Jappe—Debord—The Supersession of Art

Anselm Jappe
Guy Debord (1993)
trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (1999)

...to actualize artistic values directly in everyday life as an art that was anonymous and collective...in such a way as to transcend the dichotomy between artistic moments and moments of banality. (68)

I suppose this drags us kicking and screaming into trying to define Art, for if these are indeed hallmarks of supersession, then as such they betoken something of a radically different type. I usually argue for defining by reception rather than by intent, hence the notions of anonymity and collectivity are certainly not incompatible with classical and romantic conceptions of art. It is the blurring of distinction between the artistic and the banal, rather, which seems so thoroughly at odds with common sense, i.e via the Everything and Nothing problem. What could ever be more numbly terrifying, or terrifyingly numbing, than such a life without contour? This seems to place Art on a pedestal, thus representing the ecstatic pole which in alienated life is necessarily balanced by proportionately severe suffering. If the poles must balance, however, would moderation not be preferable to the opposite extreme?

[from a post-it, 2017 or 2018]

Vincent Kaufmann—Debord, Autobiography, Exemplarity

Vincent Kaufmann, trans. Robert Bononno
Guy Debord: Revolution in the Service of Poetry (2006)

Debord is one of the great autobiographers or self-portraitists of the second half of the twentieth century... He developed an unchallengeable form of autobiographical writing, through which a statement coincides with an act (and could coincide with an act only because it amounted to no more than "not showing himself".)

...

In this light, it is clear that it is precisely because of their exemplarity that Debord's autobiographical writings must at the same time be "theoretical," or that, at the very least, there is continuity between these and his autobiographical writings in the strict sense of the word. From Saint Augustine to Rousseau and beyond, this has always been the case. Exemplarity always serves ideology (religious, political), at least when the opposite is not the case. With Debord this continuity is especially obvious in the most autobiographical of his films [In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978)]...

...

The film does not start out autobiographical. It begins, like the film version of The Society of the Spectacle (1973), as a work of social criticism, with themes that will be familiar to anyone who has seen his previous films: the critique of passivity, of separation, of the vapidity of art in general and film in particular... But this tone is abandoned after some twenty pages (and a little more than twenty minutes), replaced by a long and explicitly autobiographical narrative, introduced in the following terms: "Thus, instead of adding one more film to the thousands of commonplace films, I prefer to explain why I shall do nothing of the sort. I am going to replace the frivolous adventures typically recounted by the cinema with the examination of an important subject: myself." There is no film, let's move on to a discussion, to conflict, that is, to me. Such a change of register is indeed an echo of the declaration of 1952, and it is emblematic of Debord's oscillation between "theory" and "self-portraiture," or, if you will, of their continuity. Autobiography is here a form of social criticism by other means; exemplarity, in a way, constitutes the proof of the relevance of theoretical discourse.

As I have already suggested, this exemplarity is negative. The period during which Debord was active, which he anticipated to a certain extent (if we imagine him beginning in 1952), is one in which autobiography, and more generally biography, triumphed. But it's just a short step from triumph to the most repulsive degradation. The death of the author foretold by Barthes and Foucault seems quite distant, and if there ever was a time when the author, modestly converted into an anonymous writer, signed his works only for the sake of form, he is now more alive than ever, and more desirous of proving this, of leaving traces of the life he so enjoys. Proof of this can be found in the recent success of intimate memoirs, correspondence, and biography, and more generally the autobiographical turn taken by contemporary fiction. Hasn't the right to create "personal fiction," as it is called, become as unquestioned as human rights once were? Everything would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds if contemporary authors still had the time, between book signings and television appearances, to lead a life that was unique enough not to depend on the clichés of sentimental personal fiction. It is one thing to have reestablished the author's rights, quite another to identify a life that is prestigious enough and, especially, unique enough to justify their use. The danger of the democratization of the right to self-expression is that when it is overused, the claim to authenticity and singularity that historically justified autobiography quickly fades into indifference and a lack of differentiation. It then becomes no more than a rhetoric of authenticity. Singularity is the condition of authenticity and authenticity is corrupted in the presence of the commonplace. From this point of view, the critical importance of Debord's actions lies in his ability to turn his epoch upside down, to make a break with it, to turn himself into its other." (28-30)

"At the very least, there is continuity between these [theoretical writings] and his autobiographical writings," and the reason is the "exemplarity" of this work, which is to say that "a statement coincides with an act" at all times. (28) VK seems to be getting at something deeper and more profound than mere consistency of words and actions, but I can't tell what. This consistency means that Debord's work is always "theoretical," even when it is also (and more explicitly) "autobiographical." "Exemplarity always serves ideology...at least when the opposite is not the case." (28)

"Exemplarity, in a way, constitutes the relevance of a theoretical discourse." (29) That is, one may prove (such a strong term, but whatever) the validity of a piece of Theory by practicing it oneself; and at that point, a chronicle of such life and living takes on a new relevance.

Importantly, "this exemplarity is negative," (29) meaning that it instantiates an example of living differently than the predominant examples in one's immediate midst. The "most repulsive degradation" of autobiography occurs when authors no longer "lead a life...unique enough not to depend on the clichés of sentimental personal fiction," when "the right to self-expression...is overused [such that] the claim to authenticity and singularity that historically justified autobiography quickly fades into indifference and a lack of differentiation." Seeing this, Debord achieved a certain "critical importance" by "turn[ing] his epoch upside down...mak[ing] a break with it...turn[ing] himself into its Other." This is Negative Exemplarity. Otherwise known as swimming against the current, zigging as others zag, or perhaps simply being born in the wrong era, city, country, milieu, etc. That is certainly not unique, but consistency is, so that as far as that goes the point is well-taken.

The critique of the prevailing practices in "personal fiction" is always timely. I hesitate to say that it is well-articulated here as I have had to reread the passage several times in order to fully grasp it. But let's just say I'll Take It, which is to say it's good to know I'm not crazy for groping towards more or less the same critique of the Autobiographical Turn. In fact I would say that VK actually doesn't go far enough vis-a-vis "the right to create personal fiction" becoming "as unquestioned as human rights once were." In fact the Autobiographical Turn has become an Autobiographical Imperative in many circles. One such circle is populated by the Arts Entrepreneurs or Arts Businessperson (-Milo's verbiage), who have found (or claim to have found) that the personal sells. It would of course be quite fruitful to attempt to ferret out the essential from the contingent here, as well as the simpler question of whether the seeming infallability of this business plan is the reality or merely the perception.

The consequences are rather different for each combination, including one logical impossibility. But regardless of the truth, I'd expect that this Imperative is here to stay for a good while. It is, let's say, quite overdetermined, no?

[from a notebook, 2017]

Fenstermaker—The Division of Household Labor

Sarah Fenstermaker
"Work and Gender" (orig. 1985)
Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Inequality, Power, and Institutional Change
ed. Fenstermaker and West (2002)
pp. 105-118

p. 110—At least metaphorically, the division of household labor facilitates two production processes: the production of goods and services and what we might call the production of gender. Simultaneously, household members "do" gender, as they "do" housework and child care, and what I have been calling the division of household labor provides for the joint production of household labor and gender; it is the mechanism by which both the material and the symbolic products are realized.

