biological and the cultural. Antici-pation is imperative” (Cixous 875). There is no changing the silence of women’s past, but the silence of the present and the future is unforgiveable. Maybe there is also a seed of truth into writing as the symbolic phallus. I have men enough men that are easily intimidated by women who write, women who create. It is through these productions that we break our silence, “It is by writing, from and toward women, and by taking up the challenge of speech which has been governed by the phallus, that women will confirm women in a place other than that which is reserved in and by the symbolic, that is, in a place other than silence. Women should break out of the snare of silence. They shouldn’t be conned into accepting a domain which is the margin or the harem” (881). It is a time that women should break away from the bounds of expectations, and for society to stop trying to bind their women according to patriarchal ideals.
Instead of the death of feminism, going into post-feminism, we should look into the re-embodiment of feminist. The goal of feminism is still unrealized, women’s struggles are still alive, and there is still a need for feminist discourse. Instead of ending a much needed discourse, perhaps we need to re-embody it into our present situation, “My central argument is that at this particular moment the most radical rethinking of feminism can take place through the articulation of re-embodied theories of female artistic subjectivity, feminist agency, and representation in the broadest sense. Ideally, by re-embodying the subjects of feminism–by saturating theory in and with the desiring making, viewing, and interpretative bodies of art theory and practice–the notion of a unified feminist subject (a notion that we saw was integral to this subject’s termination in the popular press accounts of postfeminism) can be rejected. And, by acknowledging multiple feminist subjects of infinitely variable identities, we can perform reinvigorated feminist art histories and practices that are radically empowered through the newly recognized diversity of feminisms” (Jones 395).
I am lucky that I am not Virginia Woolf’s Judith Shakespeare, I was not a poetic mind driven mad with frustration by society’s bounds. It may be a middle class, elitist dream, but creation can more easily happen in Woolf’s imaginings, “By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream” (300-1). More so, she says, “So that when I ask you to earn money and have a room of your own, I am asking you to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life, it would appear, whether one can impart it or not.” This is what I hope for every woman, as her story goes. This is just the beginning too, as its merely scratching the surface of a heterosexual woman in society, a place that I also belong too. And women’s stories do not, in any way, end here. We can start again by taking care of health, and then break the bounds of society instead of conforming to it. After that, creation, writing, artistic productions and criticism may easily follow. A woman as a writer, as an artist, as anything she may want to be would be just as acceptable as her role as a daughter, a wife and a mother. Hopefully, not just in my ideals but also in reality.
References:
Brand, Peggy. “Feminism and Tradition”. Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 1999.
Brodsky, Joyce, “Feminist Art History”. Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 1999.
Cixous, Helene. “The Laugh of the Medusa” trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, Signs, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer, 1976), pp. 875-893
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Online.
Jones, Amelia. “Postfeminism, Feminist Pleasures, and Embodied Theories of Art” The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, ed. Donald Preziosi. New York: Oxford University Press (1998) 383-395.
Nochlin, Linda. Why Have There Been no Great Women Artists? Online.
Silvers, Anita. “Feminism”. Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, 1999.
The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2011. 15h Philippine Congress.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Online.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
Once again, I am staring at a blank sheet of paper as I struggle with the topic I am working on–psychoanalysis and phenomenology. Neither of the two are my favorite. I certainly do not want to unearth the writings of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, again. As an undergrad, encountering their perception of the world for the first time, I was very impressed. I found it fascinating to read. I was opening the world of psychoanalysis, something I have never encountered before. Familiar, in a way, of the story of Oedipus, and having Oedipus Rex as the first play I have watched by Dulaang UP, I was enthralled. I thought it was a viable theory and even fooled myself into believing that it was an explanation for sexuality, behavior and representation. I had feminist leanings as a teenager as well, so encountering Laura Mulvey‘s Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema was a revelation. I found myself writing more and more about psychoanalysis and visual perception, I even remember my paper on the image-formation of Filipino women in cinema using Mulvey’s paper as a theoretical framework. Fortunately, I outgrew that perception of the world.
As I grew up and grew more critical of what I am reading and writing, I find psychoanalytic theories too encompassing, without consideration for other people and other cultures. Certainly, not everyone in the world can be the same? As fascination for a new concept fades and criticality begins, Freud’s Oedipus Complex and Jung’s Electra Complex became more and more ridiculous. I now find the concept of a son hating his father and desiring his mother, and a daughter hating her mother and desiring her father, in the way of their psychosexual development, absurd. Of course, in time, I knew that various points of their arguments were also disproved. The five stages of psychosexual development is no longer accepted. Yet, these are the starting point in the discussion of psychoanalysis. Certain theoreticians still adapt and appropriate these theories in their analysis. It is also a good beginning in the discussion of consciousness, particularly of the concept of the sub-conscious. Still, I struggle with the fact that, I just don’t want to write about this again.
I watched PETA’s production of William last Saturday. I have to say that its a very good play, a combination of Shakespeare 101 for students and ‘identify the reference’ for Shakespeare fans. Its a different feeling when you get to witness a theatre-full of teenagers laugh and applaud a Shakespeare-inspired play. Looking at this from a psychoanalytical point of view, the play could go down the road of over-reading and absurdity. There are various parent-child relationships in the play, notable ones are the relationship of TJ Domingo and Estella Marie Carandang. Their relationship with their fathers (played by the same actor but with different characterizations) display more or less the Oedipal and Electra Complexes. TJ Domingo, the rebel, aggressive jock has a violent relationship with his father. His father, a dominant and aggressive man is abusive and tends to beat-up TJ, whenever TJ fucks up. TJ of course, resents his father. The absent mother is never mentioned, but he looks into Estella, the mature mother-image of the group, to help him out whenever he was in a bind. He also grew to love her in a romantic way. Sounds familiar? Looking into Estella’s parental relationship, on the other hand, she resents her mother greatly for leaving them and is very close to her father as a result. The father tends to be over-protective of Estella and Estella adores him greatly. Again, familiar right? So, maybe Laura Mulvey wasn’t too far off in her essay, even though the narrative here is in theatre form. If my main focus is on the psychoanalytic aspect of the play, it would focus in these two parent-child relationships and its representation. There are two other characters with fathers (again played the same actor) with the same dynamics. A little bit different, though, is Erwin Castro’s relationship with his father. Even though he is male, he has a good and gentle relationship with his father. But the thing is, though Erwin is not gay, he is, in a way, effeminate. He is very gentle and soft-spoken, almost the common characterization of a woman. He is not aggressive, so there is no competition for dominance or for being the alpha male of the family, unlike in TJ’s case. Here, there is no struggle for power. Erwin, to a certain point, is a mediocre push-over. Using the psychoanalytic perspective will go far in any narrative, but I have grown up enough to know that it is often not enough, that there is something more to the perception of the world than psychosexual and power relationships of gender and consciousness. Or more to the point of psychoanalysis—the sub-conscious. Though this theory does not lack in merit, I still feel that there is something else, something more.
This is where I see phenomenology coming in. Instead of just focusing on the universal sub-conscious that psychoanalysis seem to imply, I want to explore art as we experience them. I want to point out the self-consciousness of the audience rather than the psychoanalytical dispositions and secret sexual desires that the audience apparently has no control over. Looking into Merleau-Ponty, when we perceive something, we also perceive ourselves, that we are also visible. He says that, “The visible can… fill and occupy me only because I who see it do not see it from the midst of nothingness, but from the midst of itself; I the seer am also visible. What makes the weight, the thickness, the flesh of each color, of each sound, of each tacile texture, of the present, and of the world, is the fact that he who grasps them feels himself emerge from them by a sort of coiling up or redoubling, fundamentally homogenous with them, he feels that he is the sensible itself coming to itself” (113-14). When you watch a play, you do not just see the play, you also locate yourself in the play. Part the popularity of William is the easy self-identification with at least one of the characters and recognizing other characters as someone one have encountered in everyday life. Very suited to the teenagers as the characters are mostly teenagers themselves, most adults can also relate as they have played such roles earlier in their lives. Often, the tendency is to relate to one character and remember people encountered in life that embodies the other characters.
