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What lies beyond the mirage
Gazing into hyperrealitys hegemonic imaginary
Stuart Russell Brown
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Locating a (dis)course - 1
Provisional Preparations - 3
Entering the terrain - 5
Sizing up hegemony - 7
Heading into hyperreality - 10
Songs for the journey - 13
The Revolution may happen - 16
but we will still discuss production
The Revolution may happen - 22
but we will still buy our bread
The Revolution may happen - 26
but we will still have Art
The Revolution may happen - 32
but we will still flush our toilets
The Revolution may happen - 35
but we will still drink tea
A View beyond - 40
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Locating a (dis)course
To begin locating a direction one must first recognise the initial factors that influenced
the decision to travel. For that I cannot, and would not, want to deny the part played
by my parents in influencing my current trajectory. To Lucy Dunn I am grateful for hertime, patience in understanding the frequently dogmatic views of a now avowed
Marxist, and therefore of having the tolerance to read this text. I wish to thank Gaia
for both her attention and for injecting humour into the process of what would
otherwise have been a rather dry academic exercise. To Gwil I wish only to say how
much I appreciate and value his considered thoughts and opinions, and for being a
reliable sounding board for ideas.
- I should like to thank Chris Taylor for suggesting that this text could be not so much
a final resolution, but rather a point of departure and further investigation. Finally I
would very much like to express my sincere gratitude to Roger Palmer for his
patience, advice, and kind compliments, which have provided the motivation to
attempt to complete this to a respectable standard.
The decision to vocalise this dissertation stems from the psychoanalytical belief of the
subjects unconscious picking up on pertinent elements of a discourse.1 The
psychoanalyst, and this applies as equally for any sympathetic listener, should simplylisten, and not bother about whether [they are] keeping anything in mind.2 The
difference between reading and listening enables differing understandings of a
discourse, for whilst we can pick over a text, in listening the analyst must turn [their]
own unconscious like a receptive organ towards the transmitting unconscious of the
patient, so the doctors unconscious is able, from the derivatives of the unconscious
which are communicated to [them], to reconstruct that unconscious.3
There is also a more practical basis to the decision, for at the very least the length of
this dissertation presents a daunting prospect. Therefore an audio version renders it
more accessible both to those without time to read but time to listen, and also those
for whom reading presents a chore or barrier. This is particularly true for theoretical-
academic works, the difficult and unapproachable aspect of which invariably obscures
the merit of ideas contained within. The conception that knowledge must be hard won,
and deservedly earned, remains the illusion only of those who are aware of the
1The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, (Vintage: London, 1995), pp. 357, 3712 Ibid, p. 3573 Ibid, p. 360
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perilous condition of their ivory towers. In the face of such obscurantism, I have
always maintained that if a text seems especially difficult, even after persistent
attempts to comprehend it, the most likely cause is simply that it is badly written. To
this I add only that I welcome any comments to improve the comprehensibility of this
discussion. A full copy of the text for careful picking over can be found at:www.somethingabitdifferent.org
To prevent the tone remaining monotonous quotes are read by another voice, which
also serves to interrupt the authority of the main voice. The perhaps excessive
naming of theorists is intended to enable the listener to trace topics that here receive
only a cursory mention, to assist this an audio bibliography is also included. For those
reading this the extensive references in the footnotes are intended to aid following up
the concepts touched upon, as such they function more as indices to the concepts
mentioned within the texts cited. - To dtourn the words of Isaac Newton, I have not
so much stood on the shoulders of giants as trampled liberally over them.
It now only remains for me to invite you to find a comfortable chaise-lounge from
which to interpret the dissembling thoughts of an analyst.
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Provisional Preparations
Marxism is as hyperreal as it gets; a whole theoretical-political model motivated by a
generally unquestioned and unchallenged assumption.4 This occurs because Marxism
is predicated on a fantasy, that of the eventual fulfilment of true needs; whateverthose might be and by whom such decisions would be made is problematic, if not
impossible to resolve.5 The instability of any resolution, and the tangential attempts to
negate the absent centre of Marxist theory, forms a foundational point for
construction.6
Karl Marxs conception of the materialistic basis of consciousness, combined with a
consideration of the importance of theory developed through practical activity the
concept ofpraxis provides powerful analytical tools. Unfortunately the establishing
of a critically progressive theory, which ironically enough offered a new justification of
production, led to the formation of a social common sense shared by both advocates
and critics of Marxist theory.7 Common sense is described by Gramsci as the
folklore of philosophy which is fragmentary, incoherent and inconsequential, in
conformity with the social and cultural position of those masses whose philosophy it
is.8
The inherent oppositions and contradictions within such a discordantly created
common sense subsequently entered into a more widely dispersed and socially held
imaginary. The imaginary, which for the moment can be understood in the everyday
sense of the word, provides the space within which the following discourse is located.9
The imaginary, a concept developed by Cornelius Castoriadis, bears a close
resemblance to Gramscis conception of common sense, with the former being
validated through alignment with psychoanalytic theory. The full signification of the
imaginary is extruded from a psychoanalytic lexicon, from which the Structuralist
aspect provides a methodological framework. Over this structure the product of the
historical process to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces can be
4 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser, (The University of Michigan, 1994),pp. 1-3,215 Kate Soper, On Human Needs: Open and Closed Theories in a Marxist Perspective, (The Harvester Press Ltd:Brighton, 1981), pp. 25-26, 31, Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, trans. Kathlen Blarney,(Polity Press: Cambridge, 1997), p. 1476
On human needs, Kate Soper, p. 357Antonio Gramsci: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans Quintin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith, (London:Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), pp. 323-324, 326, 419, Kate Soper, On human needs, p. 268Antonio Gramsci: Selections from the Prison notebooks, p. 4199 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 103
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positioned and viewed.10 The delineation of a structural topography is worth bearing in
mind, especially in consideration of Marxs reliance upon such hierarchical imagery.