Indeed, are there not as many "symbolic products" manufactured this way as the given society is able to conceive of and value? Because this seems to me also a perfect description of how what might be called status, prestige, distinction, or more likely simply conformity (in a nonetheless intensely value-laden sense) is produced; "normative conceptions," all of them, and none precisely coextensive with "class" per se. Seems to me as well that the holding-to-account that is done with regard to family distinction is, more often than in more widely discussed, historically fraught arenas such as race, undertaken quite bald-facedly and unremorsefully. If indeed it belongs in the category of manufactured accountabilities, it could for this reason be uniquely susceptible to study; but then, for it to be thus studied would require the studiers to treat the artifacts of family distinction as no more absolute or imperative than gender, race, or class identities are treated in Doing Difference; and thereby one may, I think, occasionally be up against the White Bourgeois streak in Feminism that we read so often about but less often can put a finger on.

[from a notebook, 2018]

Karen Offen—Wherein It Takes One To Know One

Both the relational and the individualist modes of argument have historical roots in what historian Temma Kaplan has called "female consciousness," or consciousness of the "rights of gender." The evidence also suggests incontrovertably that proponents of the relational position possessed a "feminist consciousness": they viewed women's collective situation in the culture as unjust, they attributed it to social and political institutions established by men, and they believed that it could be changed by protest and political action. Nevertheless, they insisted that women had a special role, a role distinct from that of men. Thus, it is clearly erroneous to assert, as Kaplan recently did, that "all feminists attack the division of labor by sex, because roles limit freedom, and to mark distinctions is to imply superiority and inferiority." This is a radically individualist, very contemporary, and ultimately very exclusionary perspective on the history of feminism. ("Defining Feminism," 141)

First, recall that KO, having established the validity, if not the importance, of pursuing the question of definition of terms more than cursorily, dismissed the practice of applying the word "feminism" retroactive to its actual existence as "anachronistic" and, more to the point, "conceptually anarchic." (131) The present passage, then, is aimed at something of the opposite problem, i.e. the narrowing of both the temporal and conceptual bands to which "feminism" might be applied, specifically hinging on whether or not it "attack[s] the division of labor by sex." Without saying so quite so explicitly, KO offers a somewhat broader but ultimately just plain differently-oriented definition of "feminist consciousness."

Indicative perhaps of the social and intellectual fracturing inherent in hair-splitting expeditions, I would say that neither of these definitions quite works for me; though I'm happy to grant Feminism whatever leeway it needs, in terms of the interconnection of Feminist insights with wider social issues (and to be sure, both definitions here seem anxious to embrace those connections) I believe a broader, simpler concept of unprejudiced social agency is both sufficient and more pragmatic. The premise that "roles limit freedom" is central to this concept, but it also rejects Kaplan's rejection of "mark[ing] distinctions" on the grounds that distinctions cannot help but emerge even (actually especially) from ideally fair social intercourses; the fairness of the process generally (though certainly not always) will be reflected in the result.

KO's "feminist consciousness" is, in a word, broader than Kaplan's (anti-)role-oriented critique, and it must be pointed out that my "unprejudiced social agency," being broader yet, certainly allows for the eventuality that, given a fair case-by-case sort of interchange with the social world, a sizable group of women may well emerge whose wants and needs look very Traditional in comparison to present and future prevailing social norms, and that as a group within this larger social world they could have valid and distinctive concerns which need to be addressed. That being as it may, given such an ideal scenario, can we expect this group to be any larger than a middling minority? I for one would be quite curious to know the answer, because it so often seems that despite our present patriarchal malaise there persist nonetheless myriad institutional and psycho-social tithes to the bourgeois, quietist aspirations of this vocal minority; hence, for me, having quite different aspriations, KO's "relational" feminism is what makes feminism scary, and "individualist" feminism, while I certainly see its limitations, usually seems closer to curing what ails us.

It is at that point in spite of the admirable breadth and depth of KO's research that this passage crystalizes the impression that there is, as cannot be entirely avoided by any of us, something of an agenda underlying this work, namely to advance a collection of formal (e.g. semantic and historical) arguments for not kicking the family woman out of feminism.

solidarity among women is based not solely on recognition of common oppression but also, historically speaking, on a celebration of shared and differential experience as members of the same sex, the childbearing and nurturing sex. Feminist scholar-activists have discovered, for instance, that women's experience of motherhood as negative and restricting is historically specific and, given a different shape, can potentially offer women much satisfaction. [subsequently argues for a sort of synthesis of the relational and individualistic modes,...]one that can accommodate diversity among women better than either of the two historical approaches can on their own. (155-156)

Suddenly we are mired in consequentialism again: if women lose their greatest (really it is just their easiest)

[now: whoops, this is ambiguous and one of the meanings is offensive; what I mean is that getting pregnant is easy, and deciding to get pregnant is even easier, not that actually birthing or raising kids is easy; e.g. my extremely talented gay roommate at CalArts complaining that his family had lionized his straight brother upon conceiving, just because "he stuck his dick in a pussy"; I'm pretty straight but I resent this kind of thing just like many gay people do; I respect parents bonding over the hard part and I resent them bonding over the easy part; ditto artists; ditto pet owners; ditto scrabble players]

shared experience,

[now: of course she has thought through all this and so says she is actually talking about the hard part; I know this is really mean to say, but I'm dubious about that; please consider the rest of this before dismissing that thought outright]

they could also lose hope of identification with each other, as a group, as women. I would argue that there are more than mere "individualist" arguments to be made for allowing such massive, ancient identifications to stand or fall on the terms of contemporary rather than ancient life. Suddenly KO's brand of relational-individualist synthesis is revealed to have the stunningly flimsy goal of "solidarity" borne of identification, this in service of what is also a very "historically specific" conception, i.e. the need for vigilant feminist organizing/action on a massive scale. There are worse ways to go...but hand to heart, the thought of identification-as-women evaporating seems to me to be the truly radical alternative here, empowerment defined, the conclusive shedding of the Victim Mentality, and the creation of a decentered moving target on which Patriarchy could never hope to strike a direct hit. Merely giving "the cultural experience of motherhood...a different shape" achieves little; rather, individuals (yes, I said it) ought to have the necessary leeway to, for lack of a better way of putting it, find themselves. We can rest assured that plenty of motherliness will arise from such conditions; whether this mode (circumstance, culture, personality, and yes, even a certain accumulation of strictly rational consideration each have a part to play in delivering a person to their Mode of One) needs or deserves to be subsidized, and to what degree, is a rather separate question.

[from a notebook, 2017 or 2018]

Karen Offen—Defining Feminism

Karen Offen
"Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach" (1988)
Signs 14/1 pp. 119-157

pp. 134-135—"relational" and "individualist" modes

Viewed historically, arguments in the relational feminist tradition proposed a gender-based but egalitarian vision of social organization. They featured the primacy of a compassionate, non-hierarchical, male-female couple as the basic unit of society, whereas individualist arguments posited the individual, irrespective of sex or gender, as the basic unit. Relational feminism emphasized women's rights as women (defined principally by their childbearing and/or nurturing capacities) in relation to men. It insisted on women's distinctive contributions in these roles to the broader society and made claims on the commonwealth on the basis of these contributions. By contrast, the individualist feminist tradition of argumentation emphasized more abstract concepts of individual human rights and celebrated the quest for personal independence (or autonomy) in all aspects of life, while downplaying, deprecating, or dismissing as insignificant all socially defined roles and minimizing discussion of sex-linked qualities or contributions, including childbearing and its attendant responsibilities. (135-136)

Thirty or so years on, the phrase that jumps off the page here is, "...made claims on the commonwealth on the basis of these contributions." (136) Indeed, it is only by the logic of what might less charitably be called a sort of genteel difference feminism that a particular "social organization" and/or family structure could be thought so unimpeachable as to entitle its adepts to "claims on the commonwealth." Hence KO's taxonomy here is apt for drawing attention to the profoundly anti-individualistic nature of this orientation, which, even without yet wading into questions of valuation, lays bare the bald-faced contradiction typically committed by today's most simple-minded liberals. I wonder if this cognitive dissonance could ultimately become a stumbling block on the road to UBI of even vaster dimensions than various conservative/right-wing objections, so thorougly ingrained (many on both sides would say organically arising/essential) is the ideal of kids-house-job-car. Concurrently, let's hope that the questioning of the ongoing utility of the rights orientation from within its own tradition might at some point engender a modicum of respect for the myriad non-procreative, non-economic contributions of the willingly childless on behalf of both relationalists and individualists.

