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Gail Day
To cite this article: Gail Day (2009) The Fear of Heteronomy, Third Text, 23:4, 393-406, DOI:
10.1080/09528820903007677
Not so long ago, discussion of politics in art was something that had to
be treated indirectly or approached by way of ruses. The search for
‘seeds of time’ (Fredric Jameson) or identification of ‘placeholders’ for
the critical spirit (J M Bernstein) that once preoccupied the discussions of
left aesthetics have subsided. No one seems to believe any more that crit-
ical distance is under threat in the same way – that is, terminally or onto-
logically – crushed by capital’s powers of penetration. Those powers are
fully recognised, of course, especially in a period that is seeing their
further and grotesque extension through the remaining commons, but
what has altered is that there is a growing sense that these developments
must and can be resisted. Emancipatory aesthetic discourse is no longer
dominated by the fear that the last flicker of critical thought might be
about to be extinguished because it burns in our daily life and because
we are exercising it. Debates in art have been driven in directions that
are increasingly radical, concrete and explicitly (and, often, unapologeti-
cally) ‘committed’, and it is often remarked that there has not been so
much political art since the 1960s or even the 1930s. Talk now is
peppered with a new (or renewed) vocabulary: alongside analyses of
‘empire’ and awareness of ‘precariousness’, there has been growing
attention to the ‘coming community’, ‘event’, ‘singularity’, ‘potentia’,
‘multitude’, ‘exodus’, ‘commons’, ‘contretemps’, ‘actuality’, ‘praxis’.
While most of these terms have been around for some time, they have
recently gained a more consistent presence. Within this matrix of ideas,
the rearticulation of the relationship of ‘aesthetics and politics’ and the
notion of the ‘avant-garde’ – maligned and declared redundant for the
past twenty years or so – has returned to the fore of serious consider-
1. Dmitry Vilensky, ‘You
ation. Even back in 2000 – already in the wake of Seattle but still prior
Can’t Anticipate to the destruction of the World Trade Center (that is, at the moment so
Explosions: Jacques often deemed a high point in the ascendency of ‘the movement of move-
Rancière in Conversation
with Chto delat’, Chto ments’) – John Roberts, a theorist not known for shying from the idea of
delat?, 17, August 2007, avant-gardism, was rather cautious in the way he described its relevance.
unpaginated; accessible at: Challenging those who would ‘confuse the demise of the historic avant-
http://www.chtodelat.org/
index.php garde with the would-be cessation of art’s labour of negation’, Roberts
Third Text ISSN 0952-8822 print/ISSN 1475-5297 online © Third Text (2009)
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/09528820903007677
394
noted that ‘the former may have ended – for now – as a historical possi-
bility, but the latter continues inexorably to exert its demands and
responsibilities’.2 The situation, it seems, has moved on.
Below the surface of this new politicised language of art, however,
can be found some widely different responses. It is striking just how
often commentators find the need to urge caution about the presence of
explicit social impulses in current art; we are repeatedly warned about
the dangers of risking art’s autonomy and reminded of the threats
presented to art when its ambitions become ‘too’ political. There is a fear
of art’s reduction to social servitude and the instrumentalities believed to
characterise committed practices. In a recent interview, for example,
Claire Bishop – a critic who has gauged the current mood – states that ‘it
is crucial for art practices to tread a careful line between social interven-
tion and autonomy’.3 Discussing the recent wave of engaged art practices
in Artforum, she argues that the most successful address the ‘contradic-
tory pull between autonomy and social intervention, and reflect on this
antinomy both in the structure of the work and in the conditions of its
reception’. The apparent balance presented by this statement, however, is
belied by her concerns that art is being overtaken by ethical criteria and
her call for a ‘commitment to the aesthetic’. To underline and qualify her
point, she appeals to the work of Jacques Rancière: ‘the aesthetic’, she
asserts, ‘doesn’t need to be sacrificed at the altar of social change’.4
Stances such as this – and Bishop’s is just one of the more carefully posed
observations among those arguing that art must not be ‘reduced’ to poli-
tics – result, one suspects, more from what have become the accepted
routine reflexes of professional critical art discourse and pedagogy than
from a thoroughgoing critical reflection on the situation. The alleged
‘risk’ to art today is vastly overstated. Indeed, most so-called ‘political
art’ remains thoroughly autonomous in its mode, institutional function
2. John Roberts, ‘On
Autonomy and the Avant- and discursive situation (even if not necessarily in the desires of, or terms
Garde’, Radical of self-presentation used by, the artists). This is the case even with those
Philosophy, no 103, post-relational works where aesthetic ‘form’ seems to have dissolved
September/October 2000,
pp 25–8. More recently, totally into the social matrix; they nevertheless remain completely and,
Roberts has returned to the for the moment, irrevocably grounded by autonomy as an institution.