The use here of structural imagery is employed as a means of installing a self-critique
of the work, for Henri Lefebvre warns that if such imagery is used carelessly we will
risk validating a certain practice and ideological representation of the social.
11
10Antonio Gramsci: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 32411 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 2, trans. John Moore, (Verso: London, 2008), p. 118
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Entering the terrain
This collection of essays will attempt to trace several hegemonic devices instilled
within our current social hyperreality. The symptomatic presentation of the art
objects sublimation as signifier into the economic system of signs, and thesubsequent manifestation of the signified Art, is just one of those devices. * The
concept of the art object and Artis not emphasised because I have a particular desire
to re-appropriate the terms, for I very much agree with Jean Baudrillard when he says
art as a whole is now merely the metalanguage of banality.12 Instead the transition
seems to present a clear instant of the reification to be found in our hyperreal and
poeticised society.13 The transition is explored here as a function of the estrangement
posited by Lacanian psychoanalysis, caused by the subjects awareness of the
externality of their own discourse.14
Before proceeding further it feels pertinent to recall that the critique of everyday life
does not mean exemption from self-criticism15, this discourse shall remain above self-
reproach through engaging critically with the discourse of the otherii. To this extent I
make no pretensions about the nature of this exposition, which exists self-evidently as
a particular articulation of, and within, an ideological construct, thereby reflexively
forming a hegemonic simulacrum.16 I wish to style the discourse around a conception
of the genealogy of knowledge, through which theoretical lineages are expanded,
thereby negating the dogmatism caused by the collapse and compaction of those
theoretical lineages.17 I will present a working through of a particular set of perceived
circumstances, which normally do not exist as separated entities, but have been
divided here for the sake of examination. Consequently there is a degree of overlap
between the theories used to explain each. The theories chosen are ones that
encourage the reflexive use and modification of their terms, so as to avoid the
* The utilisation of a psychoanalytic vocabulary owes to a desire to invoke the metonymic associations inherent in theuse of language to attempt the delineation of concepts, Jacques Lacan, crits: a selection, trans. Alan Sheridan,(Routledge Classics: London, 2001), pp. 169-17512 Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, trans. Ames Hodges, ed. Sylvre Lotringer, (Semiotext(e): NewYork, 2005),p. 11613 Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, p. 12214crits: a selection/Jacque Lacan, trans. Alan Sheridan, p. 315 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, trans. John Moore, (Verso: London, 2008), p. 98, CorneliusCastoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 101- 103ii For those sensitive to psychoanalytic terms the uses of the other and Other are used throughout this essay accordingto the loose definition that: the other is that which is not oneself, but which is necessary to be oneself, i.e. social
history, whilst the Other is the definite, detached opposing identity- Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution ofSociety, pp. 104-10816 Louis Althusser, Ideological State Apparatuses, Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, eds.Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, (Blackwell Publishing: Malden, 2003), p. 96017 Michel Foucault, A lecture, Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, p. 992
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authoritarian privileging of one knowledge over another.18 The privileging of
knowledge results from the tacit invocation of the authorial function, however the very
act of denouncing that function causes it to be obliterated in being named.19 Instead I
wish to posit my operation as functionally analogous to a bricoleur, one quality of
which Levi Strauss identifies as the tendency to use whatever is at hand.
20*
This is adeliberate positioning that serves to extend the discourse in a direction both poetic
and pataphysical, which Baudrillard describes as the science of imaginary solutions.21
18 Henri Lefebvre, A Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1,p. 17819 Jacques Derrida Of Grammatology: corrected edition trans. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore & London:The John Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 10920 For an elaboration of bricoleur as a metaphorical synonym for language use see Structure, Sign and Play in theDiscourse of the Human Sciences, Writing and Difference, Jacques Derrida, (Routledge: London, 2001), pp. 360-361.* I have chosen the Verdana font type as a more appropriate tool, for a fuller account of font types see A Comparisonof Popular Online Fonts: Which Size and Type is Best?, By Michael Bernard, Bonnie Lida, Shannon Riley, Telia Hackler,
& Karen Janzen, Usability News, January 2002, Vol. 4 Issue 1, from accessed 28 November 201021 Michel Foucault , What is an Author?, Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, p. 949-953. Forpataphysics see Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, in particular the chapters Aesthetic Illusion and Disillusion,pp. 122 (cf. note 3), and Pataphysics, pp. 213-214.
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Sizing up hegemony
Prior to fully entering the body of the discourse there remain two terms, hegemony
and hyperreality, which require elaboration so as to ensure a suitable orientation by
which to progress. Since hegemony is the more fundamental of the two terms we
shall concede to its position by placing it foremost.