Even in Anglo-American thought prior to the twentieth century, these two modes of argument were not always as analytically distinct as I am portraying them here... In earlier centuries, evidence of both these modes can often be located in the utterances of a single individual, or among members of a particular group, exemplifying perhaps that not uncommon human desire to have things both ways. (136)

A very astute conjecture, I think, the missing piece being that such self-contradiction from a psychologistic perspective quite ofen betrays that the utterer is very aware of their own inconsistency.

Lest it be thought that the two approaches I am invoking here represent simply another sorry instance of the much-criticized binary logic endemic to Western thought, or a form of reductionism, let me suggest that there are important sociological reasons for positing two and only two categories rather than "varieties" or "relative degrees" of feminism. These two modes of argument certainly reflect the self/other dualism characteristic of Western thought, but they continue to be meaningful because they also reflect profound differences of opinion that have long existed within Western discourse about basic structural questions of social organization and, specifically, about the relationship of individuals and family groups to society and the state. Both modes must be accounted for if one is to understand feminism historically.

If I might further paraphrase/interpret, the tension between individualism and collectivism IS the essential Feminist issue, of which Feminism's various internal debates can all be understood as proxies. Absolute as it sounds when put so bluntly, there is much to recommend this view, starting with the unfortunate practical political reality that myriad social and political actors' inability/charlatanry vis-a-vis locating themselves and/or their worldview/constituency in this scheme is itself a nearly catastrophic source of friction in the day-to-day functioning of ostensibly democratic institutions. e.g. There seems to me to be some serious cognitive dissonance (or, in the case of groups, unresolved tension) surrounding conceptions of child-rearing as collectivistic ([name of ex-gf redacted]—it's "our obligation" to raise the next, better generation) vs. individualistic (i.e. as the most power the powerless can readily wield; and with that, autonomy in this task of shaping the future according to their views). And yes, it is true that some degree of such confusion is inevitable on account of the ultimate untenability of hard and fast dichotomies; but IMHO, using that as an excuse not to tease out the endpoints of the dialogue seems to me akin to giving up outright.

[from a notebook, 2017 or 2018]

Len Bracken—Debord, Adorno, Time

Len Bracken
Guy Debord—Revolutionary (1997)

...the difference between Adorno's ideas and Debord's relates less to the question of what would be desirable in itself than to the question of what is actually possible at the present moment in history. (117)

For Debord, as for Lukács, alienation arises from the predominance of the commodity system in social life; it is thus associated with industrial capitalism, and has not existed for more than about two hundred years. Within such a relatively brief period of time, changes occurring in the space of a decade may naturally assume great importance.

By contrast, the changes of a whole century can carry little weight for Adorno, whose yardsticks for measuring events are "the priority of the object" and "identity." By "exchange" he does not in the first instance mean the exchange of commodities embodying abstract labor...but rather a suprahistorical "exchange in general" that coincides with the entire ratio of the West. The antecedent here was the kind of sacrifice that sought to win the favor of the gods by means of an offering that soon become purely symbolic; this fraudulent aspect of sacrifice foreshadowed the fraud inherent to exchange. (119)

Generally I am strongly inclined towards the Long View, which Adorno represents here as against Debord's Shorter one, even if it would be easy to quibble with a few of the specifics here. The adolescent petulance and self-importance in Situationist writing can be overwhelming, and it seems that even two hundred years is quite a bit vaster than many of those young people's frame of reference. On Adorno's scale of time, rather, Capitalism cannot possibly be a new or unique problem but rather an instantiation of so many ancient problems given modern form. [Name of former roommate redacted] once attempted to stake out just such a position, which was not at all consistent with many of his other opinions, but which in and of itself was not too far off from what is being laid out here, and which I find compelling, at least as far as it goes. It is less clear to me that it is possible or profitable to, as [roommate] was implying, somehow oppose these endemic human problems while simply leaving Capitalism alone to continue to do God's work. "Exchange" is not new, but Capitalism IS built on exchange. Would a better -ism not necessarily be built on something else?

More of the same, but worth including:

One gets the general impression that for Adorno the particularity of different historical periods fades in the face of the working of certain unchanging principles that have obtained since the beginning of history, such as domination and exchange. ...the division between the thing and its concept had already begun in the animistic period with the distinction between the tree in its physical presence and the spirit that dwells within it. Logic arose from the earliest relationships of hierarchical subordination, and the identification of things by means of their ordering by kind begins with the "I" that remains identical through time. ...the same "reason" applied in the pre-Socratic period as applies today. For Adorno, therefore, it ought to be well-nigh impossible to surmount reification, for he sees it as rooted in society's very deepest structures. (119-120)

[from a notebook, 2017]

Walter Capps—Erikson, Psychohistory, Worldview

Walter Capps
"Erik Erikson's Contribution Toward Understanding Religion"
in Ideas and Identities: The Life and Work of Erik Erikson (1998)
ed. Wallerstein and Goldberger
pp. 67-78

were the primary Erikson insight writ large, one could make a compelling case that the religious traditions themselves can be approached as extensions and exemplifications of the lives—indeed, the biographies—of their founders. (69)

And in a footnote to a related passage:

In making this suggestion, I wish to call attention to the fact that psychohistorical analyses have been applied to Western figures rather exclusively, and not to representatives of Asian religious and/or cultural traditions.

This is quite an allegation from a scholar who throughout this article appears exceptionally well-read. But perhaps by "psychohistory" he refers to the narrow circle of assembled disciplines rather than to general scholarship.

As for the former excerpt, the sentiment is at once essential and superfluous. Of course any abstraction of a social institution is ultimately populated by real people living their lives; but of course there are often enough of them to choose from that achieving an adequate sample rate is quite a challenge.

Also related:

Perhaps the most profoundly religious factor of all is that, in so many ways, like the equations he studied, the psychoanalyst came to embody the insights he had identified. That is, his study of the human life cycle was reflected in his own stage-by-stage journey through life. (75)

And so besides sample rate, there is the general issue of judgment: who to study and how to study them. Each religion furnishes its own criteria, of course, but then comparison becomes the bugaboo.

Even so, this "profoundly religious factor" leading to "embod[iment] of the insights he had identified" is a beautiful idea. Lots of artists aspire to it, and many more claim to have achieved it than seems plausible. But then, what IS art?! Perhaps they HAVE found its essence and have come to embody it, thereby becoming completely insufferable and self-absorbed!

The adoption of a worldview is not something that is done mechanically, as if one simply selects an "ism," a philosophy, or a religion from within a set of possibilities... Rather, the adoption of a worldview involves highly selective, synthetic, constructive work in which a large set of differentiable, temperamental, and dispositional factors come into play, a large portion of which are probably never brought into full cognizance. Indeed, if one wanted to put this insight into formula, one would say that Immanuel Kant's now famous "apriori/synthetic judgments" are implicit in worldview construction, and much that is assigned to apriori status is of a psychological or, more exactly, psychogenic nature.

