Leszek Koczanowicz
The Magical Power of Art:
Subject, Public Sphere, Emancipation
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or the sub ject o f h is N ob el lecture, Joseph B rodsky chose an issue o f key im portance to an artist, namely, the m eaning o f art for people, individuals and society. He opened w ith a strong statem ent on the com pletely private character o f the w ork o f art.I f art teaches anything (to the artist, in the first place), it is the privateness of the human condition.
B ein g the m ost ancient as w ell as the m ost literal form of private enterprise, it fosters in a man, know- in gly or unwittingly, a sense o f his uniqueness, o f individuality, o f separateness - thus turning him from a social anim al into an autonomous “I.” Lots o f things can be shared: a bed, a p iece o f bread, con- victions, a m istress, but not a poem by, say, Rainer M aria Rilke. A w ork o f art, o f literature especially, and a poem in particular, addresses a m an tete-a- tete, entering w ith him into direct - free o f any go- betw eens - relations.1
i This and fu rth e r q u o ta tio n s fro m B ro d sk y are b a sed on th e scrip t o f his le ctu re a va ila b le on th e w e b p a g e o f th e C o m m itte e : h ttp://
w w w .n o b e lp riz e .o rg /n o b e l_ p riz e s /lite r a tu re /la u re a te s /19 8 7 /b ro d - sk y -le c tu re .h tm l
Leszek Koczanowicz is a p ro fe sso r o f p hilosoph y and political scie n c e at SW PS U niversity o f Social S cie n ce s and H um anities (Faculty in Wroclaw, Poland). Currently he is a EURIAS sen ior fello w a t Helsinki C ollegium for A d van ced Studies.
His in terests include:
social theory, cultural politics, c o n te m p o ra ry social philosophy, and th eo ry o f dem ocracy.
Leszek K oczanow icz is an a u th or o f e ig h t books and n um erous articles in Polish and English.
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D eparting from this axiological statem ent, the great R ussian poet arrives at a paradoxical conclusion. A rt, private b y its very nature, a refuge for privacy even, fulfills an extraordinary social role, not despite but p recisely because o f this characteristic. A rt has an advantage over politics, over the sphere o f power, sin ce:
Language and, presum ably, literature are things that are m ore ancient and inevitable, more durable than any form o f social organization. The revulsion, irony, or indifference often expressed by literature towards the state is essentially a reaction of the perm anent - better yet, the infinite - against the temporary, against the finite. To say the least, as long as the state perm its itself to interfere with the affairs of literature, literature has the right to interfere with the affairs of the state. A political system, a form of social organization, as any system in general, is by definition a form of the past tense that aspires to im pose itself upon the p resent (and often on the future as well); and a man w hose profession is language is the last one w ho can afford to forget this. The real danger for a w riter is not so much the possibility (and often the certainty) of persecution on the part o f the state, as it is the p ossibility of finding oneself m esm erized by the state's features, which, whether m onstrous or undergoing changes for the better, are always temporary.
Brodsky believes that in this relation o f infinite art and tem porary politics, a highly im portant role is played by the private aesthetic experience w hich at the sam e tim e is an ethical experience.
O n the w hole, every n ew aesthetic reality m akes man's ethical reality m ore precise. For aesthetics is the m other o f ethics. The categories of
“good” and “bad” are, first and forem ost, aesthetic ones, at least etym o- logically preceding the categories o f “good” and “evil.” If in ethics not “all is perm itted,” it is precisely because not “all is p erm itted” in aesthetics, because the number of colors in the spectrum is limited. The tender babe w ho cries and rejects the stranger or w ho, on the contrary, reaches out to him, does so instinctively, m aking an aesthetic choice, not a moral one.
The con n ection b etw e e n art and politics, aesthetics and ethics, is n o t only ob vious but also sp ecial and in tim ate p re cise ly b ecau se art allow s for the preservation and cultivation o f privacy. In fact, Brodsky adds that “The m ore substan tial an individual's aesthetic experience is, the sounder his taste, the sharper his m oral focus, the freer - though not necessarily the happier - he is”
and continues: “It is precisely in this applied, rather th an Platonic, sense that
w e should un derstand D ostoevsky's rem ark that b eau ty w ill save the world, or M atthew A rnold's b e lie f that w e shall be saved by poetry.”
A s a consequence, art in a society is a condition sine qua non o f its hum an dim ension and ethical w ell-being. Brodsky outlines a kind o f political utopia:
In any event, the condition of society in which art in general, and litera- ture in particular, are the property or prerogative o f a m inority appears to m e unhealthy and dangerous. I am not appealing for the replacement of the state with a library, although this thought has visited me frequently;
but there is no doubt in m y mind that, had w e been choosing our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there w ould be much less g rief on earth. It seem s to m e that a potential m aster of our fates should be asked, first of all, not about how he imagines the course of his foreign policy, but about his attitude toward Stendhal, Dickens, Dostoevsky. If only because the lock and stock of literature is in- deed hum an diversity and perversity, it turns out to be a reliable antidote for any attempt - whether fam iliar or yet to be invented - toward a total m ass solution to the problem s o f hum an existence. A s a form o f moral insurance, at least, literature is much m ore dependable than a system of beliefs or a philosophical doctrine.