Whilst murmurings were heard during the recent economic crisis for a socio-
economic order in which wealth might be more evenly distributed, the retention of the
practice of material incentives to work remained fundamentally unchallenged.22 If we
appear reluctant to disturb the receipt of a healthy paycheque, the rethinking and
relinquishing of other behaviours and attitudes considered part of normal living seems
remote. One such attitude positioned beneath and so obscured by competition - of
which it forms its predominant support - is the Puritanical notion of the work ethic
instilled during the Industrial Revolution to provide workers fit for factory life.23 This
hegemonic matrix lingers malodorously for we continue to believe that a desired
reward should be earned*, possible only by engaging in activities deemed valuable.
Furthermore the moral obligation we feel to continue obtaining as much as we
possibly can, whilst we retain the ability to do so, bears testimony to the work ethics
continued presence.24 This assertion is not limited to the platitudes of materialisms
pessimism, for we would hardly expect a promising intellectual to cease activity after
the successful publication and reception of their first work.
We can discuss, debate, and generally speculate about changing the dominant
ideology without questioning the underlying hegemonic order. For Lefebvre the
condensation of this deceptive political awareness can be found in the example of the
caf, a space in which the right to say what one likes is fiercely guarded.25 The very
defence of this ostensibly democratic privilege illustrates how discourses are drawn
22 Zygmunt Bauman, Work, consumerism and the new poor, 2nd ed., (Open University Press: Maidenhead, 2005), p. 21Three weeks that changed the world, Nick Mathiason, 28 December 2009, Guardian,accessed 13 March 2011Bonuses to make even a banker blush, Nils Pratley, 7 March 2011, Guardian accessed 13 March 201123
Work, consumerism and the new poor, Zygmunt Bauman, pp. 5-6* The allusion to religious terminology is not without founding, for the moralisers of the early 20th century engaged aliturgical rhetoric to align factory work with an ecclesiastical emphasis on morally fortifying activities24 Zygmunt Bauman, Work, consumerism and the new poor, 2nd ed.,, pp. 5-6, 20-2225 Henri Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 41
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back into themselves, reflected by the reinforcing ideologies instilled by Capitalisms
hegemonic logic.26
As a demonstrable example of hegemony ample evidence can be found in the strict
requirements ofThird Textfor the formatting of submissions, particularly references even down to the positioning of punctuation but perhaps most cringingly in their
specification to Use English spelling rule. Considering Third Textpositions itself as a
journal intended to question ethnocentrism, it fails spectacularly in meeting its own
ideological parameters:
Third Textaddresses the complex cultural realities that emerge when different
world views meet, and the challenge this poses to eurocentric and ethnocentric
aesthetic criteria. Third Text develops new discourses and radical
interdisciplinary scholarships that go beyond the confines of eurocentricity.27
This stipulation by Third Textserves to clearly illustrate the paradoxical operation of a
paradigm challenging ideology, particularly one that continues to locate itself within
an existing hegemony. The problem is resolved to some extent by Gramscis
observation that hegemony requires an individual who can govern himself without his
self-government entering into conflict with political society.28
To mention politics is invariably to elicit discussion of ideology, and to bring its
attendant evocations of fervent order-shaking rhetoric to mind. It is fairly safe to say
that with globalisation no single ideology holds particular sway, although there is
collusion between elements.29 Ideologies may rise and fall whilst a hegemonic order,
which leads by aligning intellectual and cultural values across the greatest spectrum of
subjugated groups, persists throughout.30 This means that any change is as visible
in the case ofThird Text for the most part merely superficial. The persistence of a
particular hegemonic order relies upon its ability to operate through utilising and
influencing apparently normative values, such that the rise of another ideology is
possible without affecting the existing hegemonic order. Such is the breadth, and
26 Hegemony, Raymond Williams, Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society, (Fontana Press: London, 1976), pp.144 146, Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince and Other Writings,trans. Louis Marks, (International Publishers: NewYork 1968), pp. 182, 18627
Third Text, and [accessed24 November 2011]28Antonio Gramsci,ed. Steve Jones, Routledge, pp. 51-5229 Kate Soper, On Human Needs30 Steve Jones, Antonio Gramsci, (Routledge: Abingdon, 2006), p. 42
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apparent naturalness, of influence that the change of political parties equates to little
more than an alteration of the intensity or clarity of a mirage.
The illusion of a mirage operates through presenting an ambiguous surface upon
which desires are projected, providing both motivation and irritation.
*
The formationof a mirage serves suitably as a metaphor to illustrate the functioning of hegemony,
such that I will develop it here. A mirage results from the inequality of many layers, or
strata, acting in unison. The notion of strata is engaged here as a synonym for class.
I also hope that the pronunciations of strata, and its singular stratum, will draw
attention to the arbitrary distinctions, be it accent or otherwise, maintained between
social groups. The outermost stratum of one extreme generally has the greater
influence upon a passing ideological ray. The pronounced influence of an external
stratum is possible only when it is the most energetic or agitated of the strata. This
agitated strata requires however that the ideological ray is already grossly deflected
upon entering the opposing restful strata. The ideological ray entering a mirage is
refracted in such a way that it traces a parabolic course through the strata, so that
each stratum receives and transmits the ray. This duel action of absorption and
emission affects through attenuation the rays direction and ultimate destination. The
metaphor of the mirage exists within the hegemonic organisation alluded to earlier,
for typically the refracted ideological ray that constitutes a mirage obscures both thebase (the absent centre) and what lies beyond (the traces of history as determining
instances in our formation).