Here Erikson can be credited with two very significant accomplishments. First, he recognized all of this to be the case, that is, that worldview construction involves the interdependent coordination of these various elements. Second, in some specific instances, he identified how the construction—or, better, the composition—came into formation. Clearly, here as elsewhere in Erikson's observations, a strong aesthetic element is present. Worldview construction, like the formation of personality, is thoroughly compositional. It is composed and stylized, as are cultures, as are personalities. (71-72)

Yes! And I think it is clear, though not explicitly stated here, that the act of "composition" is the act of an AGENT. One can more easily and profitably distinguish the conscious/unconscious here than the intentional/unintentional. It is all intentional in some sense!

[from a notebook, 2017]

Vincent Kaufmann on Détournement

Kaufmann/Bononno, Guy Debord

It's true that détournement is also based on a technique of dissimulation, if we insist on using the term, even though it would be more correct to speak of it as a ruse or feint. But it is at the very least problematic to attribute such a technique to the practice—considered shameful or inadmissable— of autobiography, a larvatus prodeo to which no more than a handful of self-proclaimed scholars hold the key. Reading Debord is not like a game of Trivial Pursuit, and I doubt that he was the least bit ashamed of his image or self-portraits. The concept of détournement entails the notion of detour, the intent to circumvent an obstacle, and contains elements of game playing and warfare. Détournement turns the reader or public into a warrior. It incorporates a strategy of blurring appearances, the rejection of comparative quotation demanded by the spectacle, which is currently so intrigued by the cliché of authenticity. Consequently, it also involves a rejection of an entire order of discourse, a logic of allocation, of pigeonholing, of signatures and responsibility through which everyone is in some way put back in his place or finds himself back there. But Debord, the lost child, did everything he could to avoid discovery, to not remain in his place. The spectacle has made authenticity a cliché we are assigned to, it continuously demands that we signal our presence. It is this imperative that détournement rebuffs; it is also, and perhaps especially, a technique of appropriation (which has never concealed its intentions), a technique for making the best possible use of words and texts. "Plagiarism implies progress," wrote Ducasse, it's least improbable inventor, a man Debord deeply admired. With détournement the cliché is taken over for special purposes, as were the Sorbonne much later and, more ephemerally, the Odéon Theater and a handful of factories. There was jubilation rather than dissimulation, none of the sorrow associated with hidden mastery. A challenge was launched against the cliché by a singularity whose self-rediscovery involved abandoning the cliché and reappropriating the belle langue of the century, as Baudelaire—here appropriated—had wanted to do. And Baudelaire, like Debord, was horrified by philanthropic journalists short on inspiration, who wanted to be considered equals or even friends. Charity leads to the spectacle, religiosity to the religious. (37)

dissimulate (v.)—"to hide under a false appearance"
(merriam-webster.com)
larvatus prodeo—something about a mask (The Internet)
feint — (n.) "a deceptive or pretended blow, thrust, or other movement, especially in boxing or fencing" (Google)
So, for VK it is "more correct" (37) to speak of détournement specifically as a tactical maneuver in a physical confrontation ("feint"), or as a "ruse," which seems not all that different from a "dissimulation." One can only hope that something was lost in translation here, because the difference seems stylistic rather than substantive. And the concept further "entails the notion of the detour, the intent to circumvent an obstacle" (37), from which it follows that the nature of the obstacle in question and one's reasons for attempting circumvention are factors which ineluctably color any potential judgment of the maneuver. In this case the obstacle is "comparative quotation [as] demanded by the spectacle," the "cliché of authenticity," "allocation," "pigeonholing," "signatures and responsibility" (37); in short, the way the spectacle "continuously demands that we signal our presence." (38) Fair enough as a goal, I think, but appropriating existing material seems at best a curious means, at worst an impotent one. Can one's location/presence not be triangulated perfectly well (or well enough) from a series of appropriative maneuvers as from ostensibly original ones? Certainly for me coming to this oeuvre without much of any common background with Debord et al, the attributed references are jarring enough on account of this dynamic as to constantly remind me of the author's presence in a different time and place, while the unattributed passages may as well not be appropriations at all since I'll never catch them. Which is to say that Debord, like most authors who for whatever reason continue to command our attention, is no more or less formed/defined/limited by the unique profile of his intellectual pedigree. That this dynamic is through appropriation manifested as a sort of jigsaw puzzle rather than as a tapestry of Influences is rather meaningless vis-a-vis tactical combat with the spectacle, to which both modus operandi signal one's proverbial presence perfectly adequately. Failing that line of reasoning being convincing, it is a simpler route perhaps to point out that Debord signed plenty of his works with his own name, and that unsigned or pseudonymous works, as VK occasionally chronicles below, while certainly part of Debord's toolkit were the exception rather than the rule.

As for "making the best possible use of words and texts" (38), this is segued into rather facilely as if it were an obvious implication of the above, but I would insist that as a question of valuation (comparative!) it is certainly not so simple. At best this position hews to one far-off endpoint of a continuum, at the other end of which lies the whole-cloth ideal which is responsible for supplying the plagiarist's ammunition in the first place. i.e. There is nothing to plagiarize (or nothing fresh and unspoiled) without the products of the whole cloth conceit, and similarly no getting off the ground for practitioners of this conceit without first making a certain peace with the inevitability of influence and the fact of its multiple pathways to manifestation. This much is noncontroversial; but to posit appropriation as the search for an ideal repurposing opens up another, discrete can of worms. Certainly the unquestioned reverence for an author's use of his/her own material is neither necessary nor constructive; this phenomenon (The Composer's Intent is a pop-musicological phrase which comes to mind) would seem to fall under the heading of "authenticity" as it appears in the text here, and the problematizing of this impulse on grounds of resistance to The Spectacle certainly is timely and proper. But the same principles which support an irreverence for authenticity point equally clearly and strongly toward an irreverence for the appropriator's conceit to having found, if not the "best possible use" (!!), then even a better one, quote-unquote, than anyone else (the original, "authentic" author included) has or could. The end run around this obstacle is of course to objectify such value based on function within a social system. This is exactly what VK seems to be claiming Debord was interested in. If that is so, I think that is precisely where the Intentional Fallacy can rightly be called. There is no way to control the reception of such a work by anything as complex as even the most rudimentary social system worthy of the name.

[from a notebook, 2017]

Debord and Wolman—Détournement

Guy Debord and Gil J Wolman
"A User's Guide to Détournement" (1956)
in Situationist International Anthology (2006)
trans. and ed. Ken Knabb
pp. 14-21

It is not just returning to the past which is reactionary; even "modern" cultural objectives are ultimately reactionary since they depend on ideological formulations of a past society that has prolonged its death agony to the present. The only historically justified tactic is extremist innovation. (14)

Unfortunately it is not only our various underlying "ideological formulations" which are products of the past but also the whole of our knowledge. Hence "extremist innovation" can be extreme only relative to current conditions; it cannot be any more or less rooted in the dead past than can any other point on this continuum.

Any elements, no matter where they are taken from, can be used to make new combinations. The discoveries of modern poetry regarding the analogical structure of images demonstrate that when two objects are brought together, no matter how far apart their original contexts may be, a relationship is always formed. Restricting oneself to a personal arrangement of words is mere convention. The mutual interference of two worlds of feeling, or the juxtaposition of two independent expressions, supersedes the original elements and produces a synthetic organization of greater efficacy. Anything can be used.