Brodsky's lecture w as undoubtedly intentionally provocative: an apothe
osis o f art w hich, w hile rem aining free o f lim itation, is capable o f countering all kinds o f pressures, and m ore to the point, depriving them o f their political power. W hen the dictator's w ords are revealed as em pty rhetoric, its pow er o f enslavem ent dissipates despite all o f its m ore or less refined tools o f violence.
A r t is also an ap oth eosis o f freedom , although the p o et p refers to speak o f privacy, probably in order not to overuse big w ords. The autonom ous “I” op- poses the social anim al, a product o f “m ass solutions to the problem s o f h u m an existence.” Such p ositioning o f the private versus the public entails the positioning o f good versus evil, beauty versus ugliness, in w hich the victory of b eau ty and good results not only from the w ork o f an artist but also fTom the reader's. For Brodsky, a “novel or a p oem is not a m onologue, but the conver- sation o f a w riter w ith a reader, a conversation, I repeat, that is very private, excluding all others - if yo u w ill, m utually m isanthropic.” Consequently, the pow er o f art lies for Brodsky in its influence upon the audience - the reader.
N othing from w h at had b een lived or read disappears, all p ersists and con
tin ues to im pact the ve ry center o f the “autonom ous I.” A n d so, the R ussian poet adds “I b elieve - not em pirically, alas, but only th eoretically - that, for som eone w ho has read a lot o f D ickens, to shoot his like in the nam e o f som e idea is m ore problem atic than for som eone w ho has read no D ickens.”
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It w ould be easy to critique the view s presented in the cited lecture. Even if they reflect the extraordinary, alm ost m ythical, m oral o f Joseph Brodsky's life, they also present him evoking the pathos o f the Rom antic idea o f art and art
ist as a creative force transform ing and shaping the society. M odern ity seem s to have underm ined this in terpretation o f the m ission o f art, assigning to it a far h um bler role and w eakenin g the faith in its power. The relationship of aesthetics and ethics appears, sadly, to be broken. It h as been pointed out in the context o f Brodsky's lecture that one could im agine a p retty decent vol- um e o f poetry w ritten by Stalin, M ao-Tse-Tung and H o-C h i-M inh , illustrated w ith Hitler's w atercolors. Brodsky is obviously aware of this and differentiates b etw een those w ho are w e ll read and true readers, but such differentiation can really be conducted only a posteriori, w hich o f course m eans that the valid- ity o f the very distinction can be easily underm ined. Finally, one could level w hat I consider the m ost significant charge against Brodsky, n am ely that he p resen ts an elitist, aristocratic m od el o f art w h ile try in g to dem ocratize it.
Brodsky b elieved that R ussian totalitarian ism could have com e to existence only because art w as lim ited to the circles o f the chosen, to the R ussian intel- ligentsia, leaving entire hum an m asses outside its dom ain.
I f one w ere to system atize and sum m arize B ro d sk y s poetic in tuitions, a rather clear d istinction w ould em erge b etw een the corrupt public sphere and the private one, w h ere the au ton om y o f the in d ivid u al and its ab ility to reject m ass slogans can - or m ust - be p reserved if hum an ity is to survive.
True art, and the poet clearly uses a very lim ited definition here, should thus avoid engagem ent, as it is bound to be a false one. A rt cannot be entangled in social or political argum ents or it w ill in evitably becom e entangled in “b ad ” language w hich in turn w ill subordinate art to tyranny. The only m eaning of art, to restate once m ore, is its intim ate im pact on the “autonom ous I” through a m isanthropic conversation. The originality o f Brodsky's idea, how ever, lies in its introduction o f the private sphere directly into politics. The concept of culture as an im provem ent o f Bildung, found in num erous definitions o f cul
ture in the l9 th century but distant from all political connotations, becom es for the poet a political tool. This way, he perform s an extraordinary politiciza- tion o f the private sphere, prefiguring or predicting that w hich has becom e, as I w ill attem pt to show, the central issue o f the first decade o f the 2 lst Century.
O ne can fu lly appreciate B ro d s k y s in tu itio n s on ly b y lo o k in g b ack at the b eg in n in g s o f the l9 th cen tu ry w h e n the m od ern public sphere began to take shape. In order to define it, w e m ust refer to the sem inal w ork of Jurgen H aberm as w ho w rite s:
The bourgeois public sphere m ay be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claim ed the public
sphere regulated from above against the public authorities them selves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the b asically privatized but publicly relevant sphere o f com m odity ex- change and social labor.2
C o m m en tin g on th is definition, H aberm as stre sse s the dialectic o f the public sphere's em ergence from the already existing private sphere w hich it- se lf inevitably undergoes a transform ation as a result o f the em ergence o f the m odern, com plex com m odity exchange and the related division o f labor. The private is not destroyed as a result o f the public sphere constituting itse lf - on the contrary, it is given an additional d im en sion w hich had p reviously been nonexistent or barely present.