There were five main characters in the play, the five students–TJ Domingo, the popular, basketball player, jock; Sophia Reyes, the nouveau riche, social climbing, beautiful, shallow, romantic girl; Richard Austria, the gay guy “outed” during the course of the play; Erwin Castro, the mediocre, push-over, quiet-type geek; and Estella Marie Carandang, the plain-looking, know-it-all nerd. These are the five stereotypes of the typical high school classroom translated into students learning about Shakespeare from their weird, passionate teacher Ms. Lutgarda Martinez. When viewing these characters, it is not a simple identification of the high school stereotypes but also self-identification with previous experiences informing and affecting the perception of the play. Paul Crowther further explores Merleau-Ponty:
“There are two aspects to this (though Merleau-Ponty does not always clearly separate them). First, as we have seen, things define themselves as styles brought about by our body’s modes of orientation towards the world. Our perceptual contact with the world is expressive, in so far as the body is constantly taking up new positions and launching itself into new projects. This means that the stylizing and expressive foundation of perception is of general validity. Each human has the same broad range of bodily capacities and will, therefore, tend to see and do much the same things (i.e. share the same styles of perception) as other human beings. However, it is also true that as individual embodied beings we each retain our particular view of the world” (108).
Aside from recognizing the Shakespearean motifs in William, the audience also recognize themselves as they experience the play. As Merleau-Ponty says in Eye and Mind, ” Things have an internal equivalent in me; they arouse in me a carnal formula of their presence. Why shouldn’t these (correspondences) in their turn give rise to some (external) visible shape in which anyone else recognize those motifs which support his own inspection of the world” (60). There are several layers of recognition that may happen. At first, the easiest one is the characterization of the high school stereotype that an audience may relate to. Next, is the Shakespearean references that such characters represent. Another layer is the Shakespearean play or sonnet that the character is acting out, whether straight-up recitation (Shylock’s monologue from The Merchant of Venice) or appropriated to a more Filipino context (Marc Anthony’s monologue from Marc Anthony and Cleopatra). Yet another layer that may affect this identification is the actual knowledge or experience the audience have of Shakespeare. Though some are easy to identify as it is explicitly stated in the performance, some are not, and only those who have some previous readings and knowledge of Shakespeare may recognize. Such identifications may happen in different layers within the embodiment of the play. Each person will have a different sense and layer of such embodiment. A necessary condition for such embodiment, is self-consciousness, as Crowther defines it, “To be self-conscious is to be able to ascribe experiences to oneself. It is to be a person” (150). In order to examine the consciousness and embodiment present in William, I want to go beyond the consciousness and sub-consciousness of Freud and consider the phenomenological proposition of Crowther in Art and Embodiment, from aesthetics to self-consciousness:
“The first of these I shall call attention. By this I mean our capacity to be receptive to sensory stimuli. It is a basic orientation or directness bound up with our body’s position in relation to that world of sensible items and events with which it is causally continuous. The second necessary capacity is that of comprehension. A self-conscious being in one who must be able to organize the stimuli received in perception by discriminating sameness and difference amongst them. This capacity is powerfully enhanced by the third necessary (and complex) feature, which I shall call projection. A being can only be self-conscious if it can posit situations other than those presented by the immediate perceptual field. The chief projective powers are memory and imagination; the former enables us to posit situations in which we have previously been, and the latter enables us to posit alternative possibilities of experience to those which are immediately accessible to us in perceptual terms. The projective powers, of course, are the very flesh of any sense of having a personal history” (150-51).
I will take into consideration, the most powerful performance delivered in William, the character of Richard Austria, the gay guy. His story embodies Shakespeare’s Shylock, the Jew from The Merchant of Venice. Richard was a closeted gay, “out” only to his closest friends. A fight with TJ caused him to be “outed” in his entire school, resulting to his persecution. Richard, the hard-working class representative was suddenly mistreated and harassed by his fellow classmates. Thus, he delivered Shylock’s speech, as they both embodied persecution, “He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies; and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction” (Act III, Scene 1).
In the manner of Crowther’s self-consciousness, the layers are attention, comprehension and projection. In Richard’s arch and almost every other performance, the most obvious part in experiencing it is by paying attention, in order to be receptive of the performance. Next is to organize the stimuli received and basically understand the performance–what is happening, why it is happening, what are the the Shakespearean references made, what is the plot, what does the plot pertain to in Shakespearean plays, etc. But the most notable part in Crowther’s self-consciousness is projection, the actual embodiment. The relationship of Richard’s character and performance and the memory or imagination of the audience will come in to play. Do you need to be gay to be able to feel for or project the performance of Richard’s character? Not necessarily. Because even though you do not have the memory of being a discriminated gay student, you still have the memory of others as well as your own imagination that enables you to project yourself into the performance. Through an effective performance, one can project the self into it through memories and imagination–feel the frustration, the pain of betrayal, the hate of discrimination and the release into freedom after the resolution. The phenomenology in experiencing and projecting into a performance could be achieved in that manner. This projection will also have another layer, as the audience will not only project themselves into Richard, but also into Shylock as he is embodied by Richard. The pain of persecution and the desire for revenge is something that would be powerful in the memory and imagination of the audience. The layers of embodiment enriches each other, as the character (Richard), the character reference (Shylock) and the audience affect each other and enrich each other in the phenomenological and aesthetic experience, and transcend this relationship into the projection of the self.
Another interesting character is TJ. He is initially presented as a stupid jock, a bully and a villain. As the narrative goes further, he was humanized as his relationship with his father was explored. He was also redeemed towards the end as he apologized publicly to Richard. Again, looking at it from Crowther’s self-consciousness and embodiment, one does not necessarily need be in TJ’s situation or have a memory of experiencing such event. The imagination of the audience will help transcend the performance from attention and comprehension, well into projection. With such imagination, the audience may project on to the humanization of TJ, his reasons for being a bully, his eventual redemption. The viewer may not only comprehend the meaning of redemption but also characterize and embody the feeling of being redeemed. This gives the ephemeral character of a performance lasts in the imagination of the audience. Just like in Richard and Shylock, the layers of embodiment is also there. This time, the relationship is between TJ, Claudius and the audience. One does not necessarily be a betrayer to feel the pain of betrayal. The use and enhancement of memory and imagination will come into play as the humanization and pain of the villain is represented. The viewer transcends into the character of TJ and into the the character of Claudius from Shakespeare’s Hamlet:
“O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;
And, like a man to double business bound,
I stand in pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother’s blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy
But to confront the visage of offence?
And what’s in prayer but this two-fold force,
To be forestalled ere we come to fall,
Or pardon’d being down? Then I’ll look up;
My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul murder’?
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of those effects for which I did the murder,
My crown, mine own ambition and my queen.
May one be pardon’d and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence’s gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft ’tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law: but ’tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell’d,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence. What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?
Yet what can it when one can not repent?
O wretched state! O bosom black as death!
O limed soul, that, struggling to be free,
Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay!
Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe! All may be well.”
(Act 1, Scene 3)
This is the aspect that William does well in terms of engaging the audience. The main intention of the play is to enrich the knowledge of the audience, particularly the high school students, of Shakespeare. They do this, phenomenologically. The audience are given so many layers in the engagement, depending on the depth of their self-consciousness. As mentioned earlier, the easiest to identify with is the high school students. At one point or another in the audience’s high school and teenage life, they embodied a form of these stereotypes. Next is the embodiment of the character of another characters, those of Shakespeare’s. They transcend space and time as they bring to life characters hundreds of years old and embody them in their characters. The audience then, is given another layer of story and characterization to project themselves into. While all these is going on, the audience are projecting both their memories and imagination into the complexities of the characters performing. These workings on the aesthetic experience and the embodiment of the self into the artistic production enriches the performance as well as the viewing of the performance. It does not work in one way. There is the interchange of the phenomenological experiences between the audience and the performers as they project their own uniques selves—previous experiences, memories and imagination, into each other.
This dynamics in the art, not just in the theatrical performance, needs to be further explored, rather that being stuck in the rut of the sub-conscious. The theory of the sub-conscious, at least for me, is imaginative, too imaginative that the theory robs the imagination from the audience and the viewer. It is in the psychological couch that all imaginations are sucked in, never to be shared into the world. Self-consciousness, on the other hand, is far richer than the sub-conscious that the conscious realm cannot control. Self-consciousness, at least can be enriched. A person, through their own choosing, may enrich their own experiences, dig deeper into their memories and use their creative imagination as they experience things around them—particularly art, such as the theater. It has become so easy to rely into more “scientific” theories that the realm of imagination has become limited. The audience have the option, the choice, in using their memories and imagination—they become the proactive actors, rather than being mere victims of the psychosexual development and sub-conscious desires. Self-consciousness and the embodiment of aesthetics may evolve, develop and may enrich—it does not limit a passive recipient. Instead, aesthetic embodiment, in a phenomenological sense, may enrich, both the audience and the performance. It is a consistent transcendence of memories and more importantly, of the imagination. It is not just the artist who may imagine, but the audience and the viewer as well.