An examination of how social realities are created, maintained, and subsumed is
undertaken through an exploration of those circumstances instilled by capitalism via
its hegemonic project of progressive rationalisation, or more commonly,
modernisation.31 The approach of historical materialism provides a method to delve
into those hegemonic aspects of our current society that reside unnoticed.32
Interaction with these aspects offers a means to explore how our society functions
and why hyperreality appears to hold such a convincing sway over our lives.
*
The same operation being employed in the dissertations title, which playing off the vocal foundation of languageoscillates between a written statement and a verbal question31 Zygmunt Bauman, Work consumerism and the new poor, p. 87-88, Steve Jones, Antonio Gramsci, 58-63, pp. 52-53,56, 156, 160-16432Antonio Gramsci: Selection from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 344-345, 407-410
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Heading into hyperreality
Travelling into an exploration of hegemony we cannot avoid noticing a shimmer within
the mirage through which contemporary life is refracted. Drawing from the notion of
alienation described by psychoanalysis, typified in Lacans dtournement of a
hegemonic maxim I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think33, this
alienation is seen as being incorporated within a broader concept of the simulated
and so hyperreal aspect of our current society. The notion of alienation developed
by Marx, which can be considered as the separation from our productive activity,
forms for Kate Soper a problematic central theme of Marxist discourse. 34 Soper
astutely identifies the resolution of Marxist alienation as based upon the flawed
premise of the fulfilment of true needs.35 The problem arises because needs
represent an articulation of hegemonic values, and so affect the ability of a subject to
gain awareness at a political level. The approach taken by Soper is to develop the
concept of an absent centre of Marxism, which has particular use for considering the
relationship between alienation, both Marxist and Lacanian, and Baudrillards espousal
of hyperreality.36
The contradictions later to be explored by Soper are tackled by Henri Lefebvre in his
focused study of socially developed needs. He approaches the issue through
attempting to create a dialectical conceptualisation of sociology, wherein a relationship
can be considered between the influence of historical materialism and the Gramscian
conception of will.37 Whilst Lefebvre is aware of the absent centre, stating that we
need to develop a notion of need and to formulate a theory of needs38, he seeks
instead to describe a method by which people might overcome historically induced
alienation. A simplified account of Marxist alienation posits a separation from labour,
however a functional description attributes alienation to being caused by the law of a
few represented as the law as such.39 Lefebvre approaches this from two angles, one
the traditional Marxist exposition of labour as the saving activity, and the other
perhaps more fruitful, is an exploration of everyday life.
33 Jacques Lacan crits: A selection p. 183. Being of course Descartes assertion, I think therefore I am34 Kate Soper, On human needs, p. 3135
Ibid, p. 3136 Ibid, pp. 4, 1037Antonio Gramsci: Selections from the Prison Notebooks, pp. 243-244, 36038 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, pp. 96 - 9739 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution,p. 109
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The concepts developed by psychoanalytical theory of the self and identity lends
support to the inevitability of alienation. However the level identified by Lefebvre at
which we suffer the greatest degree of alienation is at the level of needs, for the
decision to purchase particular luxury items whilst neglecting home repairs proves the
existence of a new social need that outweighs practical considerations.
40
Thisignorance of practical considerations, whilst indicating that needs exist as the
justification for production, leads to a consideration of why the needs are so
enthusiastically consumed.41 The explanation forwarded by Zygmunt Bauman is that
our society has shifted to one of consumers, in which individualised social identity is
only possible through our ability to selectively consume.42
The separation between work and leisure brought about by the shift to a consumer
society has led to leisure being perceived as the imaginary space within which a
person can develop, ostensibly, as an autonomous individual, a notion which both
Lefebvre and Castoriadis identify as one of the consequences of a capitalist society.43
The aspect of our society that facilitates the elaboration of this autonomousindividual
is the presence of a social imaginary, which exists not as a mirror but as a collective
imagining of social relations.44 Our experience of socially and historically developed
material circumstances is mediated through the social imaginary, which is to some
extent vital for social existence.45
The imaginary with which we are concerned here isthe one operating through the mystification of our materially determined social-
historical development, so that it becomes invested with new significances.46 The
subject seeks to establish their own unique individualised private self through
incorporating socially developed signifieds, projected onto the social imaginary, so
that their identity might be interpreted correctly.47 This reflexive assembling and
interpretation of identity engenders an awareness of an estrangement in a subject, for
they are aware, even at a barely conscious level, that the meanings they perceive are
not intrinsically their own.48 Perception is in reality the product of human action on
40 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 9, Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution ofSociety, p.15741 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, pp. 161 16342 Zygmunt Bauman, Work, consumerism and the new poor, pp. 23-2543 Lefebvre, Critique, pp. 16, 31, 40-41, 149 152. Lefebvre plays off the dual meanings ofprivate, to allude to both aprivate individual but also one who is depriv(at)ed44 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 14845 Ibid, pp. 21, 12746 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 92. For projecting conceptions of spaces consider the notionof London as The City and the evocation in contemporary music of both London and New York as idealised spaces (Lily
Allen LDN, Frida Hyvnen London!, Paloma Faith New York, Alicia Keys Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down. Ofcourse advertising relies heavily upon this social imaginary. Antonio Gramsci: Selections from p. 376-37747 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, pp. 72, 92, 152, Antonio Gramsci: Selections from the PrisonNotebooks, p. 36048 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 62
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the historical and social level.49 At base it is only humans and their activity that exist,
yet we feel that a dehumanised, brutally objective power holds sway over all social
life, and consequently we are subjugated by our activity instead of being able to
emerge as autonomous agents.50
The metaphor of the mirage returns and is united with that of alienation in the
assertion by Castoriadis that alienation resides:
only in the phantasies of an ideology which refuses what is in the name of a
desire directed at a mirage -- the total possession or the absolute subject,
which in fact has not yet learned to live or even to see, and so can see in being
no more than intolerable privation and deficiency, to which it opposes (fictive)
Being.51
This state of fictive autonomous Being is the one we find ourselves in now, lending
support to the conviction of the existence of our overly simulated social hyperreality.