The line between state and society, fundam ental in our context, divided the public sphere from the private realm . The public sphere w as coex- tensive with public authority [...]. Included in the private realm w as the authentic “public sphere,” for it w as a public sphere constituted by private people. Within the realm that w as the preserve of private people we there- fore distinguish again b etw een private and public spheres. The private sphere com prised civil society in the narrow er sense, that is to say, the realm o f com m odity exchange and o f social labor; im bedded in it w as the fam ily w ith its interior dom ain (Intimsphare). The public sphere in the political realm evolved from the public sphere in the w orld of letters;
through the vehicle o f public opinion it put the state in touch w ith the needs of society.3
H a b e rm a ss d efin itio n o f the public sphere w a s, as w e know , b ro ad ly d iscu ssed and con tested. There is no n eed h ere to rep eat th ose often ve ry d ram atic argu m en ts b u t it m ay be w orth w h ile to outline at le a st the m ain dividing lines o f the debate. Firstly, it concerns the degree to w h ich the public sphere is autonom ous from the state, or in general, from the political sphere.
A p a rt from liberal trad itio n represen ted b y the G erm an philosopher, there em erges a parallel one, tying together the public sphere, society and the state.
The connection o f the public sphere and the state alm ost autom atically in tro
duces the second line of division, namely, the question o f separating the public sphere from the private one, in other w ords, o f separating private values and the good life from civic and political values. Follow ing the clearest divisional
2 Ju rg e n H a b e rm a s, The S tructu ra l Transform ation o f the Public Sphere, tran sl. T h o m a s B urger w ith a s s is ta n c e o f Fredrick L a w ren c e , (C am b rid g e, M a s s a c h u s e tts : MIT P re ss, 19 9 1), 27.
3 Ibid., 3 0 -3 1.
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lines, w e are presented w ith tw o alm ost sym m etrical visio n s o f society. On the one hand, there is a definite separation o f its internal spheres w ith their com pletely different values, on the other, a fa sio n o f those spheres through un iform value system s th at constitute the social life. O bviously, interm edi- ate varian ts are possible as w ell - from dissiden t thinkers o f the 70s and 8os, there em erges a v isio n o f a civic so ciety as a space o f ethical values, differ- entiating betw een the later and the corrupt political sphere o f the totalitar- ian state. In such a version o f the public sphere, values organize the society against the state w hich in its ideological dim ensions becom es an em pty shell continuing to exist only thanks to its apparatus o f violence. Im portantly, each o f these concepts is true in a w ay - inasm uch as they reflect a certain idea of the functioning o f m odern society. In other w ords, the concepts o f the public sphere and o f the public space em erging w ith in the public sphere are largely in strum ents o f sym bolic pow er. 4 Thus, an analysis o f the public sphere and its transform ations has tw o aspects. On the one hand, there is the emergence o f the public sphere itse lf as a self-stan d in g and separate space in social life;
on the other hand, the appropriation o f this sphere b y politics and ideology. 5
A rt obviously had to accom pany the transform ations o f the public sphere, and to find its place in an era w h ere it w as no longer v ie w ed as an em ana- tio n and tran sm ission o f absolute values; it began to be recognized as a phe- nom enon historically and culturally lim ited b y the horizon o f tem porality. In this n ew situation, art had to find again a niche allow ing it to reconstruct the sense o f its existence. A n d con sidering variou s in terpretations o f art's role in m odernity, one m ay sa y w ith o u t the risk o f exaggeration th at it fulfilled its role very w ell, m aybe even “too w ell.” It took the effort to fill the gap that em erged w hen the m odern “disenchantm ent o f the w orld” brought about the breaking o f culture's continuity both w ith in a certain m om ent o f the present, and b etw e e n the p ast and the p resen t o f a g iven culture. A n d i f art proved capable o f playing this role, it w as possible due to its m agical pow er allow ing it to conquer the seem ingly unconquerable horizon o f tem porality.
A te stim o n y to th is pow er can be found in the fam ou s rem ark b y K arl M arx w ho, although m oved b y the phenom enon, seem s to rem ain helpless in the face o f it. In the rem aining m anuscript and fragm entary passages o f the Grundrisse he looks at the relations betw een form s o f con sciousn ess and the
4 Pierre B ou rdieu , Language a nd S ym bolic Pow er (C am b rid g e: H arvard U n ive rsity P re ss, 19 91).
5 Id eo lo g ie s a tte m p tin g to a p p ro p ria te th e public s p h e re ca n be c la ssifie d , fo llo w in g Z e e v S ter- hell, into tw o m ajo r c u rren ts: th e E n lig h te n m e n t and C o u n te r-E n lig h te n m e n t - v ie w e d not a s a s im p le re a ctio n to th e fo rm e r bu t a s an a u to n o m o u s in tellectu al m o v e m e n t. S e e : Z e e v Ste rn h ell, Les anti-Lum ieres. Une tradition d u XVIIIe sie cle a la g u erre froide (Paris: Fayard, 2006).