References:
Crowther, Paul. Art and Embodiment, From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Legarda, Maribel, dir. William. Philippine Educational Theater Association, September 2011.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Phenomenology of Perception trans. Colin Smith with revisions by Forrest Williams. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. The Visible and the Invisible trans. Alphonse Lingis. Evanston: North-western University Press, 1968.
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader, ed. Terry Eagleton, 1985. 158-166.
Shakespeare, William, Hamlet. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2008.
Shakespeare, William, The Merchant of Venice. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2008.
This is a familiar battle cry. What kind of UP student are you, if you have never heard this chant, everywhere in the university. They even chant it outside of the university–to the senate, the congress, the palace… This often shocks or at least overwhelms new students. Yet, at the same time, the older you grow in the university, the older these cries become, until such time that it grows devoid of meaning. The once passionate, powerful cry for freedom, becomes nothing more than an empty statement, lacking even the slightest of fervor. How did we become this, the most powerful and emotional aspect of rebellion and revolution, turning into a deadened piece ideology?
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were wrong when they assumed that capitalism would end immediately and that socialism would soon begin. They were very much mistaken in these assumptions. They lived at the time when capitalism was just beginning, and if they were right about the process and evolution of society’s political-economy, it doesn’t look like socialism would follow, especially after the trauma lived through by the contemporary population. What would then, come next?
For now, no one really knows for certain what would come after capitalism, largely due to the fact that no one really sees an end to the present-day capitalism. Socialism and even communism is a failure for the most part, in the countries that forced them into practice. China, initially one of the more successful communist countries, is now one of the most successful capitalist countries of the world. This very fact itself, shows that capitalism is inevitable, at least in the present circumstances.
Given the inevitability of being trapped in the capitalist political-economy of the current circumstances, one may wonder if there is still a place for the Marxist ideology. Raymond Williams quotes William Morris, “Even supposing he did not understand that there was a definite reason in economics, and that the whole system could be changed… he for one would be a rebel against it” (283). Does Marxism still have a place in today’s ideology, or is it merely a representative of hope for a better system and even a better future? Is there a point, still, for rebellion?
Then I remember Mideo Cruz, and the Kulo exhibit in the wider context of Philippine history. Once, people were willing to die fighting for the freedom to speak, the freedom to express. Once, the streets of Mendiola were bloodied by the deaths of rebels, fighting for equality, fighting for a voice. Now, people are no longer willing to die for a cause, rather, they threaten, and are even willing to kill, in order to oppress. Are they not aware of the trap they have fallen into? Have we fallen so far from the hopes of Marx and Engels to the point that we would kill, or at least threaten to kill, in the face of a shocking voice unacceptable to a religious elite?
“In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. the sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society–the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness… With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or philosophic–in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out” (284).
One would often wonder, whatever happened to the Filipino consciousness, for them, for us, to become a nation of oppressors. For an entire nation to result to violence and threats, just to silence another person’s voice. Is the religious superstructure in the Philippines still that strong, to enable its people to band together and scream for silence, rather than scream for a voice? Instead of being freed from the repressive state apparatuses, Filipinos were fighting to be closed-in, into the empty spirituality and religiosity, trapped within a materialistic symbolism, rather than being concerned with the state of reality of the Filipino life. Again, one can ask and wonder, what happened to us?
Such attitude almost reminds one of the internal conflict in Leo Tolstoy‘s character Konstantin Levin from Anna Karenina, “Maybe all that is good, but why should I worry about setting up medical centers that I’ll never use and schools that I won’t send my children to, that the peasants don’t want to sent their children to either, and that I have no firm belief that they ought to send them to?” (Tolstoy 244). There is this pervading conflict of fighting for what is right, for what is necessary; and for selfish desires, and even the exhaustion to have compassion for others, “I only mean to say that I will always defend with all my might those rights that I… that touch on my interests. When the gendarmes searched us as students and read our letters, I was ready to defend those rights with all my might, to defend my rights to education, to freedom. I understand military service, which touches the future of my children, my brothers and myself. I’m ready to discuss anything that concerns me. But to decide how to dispose of forty thousand in zemstvo funds, or to judge Alyoshka-the-fool–that I do not understand and cannot do” (246). Such statements come from Konstantin Levin, the more exposed brother to the life, thoughts and ideologies of the peasants. It is Sergei Ivanovich, the brother out of touch from the life of peasantry, that maintains a dream-like ideology of society, “Well, you should leave philosophy alone,’ he said. ‘The chief task of philosophy in all ages has considered precisely in finding the connection that necessarily exists between personal and common interests. But that is not the point, the point is that I must correct your comparison. The birches are not stuck in, they are planted or seeded, and they ought to be carefully tended. Only those nations have a future, only those nations can be called historical, that have a sense of what is important and significant in their institutions, and value them” (247).
Is it really those who are detached from the realities of life, that are able to imagine a more ideal world? A world that common good, the common interest will pervade in the human imagination? Is still useful to fight for the freedom of the oppressed if it is they, themselves who want that oppression? Do you fight for something that they never wanted in the first place? Where then, do you place Marxism in the everyday consciousness of the Filipinos?
Perhaps, it is useful to remember the times when the population is fighting for their freedom. Dexter M. Santos’ Rizal X reminds the audience of the difficult time of the Marcos Regime, the time where the Communist Party of the Philippines was most active, the time when Filipinos are willing to leave their families, sometimes even in the pain of death, just so the nation can regain its voice. Act II, Part V, Fili Revolution pertains to this era, as Filipinos fought oppressors, yet seem to still fall into the same trappings all over again. Curtain Call was performed by a character living in UP village, in memory of those who lost, despite winning:
“When the lights start fading in
and the sound caves itself in
I’ll be right beside you
Wherever you are
I’ll stay with you,
until the night falls
I’ll be with you to
to face it all
you don’t need to worry.
I’ll be with you…
until the curtain call
I’ll stay with you,
until the night falls
you don’t need to worry,
I’ll be with you…
until the curtain call.”
Is it curtain call for idealism, for communism, for Marxism? Is it an empty ideology now as it is robbed of meaning in the life of the proletariat, the everyday Filipino? Or is there still hope? Rizal X, after all, was ended on a positive note, with a song Pabalik sa Palaruan:
“Hindi ba’t nais mong lumipad
Sa rurok ng langit
I handa ang iyong mga pakpak
Ang liwanag mong taglay
At diwang malinis
Mula sa Maykapal ay gagabay
Lagutin ang gapos ng iyong diwa’t damdamin
Taglayin mo ang lahat ay ginigiliw
Lagutin ang gapos ng iyong diwa’t damdamin
Malayang lumipad
Malayang lumipad
Malayang lumipad
Hindi ba’t nais mong sumakay
sa mabilis na hangin?
Landas ng puso’y iyong lakbayin
Angkinin mo ang pangarap
Pag-asa’y bukas
Ang tungkulin mo’y iyong tuparin
Ang puso ko’y iiwan ko sayo
Lagutin ang gapos ng iyong diwa’t damdamin
Taglayin mo ang lahat ay ginigiliw
Lagutin ang gapos ng iyong diwa’t damdamin
Malayang lumipad
Malayang lumipad
Malayang lumipad”
Though we are nowhere the end of capitalism, it is not reason enough to stop fighting for idealism and what one believes as right. There is still no reason to be subjugated and oppressed, despite the fact that most people, particularly of the proletariats, accept such subjugation and oppression. It is still a matter of fighting the strong currents of the oppressive cultures. Going back to the Kulo controversy, F. Sionil Jose’s position, reminds us of a romantic criticism, as opposed to Mideo Cruz’s materialistic critique of society. Raymond Williams cites Alick West’s Crisis and Criticism:
“Romantic criticism was a great achievement. Its conception of social relations as constituting beauty in art, of a conflict and antagonism in these relations and of the same conflict reconciled in art, of poetry as the voice of humanity against oppression and injustice and the duty of the poets to cooperate in ending them– all these ideas are of the highest value. Instead of abusing them, or divorcing them from their social meaning, or preserving only their idealism, we have to use them. We cannot use them simply as they stand, because of that idealism. As indicated earlier, the romantic poets were unable in the particular circumstances to give a material meaning to their social conceptions… Hence, in romantic criticism, the social relations which constitute beauty in art are not the actual social relations, but the conception of the relations” (Williams 291).