It goes without saying that one is not limited to correcting a work or to integrating diverse fragments of out-of-date works into a new one; one can also alter the meaning of those fragments in any appropriate way, leaving the imbeciles to their slavish reference to "citations." (15)

Imbeciles being now and forever a sizable majority, I would imagine the fate of this device to be thusly sealed. If the artist has such high (that is, concrete) hopes for their productions, then it is up to them to design imbecile-proof strategies for realization of this objective. Even the notion that "a relationship is always formed" is perhaps too charitable; some relationship or other may arise, but different imbeciles may harbor different imbecilities; and in extreme cases the "juxtaposition" itself may not be perceptible, or not equally to all. Again, the specificity of the intent necessitates a proportionate degree of responsibility taken by the artist. One does not detect a great deal of affinity here with the notion of responsibility, however.

the tendencies toward détournement that can be observed in contemporary expression are for the most part unconscious or accidental. It is in the advertising industry, more than in the domain of decaying aesthetic production, that one can find the best examples. (16)

A strikingly early mention of the affinity between marketing and pastiche. Much later, J. Wagner would remark in class that by the late 1980s Hollywood literally "couldn't afford NOT" to incorporate bits and pieces of damn near everything. So there is something prophetic here, but also a motivated inability to dig deeper and ask whether the appearance of these techniques first in the area of marketing is ACTUALLY accidental/unconscious, or whether the techniques are not in fact DEFINED by this marketing orientation. And from there it is but a small step to question the conceit to a total fluidity of relationships between détourned elements; if this were possible, advertising would not be limited to a few very particular tropes, nor would the industry need to expend nearly so much effort researching in order to determine which tropes might work.

the main impact of a détournement is directly related to the conscious or semiconscious recollection of the original contexts of the elements.

...

The idea of pure, absolute expression is dead... (17)

A characteristically Debordian irreverence for engaging with dynamic social processes on their own terms is very much on display here. He can see that absolute expression is dead, but not that "original contexts are every bit as dynamic and varied. The theory of détournement is every bit as dependent on being grounded at some archimedean point as is the romantic conception of expressive communication through artworks. Far from rejecting pure/absolute expression, the authors seem intent on using the pure/absolute/monolithic element in stultified marketing-oriented culture as a springboard to communicate tractability. And yet as monolithic as mass culture seems to get, this has remained impossible.

Détournement is less effective the more it approaches a rational reply. ... The more the rational character of the reply is apparent, the more indistinguishable it becomes from the ordinary spirit of repartee... (17)

Very true as far as it goes, but this should also be a clue that this is, as the above points would have it, not very far at all. If the "rational" and the semantic spoil the fun, this is because their own conceits to objectivity are immediately exploded when deployed in this way. The various irr-/pseudo-rational alternatives are not more effective, they merely conceal the process more completely, protecting their conceits.

It is a real means of proletarian artistic education, the first step toward a literary communism. (18)

This seems about right, actually. A "first step" in the sense of being inherently elementary, juvenile, unripe. Yet still the authors are ambiguous on the question of agency: is the prole to practice détournement as a vehicle of social and cultural agency, or merely to passively consume the expertly crafted détournements of Debord and Wolman according to the "laws" set down in these pages?

...Griffith's Birth of a Nation is one of the most important films in the history of cinema because of its wealth of innovations. On the other hand, it is a racist film and therefore absolutely does not merit being shown in its present form. But its total prohibition could be seen as regrettable from the point of view of the secondary, but potentially worthier, domain of the cinema. It would be better to détourn it as a whole, without necessarily even altering the montage, by adding a soundtrack that made a powerful denunciation of the horrors of imperialist war and of the activiites of the Ku Klux Klan... (19)

A smart and totally reasonable proposal which has become, alas, completely untenable on account of the trigger warning crowd, and also by way of what R. Gombin calls "total contestation." Debord having had a hand in establishing the latter, and also in declaring the death of film years before this article appeared, one wonders if this passage is not an instance of Wolman getting a word in edgewise. In any case, the Trigger Warning phenomenon is an apt devil's advocate avenue for contemporary skeptics of the cult of détournement, since it renders the proposal here totally untenable, intentions be damned.

In itself, the theory of détournement scarcely interests us. But we find it linked to almost all the constructive aspects of the presituationist period of transition. Thus its enrichment, through practice, seems necessary. (21)

The reluctant virtuoso defers. Détournement is simply an idea whose time has come. Artistic innovation, expression, and aesthetics are no longer possible, hence a bounded inventory of cultural artefacts with stable meanings from which may be selected and juxtaposed any and all of them according not to the personal whim of the artist but to the demands of the political situation.

[from a notebook, probably 2018]

Karen Kurczynski—Jorn's Artistic Reality

Kurczynski, The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn
p. 201—quoting directly a "somewhat humorous" passage of Jorn's:

What an artwork represents is quite insignificant. What the artist believes it represents is also insignificant. The effect the artist wanted to achieve is itself without interest. What the observer believes he sees in the artwork is in itself insignificant. The only thing that means something is the objective and real effect the art has exercised on the observer. That is the artistic reality.

Indeed, and it is a reality that usually cannot be known. We simply are (usually) not in a position to say with precision or certainty what the "real effect" is, and there are as many reasons for this as there are people. Hence also countless efforts (mostly therefore misguided) by all these people to ascertain/establish this reality. Jorn may be joking...but I'm not!

KK continues:

This emphasis on material reality, and what it does to the viewer in the moment of viewing, is the opposite of the romantic-Expressionist idea of truth, which implies a preexisting, hidden inner reality to which the external work corresponds. ...Jorn embraced the "superficial" instead, describing art as an encounter with the unknown in which neither lie nor truth exist. He believed in expression, but he also acknowledged that different viewers could interpret it in diverse ways. Jorn openly invited conflicting interpretations by making humor and irony key elements of his aesthetic. He replaced the truth of authentic expression with the reality of materials, setting in motion a play of interpretation.

The escape from this outmoded (and, I have always thought, strictly figurative) usage of "truth" is indeed urgent. One oft-overlooked reason is hinted at here: this notion of "truth" demands/imposes an opposite, the "lie," thereby forming a righteous binary, with all the attendant pitfalls that come with that way of looking at the world. But the affirmation of an equally fraught conception, the "superficial," seems also like a failure, certainly of rhetoric, perhaps of translation, and indeed also of logic (that is, of the same logic enumerated on immediately preceding pages). This usage is successful only in a strictly culturebound way, since "truth" was thought to be "hidden," ostensibly in the depth rather than the surface of works. That being as it is, seems to me that this "encounter with the unknown" elides not just the truth/lie question but certainly also the surface/depth one as well. If the "objective and real effect" of artworks on observers is in fact the only "artistic reality," then both of those toxic binaries are taken care of rather parsimoniously, not for individuals necessarily but certainly for institutions and dialogue among them. Similarly, the previous except re: "artistic reality" did not indicate at all that Jorn in fact "believed in expression" after all (!!) and also/already in the "play of interpretations." That combination is quite proto-postmodern indeed in both fact and folly; but it probably tells us more about the author than about Jorn: the consistency with which his supposed positions are inconsistent throughout the book is tough to parse any other way. Yet another example in conclusion: there are many ways to "[set] in motion a play of interpretation;" in fact there is practically no way not to, according to the bit on "artistic reality." Why then posit "humor and irony" as especially fertile devices for this purpose? Are both not, in fact, just as profoundly culturebound (especially to references) as any work or subject? (See many prior remarks in this notebook re: detournement.)