I d isc u s s e d th is in „O św ie c e n ie i n o w o c z e sn o ść (cz ę ść I),” Przegląd Polityczny 81 (2007): 6 1-6 6 .
p rocesses o f production, and in this context struggles w ith an odd property o f art that m anages to overcom e its tem p orary lim itation . M arx notes that:
“certain p erio d s o f the h ig h est developm en t o f art stan d in no direct con- n ection to the gen eral developm ent o f society, or to the m aterial b asis and skeleton structure o f its organ ization.” 6 He th en adds: “is A ch illes possib le side b y side w ith p ow der and lead? Or is the Iliad at all com patible w ith the printing press and even printing m ach ines? Do not singing and reciting and the m uses necessarily go out o f existence w ith the appearance o f the printer's bar, and do not, therefore, prerequisites o f epic poetry disappear? ”7 But w hat the author o f Das Kapital finds tru ly difficult to com prehend is h ow it is p o s
sible for us to rem ain am azed b y G reek art w hen our society differs so much from the one th at produced it, “but the d ifficu lty is not in grasp in g the id ea that G reek art and epos are bound up w ith certain form s o f social d evelop
ment. It lies rather in understanding w hy they still constitute for us a source of aesthetic enjoym ent and in certain respects prevail as the standard m odel be- yon d attainm ent.” 8 M arx's answ er to this question w as very enigm atic and has rem ained so despite num erous com m entaries in the follow ing years. He says:
A man cannot become a child again unless he becom es childish. But does he not take pleasure in the naivete o f the child, and m ust he not strive to reproduce its truth on a higher plane? Is it not the character of eveiy ep- och revived in its original truth in the child's nature? W hy should not the childhood of m ankind exert an eternal charm in the unique historic age where it obtained its m ost beautiful development? [ . ] The Greeks were norm al children. The charm of their art has for us does not conflict with the im m ature stage of the society in w hich it had its roots. That charm is rather the product of the latter. It is inseparable from the fact that the immature social conditions under which that art arose can never return.9
M arx's rem arks have been interpreted w ith the goal o f finding those fea- tu res o f a rt th at decide ab out its u n iv ersal character. B ut w h en w e look at th em today, this does not seem to be o f key im portance. W hat is im portant is the fact that because o f its dualist, protean nature, art m ay fulfill in the public sphere, and in culture, the role o f b eing a keystone o f values.
6 Karl M arx, "In trod u ctio n to th e G run drisse" in Karl M arx: A R ea d er (C am b rid ge: C am b rid g e Uni- v e rs ity P re ss, 19 86), 19.
7 Ibid., 20.
8 Ibid., 20.
9 Ibid., 20.
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W riting about W alter B e n ja m in s fam ou s p ro po sition s from On the Con- cept o f History, Giorgio A gam b en em phasizes that tw o im portant tropes in the w orks o f the G erm an philosopher, “quotation” and “collector,” are an answ er to a cultural situation w here the chain o f connections allow ing for a continu- ous tran sm ission o f the past has been broken: “In a traditional society neither the quotation nor the collection is conceivable, since it is not possible to break at any point the links o f the chain b y w hich the tran sm ission o f the p ast takes place.” 10 A ccording to A gam ben, B en jam in did not fully consider the conse- quences o f his ideas, especially the concept o f “aura” w h ich is central concept in The Work o f A rt in the Age o f MechanicalReproduction. A gam b en believes, con- trary to Benjam in, that the disappearance o f aura does not result in liberation o f the w ork o f art from its cultural sheath but quite the opposite - endow s it w ith n ew artistic value:
This is to say: the work of art loses the authority and guarantees it derived from belonging to a tradition for which it built the places and objects that incessantly w eld past and present together. However, far from giving up its authenticity in order to becom e reproducible (thus fulfilling Holder- lin's w ish that poetry might again become som ething that one could cal
culate and teach), the w ork of art instead becom es the locus of the most ineffable o f m ysteries, the epiphany o f aesthetic beauty.11
A ccording to the Italian philosopher, b eau ty m ust appear to fill the em pty space rem ain in g after the fall o f the trad itional, m im etic culture w h ere the processes o f m ovem ent from the past to the present and the object o f tran s
m issio n w ere iden tical. A r t p erform s e xactly the sam e ta sk s as th ose once fulfilled by tradition: it resolves the conflict betw een the old and new, w hose resolution is necessary for m an to function. A esth etics is capable o f reclaim - in g this space b etw een the p ast and the future, space w h ere h um an actions and hum an know ledge are situated. However, A gam b en notes that:
This space is the aesthetic space, but w hat is transm itted in it is precisely the im possibility of transmission, and its truth is the negation o f the truth of its contents. A culture that in losing its transm issibility has lost the sole guarantee of its truth and become threatened by the incessant accumula- tion of its nonsense now relies on art for its guarantee; art is thus forced
10 G iorgio A g a m b e n , The M an W ithout Content, tran sl. G e o rg ia A lb e rt, (Stan fo rd : S ta n fo rd Uni- v e rs ity P re ss, 19 99 ), 10 5.