question of the avant-garde Despite sharing many surface characteristics, there is still a world of
and ‘event’ in ‘Avant-
gardes After Avant- difference between the situation of a jobbing community artist and the
Gardism’, Chto delat, 17, most full-on post-relational activities. Whatever their overlaps – the
August 2007; available
online at http://
crossing of institutional spaces or even of personnel – they clearly emerge
www.chtodelat.org/ from, and are sustained by, different parts of the social division of labour
index.php within which art under capitalism has attained its unique placing(s). The
3. Jennifer Roche, ‘Socially anxiety over defending autonomy expressed by some commentators even
Engaged Art, Critics and when – especially when – in the act of championing some form of politi-
Discontents: An Interview
with Claire Bishop’,
cal practice is wildly misplaced. ‘Autonomy’ is not remotely under threat
Community Arts Network just because some artistic collaborations have accessed funding or venues
Reading Room, July 2006, by trading on their ‘social relevance’, nor because a number of articulate
available online at http://
www.communityarts.net/ artists have committed themselves to the anti-capitalist movement. The
readingroom/archivefiles/ unease might be more justified – and matters might be considerably more
2006/07/ interesting – were this in fact the case.
socially_engage.php
To be sure, there is much confusion over ‘autonomy’ and ‘heteron-
4. Claire Bishop, ‘The Social omy’, with the terms being used in multiple and conflicting ways. For
Turn: Collaboration and
its Discontents’, Artforum, instance, Pierre Bourdieu argued that ‘the field of cultural production’
February 2006 should be understood as a site of struggle shaped by the double hierarchy
395
‘two vanishing points’: the danger of art’s reduction to mere life and that
of its reduction to mere art (both of which have already been rehearsed
above).10 The contradictions and oppositions that we repeatedly encoun-
ter in debates on modern culture (art/life, high/popular, art/non-art, etc),
then, are taken as symptoms of this deeper contradiction, namely that
‘art is art to the extent that it is something else than art. It is always
“aestheticized”, meaning that it is always posed as a “form of life”’.11
Rancière’s purpose in ‘The Aesthetic Revolution and its Outcomes’ is
to challenge the dominant plot of autonomy, especially that provided in
10. Rancière, ‘The Aesthetic
Revolution and its Jean-François Lyotard’s reading of Kant (although Rancière notes that
Outcomes’, op cit, p 150 Kant’s writings do not fit the ‘Kantian’ frame set out by Lyotard).12 His
11. Ibid, p 137 argument also challenges binarist models that baldly counterpose ‘art’
12. Ibid, p 149. As Rancière
and ‘life’, and those single-track ‘entropic’ narratives that, in the late
sees it, Lyotard’s aesthetics twentieth century, often accompanied discussions of the ‘end of art’.