F. Sionil Jose, was ahead of his time, at the height of his writing career. But in the face of a fast-changing world, he was not ready for the ugly, for the grotesque, for the decay, as actual tools for social change, rather than the concept of art and beauty that he was conscious of. He, along many others and their limited views of art, did not fathom and absorb the concept of the current consciousness of the Filipinos. Things changed, fast, and they were not ready for such changes. Art, good or bad, beautiful or not, is capable of changing people, of changing societies, whether they are ready for it or not. Williams looks into Christopher Caudwell’s definition of the value of art, “The value of art to society is that by it an emotional adaptation is possible. Man’s instincts are pressed in art against the altered mould of reality, and by a specific organization of the emotions thus generated, there is a new attitude, an adaptation” (297). People are meant to adapt. Though numerous Filipinos were not ready for the kind of art Mideo Cruz created, yet, they are meant to adapt to it, as artistic creation continues to move and to evolve, and sometimes, become powerful enough to shake the seemingly solid, yet oppressive conditions of society.
If the artist has this power, to shaken and even weaken established systems and beliefs, and more importantly to effect change, what exactly is their role and where does one draw the line, if a line can be drawn? Williams refer to Lenin’s words, “Every artist… has a right to create freely according to his ideals, independent of anything. Only, of course, we communists cannot stand with our hands folded and let chaos develop in any direction it may. We must guide this process according to a plan and form its results” (302). Then again, where does one draw the line of freedom of expression, responsibility of the artist, and the conditions of social consciousness and the desire for change? There never was and perhaps never will be a clear dividing and definitive line for this, perhaps there may be no need to. Yet, where does an artist, an artwork and even an audience position themselves in these circumstances? How does one fight for freedom at the same time bearing responsibility towards their fellow human beings?
During the academic forum hosted by the Department of Art Studies, a Catholic student gave a very Marxist argument on the issue of Poleteismo and the Kulo exhibit. She insists that artists should start creating works for the ordinary Filipino, for the poor, for the oppressed. This is the social responsibility oftentimes forgotten by exhibiting artists. How do you free the oppressed through your artworks? Does one go to the extent that Lenin did, create works for the sake of manipulating them and pushing them to want their freedom, or does selfish desire and a degree of self-expression out weigh this? There is no simple answer nor solution to these issues. More than a hundred years may have passed since the height of these arguments, yet, there is still no answer for it.
How do you free those who are content with their position as the oppressed? How far can you take your social responsibility in line with your freedom of expression and your own desires? Perhaps, simply trying is enough, until such time that society is really ready for a socialist and communist ideal. It is a possibility that socialist and communist movements were failures because it was forced. It may also be that there’s another form of political-economy waiting for people after the end of capitalism. But these values and beliefs, whatever they are and wherever they may take the population relies heavily on the ideals of art, because such beliefs can mostly be understood and accepted in the arts before anything else. It is a heavy weight of social responsibility for the artist.
The time, perhaps, is not yet ripe for revolution. After all, majority of people are comfortable where they are. The wealthy are unlikely to be willing to give up their riches and property for the population. The middle class, though often unhappy with their jobs and with what they have, are unwilling to move away from it. The poor, though oppressed and lacking opportunities, also seem comfortable enough on where they are, or at least unwilling still, to do something, in order to change to social structure of the Philippines. For a long time, we have been here, and by the looks of it, we would be here for a longer time still. In the meantime, art has a key role to play in preparing people for social change. Art, may in itself, create and inspire ideologies that would be key in the creation of a new political-economy, a new social structure. Though still dependent on the current political-economy, it is after all anchored strongly enough to an independent structure–the imagination.Though artistic production may no longer be as intentional to create ideologies as in the conception of Lenin, it is still a big influence on the imaginary of the people, and artists can always take advantage on that imagination. They can take it beyond “the true, the good and the beautiful” towards the ugly, the grotesque, and even onward to an actual social change. It is unsure, whether socialism and communism would take hold of the world, but for now, a social imagination of change may be useful. Marxism, is not an empty and dream-like ideology, but perhaps may serve as a tool for the creation of an ideal imaginary, that may eventually pave the way to real social change. For now, society and art have to survive capitalism at its height and with Marxism, still, at the ideological level of imagination.
References:
“Critical Theory.” Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 462-473.
“Marxism.” Oxford Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Vol. 3. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 185-191.
Santos, Dexter M., dir. Rizal X. Dulaang UP, August 2011.
Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society 1780-1950. New York: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1960.
Soft lighting, generic jazz music, cheap wine, flowing beer, canapés, dimsum, finger foods and pretensions—that pretty much describes the stereotypical gallery opening in the “modern” art world of Manila. People laugh, smoke, kiss each other’s cheeks and throw in art words as they toast to the success of the exhibiting artist and gallery. They are the connoisseurs, artists, gallery staff, collectors and critics. They are deemed “experts” in the artistic field—the avant-garde.
How can one fully appreciate the avant-garde of Manila’s art? Charles Baudelaire described the perfect audience of modern art—the flâneur, “The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world yet to remain hidden from the world—such are few of the slightest pleasure of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito” (Baudelaire 795). Maybe one does indeed need to embody the French flâneur, in order to bear with the avant-garde.
The Son of Man by Rene Magritte
A work regarded as avant-garde is something good, great even. It is the new and chic in the art circle. One often hears of this artist or that is really avant-garde and is quite popular and celebrated. These artists are the new and the modern artists. Endless small talk among the popular experts would continue for about three to four hours. If you would actually listen though, among the clinking glasses and swishing beers, you would be left in a wide-eyed wonder at what everyone is actually talking about. Through the eyes of the flâneur, this scenario might’ve been much better. For an idler that could independently wander around through endless parties, belonging yet remaining hidden, perhaps the flâneur would enjoy gallivanting through this crowd.
It will not be surprising that such a circle would not have read Clement Greenberg’s Avant-Garde and Kitsch written as early as 1939. He cites the pre-eminence of the avant-garde because of its “superior consciousness of history” and its purity as “art for art’s sake” (Greenberg 2). You can stare and listen for hours, wondering if they are aware of how old the concepts they were talking about are. Given the flâneur’s luxury of time, perhaps a flâneur would’ve read Greenberg and would be able to articulate on the avant-garde much better in this crowd. One would wonder, though, would the flâneur be as aware and as conscious of what modernism really is and where the concept came from?
Would the flâneur have the time to read on history and philosophy or would parties and gallery exhibits mostly occupy such luxury of time? Would he encounter the fact that the newness of the modern started out as early as the mid-1500s when the break between the accepted dogmas of the church surfaced upon the scientific findings of the Copernican Theory? That the dogmas were declared wrong and the man is proven correct? This concept would later be refined by Galileo and Kepler in the 1700s. Ecclesiastical authority declined as the man discovered his own authority over the environment. The power of the man is slowly recognized until such time that a man is considered as the creator and discoverer rather than being a subject of a creator. By the time the Renaissance came into being and classical knowledge were re-discovered, religious dogmas were relegated as the myths of the “dark ages” (Russell 491-495). Can the flâneur take some time off from the socialization and go in-depth in the concept of modernism that created the very nature of a flâneur?
Thinking about is, would a flâneur go to church? Or perhaps feel how it’s like to be trapped within a belief of one? Emancipation from the church gave rise to the individualism. The role of the individual increased and was freed from the collective as the church followers and followers of god (493). By the time Greenberg wrote his article, the individualization and specialization of the artist is no longer a new concept, but a concept a few hundred of years old (Greenberg 4). Contrary to pretentious belief, the modern individuality of an artist is not an invention of the present but something that has been written about in 1939 and was developed as early as the Renaissance. I then wonder how some artists would feel, declaring themselves as modern artists, if they are made aware of these concepts. Will the flâneur know how old the concept espoused by the nature of his own individual existence?