In the description of hyperreality Baudrillard employs the metaphorical movement of
precession, no doubt drawing from the simulacral quality inherent in the model
developed by quantum mechanics to explain nuclear behaviour.52 The precession of
simulacrum can be likened to the eccentric gyrations of a spinning top, leaning furtherfrom the vertical as its momentum deteriorates. The conic path traced by simulacral
models orbiting the absent centre of Marxism illustrates the current asymptotic
rendering of social reality the asymptote is a mathematical term, employed by
Lacan, to describe two courses that draw ever closer together and only converge at
infinity.53 The role played by models in Baudrillards conception of hyperreality causes
language to occupy the supreme position as model, and subsequently as primary
system of creation, and it is this truth which leads me to a consideration of our
hyperreal society as functioning poetically.54
49 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 16350 Ibid, p. 16651 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 11252
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, pp. 32, 3553The concept of the asymptotic aspect of reality is developed by Lacan in his essay The Mirror Stage as Formative ofthe Function of the I, Jacques Lacan, crits: a selection, pp. 1-954Jacques Lacan, crits: a selection, pp. 48, 70 71, Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, (Routledge Classics:Abingdon, 2002), pp. 113, 116-117, Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 237-240
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Songs for the journey
The role of language as designating and structuring reality is not the point of
contention here, but rather the genesis of hyperreality contained within the poetic
articulation of language.
55
Perhaps one of the more tangible demonstrations of thecreative faculty of language can be found in the concept of the speech-act.56 The act
operates through the subjects recognition that language is institutionalised within our
modern civilisation of speech; by invoking its institutional laws we can achieve a sense
of autonomy, albeit alienated.57 We come to realise that power recognised in our
current ideology by the actualisation of our apparently individual will - is arbitrary
since the invocation and manipulation of the institutional weight of language is
available to all.58 This vulnerability to manipulation leads to the creation by groups of
specific lexicons, to demarcate and establish their autonomous identities, which only
serves to enhance the alienation inherent from the initial invocation of the
institution.59
The conceptualisation of the poetic aspect of society can be ascribed to the notion that
we lack the conscious awareness of our social dependency to produce or control our
material circumstances. Consequently in order to engage in any sort of reciprocal
symbolic exchange we fall back on language as a socially accessible currency.60
Through language we are able to maintain myths and create new social realities.
The conviction for this study stems from the exhaustion and frustration of attending
art exhibitions, caused by the futile attempt to grasp any meaning within the work, to
discern something engaging, stimulating or challenging. The only challenge is to our
ability to endure our own mental mortification, caused by the exhausted recycling of
content within the myth of art, a language that express only its own emptiness.61 The
hyperreal descriptions of work are emptied by their over-enthusiastic prose, rendering
the object as no more than an interesting array of surfaces upon which dust might
land.
55 Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, pp. 114-117,Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp.223, 243-24756 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1,pp. 135, 142, 183, J. L. Austin How to do things with words, 2nded. J.O. Urmson, (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1975), pp. 9 11, 1657 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 103, 110, Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text, p. 17558 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 110, 223, As a corollary the value accorded to
dignity results precisely from an exercise of restraint59 Leonardo Salamini, The Sociology of Political Praxis: an introduction to Gramscis theory, (Routledge & Kegan PaulLtd: London, 1981), p. 19660Jacque Lacan, crits: a selection, pp. 48, 67, Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, pp. 26-2761 Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, pp. 94, 96, Roland Barthes, Mythologies, p. 109
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The commissioned installation of two aircraft, titled humbly enough Harrier and Jaguar
at Tate Britain, whilst presenting a spectacular monument to Fiona Banners practice
serves rather to epitomise Arts auto-asphyxiation.62* Items that once promised
destruction are anthropomorphised into vessels that permit our projected
contemplations of obsolescence to reside within. The associations to its ornithologicalnamesake have been activated in the Harrier, which rendered animalistic is then
subject to further degradation through being hung like a dead bird. The shame at our
vanity, for having killed only to destroy the freedom we desire, is negated by
elevating the carcass through a dignifying aesthetic; the contemplation of some noble
quality, the fragility of life, the repressively sublimated longing for power. The other
shell, carrying the prestige of a Jaguar, is polished and sleek but inverted like a toy
cast aside, a Dan Dare rocket ship grounded by the failed hope of an atomic future. A
grand exercise in power and logistics, an act that expresses only the spectacular
glamour of Arts myth.