of the sublime is an Emphasising the ongoing force of the ‘heterogeneous sensible’, Rancière
argument that devises ‘a
way of blocking the
resists the silencing of the Schillerian promise and the suppression of
originary path from the aesthetic’s heteronomous dimensions. Rancière certainly acknowl-
aesthetics to politics’, edges the aporetic consequences of various scenarios unleashed by the
imposing a detour to
ethics, in which art aesthetic regime, but, unlike many accounts describing aporia, his
witnesses the concern is with maintaining both a politics and an aesthetic character-
‘unrepresentable’. Lyotard ised by openness and possibility. Resisting straightforward narratives of
does this, despite his anti-
Hegelianism, by drawing progress (or regress), and emphasising the mutual permeability of art
on Hegel’s description of and life, he sets out a social concept of the aesthetic. It is easy to see why
the sublime as the Rancière’s writing has had a wide appeal: he asserts the ‘life’ of art
impossible adequation
between thought and its against its ‘death’; he promotes potentiality against historical foreclo-
sensible presentation, not sure; he gives the aesthetic a central place, not just for art but also for
because there is something
unrepresentable, but
our understanding of how social emancipation was formulated; and he
because ‘it fulfills the desire dismisses as ‘beside the point’ those who would seek to remove politics
that there be something from art. In short, his argument has a dialectical mobility which by
unrepresentable, something
unavailable, in order to
emphasising ‘scenarios of latency and reactualisation’ indicates poten-
inscribe in the practice of tials for and of transformation.13
art the necessity of the It should not be surprising, then, to find that the emphasis on the
ethical detour’, p 150.
Rancière also advances his
politics of aesthetics in Rancière’s work has opened onto debates over
critique of Lyotard in the avant-garde which have again resurfaced with the wave of politically
‘What aesthetics can orientated practices in recent years. There have been a number of artists
mean’, trans Brian Holmes,
From an Aesthetic Point of and theorists who have identified the rise of a new avant-gardism. An
View: Philosophy, Art and edition of Chto delat?, which includes a long interview with Rancière,
the Senses, ed Peter has been specifically devoted to the question. In one article, Zanny Begg
Osborne, Serpent’s Tail,
London, 2000, pp 13–33. and Dmitry Vilensky argue for the need to take current avant-gardist
strategies seriously, and outline what they take to be their different
13. Ibid, p 143. These qualities
can also be found internal tendencies. As they put it: ‘we believe that some of the essential
articulated in On the content of the avant-garde is crucial for an understanding of contempo-
Shores of Politics, Verso,
London–New York, 1995
rary art’.14 Rejecting concepts of the avant-garde based on formal or
(originally published stylistic innovation, on a direct identity with radical politics or on the
1992). association with ‘vanguardism’, they instead draw on Rancière to point
14. Begg and Vilensky, ‘On the to the avant-garde’s ‘poietic force’, that is, ‘its ability to question and
possibility of avant-garde destabilise the very notion of the political, social, cultural and artistic’.
composition in
contemporary art’, Chto
The concept of the avant-garde, they argue, turns on ‘the political
delat, 17, August 2007, understanding of the aesthetic … confrontational approaches towards
unpaginated (emphasis the culture industry’ and direct interaction with activists who, and insti-
added); available online at
http://www.chtodelat.org/ tutions which, question ‘the established order of what art is’, and they
index.php call for a:
398
15. Begg and Vilensky, op cit … return to a discussion of the avantgarde but through a different read-
16. Rancière , ‘You Can’t ing of its composition: a reading which not only locates the political
Anticipate Explosions’, op potential of art within the autonomy of the aesthetic experience but also
cit. He treats the autonomy within the autonomy of art as rooted within the political context.15
of aesthetic experience as
the first or prior issue for
the aesthetic regime. It may not be immediately apparent what is at stake here. Rancière has
17. Rancière, The Politics of increasingly emphasised – a point that comes out especially forcefully in
Aesthetics, op cit, p 45. his conversation with Chto delat? – that his discussion of autonomy
Elsewhere, Rancière has
spoken of the democratic
concerns not that of art (or the artwork) but the autonomy of ‘aesthetic
experience as ‘a particular experience’.16 The inauguration of the aesthetic regime was the moment
aesthetic of politics’ and when this specific form of experience could be appealed to, deriving its
the demos as ‘the
autonomous power to
force precisely because it lay outside any direct social function. This defi-
separate from the ochlos’, nition of aesthetic experience, of course, goes well beyond the idea of
On the Shores of Politics, the appreciation of art (a point that Rancière had already made in The
op cit, pp 51 and 32.