[from a notebook, 2018]

Karen Kurczynski—Jorn's Distrust of Photography

Kurczynski, The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn

...distrust of the prefabricated image in fact led him [Jorn] at first to dismiss—shortsightedly—the artistic and critical potential of photography. Jorn writes that excessive faith in the progress and objectivity of science leads to the view that photography is the best art form, because it is the most objective and realistic. But there is no objective reality even in science, he argues, since it is always tied to the needs and interests of those who fund it. Rather than make art more objective, Jorn argues for the subjectivity of science. Writing in the late 1940s, he warns of the danger of considering photography a substitute for reality, the equivalent of armchair traveling instead of real experience. Jorn argues that the close connection of photography to reality is precisely what makes it the least artistic. He was unable to see the potential of photography as a creative medium because of its associations with impersonal, mass reproduction. Jorn reductively associated photography with the culture industry... While hopelessly limited for any contemporary understanding of photography, these views were typical of the 1950s. (198)

It seems once again that an opportunity has been missed and an opponent talked past rather than hit where it hurts: is "artistic" or "critical" potential really the issue, or is it rather that both potentials are in fact so shockingly vast in relation to the type of agency required that a certain devolution in the latter respect was now simply inevitable? The vast power of representation had in fact been democratized, and this rather directly and drastically cheapened initiative, intent, vision, subjectivity...it is hard to name an "artistic" or "critical" value that was not cheapened this way; that is, for the abundance of those potentials rather than their lack. Photography, in the moment that it was new, was too easy in proportion to the power inhering in it. This is not a denial that photographic skill exists, but rather that it was now both harder to distinguish from the ordinary and more widely dispersed and rather less scarce. Seems to me that these are material questions susceptible to material validation, whereas I cannot imagine successfully teasing out the objectivity/realism/science question raised here (certainly not only on the broadest of strokes painted here). The "substitute for reality" seems equally absurd on the surface, but I think it ultimately has been materially validated; in this case people can tell the difference but even so don't seem to care about the difference. But even here, the given discussion has suddenly shifted entirely to the consumption side of things; nothing is said about initiative, accessibility, technique, etc. as this pertains to creators, whereas it seems to me that the accounts of Jorn's chosen mediums throughout center around creation rather than reception. Continuing on, the word "impersonal" is used; this also demands that creation and reception both be explicitly accounted for; otherwise the impression is that of reactionary bluster rather than considered critique.

Jorn suggests that abstract art addresses our imagination more directly that the "indirect and superficial" art of photography. He writes that "visual art means first and foremost visual effects, and the most elementary, direct visual art is that which effects our power of imagination by means of colors, forms, and direct visual effects." (198)

Now we're talking! But there is again an unsatisfying, overgeneralized aspect betokening another missed opportunity. Is it photography itself which is "indirect," or is the photograph in fact the intermediary begetting an unduly "indirect" response in the subject? Is the problem in fact that the photograph is so direct (or perhaps simply suggests/imposes this conceit whether or not it is true) that the subject's imagination is subdued not for lack of "direct" stimulation but in fact for (the conceit to/impression of) an overabundance of it, thereby constraining the imagination inside thick walls of information rather than inviting it on an open-ended journey guided only by the occasional signpost? This analysis certainly is available re: representation and reproduction, as against abstraction/nonrepresentation and singularity. We may well read "elementary" as "leaves something to the imagination"; of course it is not just photorealism which fails this prescription precisely where nonrepresentation succeeds, but also language properly construed which fails where non-/pre-/supra-linguistic cognition succeeds. This is indeed a role (dare I moralize and say a Function?!) for abstract art and music; yet that aspiration to utilitarianism hits a snag if the ultimate, final, exalted end product of whatever particular process we are talking about remains representational, photorealistic, linguistic, communicative, etc. Seems that those types of thought are necessary, by definition, for any social intercourse at all, hence serial abstractifying exercises can be only a means, never their own ends, and in fact uniquely vulnerable to the conquering dictates of social ends which are contingent rather than absolute.

[from a notebook, 2018]

Karen Kurczynski—Jorn on Abstraction and Inhumanity

Kurczynski, The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn

...this renewed interest in painting [in the 1950s] had an important social function as a profound rejection of what critics perceived as the threatening aspects of the spread of mass-media technologies mostly experienced on a screen. (196)

...cultural critics who contrasted the material specificity of painting as the ultimate medium of sensory engagement to the alienating effects of the mass media, despite the media's own claims to collapse distance into televisual "immediacy." (197)

Jorn's interest in gesture was about singularity itself, meaning not an especially talented individual but rather the volatile presence of a subjectivity at a particular moment or in relation to such a specific image. ... Jorn's emphasis on irreproducible singularity turned its back on the ideas of technological progress that the historical avant-garde had believed in so strongly before the war. (197)

In 1962, Jorn wrote that the great inhumanity of both the camps and the bomb was their dehumanization of people as a mass: [quoting Jorn directly] "The threatening thing about the German concentration camps as well as the American Hiroshima explosion lies in no way in the atrocities, which are no worse than those happening in many other places on earth. The shattering thing is their colossal and blind mass effect that makes humanity more and more valueless." (197)

Here, then, is a dissent from mass-ification but NOT from abstraction per se. This seems more lucid than lumping the two together, since the concurrent use of the A-word to denote both (1) nonmaterial intellectual images, and (2) visual representations skewed to the edge of recognizability, inevitably clouds more than it clarifies; and so here we have an excellent demonstration of just what is NOT abstract about so-called Abstract Painting, i.e. its materiality...or at least one could choose to parse "immediacy" and "singularity" of "gesture" this way. Abstract art is itself; here KK gives an account of a moment in history wherein Jorn and others (Adorno is mentioned) would/could not see television as simply being itself, but rather fixated on its ability to REproduce, and on a "mass" scale. I suppose the theory of Medium as Message would hold that TV is an "immediate" experience of TV itself, not merely an uncanny reproduction of other content. There's really no Right Answer to that disjunction, just different ways of looking. But looking in BOTH cases is passive, so the fact that the painterlies also had powerful theories of collective (NOT mass!) artisthood really ought to be acknowledged as a factor here. It unifies their theory, makes it whole, and supports their claims above. Mass communication technologies would not be democratized for decades yet, hence there was no such thing as active/generative participation in either the medium or the message of the new mass culture. Hence when KK subsequently points to Jorn's own use of some modern reproductive techniques in his own ongoing work, it must be borne in mind that the analogy to television (which is the specific example used above) breaks down over the question of activity/generativity; also (more so yet) over the lack of mass access to the network of TVs. (The network, by the way, seems to have since become both the medium and the message; if Jorn et al failed to see this coming, it was because they didn't have to see it coming to know that anyone could paint but not just anyone could broadcast.) And as for "mak[ing] humanity more and more valueless," few developments have contributed more to that process than the networks by which us humans have been forced to learn how many of us there are and how much we all suck. The media theorists carried the day as soon as the mass- became able to generate media content as easily as they could smear fingerpaint; but this has indeed made everyone more interchangeable, hence "valueless," than ever before, and it has not actually brought us either literally or figuratively closer together.

[from a notebook, 2018]

Karen Kurczynski—Détournement and Sexual Objectification

Kurczynski, The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn
p. 186—in an endnote

Baum ["The Sex of the Situationist International", 2008] defends the SI's use of erotic images of women as critical détournements. I would argue that those images fail to accomplish the SI's critical goals, however, because even out of context they continue to function as heterosexist images of the female body as passive object of desire.

Without yet having read Baum's article, I'm predisposed to agree with KK's assessment here. In fact this is quite an excellent test of the theory of détournement which it fails very much because of the exceptionally Spectacular nature of the source material rather than in spite of it. The uniquely loaded question of sexual objectification hence proves less rather than more susceptible to diversion; and in any case, there's nothing stopping the onlooker from simply gawking if that is what they choose or are inclined to do.

There is besides these occasional cameos by objectified women of course plenty of classically male energy baked right into Situationist theory via Debord's fascination with war, his rather direct application of its historical strategies to his practical political projects, and his conception of it as ineluctably two-sided and zero-sum. Hence the feminized, open-ended, festival-esque stagings by Class Wargamers rather soften this aspect of theory to a, debatably, unfaithful degree, though the festival idea was probably more central to Situationist thinking anyway and hence itself poses a possible practical contradiction once the theory is read in a gendered way.