Ironically, though modern thought and philosophy started with breaking away from religious dogmas and doctrines, modernists still went back to these debunked concepts to explain modern art. Greenberg cites the imitation of God in the dissolution of content and the sole focus on the forms (2-3). This type of thought would persist as the form and even colour is viewed as the resonance of the spirit such as in Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Though the break in the philosophical thought was significant, it eventually came into full circle as modernists went back to religiosity, spirituality and godliness in their philosophies. Again, I begin to wonder how the art circle would accept a reading of the avant-garde modern paintings they market into something akin to Kandinsky, that the blue is restful and a heavenly colour and that it has profound meaning in its retreat from the spectator. I also remember a work of Joya in the Ateneo Gallery, a white and yellow painting. In the Kandinsky analysis, the white is the harmony of silence and the absence of colour while the yellow, as typically earthly colour, is a sickly colour that can never have any profound meaning (Kandinsky 27-45). Such thought process is still difficult to reconcile to modern philosophy of breaking away from religious dogmas that has ruled over art production before modernism. Can the flâneur, exposed merely to bourgeois society, understand the irony and implication of spirituality in modern art?
The Man of the Crowd (based on Edgar Allan Poe) by Brian Pedley
The flâneur belongs to society, particularly, the bourgeois society, wherein they drink in and experience the pleasures of art. The more prevalent modernist perspective among the appetizer guzzling, alcohol gulping and social climbing is the experiential aspect of artworks that is a very modern perspective. Modern in the period of modernism, certainly, but looking at their perspective today, it is very different. In 1914, Clive Bell wrote that, “Without sensibility a man can have no aesthetic experience, and, obviously, theories not based on broad and deep aesthetic experience are worthless. Only those for whom art is a constant source of passionate emotion can possess the data from which profitable theories may be deduced; but to deduce profitable theories even from accurate data involves a certain amount of brain-work, and, unfortunately, robust intellects and delicate sensibilities are not inseparable. As often as not, the hardest thinkers have had no aesthetic experience whatever” (7). They talk of experience without thought, yet nowadays, we all know that everything—even matters of the “heart,” are actually processed by the mind. Such processing of experience from “significant forms” without consideration for content is still a mental and an intellectual practice. Of course the quality and depth of such practice will vary from the halls of the academe to magazines and even to cocktail receptions of the art circles. Which perspective will the flâneur prescribe to?
The flâneur hopefully, might be able to open a book once in a while. Maybe then, the flâneur may be forced to face a concept that goes against his existence. One wonders which would prevail in this confrontation. The art crowd would do well to do a little bit of reading, particularly, John Dewey’s Art as Experience. Before spouting “art as experience” in between munching canapés or some strange pesto on supermarket bought French bread, they should pick up a chapter or two instead. They might realize what they have done, “So extensive and subtly pervasive are the ideas that set Art upon a remote pedestal, that many a person would be repelled rather than pleased if told that he enjoyed his casual recreations, in part at least, because of their esthetic quality” (Dewey 5). Art is not meant to be separated, relegated to museums and galleries, surrounded by petit-bourgeois and inaccessible to the live creature or the ordinary human beings. Dewey further states that:
“The existence of art is the concrete proof of what has just been stated abstractly. It is proof that man uses materials and energies of nature with intent to expand his own life, and that he does so in accord with the structure of his organism—brain, sense-organs, and muscular system. Art is the living and concrete proof that man is capable of restoring consciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the union of sense, need, impulse and action characteristic of the live creature. The intervention of consciousness adds regulation, power of selection, and redisposition. Thus it varies the arts in ways without end. But its intervention also leads in time to the idea of art as a conscious idea—the greatest intellectual achievement in the history of humanity” (25).
Though Dewey opened up the art experience to the living creature, much of the art circle still subscribes to the Baudelaire’s concept of the flâneur. This flâneur would converse and mingle in the art crowd, in search for modernity, as Baudelaire would describe him, “Be very sure that this man, such as I have depicted him—this solitary, gifted with an active imagination, ceaselessly journeying across the great human desert—has an aim loftier than that of a mere flâneur, an aim more general; something other than the fugitive pleasure of circumstance. He is looking for that quality which you must allow me to call ‘modernity’; for I know of no better word to express the idea I have in mind. He makes his business to extract from fashion whatever element it may contain of poetry within history, to distill the eternal from the transitory” (798). So many still subscribe to this concept, forgetting that it is a bourgeois “man” created and conceptualized to appreciate modern art in its “art for art’s sake” realm. To experience and appreciate art, does one really have to subscribe to the demands of the “modern”, does one have to be a flâneur and kiss one another’s cheek in the formation of an art discourse? This concept would shock the flâneur and might question the very foundation of his modernity.
Perhaps, it is true that the art circles have not escaped from the modern trappings. They do not realize that this new modernism is actually old, that when they are trying to be avant-garde, they are actually moving backwards and that when they are trying to be flâneurs, they are trying to be bourgeois male of many decades past. Jürgen Habermas, in his Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere states that, “The bourgeois avant-garde of the educated middle class learned the art of critical-rational public debate through its contact with the “elegant world.” This courtly-noble society, to the extent that modern state apparatus became independent from the monarch’s personal sphere, naturally separated itself, in turn, more and more from the court and became its counterpoise in the town. The “town” was the life center of civil society not only economically; in cultural-political contrast to the court, it designated especially an early public sphere in the world of letters whose institutions were the coffee houses, the salons, and the Tischgesellschaften (table societies)” (1747). The more today’s artists, curators, gallery workers and collectors insist upon avant-garde(ness) and modernism, they are not moving forward, they are not even staying still, they are moving backwards, further and further back into art history.
Edgar Allan Poe's Daguerreotype
Going back to the flâneur, himself an imagination of decades past, as early as Edgar Allan Poe’s The Man of the Crowd, and even Jean de la Bruyère’s The Characters, is neither a new concept nor a unique one. The perspective of a bourgeois middle-class man should be let go of the art world, more importantly, they should let go of the false belief that this is of their own creation in the contemporary world. Modernism is old, so is the avant-garde, so it is about time that the art world should stop trying to be flâneurs. They cannot live as the flâneur lived, nor should they try to, “In the window of a coffee-house there sits a convalescent, pleasurably absorbed in gazing at the crowd, and mingling, through the medium of thought, in the turmoil of thought that surrounds him” (Baudelaire 794). Though experience, pleasure and modernism have a place in the art world, it shouldn’t be the central concepts that drives it. For one thing, we are not all men. Independent bourgeois hardly ever exists anymore as most of us have to work for a living as well. We are no longer concerned with “art for art’s sake,” instead, we are engaging in an art discourse.
READ. Soft lighting, generic jazz music, cheap wine, flowing beer, canapés, dimsum, finger foods and pretensions—before falling into this trap, READ. We should stop being flâneurs looking at “art for art’s sake.” Instead, read, study and understand before spouting avant-garde and going backwards, falling into the trap of modernism and Tischgesellschaften. After all, it’s the kitsch that had more success in the long run. It’s the popular image that we live in today. It’s the iconic effigies that are burned in rallies and assemblies. It’s how we got our democracy back. We should live in the present. It’s about time that the art circle grows up and moves on. Before wine sipping and beer guzzling on show openings, opening a chapter or two of theoretical books cannot hurt; after all, it’s the terminologies that they are so fond of using. Though the trappings of modernism are not easy to escape from, we should at least start to. We should accept that we are not, nor we will ever be flâneurs. We don’t have Tischgesellschaften. We have a lot of discourse available to us, we should start discussing topic relevant to the contemporary world that would develop, not hinder art development and maturity.
Works Cited
Baudelaire, Charles. “The Painter of Modern Life.” Leitch, Vincent. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. 792-802.
Bell, Clive. Art. New York: Frederick Stokes, 1917.
Dewey, John. Art as Experience. New York: Penguin Books, 1934.
Greenberg, Clement. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” Partisan Review (1939).
Habermas, Jurgen. “Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.” Leitch, Vincent. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. 1745-1758.
Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. New York: Dover Publications, 1977.
Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972.
This specific topic has been troubling me. After pondering long and hard about it, I am stuck. I’ve read all of the reading assignment. I’ve thought, reflected and questioned myself. Yet, no answer came to me. What exactly is my concept of beauty? Until such time that I finally admitted to myself that I have none. Or perhaps I have lost it. Too long, I have been taught to look beyond the image, to look beyond beauty. I have examined contexts, theories, concepts, aesthetics and various perspectives. For a long time, the concept of beauty is something that was never considered. It was skirted, if not directly avoided. The concept of beauty is essentialist, universalist and very subjective. So, I simply never dealt with beauty. My pre-disposition demanded it; my university training ingrained it.