Aesthetics has been Politics of Aesthetics).17 Accordingly, ‘the potential of aesthetic experi-
described as ‘the originary ence qua autonomous experience’ was the basis for art’s political
knot that ties a sense of art claims.18 In one of the most insightful parts of Rancière’s account, this
to an idea of thought and
an idea of the community’ potential pertains equally to the way the idea of social emancipation
in ‘What aesthetics can could be construed by the emergent movements of radical workers.19
mean’, op cit, p 33. There was a sense in which, in addition to art’s own political claims,
18. Rancière, ‘You Can’t modern forms of political radicalisation were also connected to the
Anticipate Explosions’,
op cit
emergence of the ‘“autonomisation” of aesthetic experience from the
ethical adequation between art and life’ that had previously prevailed.20
19. One can compare
Rancière’s earlier writing
Rancière is correct, I think, to maintain his distance from those who
on the processes of would extend this insight into the bald claim which would see aesthetics
aspiration born of the as supplanting politics, or who would fail to recognise the different
meeting of classes and the
type of political,
modes of dissensuality at work in art and political practice;21 his point is
intellectual and aesthetic more subtle and its implications more convincingly squared with history.
projects developed – and Nevertheless, whether this autonomised faculty that he describes is
the processes of mutual
self-transformation solely reducible to aesthetic experience is surely questionable. In a sense,
occurring within such what is being described comes close to the recognition of the transforma-
spaces. (See, for example, tion concepts taking place at this time, many of which wrought a deci-
The Nights of Labor: The
Workers’ Dream in sive change in content (from ‘liberty’ and ‘equality’ to ‘art’, ‘aesthetics’
Nineteenth-Century and ‘politics’) and set the course for the emergence of their modern
France, Temple University usage.22 This is what has long been known within Marxism and the
Press, Philadelphia, 1989).
The connection with his social sciences as the historicisation of categories which makes attempts
writings on worker to deploy such terms as if they were neutral to history fraught with prob-
intellectuals and utopian
socialism is made explicitly
lems.23 Rancière is knowledgeable enough to know this, but he is
in The Politics of inclined to be selective regarding which terms, categories and projects he
Aesthetics: ‘It is this subjects to the historical perspective.
paradigm of aesthetic
autonomy that became the
While his emphasis on ‘the aesthetic mode of thought’ enlightens
new paradigm for important aspects of the historical transformation represented by the
revolution, and it aesthetic regime, Rancière’s insistence on keeping at bay the question of
subsequently allowed for
the brief but decisive
art’s autonomy fails fundamentally to address the accompanying history
encounter between the of autonomy’s social institutionalisation.24 It is at this point that Begg
artisans of the Marxist and Vilensky try to go beyond Rancière (or, to put it another way, to
revolution and the artisans
of forms for a new way of return his account to an earlier moment where the distinction between
life’ (p 27); see also his art’s autonomy and the autonomy of aesthetic experience was less rigidly
reference to The Nights of posed). They not only wish to follow him in locating ‘the political poten-
Labor, p 40.
tial of art within the autonomy of the aesthetic experience’, they also aim
20. Rancière, ‘You Can’t to explore how that potential emerges ‘within the autonomy of art as
Anticipate Explosions’,
op cit rooted within the political context’. I think they point not only to an
399
21. Rancière interviewed by important elision in Rancière’s approach, but, without developing their
Christian Höller, ‘The
Abandonment of
argument, also to something crucial for their understanding of the avant-
Democracy: An Interview garde’s ‘essential content’. Bringing together Adorno’s notion of the
with Jacques Rancière’, ‘new’ (understood as ‘the possibility of keeping alive art’s non-identity in
Springerin, 3, 2007,
unpaginated; available the face of its own institutionalisation and, as such, in the face of the
online at http:// means–ends rationality of capitalist exchange value’25) with Alain
www.springerin.at/en Badiou’s ‘event’, Begg and Vilensky argue for a mediated understanding
22. Raymond Williams’s of art in both its social and its autonomous aspects.
Keywords remains the Rancière justifies his dismissal of the notion of art’s autonomy with
classic exposition.