[from a notebook, 2018]

Karen Kurczynski—Jorn: Critique Is Secondary, Creation Is Primary

Kurczynski, The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn

...the Lettrists stated in 1953, "Oblivion (l'oubli) is our dominant passion." The original term "oubli" signifies at once forgetting, intoxication, and anonymity. (165)

p. 183—excerpt from Jorn

What one expresses through destruction is critique. Critique is a secondary reaction to something primary which already exists. What one expresses through artistic creation is joy of life. Art is primary action in relation to the unknown. The French have brought critique into the revolutionary plan, but if critique also becomes the purpose of creative art, and the creative artist thus a "specialized worker," whose work should only serve the permanent revolution's permanent consumption, then these Situationists have lost any sympathetic contact with the artists who seek to create a joy of life for its own sake, and drive them precisely into the arms of the power elite, which always controls the destructive instruments that can crush the people down, and which always make sure to have a moral excuse to make it all good and thorough.

[from "a 1964 lecture, after the artists and the SI had split"]
[source="unpublished manuscript" in Jorn Museum archive, KK's translation]

KK continues:

Jorn perceived Debord's SI as going too far, so that its claims to destroy art effectively relinquished art entirely to those in power. This self-marginalization would allow art institutions to take control of the group's historicization by default and perpetuate the very apolitical conception of art that the Situationists wanted to overturn.

A Just Say It moment which unfortunately runs aground on a couple of key points. Jorn merely talks past Debord when he threatens a loss of "sympathetic contact" with artists "who seek to create a joy of life for its own sake;" this is certainly true, but Debord had already put forth a powerful theory justifying this total break with art and centering on the ways in which it is not nearly so easy to give the artists the generous benefit of the doubt that Jorn seems inclined to grant them herein. The notion that they will thereby be driven into the waiting arms of power is also rather farfetched and seems to deny these artists agency in their own political affairs. And of course the concept of expression is problematic for all of the usual reasons. Seems to me that a stronger strategy here would be to eschew any consequentializing and attack Debord where he lives, i.e. take his theory apart. What I think we find thereby is that the Marxist obscurantism has led old Guy to a blanket, total, monolithic, teleological interpretation of the situation, especially vis-a-vis the anticipated thrust from fragmentary to unitary life, which reduces the complexity of the situation beyond the point where such reduction is tenable. There seems little difference between the two when it comes to the more immediate issues: releasing human potential from institutional mediation, and thereby freeing this potential to manifest. Beyond that, it's hard to shake the impression that Debord simply had it out for art whereas Jorn had more invested in it; in absence of this there doesn't seem to be any reason that Jorn's "primary action" and "joy of life" could not be reconciled with Debord's unitary, unalienated existence.

[from a notebook, 2018]

Karen Kurczynski—Jorn's Critique of Functionalism

Kurczynski, The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn

Jorn argues, "It is a basic weakness of Functionalism that it cannot tolerate the idea of freely creative art." In its worst iterations, Functionalism tended to celebrate standardization and technology for their own sake, imposing its aesthetic on people in a way reminiscent of the classicism it initially opposed. It became the classicism of the machine age. Just as in classical architecture, Functionalism's claims to the democratic ideals of openness and transparency were belied by the way it mirrored the social exclusions of class society through its impersonal monumentality, celebration of technology, and disdain for people's own irrational desires. (110)

As a complete outsider vis-a-vis "architecture," I am struck here (and this is merely the most comprehensive and best articulated of many similar passage throughout the book) by a sneaking suspicion that the very legitimate causes of "freely creative art," "openness and transparency," "irrational desires," etc. are simply irreconcilable with the practice of architecture as a public infrastructure endeavor. Significant compromises in the areas listed are necessary here, even in what we would call a Small Community. You simply can't make everyone happy nor unleash all of them all at once when it comes to designing and building public infrastructure. Now certainly it is MUCH MORE than mere infrastructure; that aspect of the theory is accurate. But these free and irrational impulses need other outlets, that is outlets without the material, monetary, and political weight of an entire community weighing on them. Definitionally, they will not flourish if asked to bear this weight. I'm not aware of an SI-adjacent theorist who explicitly incorporates and absolute, micro-scale localism into their overall theory, but here is an example where anything less than block-by-block autonomy just won't do (and even city blocks are probably too large to thrive under such anarchy).

As for "impersonal monumentality" and "celebration of technology," which supposedly "mirrored the social exclusions of class society," it is fair to expect the psychogeography of such installations to beget feelings of exclusion, but how much do feelings matter here? Once again, we suddenly seem to have fallen quite a long way from "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent," all the way to "Anyone who builds (or achieves anything at all) at "monumental" scale implicitly "excludes" everyone else, which is what the upper "classes" do explicitly." Seems to me at that point that the Millennial generation hardly invented the snowflake phenomenon! The Function- in Functionalism indicates that if a Monumental structure was open to the public unconditionally, any feelings of exclusion were the feeler's problem rather than the builder's. I have to confess that I also find such feelings absurd; but then perhaps I'm not much of a psychogeographer.

[from a notebook, 2018]

Karen Kurczynski—Aesthetics Make an Appearance

Kurczynski, The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn

p. 105—on the Statsgymnasium in Aarhus

Rational, ordered, rectilinear, Apollonian, the building stands for everything Asger Jorn critiqued in architecture: geometries so harmonious and restrained that they became almost lifeless; the aesthetic celebration of structure and engineering that rejects almost anything decorative, organic, or irregular.

Here is a quite curious and loaded usage of "aesthetic;" or perhaps it is the usage of "decorative" in opposition to it which is the curiosity. The implication in any case is clearly of self-referentiality, formalism, and the specialist intellect run amok; that is, of a panoply of traits which I at least would consider to comprise one of the foremost ANTI-aesthetics, or perhaps non-aesthetics, as in that which does not engage with the senses in their basest form. Indeed, it seems (not only here) that the classbound conception of Aesthetics per se has gradually overtaken its literal/historical meaning: the word doesn't just denote the highbrow, it is highbrow; there is then no term left (or not one with wide circulation/currency) for the much simpler (but NOT therefore also Lower) question of sensation, perhaps not even for the sensation-intellect synapse, which is where we NEED this word most. Customarily this interface becomes a brick wall; so it is here, to the extent that a yet larger, more glaring slippage of concepts manifests: "aesthetic" opposed to "decorative."

[from a notebook, 2018]

[Now: this note itself is a hot mess in the usage department. I'm sure it was late after work. But you get the idea.]

Karen Kurczynski—Jorn on Functionalism as Totalitarian

Kurczynski, The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn

p. 34—on "collective creativity" and the "open work"

Given the context of Jorn's extra-painterly concerns in the early 1940s, the idea of openness implicit in the indeterminate compositional process also takes on social and political dimensions. Openness to the new would become one of Jorn's central artistic themes. He argues in Held og Hasard that curiosity about the new and unknown is the beginning of all aesthetic activity.

Is this orientation indicative of a moral purpose per se? Only by way of analogy/metaphor/mimesis/poiesis/etc. Where it takes hold at all, it is necessarily only at a distance from so-called Everyday Life, or at least this is so in this case because the result is an artwork. As an artist by vocation and calling, Jorn can model "openness" in the way he goes about his work, but he usually won't succeed in communicating per se to this effect, nor does the fact of his modeling seem likely to get over to much of anyone outside of the social world immediately surrounding art and artists. This is of course all well and good until KK would attach greater pretensions.