I realize now that though I have gained much in my years of study, I have also lost much. After re-reading and re-discovering classical writers and even some contemporary ones, I saw how enjoyable their philosophies are. It is unburdened by years of philosophical analysis, political correctness and fear. They have a stand, a very solid stance that they write about clearly. They know what they are saying and they are simply saying it. Nowadays, that kind of writing is rare. Though a lot of their ideas will be critiqued and questioned over the years, their writing endures as their perspective is strong. I will have to shape myself and my own ideas to be just as strong. As previously mentioned, I have lost my sense of beauty amidst theories and perspectives. It is about time I regain it.
Then I remember Juan Luna’s Picnic in Normandy. In my Art Criticism class last semester, we were asked to choose one work from the permanent collection of Vargas Museum to do a close reading and phenomenological approach on. Going back, I was once again struck at how beautiful this painting is. But I did not choose it because I thought I would have nothing to write about it. It was simply a beautiful painting to me, post-impressionist European painting of a place in Normandy, perhaps around the same place where Claude Monet painted his Impression: Sunrise. Juan Luna just happened to be a Filipino Ilustrado making a European painting. So, I chose a more political work, Mark Salvatus’ Secret Garden 2. Writing about him is always fun as his work is conceptual without being unreadable. Now, I return again, with the challenge of finding the beautiful and having this painting as an inspiration in this unprecedented approach.
That I find the painting beautiful is a given. The next question is why. Why do I find it beautiful? What are the parameters that my mind used in analyzing and judging it as beautiful? No theory, no context was considered, I just found the painting beautiful. Is it as Plotinus envisioned when he states that, “Thus the corporeal beauty arises by communion with divine reason” (Plotinus 49). Maybe I find it beautiful because my soul finds it beautiful in its communion with a divine reason? Is it because my soul is beautiful that I recognized the beauty of the painting? He further explains that a only a purified soul would recognize beauty, “Once purified, the soul become form and reason, completely incorporeal and intellectual, belonging to the divine, which is the source of beauty and all such things akin to it” (51). On the other hand, though Plotinus provides good writing and interesting insights, it is too much on the metaphysical plane, and I seek for beauty explained here in our existence.
I’ve established that I find Picnic in Normandy beautiful. I am still exploring why. I admitted this when I have, for this exercise, let go of my pre-conceived notions and judgements, and even the theories and concepts that have been ingrained in me. Perhaps David Hume has a point in his Standard of Taste when he says that, “It is well known, that in all questions, submitted to the understanding, prejudice is destructive of sound judgement, and perverts all operations of the intellectual faculties: It no less contrary to good taste; nor has it less influence to corrupt our sentiment of beauty” (Hume 494). Ironically, Hume also points out that not everyone can properly judge artworks as they may be lacking in their taste. He further states that, “Thus, though the principles of taste be universal, and nearly if not entirely the same in all men; yet few are qualified to give judgement on any work of art, or establish their own sentiment as the standard of beauty. The organs of internal sensation are seldom so perfect as to allow the general principles their full play, and produce a feeling correspondent to those principles their full play, and produce a feeling correspondent to those principles” (494). Yet, it is because I have left my pre-conceived notions strengthened by my education behind that I managed to find Juan Luna’s work beautiful. Or is it the other way around, maybe I’ve always considered it beautiful but my pre-conceived notions held me back from recognizing it?
Though art education at some point or another may have become convoluted after hundreds of years of theoretical and philosophical studies, it is always good to remember Friedrich Von Schiller in his essay On the Aesthetic Education of Man where he stated that, “For whole centuries thinkers and artists will do their best to submerge truth and beauty in the depths of a degraded humanity; it is they themselves who are drowned there, while truth and beauty, with their own indestructible vitality struggle triumphantly to the surface” (Schiller 580). Beauty is believed to be something that will always pull us back from the degradation of humanity. I have reached the function of beauty, yet still having a difficult time with the vagueness of the concept. Yet I can tell when something is indeed beautiful. Is it a matter of personal opinion or is there a driving force behind it?
Pleasure. One of the most common driving forces behind beauty is pleasure. I know for sure that I felt pleasure as I take in Juan Luna’s Picnic in Normandy. I can neither quantify nor explain it, but it is pleasurable anyway. Better in the words of Plotinus again, “Such should be the experience of beauty, amazement, pleasant consternation, yearning, ardour and excitement mixed with pleasure” (Plotinus 50). It is almost like falling in love. Francis Hutcheson also gives a similar examination, “Our sense of beauty seems designed to give us positive pleasure, but not positive pain or disgust” (Hutcheson 97). Art, for most of the writers and philosophers who are concerned with beauty, is pleasurable. Indeed, if a concept is more on the beautiful and letting go of all other pre-dispositions, it is indeed, mostly pleasurable.
It is important to understand that beauty is still anchored to an object. I find the Picnic in Normandy beautiful. The concept of beauty is still dependent on an object, an object which is beautiful. Often, there is confusion between beauty and the sublime, particularly when dealing with the effects of both. Though these two may intersect as something beautiful may also be subliminal, yet it is something different. Sublime is something else, in most cases, something more than beauty. Though an object may inspire the sublime, it is about the feeling that one gets which is beyond pleasure and beyond the senses. For Longinus, “Sublimity is the echo of a noble mind” (Longinus 141). Longinus looked into the viewer as someone capable of sublimity rather than at the object or the subject of the subliminal feeling. It is more about the person feeling and experiencing the sublime rather than the object that inspires it. This is the key difference of the two intersecting terms. Beauty is found on the object, while the sublime is found in the person experiencing it.
Sublime is something that I can understand more than I understand beauty. I don’t need to seek a particular art work for it. Whenever I walk around the university with the shade of the trees, the fluttering leaves and the passing butterflies, I feel the sublime. The stress of work and studies is cured by a walk along the university. There is the sublime in life despite of the time spread thin and a low income. It is almost unexplainable. Yet you feel the transcendence into something beyond. For Edmund Burke in his A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the sublime and the Beautiful, he sees sublime as “…productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling” (Burke 549). This is what I mostly feel, which makes everything else in life worth it.
Feeling and experiencing the sublime is almost natural, but the discourse on the sublime is another matter. Again, it anchors so much on something beyond, almost on the metaphysical state that it is almost impossible to quantify. Guy Sircello in his article Is a Theory of the Sublime Possible? distinguishes a tripartite aspect on the issue of the sublime, “First, there are experiences of the sublime or, alternatively, sublime experiences. Second, there is what I call the sublime discourse. And third, there is talk about the sublime” (Sircello 541). Further, his assumptions are, “The first assumption is that only sublime experience properly motivates sublime discourse and therefore that only sublime experience is the proper and ultimate subject matter of talk about the sublime” and “My second assumption is that sublime experience can and does occur in a large variety of personal, cultural, social and historical contexts, all such contexts also inevitably involving experience that is not specifically sublime” (542). He formulated a theme on the sublime which he refers to as an “epistemological transcendence” (542). This epistemological transcendence is supposed to validate a sublime discourse that can somewhat be quantified without falling into the trap of universalism.
Despite Sircello’s attempt, there is still much left on the study of a theoretical discourse of the sublime. There is still a long way to go when it comes to the issue of the sublime because of the abstraction of the concept. He even outlined the concerns on the sublime and epistemological transcendence that needs to be explored, “(1) what it might mean, whether it is indeed presented in sublime experiences, (3) what, if so, there might be about such experience that could present and epistemological transcendence of that form, and finally, (4) whether epistemological transcendence as also interpreted is warrantable or believable are tasks—among many other tasks—at least for more talk about the sublime, if not for a theory of the sublime” (549). There is still a lot of work to be done, particularly on an issue hundreds of years old. Yet, the discussion never gets old.
Personally, the sublime makes more sense to me than beauty. I can wrap my head around it because I can feel it, I can experience it. There can never be any question on my experiences. Beauty is another matter. It is not dependent on me as a person; it is not as dependent on any audience. The concept of beauty is more or less anchored to the object that is considered as beautiful. Though now, I understand the value of beauty, especially one’s own concept of it. It is something that should never be lost or never be denied, despite the demands of academic rigour that expects something else. I have always thought that a philosophy which relies mainly on beauty is something inferior, because it relies so much on surface appearance. Upon closer examination, it is not so, it may not be something beyond other theories and perspectives in the arts, but it is not something beneath them. It is another perspective worthy of consideration. It is as useful in the academic rigour as any other theory, if not more challenging as it requires you to let go of all pre-conceived notions and just think and write. It may even be more difficult to express one’s own opinion independently without relying on other theories, and writing it without restrictions or fear. A challenge for contemporary writers is more on taking a stand in what they write with considerations of previous studies yet with independence unencumbered by pre-conceived notions and dispositions.