reference to the problem of ‘aesthetic indistinction’. The autonomy of
23. Rancière himself pays close
attention to the shifting
aesthetic experience, he argues:
‘conceptual status of the
sensible’ and aisthesis in … is not tantamount to the ‘autonomy’ of the artwork, since this separa-
‘What aesthetics can mean’,
op cit. Interestingly, this
tion of a sphere of experience goes along with the loss of any determined
problem of categorial criterion of difference between what belongs to art and what belongs to
historicisation features nonartistic life.26
frequently within efforts to
conceptualise the avant-
garde, autonomy and While it is true that the criteria for distinguishing artistic from nonartistic
heteronomy. See for life in capitalist modernity cannot be fixed in an absolute way, it is surely
example, Peter Bürger, on
‘The Historicity of Aesthetic
incorrect to say that parameters and boundaries are lost, and still more
Categories’, in Theory of erroneous to conclude from this situation that one can no longer speak of
the Avant-Garde, trans art’s institutional autonomy. On the contrary, there have been ongoing
Michael Shaw, University of
Manchester Press/
struggles over what might, or should, be admitted to ‘art’; this seems to
University of Minnesota be the substance of much of the critical debate through the twentieth
Press, 1984; Pierre century. Almost fifty years ago, Harold Rosenberg referred to this very
Bourdieu, ‘The Field of
Cultural Production’, phenomenon as ‘the anxiety of art’, and Greenberg found much contem-
op cit. porary art wanting because he detected its elision with ‘nonart’; Michael
24. Rancière, The Politics of Fried, famously, worried that Minimalist works were becoming ‘theatre’;
Aesthetics, op cit, p 45 development in conceptual art further challenged the defenders of what
were then ‘art’s’ borders.27 Concerns with art’s lack of categorial distinc-
25. John Roberts cited by Begg tion with commodification have rumbled on since Pop, and, despite a
and Vilensky, op cit
period in which he feared that contemporary art had lost its coordinates,
26. Rancière, ‘The Hal Foster has since expressed concerns about how art borders ‘design’.28
Abandonment of
Democracy’, op cit
There may have been a pluralisation of artistic media and modes (from
the admission of documents to that of ‘post-relational’ events within art’s
27. Harold Rosenberg,
‘Toward an Unanxious
field), not to mention much post-Jamesonian theoretical touting of the
Profession’, in The postmodern collapse of determinations. However, it could be argued
Anxious Object, University that, at the same time as so-called ‘aesthetic indistinction’ has expanded
of Chicago Press, Chicago–
London, 1982 (originally (the claim, I think, is superficially derived and overblown), the categorial
published as collection in borders of artistic activity have been both strengthened and shored up
1966), pp 13–20, and ‘On institutionally. Indeed, much of the unease being expressed in the face of
the De-definition of Art’,
The De-Definition of Art, the current wave of ‘political art’ (including some from Rancière himself)
University of Chicago – the concerns to protect art’s autonomy, the efforts to reel back where
Press, Chicago–London, art might go without losing its identity – represents yet another moment
1983 (originally published
as a collection in 1972), in this long debate. Anything but indistinction, one might conclude.
pp 11–14; Clement Contestations may challenge and relativise aesthetic values, but this does
Greenberg, ‘The
Recentness of Sculpture’,
not amount to claiming that determinate criteria are erased (unless the
The Collected Essays and term ‘determined criteria’ is to be taken, falsely, in the most statically – or
Criticism, vol 4, ed John formally – conceived manner); relativisation, after all, is itself a determi-
O’Brian, University of
Chicago Press, Chicago
nate process, both determined and determining.
and London, 1993, Rancière rejects the longstanding distinction of modernism (autono-
pp 250–6 (the essay was mous) and the avant-garde (art/life). This is handled most fully in The
400
seek to exceed their accepted place of fiddling with sensoria while the
world burns. They would be, on this account, in a state of being always
already defeated, their actions perennially self-defeating.