Jorn did not intervene to save them; in fact, he writes that the quick and inexpensive painting techniques and temporary lifespan of the murals were important aspects of their meaning. More broadly, the emphasis on the social experience over the finished work exemplified the way the collective practices of Cobra anticipate contemporary Relational aesthetics. Jorn believed that the role of artists was to inspire by example, through their embrace of a creative life, rather than either to create finished works which would only end up decorating the homes of the wealthy, like a painter, or to redesign the everyday lives of the working class, like a modern architect. ... The Bregnerød murals attempted to redefine "painting" from a noun to a verb, considering painting a process of redefining a space, transforming it into something at once more social and more artistic, in a new holistic statement that was simultaneously personal and collective. (83)

All of this begs all of the same questions as do so many later bubblings-up of "Relational aesthetics," itself a rather oxymoronic/contradictory turn of phrase, and most clearly so by the logic of its most vociferous supporters. If "social experience" is paramount, why pursue it through an activity which indeed results in, if not necessarily a "finished" work, certainly some kind of work? Does such a choice of vehicle not indicate that there is something about the process of creation, whether or not this process has clear starting and ending points, which facilitates the specific type of social experience desired? And if so, how could the fate of the work be quite as trivial a matter as such theorists would insist? It seems not merely illogical but actually fully disingenuous to have designated a destination while subsequently insisting that the journey is the priority. Of course who knows what scenarios could arise spontaneously; but as far as both internal logical consistency and empirical resonance, Debord's theory of the supersession of art and its absorption into Life actually seems to me to have quite a bit more going for it. As does, IMHO of course, Modernism writ large, which is perfectly transparent in its internal logic, aims, social role, etc., perhaps without much empirical resonance in the Everyday realm (which is of course intentional).

Needless to say that "inspir[ing] by example" as against "decorating the homes of the wealthy" is rather over-reductive and quite the false dichotomy.

Despite his interest in architectural murals inspired by Léger and Le Corbusier, Jorn rejected the emphasis of those artists on designing a complete socialist environment, which he felt only led to the rationalist plans of Functionalism. He critiqued the notion of design creating a new modernist lifestyle for its technocratic and authoritarian tendency. Jorn argues that, "we need an art that is living, a part of itself," adding that the most useful goal for artists is to attack the artistic establishment that prevents the working classes from understanding their own creative potential. (83)

The terms "technocractic" and "authoritarian" serve to highlight the concealed power differential between the designer and the end user. This much, I think, is worth granting and ruminating on (and possibly even connecting to, say, the current design-driven power dynamic in the Music Production/Distribution sector, where those thought to possess privileged knowledge of packaging methods exert strong gravitational pull on the scarce revenue streams while content (let's understand this usage of that word as a double-usage, as in the classical duality Form-Content AND the internet-oriented sense of a Content Producer) generators are, as they always have been but not always for the same reasons, the last to get paid). All of that having been duly noted, granted, ruminated upon, etc., the concealment of such power dynamics is only sometimes, or only partially, attributable to power's own interests/objectives; in the case of Functionalist design, I would say they are concealed in part because they are unavoidable. It is indeed perfectly accessible to the rhetorical "working classes" to paint murals on the walls of their apartments; it is rather less accessible but not insurmountably so for them to produce and distribute their own sound recordings; but it is scarcely possible for them to design and build the apartment building, the audio editing software, or the Internet themselves; and much more to the point, neither is it necessary for them to do so, unless they experience a Foucauldian level of anxiety over the fact that the specialists in design and construction of each of these items hold, it is true, some modicum of power over them. And so, again having granted the mere fact that such dynamics do in fact exist, it is a long way from there to technocracy and authoritarianism, these sorts of terms representing (or they did before people began throwing them around carelessly) a sort of total-ness of top-down power, complete with mechanisms of accountability which flow in only one direction. Obviously I need to brush up on architectural functionalism, because it seems from a distance that it could not possibly have risen to this level.

...Jorn produced so many more murals in private settings throughout his life; the Kindergarten and Bregnerød house were the exceptions. Unlike the 1930s murals of Le Corbusier, his were meant to inspire in the broadest possible sense, rather than to instruct or to enforce social ideals upon a population. For this reason, the gestural nature of both sets of murals was essential to their message of free expression. In rendering personal expression at a public scale, they broke down the strict opposition of public and private space, countering the ideals of public order inherent in the architecture with a seemingly chaotic organicism. The unprecendented combination of automatic drawing, popular motifs, and dynamic monumental imagery at Bregnerød created an aesthetic tension that suggests the mutual interdependence of collective space and personal expression, the situation Nancy describes as "being singular plural." (84)

So, the Direct Path of "instruct[ion]" is eschewed in favor of "inspir[ation]," ostensibly similar to Eu. Rousseau's opposition of intellectual understanding and emotional realization, of just telling a student the answer versus optimizing conditions for them to arrive at the answer themselves. There is indeed much to be said for this idea, but there's no disputing that it progressively loses its appeal as the scale of interaction is increased, i.e. as the range and quantity of distinct outcomes vis-a-vis individual social agents eventually increase enough to become intractable. Hence if a word as strong as "enforce" is occasionally (or, uh, perhaps all too frequently) appealed to, this reflects the necessity of both reductionism and brute force (hopefully merely of the rhetorical variety) in any mass-/macro-scale communication; these are the techniques which yield tractable outcomes. The theory of "free expression" that is presented here forfeits this tractability in exchange for liberation, but not for progress; or not UNLESS one believes in an exceedingly optimistic human nature which simply needs to be unleashed without being told where to go or what to do. More likely it will go everywhere all at once. Is this a bad thing? Perhaps not, but progress will not be achieved via chaos, which theorists of the latter tell us illustrates a certain Sensitivity to Initial Conditions, which is to say the rich get richer.

Perhaps those of us living now can be thankful that Jorn and others thought to pose an alternative to the comparatively naive First Wave progressivism of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Yet where we go from here is as unclear as ever: the enforcement-inspiration opposition presented here really only marks out the poles of a spectrum, both of which have well-known flaws and limitations. Having learned this much, we may deploy one or the other strategy and hope to learn more about the strategic deployment of each. It is nonetheless hard to imagine resolving the central problem: you can't tell people what to do, and you can't expect them to figure it out for themselves.

Questions of scale arise more specifically as the passage continues. These muralists "broke down the strict opposition of public and private space" by "rendering personal expression at public scale." Seriously?! Just because this act, for instance, highlights the public/private distinction, displays a certain irreverence for it, invites consideration of its nature and implications, in no way necessarily encompasses as well the fait accompli that is related here. In fact the modifier "public" is a rather strange one to apply to the concept "scale," since both physical and intangible objects of all scales comprise the public sphere. As such, a "personal expression" made "public" can have all manner of implications rather independent of its physical scale. Concealed by this rhetorical maneuver is the potential that such ostensibly well-intentioned public displays of personal work reach various absolute statuses at various absolute increments of physical size (and perhaps also, but not necessarily, "scale"). Hence, the general principle enumerated here is quite suspect, and the specific case of "murals" is not exactly an ideal exemplar. The theory runs aground via the same oversight as in the previous case of "enforcement" versus "inspiration:" the sender of communication (in this case the artist) does not exert perfect control (nor anything approaching it) over its reception by any particular individual, or not unless (to recapitulate the previous issue) a degree of simplification and/or reduction is embraced which artists are generally loathe to even consider (and certainly Jorn's larger oeuvre as related throughout this book would give the impression that this sort of truly populist compromise was not in his vocabulary).

[from a notebook, 2018]