Works Cited
Burke, Edmund. “From “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful.” Leitch, Vincent. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001. 539-551.
Hume, David. “The Standard of Taste.” Leitch, Vincent. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. 486-499.
Hutcheson, Francis. “From “An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue”.” Townsend, Dabney. Aesthetics: Classic Readings from the Western Tradition. USA: Thomson Learning, 2001. 87-99.
Longinus. “On Sublimity.” Leitch, Vincent. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. 138-154.
Plotinus. “Ennead One: Sixth Tractate.” Townsend, Dabney. Aesthetics: Classic Readings from the Western Tradition. USA: Thomson Learning, 2001. 48-54.
Schiller, Friedrich Von. “From “On the Aesthetic Education of Man.” Leitch, Vincent. Norton Anthology of Aesthetics. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. 573-582.
Sircello, Guy. “Is a Theory of the Sublime Possible?” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (1993): 541-550.
Janet Wolff provides a neo-marxist take on aesthetics and art criticism. Neo-marxism involves the principles of marxism and applying it to various practical forms, in this case, in artistic forms. This differs from orthodox marxism wherein there is a partiality for “tendency literature.” Tendency literature are literary forms that directly states and reiterates marxist ideals. Another interpretation of marxist literature is the para-marxist approach, wherein they put much belief in the great literatures that influenced the world and effected social change. Neo-marxist literature on the other hand is a complete innovation of artistic form, wherein it would still be geared toward social change but it will no longer be in the form practiced by the orthodox and para-marxists. Rather, it will utilize a different and innovated form to achieve such goals.
The Social Production of Art is divided into six chapters namely—Social Structure and Artistic Creativity, The Social Production of Art, Art as Ideology, Aesthetics Autonomy and Cultural Politics, Interpretation as Re-Creation and The Death of the Author. Wolff provides a short summary in the beginning of each chapter as well as a logical conclusion at the end of it. This helps in the comprehension and analysis of each chapter. Her writing style is fairly simple despite the provocative thoughts and arguments that she presents. The main focus of the book is on literature and visual arts, particularly that of painting. She analyzes the mode of production and consumption of art and literature, taking into account the marxist perspectives that she applies in aesthetics and art theory.
Social Structure and Artistic Creativity deals mainly on the changing paradigm of artistic production and the shifting perspectives on artistic creativity. Particularly, Wolff points out the major slippage of perspective upon the introduction of capitalism to artistic production. Artistic production before capitalism is considered as a communal practice. With the advent of capitalism, a communal practice and expression is reinterpreted as an individual practice that required the isolation of the artistic genius. This reinterpretation displaced the artist from being a part of the community into someone who is separate from it. Such a shift resulted into a displacement of the artist and apparent dehumanization of labor. Such is the beginning of the breakdown of traditional ties that were the foundation of artistic production.
The Social Production of Art, the second chapter, bears the title of the book. This part mainly dealt with the marxist aesthetics. Once again, the loss of the collective production of art into the artistic genius is pointed out. But such artistic genius as a separate institution is questioned. Wolff points out that the artist is mediated by social and economic institutions that influence the mode of production. It is disproved that artistic production can be isolated and completely individualized because at the base of this superstructure is the social and economic institution where the artist belongs to. The artist would still reflect the collective as he cannot escape from or be isolated from it.
Art as Ideology, the third chapter, once again shows strong marxists tendencies. Wolff further explores the nature of mediation in artistic production. She states that, “The ideological nature of art, then, is mediated in two ways: through the material and social production of works of art, and though the existing codes and conventions in which they are constructed.” Wolff uses two solid examples, Thomas Gainsborough‘s painting entitled Mr. and Mrs. Andrews and the Jane Austen‘s novels. Contemporary viewers may interpret Mr. and Mrs. Andrews as a portrait but given the material and social condition during the time of artistic production, the painting presents the properties of the Andrews and situating them within that property. They exist through the codes and conventions where they are constructed. The same is with the case of the novels of Jane Austen. The contemporary reader may encounter difficulties with reading her works, some might find it boring, repetitive and cyclical. But taking into consideration the conditions at the time of artistic production, Jane Austen’s novels were not published as books in its first incarnation, it was originally published in parts through serialized form. Each part needs to have a beginning and end to be comprehensible as a serial that can be read on its own. Then such serials were compiled into what is known now as her novels. This affected the material form of the novel as the codes and conventions of the times dictated it. Yet, it is important to locate exactly where does the artistic intention ends and the autonomy of the art itself begins?
Such question is answered in the fourth chapter entitled Aesthetic Autonomy and Cultural Politics. Wolff points out the different forms of marxism mentioned earlier. More importantly, she shows the relative autonomy of aesthetics and how cultural politics work. Despite the mediations, aesthetics and culture as a superstructure has relative autonomy from the base, particularly in the moment of the last instance. Wolff states that, “Art, at least in certain conditions, has this potential transformative power, and that cultural practice and cultural politics have a part to play in cultural change.” This shows that artistic production is not a mere slave of capitalistic powers, but because of its relative autonomy, can actually effect change and transformation in society. Such is the power of art and artistic production.
Interpretation as Re-Creation shows the role of the ordinary reader—to harness the transformative power of an artistic product. At one point, artistic intentions must give way to the reader’s interpretation. Wolff says that, “consumption produces production… because a product becomes a real product only by being consumed.” Artistic production would be meaningless without the consumption of an audience. Upon consumption, the interpretation of the reader becomes the re-creation of the artistic work. A work is never understood completely as the author intends it to be. Once again, the material and social conditions would mediate with the meanings and ideologies understood.
The Death of the Author, the last chapter of Wolff’s book, takes off from Roland Barthes‘ book of the same title. Unlike Barthes, Wolff believes that the birth of the reader does not necessarily result to the death of the author. The author as a “fixed, uniform and unconstituted creative source” is in fact dead, but Wolff repositions the author as a subject who is also part of the collective consciousness. The work may produce thoughts and meanings that are outside or beyond the author’s original intention, yet it does not mean that it is completely absent at the time of production. Wolff also demystifies the creative process, reiterating that it is not an isolated production but a product of a collective consciousness. The author is also a subject, therefore is also subjected to various positionalities and is not restricted to one point of view and position. The author and the reader are both positioned as subjects and therefore interact in the analysis and reading of the text. The author and the reader are freed from the rigidity of Barthes reading in his The Death of the Author.
Neo-Marxism in Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Janet Wolff’s The Social Production of Art is an effective application of maxist ideals on aesthetics and art criticism. She gives very practical analysis on artistic production and reception by positioning the author and viewer as both a subject of material and social mediations. She puts forward the importance of the collective consciousness in artistic production thereby demystifying the idea of an isolated artistic creativity. The importance of the ordinary reader (or the audience) in the artistic production and reception is also very noteworthy in the writings of Janet Wolff. The text goes beyond simple interpretation as it explains the meanings and ideologies as it is mediated by material and social conditions. This line of thought involves not just the artist and critics but gives an equal importance towards the ordinary reader.
Because of the marxist ideals of Janet Wolff, there is a strong materialist basis for the writing. Her thoughts, ideas and ideologies always begins with a material object. This is a very strong stand in aesthetic and art theory as Wolff does not get lost in the philosophy or ideology of an art work. She always bases her analysis on an existing and actual art work and does not rely on pure imaginings of what an art work should be or could be. The material basis of her stand gives a solid foundation for theoretizing, analyzing and application of the marxist ideals. She does not get lost in the thought, rather, her writing is very grounded on the art work.
In aesthetics and art criticism, Janet Wolff’s neo-marxist writing contributes in taking to account the ordinary reader or the ordinary viewer. Most writings on the area ignores the ordinary audience and put much stock on critics and academics. In the marxist perspective, the point of view of the ordinary audience is just as important as that of the critics and academics. This is almost groundbreaking in terms of the freeing of the expression and perspective upon art works.
Again, in the realm of aesthetics and art criticism, the demystifying of the artistic genius and creativity is important so that writers can veer away from the humanistic veneration of the genius and recognize the existing mediation of material and social conditions. As the mediation of material and social conditions evolve and fluidly move through time and culture, it is still important to note that both the artist and the audience is part of that movement. Wolff’s idea of an artist as a non-static and moving entity is important in understanding the art work and art history, as well as in formulating aesthetic theory and art criticism.