It seems that what is of crucial importance to Rancière’s ‘politics of
aesthetics’ is not only his articulation of aesthetic autonomy’s dialectic
with heteronomy but rather his desire to emphasise the ambiguity or
undecidability induced in the shuttling between the aesthetic regime’s
two vanishing points. 39 Rancière’s account has internal motility, which
is part of its attraction, but its dynamism is circumscribed by the essen-
tial stasis of an overarching aporia in which any moments of heterono-
mous transitivity are repeatedly curtailed.40 Interestingly, Rancière’s
readers divide into those who all-too-readily accept the quietistic impli-
cations of the argument, extending them even to places at which
Rancière might baulk, essentially a sanitised notion of autonomy decked
out with a few political accessories, and, on the other hand, those who
cannot disavow the meaning of the heteronomous power and who
would try to press through the desire for political accomplishment.
Faced with enthusiastic enquiries about a contemporary avant-gardism
from his some of his readers, it is unfortunate that Rancière has tended
to retreat to a magisterial position which sees in their ambitions little
more than just the latest race of the shuttle towards the heteronomous
scenario. Thus the constant ‘shuttling between’ scenarios of autonomy
and heteronomy, which Rancière describes as the ‘life of art’, is repro-
duced at the level of his own meta-account. It is impossible to isolate art
from politics; absolutely true, but dissensual practice, whether in art or
politics, has to accede to determinate points and decisions (and also to
partisanship) if it is not to be drained of content.
Rancière himself refuses to be lured into second-guessing, or acting as
a guide for, the future. This is probably wise, but one consequence of his
avoidance of even tentative articulation is that the presentation of the
dilemmas and paradoxes of the aesthetic regime develops a centripetal
force from which there is no escape. For those desiring ‘political accom-
plishment’ (of both art’s promise and social emancipation), the aesthetic
regime has to be thought of not as prognosis, as a future shaped by an
eternal present, but as itself – at least potentially – transient. Few would
venture to predict the historical and temporal scale of aesthetic or social
transience (although, on 23 September 2008, Jack Straw, the Lord High
Chancellor of Great Britain and Secretary of State for Justice – and he was
39. Ibid
not alone – did suggest that the collapse of capitalism had almost occurred
40. Bürger’s conclusion to ‘last Wednesday’).41 However, if the promise is to have any meaning (if it
Theory of the Avant-Garde
also returns to autonomy:
is not to be merely a gesture internal to the aporia), the conception of
the avant-garde, he argues, temporality has to project beyond aporetic logics. And this is what had
wanted not to dissolve the begun to change, and – all cautions and qualifications due – is what makes
emphasis on means–ends in
the projects of art into life,
it reasonable to speak again of avant-gardes. Mobilising around
but to refigure life on art’s Rancière’s theory, they pursue his point that if it is to retain the promise
terms (the Romantic of the aesthetic scene, advanced art ‘has to stress more and more the
legacy).
power of heteronomy that underpins its autonomy’.42 The great strength
41. Jack Straw interviewed on of today’s emergent avant-gardists is that, after decades in the doldrums,
‘Today’, BBC Radio 4, 23
September 2008 they want to exercise art’s heteronomous impulse, not just to recollect the
Schillerian promise, but to break open the aporetic condition itself.