11 Ibid., 10 6.
to guarantee som ething that can only be guaranteed if art itself loses its guarantees in turn.12
Here, art plays a particularly im portant role, perhaps the key role, not even in constituting society but in saving the hum an condition faced w ith w hat has becom e k n ow n as m odernity. But the role assign ed to art is too dem anding because its atem poral horizon is no longer defended b y tradition. Such univer- salist vision can be found in num erous analyses of art's function in modernity, analyses w hich interestingly have b een form ulated recently. A s this is not the place for a thorough discussion o f these approaches, I w ill only b riefly m en- tio n som e o f them.
For in stan ce, A la n B a d io u s con cept o f art assu m e s it to be one o f the spheres w here truth-generating procedures em erge.
We shall thus posit that there are four conditions of philosophy, and the lack of a single one gives rise to its dissipation, just as the emergence of all four conditioned its apparition. These conditions are: the matheme, the po- eme, political invention and love. We shall call the set o f these conditions generic procedures [...] The four types of generic procedures specify and class all the procedures determ ined thus far w hich m ay produce truths (there are but scientific, artistic, political and am orous truths).13
Badiou's ethics centers upon the category o f “event.” The event is also an e l
em en t o f a “n o rm al” situ ation. From the on tological perspective, the event is a n am in g o f the em ptiness th at existed at the very center o f the previous situation. A s an exam ple, B adiou m entions the appearance o f the classical style asso ciated w ith H ayd n s nam e in m u sic: “at the h e a rt o f the baroque style at its virtu oso saturation lay the absence (as decisive as it w as un no- ticed) o f a genuine conception o f m u sical architectonics. The H aydn-even t occurs as a kind o f m usical ‘nam ing' o f this absence.”™ The event is a carrier o f truth and Badiou strongly opposes the tendency in contem porary philosophy that relativizes truth. There is alw ays one truth, although it has to be referred to one o f the four spheres o f h u m an activity: scien ce, art, politics and love.
The event determ ines the truth for each o f these spheres. In art, an event m ay
12 Ibid., 110 .
13 Alain B ad iou, M anifesto for Philosophy, tra n sla te d , e d ite d and w ith an in tro d u ctio n by N orm an M ad a ra sz , (Albany: S t a t e U n ive rsity o f N e w York P re ss, 19 92), 35.
14 Alain B ad io u, Ethics. A n Essay on U nderstanding Evil, tran sl. P e te r H allw ard (London and N ew York: V erso , 2001), 68.
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be constituted by the creation o f a n ew style, in science by the em ergence of a n e w theory, in p olitics - a revolution, and in love b y the m eeting o f lovers.
In each case, how ever, the tru th revealed in the event surpasses the already existing know ledge and becom es a source o f new knowledge.
B adiou sees in m od ern ity a d om ination o f art th at tow ered above other truth-generating spheres and m oved to the foreground, replacing philosophy.
He refers to th is period as the “age o f p o e ts” to em phasize the rem arkab ly significant role o f art for constituting truth w hich nonetheless also resulted in a confusion o f roles o f art and philosophy:
The moderns, even more so, the postmoderns, have w illingly exposed the wound which would be inflicted upon philosophy by the unique mode in w hich poetry, literature, art in general, bears w itness to our modernity.
There w ill always have been a challenge laid down b y art to the concept, and it is on the b asis o f this challenge, this w ound, that it is n ecessary to interpret the Platonic gesture w hich can only establish the royalty of the philosopher b y banishing the poets.15
O f course for Badiou this is an illegitim ate replacem ent o f philosophy by art, doubly illegitim ate in fact, as art n ot only ventured outside its territory, but also changed the ve ry essence o f p h ilo soph y w h ich is the form al condition o f the em ergence o f truth, although it itse lf generates no truths. The “age of p oets” em erged as a reaction to the w eakness o f contem porary philosophical thought but w as also a testim ony to the significant role o f art, one that alm ost exceeded its power.
Jacques Ranciere's id ea o f aesthetic m eta-politics resonates w ith the two above-m ention ed concepts. In R anciere, art m eets politics not in the area o f
“engagem ent” or “resistance,” but rather through a shared striving to reconfigure the space o f perception, to transform ation the com m on social space. Ranciere discusses the political character o f art in an interview w ith G abriel Rockhill:
It m eans that aesthetics has its own m eta-politics. [...] There are politics of aesthetics, forms of community laid out by the very regime of identifica- tion in which w e perceive art (hence pure art as well as committed art).i6
The auton om y o f art and its p articip a tio n in the p ro ject o f aesth etic m e- ta -p o litic s do n o t exclude b u t co m p lem en t each other. R anciere defines