Before this discourse descends too far into bleak criticism I would like to mention the
rather more promising work of Miroslaw Balka, as seen in his How It Is at Tate
Modern.63 The work comprised of a house-sized cube with an open side facing away
from any light source, rendering the extreme depths of the cube pitch black.
Participants were able to enter the cube, experiencing a sense of disorientation in thedepthless void. The installation succeeded through its very materiality and near
absorption into the surrounding space. Its scale happily denied it the status of art
object, instead its success lies in its architectural aspect, its immutable presence as
structuring space and any experience thus induced. Whilst the piece cannot escape
the spectacle of its creation, it is however commendable for the way it draws attention
to the spectacular nature of architecture.64
Playing off the emptying of Art by its poetic function, defined broadly by Barthes as
the search for the inalienable meaning of things, this discourse comes to exist as its
own simulacra. This existence of the discourse as its own self-creating model is
62 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, pp. 152-153, for a discussion of the work by the artist please see Tate Britain:Duveens Commission 2010, Fiona Banner, [accessed 26March 2011]*
There is a playing off here of Art and art akin to the Other and other.63 Tate Modern: The Unilever Series: Miroslaw Balka, How It Is, [accessed 26 March 2011]64 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, (Zone Books: New York, 1995), p. 121,122-123
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possible because the theory of the Text can coincide only with a practice of writing.65
Whilst seemingly tautological we can expand the referral to writing to encompass the
articulation of an act of tracing, or recording, which signifies simultaneously as the
registering of an event and the record thus produced. The concept of the Text can
then be considered more generally as an awareness of the Other, of a foreigndiscourse that is in me, ruling over me: speaking through myself.66
Subsequently we are able to appreciate that only through an active interpretation and
transcription of the traces previously registered can we become aware of the influence
of an external other. Operating consciously at the interface between input and record
I am able to negate the discourse of the other by allowing it to act through me, so
that I function as a locus of polysemous strands.67 The recognition of this function
permits me to exercise to some extents a degree of autonomy, which is contrasted to
an individualised subject through whom the others discourse continues to act
unacknowledged.68
The enunciation of the performative aspect of speech, via the articulation of its
genealogical transmission, is intended to evoke connections to past signifieds and
produce a field of exchanges available for appropriation and subsequent creation. The
role of creation or the forming of trajectories for possible futures is crucial for theadvancement of any particular project, and it is these potentialities that are contained
within the poetic.69 The hyperreality created by the idealistic use of the poetic, and the
subsequent failure of promised futures reliant solely upon rhetoric for their sustained
movement, is articulated in the five section titles The Revolution may happen but we
will still.70
65 Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text, pp. 161- 164, Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society,p. 14866Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 102
67 Roland Barthes, Image Music Text, trans. Stephen Heath, (Fontana Press: London, 1977), p. 164, Cornelius
Castoriadis, Imaginary Institutions, pp. 102-10568 Cornelius Castoriadis, Imaginary Institutions, pp 104-10569 Ibid, pp. 98, 110, and Zygmunt Bauman, Work, consumerism and the new poor, 2nd ed p. 115, 117-11870 Cornelius Castoriadis, Imaginary Institutions, p. 79, Eivind Jacobsen, The Rhetoric of Food, in The Politics of Food,ed. Marianne Elisabeth Lien & Brigitte Nerlich, (Berg: Oxford, 2004), pp. 60-61
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The Revolution may happen
but we will still discuss production
The main problem, according to Soper and Castoriadis, of production within a
Capitalist system is that:
capitalism replies [to the saturation of historically developed needs] by
synthetically producing new needs, manipulating consumers, developing a
mentality orientated towards status and social rank tied to the level of
consumption, and creating or maintaining outmoded or parasitic forms of
employment.71
These obsolete modes of employment, manifested in the pre-occupation with inane
job titles allocated by human resource departments, serve only to further the
alienation we experience within our fragmented social-historical reality.72 In an
attempt to supersede its own efficiency and subsume the alienation inherent in
production, capitalism shifts the emphasis of production into the virtual, or the
imaginary of hyperreality.73
The complexity of this doctrinal Marxist maxim lies in the positing by Soper,Castoriadis, and Lefebvre of creative activity as the vocation of humans, following
Marxs articulation of the theory of species life.74 The mystification of biological
requirements as species life, which Marx identifies as being conscious production,
causes the species life to become a way forlife and not oflife. This displacement leads
to the justification of capitalisms hegemony through people believing that the only
reason for working is to keep body and soul together.75 Creative activity under
capitalism is regarded as the means for living rather than life itself.76 The importance
of creative activity in countering alienation is openly recognised as an essential
element of society, however through this open social recognition it has been
misappropriated by the project of individualism, and its espousal of a false
autonomy77. The content of this section is located at the juncture between production,
71 Cornelius Castoriadis, Imaginary institutions of society, p. 82, Kate Soper On human needs, pp. 24, 4372 Kate Soper On Human Needs, pp. 43-44, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 8273Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 3, pp. 136-13774
Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, pp. 60-6175 Ibid, p. 17376 Ibid, pp. 60, 16677 Istvn Mszros, Marxs theory of Alienation, 5th ed., (Merlin Press Ltd: London, 2005), pp. 255, 258, HenriLefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p 149. For a sensitive exposition of the positive effects of creative
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as masked by the imaginary misappropriation of creative activity, and the drive for
individualisms false autonomy.