42. Rancière, ‘The Aesthetic
Revolution and its The argument offered by Begg and Vilensky starts to run in excess
Outcomes’, op cit, p 148 not only of Rancière’s articulation of the politics of the aesthetic; they
404
also read Adorno, if not exactly against the grain, then certainly by
attending to specific moves in Aesthetic Theory from which a more mili-
tant edge might be constructed. A similar excessive reading could be seen
to have been construed from Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics: the
strong social and dialogical emphases on process; the appeal to the social
potential of microtopias; an argument, in contrast to the prevailing art-
world Deleuze-fest, advancing a specifically Guattarian militancy; the
assertion of art’s political nature and, especially, his defense of the idea
of an avant-garde. Whatever the drawbacks of Bourriaud’s thesis (the
inadequacy of the thesis to the artworks addressed, or the art to the
thesis, or the danger of confusing mimetic adaptation to contemporary
managerial techniques and marketing strategies with emancipatory
potential), the critical engagement with this project has propelled discus-
sion and action leftwards. The explicit concern with transitivity, articu-
lated in Bourriaud at a microtopic and relatively abstract level, has been
pushed and extended in an effort to break precisely his account’s limita-
tions. The point about the microtopias of Relational Aesthetics is not so
much that they are little more than an ‘arty party’ (a judgement that
poses as sophisticated critique while being little more than a banal stat-
ing of the obvious), but that even in ideal terms they fail to live up to the
ambitions unleashed by their own promise.43 The transitive understood
43. Hal Foster, ‘Arty Party’, simply as an inter-subjective dialogic – and confined to a metaphoric,
London Review of Books,
vol 25, no 23, 4 December and sometimes metonymic, invocation of the social – has been increas-
2003, pp 21–2 ingly transformed into projects framed by the ambitions for social trans-
44. Nicolas Bourriaud, formation. The microtopic claim of Relational Aesthetics to ‘fill in the
Relational Aesthetics, trans cracks in the social bond’ tips over into the project to address its causes –
Simon Pleasance and
Fronza Woods, Les presses
echoing the historical avant-garde’s own fluctuations over the real, from
du réel, Dijon, 2002, p 36 its attempts to dispense with metaphor and make language direct
(French edition, 1998). The through to the preparedness of some of its members to risk, or even
formulation of fluctuating
over the real comes from
abandon, their attachment to, and identification with, ‘art’ itself.44
Manfredo Tafuri’s account In seizing on the language of Alain Badiou, Begg and Vilensky are
of Gris’s cubism. For among many who have positioned Seattle as ‘event’ (which they specifi-
Tafuri, it conveyed the
limitations of Gris’s
cally ally to Seattle’s transformative effect on the understanding of
practice (it merely ‘subjectivity and potentiality’45). Yet, a demonstration – however signifi-
fluctuated and did not cant (and Seattle certainly rates highly on that score) – cannot constitute
touch the real). I use it here
with a different emphasis – an ‘event’ in Badiou’s sense; even the événements of May 1968 do not
one more appropriate to accede to that status, only the social revolutions of 1789 and 1917 (and,
our, often too for one of Badiou’s political background, perhaps also Mao’s Cultural
complacently,
‘disillusioned’ times – to Revolution). Nevertheless, the desire to draw together Seattle and ‘event’
stress the tensions set in is understandable. What such references do is try to posit – and more, to
play by the striving enact, construct or start to live out – a beginning, or a beginning of a
towards social immediacy.
Manfredo Tafuri and beginning, that can be understood to be built and shared collectively.
Francesco Dal Cò, Modern Badiou himself has recently made claims for the importance of ‘a perfor-
Architecture, 2 vols, trans
Robert Erich Wolf, Faber
mative unity’. In the context of a discussion concerning how we might
& Faber, London, 1976 mobilise around the phrase ‘there is only one world’ and challenge global-
(Italian edition, 1976), isation’s sham unity, he argues that we should declare another unity (‘the
vol. 1, p 105.
single world is precisely the place where an unlimited set of differences
45. Begg and Vilensky, op cit exist’). Through this declaration and enactment, he argues, we ‘make a
46. Alain Badiou, ‘The unity’ which actually counters the false one offered by the neoliberal
Communist Hypothesis’, market economy; we ‘reverse the dominant idea of a world united by
New Left Review, 49,
January/February 2008, objects and signs, to make a unity in terms of living, acting beings, here
pp 38–9 and now’ and, in doing so, ‘we are deciding that this is how it is for us’.46
405
47. Ibid, p 41 Badiou appeals to the Left to ‘connect to another order of time’ and to
48. The essay is a reflection of adopt ‘a different durée to that imposed by the law of the world’. The
the disarray of the French heroicism that faces impossibility directly but only momentarily – and as
left (and most especially
the Socialist Party) in the ‘posture’ – needs to be replaced with ‘courage as a virtue’, which, he
wake of Sarkozy’s electoral suggests, ‘constructs itself through endurance’.47 This should not be
victory in 2007; ‘waiting’, confused with the demand that we ‘wait’, which Badiou takes to be an
Badiou believes, will
exacerbate the negative acceptance rather than a refusal of the dominant temporality.48 Important
choice between at a number of points in his argument is the same idea: that of a collective
disillusioned social self-construction as the precondition of (and activity that must be
pessimism and political
renegacy. The theme of performed to unleash) social transformation.