15 Alain B ad io u, "P h ilo so p h y and A rt," in Infinite Thought (London: C on tin u u m , 2005), 76.
16 Ja c q u e s R an ciere, The Politics o f the A esth etics (London and N e w York: B lo o m sb u ry , 2005), 50.
m e ta -p o litics as “th in kin g w h ich aim s to overcom e p o litical d isse n su s b y sw itch in g sce n e.’”17 The aesthetic p ro ject is in scrib ed in th is m e ta -p o litics inasm uch as th ey both share a com m on desire to transform the political field w hich is also the field o f perception. This is w h y both concepts o f art, shaped in m odernity and continued in postm odernity, encounter w hat Ranciere calls an original contradiction. W hether it is a concept o f art that transform s into life, or a concept o f art that resists life and through this becom es a source of em ancipatory thought, in the end
these tw o ‘politics' are in effect im plicated in the sam e form s b y w hich w e iden tify art as the object o f specific experience. [...] There is no art without a specific distribution of the sensible tying it to a certain form of politics. Aesthetics is such a distribution. The tension between these two p olitics threatens the aesthetic regim e of art. But it is also w hat makes it fu n c t io n i
I have b rie fly presen ted th ese three im p o rtan t con cepts o f a rt in order to highlight a certain feature that th ey share or, perhaps, a certain brand - one that I w ould not dare to call a sim ilarity. The brand that th ey share is a con- viction that art's entrance into the public sphere does not im ply it becom ing an expression o f external, h istorically determ ined social and cultural condi- tions. A rt transcends these, w h ich does not m ean that w e m ust return to the concept o f art as an expression o f eternal and absolute values. A n d if this last concept o f art opposes the m odern ist ones, especially th ose associated w ith the nam e o f W alter B en jam in, the resistan ce also assu m es a continuation.
T h is em ergin g con cept is n o t only critical o f m o d ern ism but tu rn s against postm odernism as w ell. Follow ing Terry Eagleton, one m ay see how postm od- ern ism resolved the contradictions inherent in the m odern ist form ulations o f arts. A ll artistic disciplines
find them selves accorded to a mom entous social significance which they are really too fragile and delicate to sustain, crumbling from the inside as they are forced to stand in for God or happiness or political justice. [...]
It is postm odernism w hich seeks to relieve the arts o f this oppressive burden o f anxiety, urging them to forget all such portentous dream s of depth, and thus liberating them into a fairly trifling sort of freedom/19
17 Ja c q u e s R anciere, A esth etics a nd Its D isco ntents (C am b rid g e: P olity P re ss, 2009), 33.
18 Ibid., 44.
19 Terry E a g le to n , The Idea o fC u ltu re (M alden and O xford: B lack w ell Publish in g, 2000), 16 .
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I w ould prefer to refrain from p assin g judgm en t on the actual valid ity of this evaluation. Postm odernity is, as m odernity w as, difficult to conceptualize in clear term s. Jean-Franęois Lyotard, a thinker as im portant for postm odern- ism as W alter B en jam in w a s for m odern ism , relates the concept o f the end o f gran d n arratives to the id ea o f art's freedom and its bou n d less potential for experim entation, but at the sam e tim e, applying his interpretation o f the K antian sublim e to m odern ist art, he em phasizes the special role o f artistic creation. The notion that art realizes social values obviously is not a m odernist idea; it nonetheless assigns to art specific challenges and tasks.
Regardless o f the details o f the debate concerning the status o f art w ithin p o stm od ern ism , the end o f th is p articu lar fo rm ation is n o w b ecom in g in- creasin gly clear. A n d it is this sen se o f p o stm o d e rn itys end rather th an its internal problem s that lead to questions concerning the role o f art, although - as it is com m on in such cases - those questions m ust be form ulated w ithin the broader context o f the organization o f the public sphere. It seem s w e are now only able to define features o f this breakthrough from a negative perspec- tive. I b elieve th at am ong the axial sym ptom s o f the end o f postm odern ity there are the return o f grand narratives, the reclaim ing o f hum an subjectivity and the fad in g o f the public sphere. T hose p ro cesses result in the reem er- gence o f the id ea o f u n iversality as an an sw er to the b esettin g questions o f post-postm odernity.
Each o f these reactions to postm odernity w ould require a thorough analy- sis, but for the purpose o f this essay, I w ould like to describe only w hat these tendencies m ean to me. W hen Lyotard w rote about the end o f the m eta-n ar- rative, the statem ent itse lf carried an aftertaste o f a story w ith a didactically optim istic character. It turned out th at after m an y dram atic, h orrifyin g ex- periences o f history, hum an ity finally m anaged to rid itse lf o f the desire to be a universal subject, to speak w ith a single voice and strive toward a single goal.