Contemporary practices in art theory and criticism can take a lot with Wolff’s work. Too many get lost in thoughts and ideas, it is a good practice to go back to the material object, in this case—the art work. The importance of the role of the ordinary reader should also be taken into consideration rather than just focusing on an academic and critical perspective. The demystification of creativity is also a good practice so that a writer can see the actual material and social mediation that is fluidly moving towards the artwork. In reading and viewing the artwork, it is also important to remember that it is always a re-reading and re-viewing, and although the original meaning and intention cannot be recovered, the material and social mediation is ever-present though ever-changing, which helps translate the writing for the contemporary reader and viewer. The birth of the reader does not always mean the death of the author as they co-exist as subjects. Wolff’s application of marxism in aesthetic and critical practices is an effective perspective in viewing contemporary art and even older art woks in a contemporary way.
Work Cited:
Wolff, Janet. The Social Production of Art. New York: St. Martin’s, 1981. Print.
Performativity in Aesthetics and Theoretical Practices
by: Maria Portia Olenka C. Placino
“Artworks must be conceived not as products (decontextualized or contextualized) of generative performances, but as PERFORMANCE THEMSELVES.”
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Art as Performance by David Davies is a challenging book that uses philosophical and logical approaches towards aesthetic practices. His main thesis, as stated above, points out that artworks are not simply products of performance, rather it is a performance in itself. Though he applies his theory in earlier works, the book mainly creates an aesthetic and theoretical framework that accomodates late modern works and beyond. An artwork is not viewed as a product of an artist’s creativity, rather, an artwork is viewed as a process completed by the product. Davies’ theory is a good starting point in the study of the emerging trend of performativity in aesthetics and other art practices such art art criticism.
Davies questions the accepted form of art theory which he refers to as the common-sense theory. In the common sense theory, the instances of works and a direct experiential encounter is necessary as it is an intrinsically valuable experience. This perspective also views artworks as artifacts with aesthetic value conferred by their creator. To counter this, Davies uses Marcel Duchamp‘s The Fountain. This late modern work creates a new perpective in art history, art theory, aesthetics and art criticism. To view The Fountain formally through its form, color, line, proportion, etc., would be missing the point of The Fountain. A person may not have the direct experiential encounter with the work, yet the meaning and the point of the work may still be understood. The Fountain creates a shift in the way that artworks may be viewed, experienced, critiqued, and theorized. Perceiving The Fountain as a performance makes more sense rather than viewing it formally as a generative product of artistic creativity.
Common-sense theory is attacked by Davies in its three fronts, common-sense axiology, common-sense epistemology and common-sense onthology. Axiology deals mainly with value or a valuation of art work while epistemology deals with the knowledge and definition of an artwork and onthology deals with the nature of an artwork. These three fronts of the common-sense theory are completely altered upon the introduction of late modern works particularly of Duchamp’s The Fountain. The long established system of valuation, definition and nature of an artwork is no longer applicable to the contemporary works introduced. Because of this, Davies’ performance theory comes into play as it accomodates the works that is outside of the common sense theory.
Performance Theory states that “artworks are performances, more specifically, they belong to the class of performances whereby a content is articulated through a vehicle on the basis of shared understandings.” This perspective diverges from common-sense axiology, epistemology and ontology. Going back to Marcel Duchamp’s The Fountain, in terms of common-sense axiology, its artistic, economic and art-historical value is very different as compared to Pierro dela Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ. Looking at the material, it is an ordinary urinal, so it will not have a high economic value. In terms of artistic value, it is a bought object, Duchamp did not make it or sculpt it, so in the common-sense axiology, it also has no artistic value. In terms of art-historical value, maybe it does have a high value, because it changed the way artworks are to be viewed and perceived, yet it will not meet the formalistic sense of an art-historical value in the same way as the academic, historical, allegorical or religious paintings and sculptures. It is in the performativity of the art work that a value is established.
Examining the epistemology of art in the performace theory, art is a performance rather than a product of a performance. The production and the product is as one, it is perceived as a process rather than an end in and of itself. The immediate and direct experiential encounter with the work is not necessary in the appreciation or the understanding of an artwork. Rather, it is conceived of as a performance which expresses its thought and meaning even without a direct experiential encounter, an encounter which common sense theory finds necessary for an artwork to be understood and appreciated. The artistic genius is not a mystical entity, rather, it is a product of a group consciousness that is shared by human beings. Though it is the artist that makes an artwork, the consciousness wherein that artwork comes from and where that artwork is formed, is a group consciousness, not a mystical and individualized artistic genius. Once again, this is a significant shift upon how an artwork is defined and conceptualized.
Another shift happens with the ontology of art or the way that the nature of art is understood. Davies states that, “Artworks, come to existence through the intentional manipulations of a vehicular medium. Through these manipulations, artistic statement is articulated in virtue of shared understandings as to how those manipulations are to be characterized in the vocabulary of an artistic medium, and as to the import of particular manipulations characterized.” The ontological shift made by Davies is significant because it lays the foundation of the premise of performance theory, wherein art, from being a product of a performance of the artist, becomes an actual performance. The object became a completion of the performance rather than just being a product. This is a radical divergence from the way the nature of art is understood in the common-sense ontology wherein the object is simply a generative product. There is a drastic shift in the way the nature of art is understood with Davies’ performance theory.
Such shifts introduced by Davies is significant in contemporary art theory and criticism. The weaknesses of his arguments comes from his philosophical and logical styles. Though such manner is effective in philosophy and logic, aesthetics and art theory still needs to go back to the artwork. Leaving the artwork too far behind while the theory or argument is being pursued depreciates the merit of the argument presented. Furthermore, aesthetics and art theory still needs some material basis in an artwork conceivable by people, particularly in the contemporary times. Theorizing an artwork as it would have been produced and consumed in Mars, a twin Earth or another galaxy is too far off a person’s experience that the argument becomes too abstract. Aesthetics and art theory cannot be simply deduced into a formula. For at least in the present time, there should still be an actual artwork (or an actual performance according to Davies) that is referred to by aesthetics, art theory, art history and art criticism. An artwork or performance outside the experience and understanding of an ordinary human being (such as the supposed artworks in Mars, twin Earth, another galaxy) does not make sense in the practices of aesthetics, art theory, art history and art criticism. Davies himself states that group consciousness come into play in the performance, understanding and appreciation of such works, if a consciousness too far removed from human experienced is factored in, then the argument fails in its merit.
Davies considers jazz improvisation as an excellent example of a pure performance work. The pure performance of a jazz improvisation fits well into his performance theory. Yet, the premise in jazz improvisation is that it is spontaneous and unplanned. There are various complications that can arise in this argument, for instance, what if the jazz improvisation performance is recorded, reproduced and repeatedly played, is it still a pure performance work? Would that recording played over and over again still be a pure performance work that is theorized by the performance theory? Or does it become part of performed works that can belong to the conception of a common-sense theory? Such arguments need reconsideration. Some of Davies’ claims, though valid, are more easily explained through theoretical and philosophical examples rather than by artworks in the real world.
In art practices, performance theory is best applied to art criticism. As a growing trend in the art critical practice, more papers are written not just on the art object or artwork but more critics are looking into the performative aspect of an artwork. Such writing utilizes performance theories such as that of Davies’. Though Davies’ performance theory is well-developed in his writing, it still needs to go back to the artwork itself and be more understandable to the existing artworks of the world, rather than being understandable towards an artwork in another world or universe. The theory needs to be applied more effectively on existing artworks of this world and the art world rather than spending so much time theorizing on other galaxies and planets with different system of valuations, epistemologies and ontologies.
Performance theory paves the way of accomodating late modern works and beyond in the aesthetics, art theory and art criticism practices. Though the argument style of Davies may have lacks and glitches, it ushers in the contemporary artworks into theoretical practices that would have been impossible within the formalistic, empiricist and common-sense theory. This is very important as it can bridge the gap between contemporary art and earlier artworks because the performance theory may be applied to both of them. This more detailed take on family resemblances on the relationship of artworks as a performance rather than a generative product of a performance offers a new way that artworks may be understood, accepted and appreciated into an ever-changing world, particularly the art world.
Work Cited:
Davies, David. Art as Performance. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print.
Such attitude almost reminds one of the internal conflict in 
Portia Placino 