refusing to wait (for the However, Badiou does not take the current situation to be one of
election, for the revolution,
for control of the state) can
fighting for the victory of the ‘communist hypothesis’ given by his
also be found in John essay’s title. Written in the aftermath of Sarkozy’s electoral victory in
Holloway: ‘we cannot 2007, Badiou argues that we are in a ‘reactionary interlude’ where our
wait’, we must refuse and
break capitalism’s time
task is to defend the very ‘conditions of its [the communist hypothesis’]
(‘Power and the State’, existence’. Anticipating an upturn in struggle (premised, it should be
Holloway’s speech to the said, on a rather dubious theory of forty-year cycles), he sees the next
European Social Forum in
London 2004, republished
historical phase as one in which we might formulate those conditions.
in Take the Power to He takes a modish line in rejecting ‘the statist principle’ and ‘the inade-
Change the World: quacy of the party’, characteristics of the previous ‘sequence’ of the
Globalisation and the
Debate on Power, ed Phil communist hypothesis (1914–1976). He seems happy, however, to
Hearse, Socialist Resistance retain other aspects of that same sequence, namely, what was ‘prefig-
and the International ured in the expression “cultural revolution”’ or the ‘revolution of the
Institute for Research and
Education, 2007, p 42) mind’. Interestingly, he conceives the experiences of cultural revolution
and ’68, unlike those earlier in the century, as ‘ambiguous’ (and thus not
49. Badiou, op cit, p 37
to be condemned as ‘bad’).49 Accordingly, the coming sequence ‘will
50. It is interesting to contrast,
from the same issue,
involve a new relation between the political movement and the level of
Rossana Rossanda’s the ideological’ – a conclusion that is certainly ambiguous.50
concluding statements on Begg and Vilensky’s ‘event’ may not strictly conform to Badiou’s defi-
the need for a mass party
(‘The Comrade from
nition, but it is a heightened conception of the word as used by other
Milan’, New Left Review, political philosophers who also, although in different ways, emphasise a
49, January/February 2008, reconception of time and stress the importance of enactment. Drawing
p 99). Rossanda’s point,
which it would be facile to
on the writings of Marx and Walter Benjamin, Michael Löwy challenges
dismiss as no more than the progressivist notion of history. The emancipatory project, he argues,
nostalgia, is echoed by one necessarily figures a ‘utopian excess’ over the present state of things.51
of her associates from the Il
Manifesto group: Lucio Daniel Bensaïd also addresses what he calls a ‘new appreciation of time’.
Magri, ‘The Tailor of Ulm’, Opposing the type of historical fetishisation characterised by the ‘dicta-
New Left Review, 51, May/ torship of the fait accompli’ and a ‘bureaucratic culture of resignation’,
June 2008, pp 47–62. Both
pieces, striking for their he contrasts Marx’s ‘syncopated history’ (‘punctuated anachrony’ is
first-person narratives, another term used) that is an open process harbouring lost potentials
belong to the growing body and deploys the ‘stake of the event’.52 The Benjaminian model of antici-
of work on communist
memory. pation is distanced from the Heideggerian version: Bensaïd reads the
51. Michael Löwy, Fire Alarm:
latter’s Being-towards-death as a form of passive certainty and appeals
Reading Walter Benjamin’s instead to a ‘political (strategic) anticipation’ which is alive to the possi-
‘On the Concept of bility of shaping a different history.53 A directly political voice such as
History’, trans Chris
Turner, Verso, London–
Marx’s, Bensaïd argues, is ‘always excessive’ because ‘excess is its only
New York, 2005, p 112 measure’ and ‘is intimately bound up with the practical subversion of the
(original French edition existing order’.54
2001)
Even before the current systemic global economic crisis, the tempo-
52. Daniel Bensaïd, Marx for rality of thinking and the thinking of temporality shifted gear; paralysis
Our Times: Adventures
and Misadventures of a gave way to a conception of transitivity and the conceptual field began
Critique, trans Gregory to be recast. Bensaïd’s contribution dates back to the mid-1990s, prior
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