The failures o f em ancipatory m etanarratives are at the sam e tim e a pro o f of a m aturity that leaves behind the tem ptations o f totalitarianism , even the one m asked as representative democracy. Sadly, the fiasco of the concept becom es noticeable on several analytical levels. To m ention only the m ost spectacular exam ples, there are n arratives o f such shocking sim p licity as the victory o f the forces o f good over the “axis o f evil,” as w ell as reanim ated eschatological stories of different religions and their varieties, from radical Islam to Christian fundam entalism . On the other hand, optim ism radiates from several varieties o f globalization, from the dream s o f realizing cosm opolitical projects b y the stoics or Kant, to the post-com m u n ist concept o f the rise and fall o f empire.
E m ancipatory illusions seem to regain their force and the voice o f the skepti- cal philosopher can only w arn that they are alw ays o f lim ited and faulty char
acter. M aybe, how ever, G iorgio A gam b en is righ t constructing a suggestive
cou nter-n arrative o f p o st-p o st-m o d ern ity, stressin g th at extrem e political and technological dom ination focuses on “bio-pow er,” resulting in the reduc- tio n o f hum an existence to “bare life.” 20
A t the sam e tim e, the return o f the grand narratives entails the destruc- tio n o f the public sphere w h ich is n o t to be equated w ith the shrinking o f public space. Quite to the contrary - as the m eans o f com m unication (among them, the Internet) develop, the public space becom es m onstrously big, but its grow th rem ains in an in versely proportional relation to the size o f the public sphere. The ve ry p o ssib ility o f separatin g the public sphere and space is in itse lf a sign o f the tim es. The public sphere described b y H aberm as is consti- tutively conditioned upon going out, finding o neself in a space dem arcated by the m eeting places o f clubs and organizations, but also b y the circulation of press and political pam phlets. A shrinking or even disappearing public sphere takes place through the shrinking o f public space. Prohibition o f free assem - bly, closing dow n clubs, censorship or suppression o f the press and banning the m eetings o f in dependent organizations - actions typ ical o f totalitarian regim es - take place p recisely in the public space although they are aim ed at suppressin g the public sphere. H ow ever, it turns out th at the connection of the public sphere and public space is not indispensable.
The pub lic sphere m a y be colon ized from tw o direction s. O n the one hand, it is being in creasin gly subordinated to grand and lesser narratives of govern m en ts. The m ech an ism s o f th is dom in ation are revealed b y several contem porary philosophers, from M ichel Foucault and his m icro-ph ysics of pow er, through Pierre B ourdieu and sym b o lic pow er, to perh ap s the m ost radical am ong them , G iorgio A gam ben, w ho in the concentration cam p sees the m odern nomos leaving little hope for the exchange o f thoughts that could reach a consensus on politics. It becom es clear, how ever, that this coloniza- tio n o f notions and m eans o f discourse does not have to entail a dism antling o f the public space w h ich m ay retain a livin g quality, filled w ith vo ices and p assion , b u t devoid o f the pow er to create its ow n response to this process o f colonization.
The public sphere is also in cre asin gly p enetrated b y the private area o f subjectivity. In a book recalled earlier in this essay, H aberm as stresses the im - possib ility o f clearing this sphere o f subjectivity w hich cannot be shed com - pletely w h en w e go outside. N onetheless, the very decision to enter the space of discussion and the act of searching for a consensus m ean that subjectivity is som ew hat suspended and the rational discourse o f the social subjects comes to the foreground. M any features o f m odern ity and p ostm odernity could be
20 G io rgio A g a m b e n , H om o Sacer: S overeign Pow er a nd Bare Life, tra n sl. Daniel H ellen-R o azen (S tan fo rd : S ta n fo rd U n ive rsity P re ss, 1998).
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exp lain ed through the p e cu liarities o f the p ro cess sep aratin g su b jectivity from the public sphere and space. This concerns, o f course, also the role o f art that first becom es divided into art for art's sake and art that enters the public sphere, often as a m ediu m o f com m u n ication or even e x p ressio n o f social values. A lthough this division has been repeatedly questioned and contested, it continues to rem ain a point o f departure for such revisionary deliberations.
Su bjectivity's conquest o f the public sphere is on the one hand a process com plem en tary to its colonization b y the m e ta-n arrative but, on the other hand, also contradictory to it. It is com plem entary in the sense that the m ajor- ity o f those n arratives include an ideal subjectivity the corresponds to all the grand political narratives. It seem s, however, that from the very beginning the process is destined to fail w h en confronted w ith resistan ce from real hum an subjectivity. T h is is w h ere I trace the reb irth o f the con cept o f su b jectivity in con tem porary h u m an ist reflection. Naturally, one can not go b ack to the illusory notion o f the subject as an integrated w hole capable, as construed by classical G erm an philosophy, o f grasping the entire available reality through intellectual effort. The subject that is reborn in the p ost-postm odern thought is a broken one, lost in internal contradictions. It is nonetheless the only force that can oppose the grow ing dom ination o f dehum anizing m eta-narratives m aking their return.