Language, as both constituent and agent of the unconscious, exists as the
predominant method of meaningful engagement with the world and offers a self-validating productive activity.78 We desire production for we feel that the person who
has nothing finds himself [sic] separated from existence in general .79 Since few
people have any particular desire to be ostracised they enter into production.
Unfortunately this engagement with production is self-defeating, as noted by Lacan in
the failure of an esperanto to render a social reality that would have made literary
formalism impossible.80 The lack of a common neutral material from which to draw
leads to the alienation found in divided production, and results in the impoverishment
of any work activity undertaken.81
This impoverishment is however masked by the conditions that must be satisfied in
order for production to occur.82 These conditions are less a set of definite and direct
socially informed requirements, rather they exist at the conceptual level where we are
aware of the political value of the action. The awareness to utter the sentence [] is
to do it83 illustrates that to engage in language use is not to describe a social
imaginary but to become that imaginary.
The assumption of the imaginary within us causes the formation of a hyper-praxis, for
the notion of social practice, or praxis, is based on knowledge, but this knowledge is
always fragmentary and provisional.84 This hyper-praxis occurs because of our
knowledge of the openness of language to appropriation, as detailed prior*. The exact
mechanism functions through the collapse of the historicized lineage, severing words
from their historical significations, thereby offering free floating morphemes for the
production of new social imaginaries.85 This severance permits us to assume our
position as mediator within the imaginarys lineage, perceiving ourselves as located at
activity see Making Art, Reclaiming Lives: The artist and homeless collaborative Andrea Wolper, But is it Art? TheSpirit of Art of Activism, ed. Nina Felshin, (Bay Press: Washington, 1995).78 Cornelius Castoriadis, Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 345-348, 350-35379 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 15580Jacque Lacan, crits: a selection, p. 164
81 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 6282 John Langshaw Austin, How to do things with words, 2nd ed. Eds. J. O. Urmson, Marina Sbis, (Clarendon Press:
Oxford, 1975), pp. 14 - 1783 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 13584 Cornelius Castoriadis, Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 71-79* see p. 13 this document85 Leonardo Salamini, The Sociology of Political Praxis: an introduction to Gramscis theory, pp. 184-185
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the point of the potential trajectories offered by a constantly regenerating imaginary.
The consequence of this assumption is borne out by Marxs analysis that:
if what he [sic] makes comes from him, he in turn comes from what he makes;
it is made by him, but it is in these works and by these works that he has madehimself.86
The contemporary social employment of language, as the manifestation of the other,
contains an adverse implication for the [other] is experienced only in an activity of
production87; it is thereby experienced simultaneously as an act of consumption. To
consume contains within it the activity of production, for by consuming we are both
re-producing and superseding the initial need. The development of consumer needs
creates a situation in which for each person the necessity of having to work weighs
down on him [sic], dragging him into a mechanism he knows nothing about.88 This
alienating necessity resulted from the original means of affirming ones identity, via a
particular trade and its attendant status, becoming unviable with the advent of global
capital and accompanying job insecurity. Desiring to escape this mechanism
establishes a system where we are forced to work to earn our leisure, and leisure has
only one meaning: to get away from work.89
Whilst we continue to believe in and desire leisure, and its inherent consumption, as
an autonomous means to produce our individual identities we will remain unable to
engage in any practical resolution of our current situation. The production of an
individualised identity through consumption is strengthened by the hegemonic
encouragement to develop a life attitude that can be incorporated into work. 90 This
attitude, the articulation of a drive for excellence, can be seen in the naturalised
conceptual work-life cycle.91 This cycle operates through the integration of excellence
into the subjects life, such that to work (i.e. where excellence is recognised) = to live
(where we can demonstrate our success through discerning consumption and thereby
have a life of excellence affirmed through that consumption) = to work, ad infinitum.92
86 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1,p. 16387 Roland Barthes, Image Music Text, p. 15788 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 16689 Ibid, pp. 33, 4090 Zygmunt Bauman, Work, consumerism and the new poor, p. 16-19, Steve Jones, Antonio Gramsci, p. 6091 Steve Jones, Antonio Gramsci, pp. 59-6392
Zygmunt Bauman, Work, consumerism and the new poor, p. 27-28. See also the article by Charlotte Raven,Bespoke: Delusions of grandeur, The Independent- It is not enough to buy designer one has to order bespoke. Butthis Grand Designs life of endless choice is just an ego-stroking sales pitch that lets us believe our cash makes uscreative, Friday, 3 December 2010, article available from
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The project of excellence demonstrates a directional confinement of the attitude of
individual competition instilled with the division of society. The amalgamation of, and
relationship between, production and individualism is detailed in Castoriadiss
description of the formation of a social imaginary:
World-image and self-image are obviously always related. Their unity, however,
is in its turn borne by the definition each society gives of its needs, as this is
inscribed in its activity, its actual social doing. The self-image a society gives
itself includes as an essential moment the choice of objects and acts, etc.,
embodying that which, for it, has meaning and value.93
The desire to avoid being collated with other sections of society, notably the working