U sin g the id io m o f psych o an alysis, Ju lia K risteva perh ap s p resen ts the m ost distinctive concept of rebellion in the contem porary hum anities, a revolt u n d erstood as an in tim ate tran sform ation in stead o f a m ovem ent or social rebellion. This is h ow she form ulates the concept in one o f the interview s:
In contem porary society the w orld revolt m eans very schem atically p o litical revolution. People tend to think of extreme left m ovem ents linked to the Com m unist revolution or to its leftist developm ents. I w ould like to strip the word revolt of its purely political sense. In all Western tradi- tions, revolt is a very deep m ovem ent of discontent, anxiety and anguish.
In this sense, to say that revolt is only politics is a betrayal o f this vast m ovem ent.2i
Revolt, in opposition to revolution, confirm s w hat is m ost crucial in psychic life, or - in the p sych oan alytical language o f the author - the return to the Self, to the “I.” T his return, how ever, is alw ays un stab le and tem porary, as it is in the conflict that w e find pleasure and jouissance. Let m e quote one m ore passage from the above m entioned interview , in order to further clarify K ris- teva's thought:
21 Julia K riste va , Revolt, She S aid (Los A n g e le s : S e m io te x t(e ), 2002), 99.
I think that in the automated m odern w orld the depth of psychic life, the liberation of psychic life, the search for truth in the interrogation and the questioning are all aspects that are overlooked. We are expected to be p er
form ing entities. A t best, w e are asked to work w ell and to buy as much as possible. This whole problematic o f interrogation, of the return to the self, the questioning and the conflicts that are sources of human freedom have becom e obliterated, rejected or even destroyed param eters. The culture that arises from this situation is a culture of entertainm ent rather than one of interrogation and revolt. I would say it is an essential kind of re- sistance in a technocratic society to rehabilitate m em ory along w ith the questioning and to allow the conflicts of the individual to take place.22
The sphere o f im agination or the im aginary sphere (to use Jacques Lacan's category) is o f key im portance for the developm ent o f freedom as postulated by Kristeva. This is because im agination allows for stopping the attacks on our internal psychic life, and it is capable o f transform ing them , sublim ating them and, as such, allow s us to live and be free. A rt is, naturally, crucial for the de
velopm ent of the im aginary sphere, because it allows to “translate” our m ental states to ourselves.23 Adm ittedly, K risteva w rites m ain ly about w riters, since her analyses concern m ostly literature, but one can easily apply her notions to other types o f art that, u sin g their ow n m eans, perform the sam e work.
Joseph B rodsky w ould be definitely critical about the entire psychoanalytical assem blage o f the concept o f rebellion as presented b y the French philoso- pher, but certain sim ilarities betw een these tw o voices are difficult to deny.
Both see the m ission o f art in revealing and strengthening the internal w orld of the view er or reader. A rt is first and forem ost a w ay to encourage introspec- tion, a search and questioning o f that w hich the m ind m ay see as obvious. It is equally clear for the poet born in totalitarian R ussia and the psychoanalytical philosopher b orn in totalitarian Bulgaria that the political m eaning o f art lies in its distan ce from politics. N eith er a con n ection to p o litics or a n y other ideology, nor its support for a political alternative decide the term s o f engage
m en t for art, w h ich after all is determ ined b y its ab ility for a “m isanthropic con versation” or for q uestion in g the seem in g coherence o f the psyche. The core o f a r ts in flu ence lies in pleasure, jouissance o f negation, a d isco very o f internal conflicts. Im agination is inevitably in scribed in it, and indispensible to all internal, intim ate revolts.
22 Ibid., 10 0 - 10 1.
23 Julia K risteva, Intim ate Revolt. The Pow ers and Lim its o f Psychoanalysis, tra n sl. Je a n in e H erm an (N ew York: C olu m bia U n ive rsity P re ss, 2002), 254.
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Such political reading o f art assum es, o f course, a tran sform ation o f the very notion o f the political. The political is different from politics (in the French tradition, respectively, lepolitique and lapolitique), it is a w a y o f life or o f view - in g social reality, and it m eets art at its deepest level. A rt as a project o f m e- ta -p o litical aesthetics or as a space b etw een the p ast and the p resen t m ust eventually refer to the internal conflicts and tensions em erging in the internal lives o f individuals. It seem s, how ever, that such an autonom ization o f indi- viduals leads in turn to the restitution of public space identical w ith the public sphere. Entering the public space but at the sam e tim e going b eyond it, art rem ains in the condition o f allow ing this space to exist and be transform ed.
I would em phasize especially the latter as it is im possible to find an unchange- able public sphere or public space d istingu ishable from the private sphere.
This is because the d istinction its e lf alw ays results from a certain political, or - to be precise - m eta-p o litical p olitical project (as in Ranciere) and its contents largely determ ine w hat is im aginable and w h at cannot take place in current politics. A rt situated w ith in this distinction is at the sam e tim e one o f the conditions for its existence and is the reason w h y it is so difficult to see its m an ifestation s in the public sphere w h ich are n o t m erely sym ptom atic or fleeting. U n iversalism in the aesthetic political project reveals itse lf only through subjectivity, in the defense o f the individual and the unique w orld of the individual's in ternal conflicts.
Translation: Anna Warso