class, appears as the main motivation in the affirmation of the excellent individual. 94
This desire also serves to highlight how the romanticised concept of the working
class operates on several levels. Firstly we encounter the uncovering of the
machinations of the imaginary, in the appropriation of history to provide material for
the construction of a groups identity.95 Secondly through this historical appropriation
the imaginary serves to denote a group engaging in the necessarily arduous,
repetitive and tedious activities required to justify the work ethic.96
Thirdly thecreation of a segregated group, defined through physical labour, serves to illustrate
how the philosophy of common sense perceives the disgusting truth that the point of
connection between the self and the other, is the body, that material structure
heavy with virtual meanings.97
That disgust is possible results from two interlinked factors, both originating in the
rationalisation of our lives. Firstly with the arbitrary social definition of needs within
hyperreality, for we have replaced the fulfilment of basic physical needs with the
satisfaction of gratuitous needs.98 This superficial replacement accompanies the
second factor, for the satisfaction of gratuitous needs supports the hyperreal
construction of autonomy, which is bounded by the imaginary of individualism. As
93Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 149
94 Zygmunt Bauman, Work, consumerism and the new poor, p. 28. The generally uncommented upon observation thatthe majority of people are strictly speaking working class, since we must workfor our living, illustrates therarefaction of the materially based social relations of production.95
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, p. 4496 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 14697 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 106, William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust,(Harvard University Press: USA, 1997), pp. 51-5298 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 156
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such we feel disgust at being reminded of our confinement by physical limits, of how
our apparent autonomy is in fact reliant upon the very materiality that makes our
lives possible.99 The collapse of the imaginary, resulting from the reduction to the
immediate biological aspects of life, has striking parallels with Freuds exploration of
physical affliction. He develops the idea that when we are ill the loss of theimaginary the ego retracts into the afflicted part our immediate awareness of our
dependency on others for our continued existence and subsequently we become
unable to love. The wider implication pertains to the psychoanalytic consideration of
love as narcissistic; the egos retreat prevents us from self-love, and it is the phobia
of lost love that is central to the formation of neuroses.100 Consequently we live within
our fragile hyperreality, carrying an ingrained predisposition to neurosis, verging on
hysteria should we attempt to sublimate the symptoms.101
The presence of ideological state apparatuses, established by the hegemonic order,
serves to provide experiences that can be shared in order to obscure the realisation
that we have little autonomous engagement with our material lives.102 This lack of
involvement stems from the way in which an individuals identity is formed through
their multiple relationships with the institutions of the state and civil society.103 People
in tertiary industry ranging from telesales personnel to academics have their
thoughts, memories and concocted fantasies to use for the production of a discoursefor exchange. Production is possible because of the prior consumption of cultural
material, issued by the ideological state apparatuses.104 We acknowledge and depend
upon the ability of this material, which being ideological is inseparable from language,
to furnish us with a reality, albeit a hyperreality, and permit symbolic exchange. 105
Whilst symbolic exchange resides beneath all actions, and is the basis of creative
activity, through being emptied by capitalisms hegemonic hyper-praxis it now serves
to support little more than an impoverished recital.106 For the telesales personnel,
academics and us, language has become a coin whose obverse and reverse no longer
bear any but effaced figures.107 Our speech has become the displaced outlet for the
99 William Ian Miller, Anatomy of Disgust, pp. 210, 212, 239.100The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, pp. 550-552, Jacques Lacan, crits: a selection, pp. 24-25101 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1,p. 120102 Louis Althusser, Ideological State Apparatuses, Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, eds.Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, pp. 955-957103
Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, pp. 105, 108, Steve Jones, Antonio Gramsci, p. 58104 Steve Jones, Antonio Gramscipp. 45-46105 Leonardo Salamini, The Sociology of Political Praxis, p. 187106 Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production,pp. 48, 78 79, 146107 Jacques Lacan, crits: a selection, p. 48
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neurotic realisation of our inability to produce our lives, with speech being employed
in a cathartic attempt to create, albeit the creation of a hyperreality.108
108 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation p. 23, The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, pp. 289- 290, CorneliusCastoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 94
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The Revolution may happen
but we will still buy our bread*
Hunger is hunger, but the hunger gratified by cooked meat eaten with a knife
and fork is a different hunger from that which bolts down raw meat with the aidof hand, nail and tooth109
It is prudent to note that this statement by Marx contains the very confusion that
Baudrillard so critically exposed in his uncovering of the paradoxical foundations of
Marxism.110 Aside from the underlying primitivism connoted by the opposition, we can
discern that in the first instance hunger is at the service of both delectation, and
needs prefigured by capitalism. In the second instance the imagery employed goes a
substantial part of the way to enforcing the view that a primitive life is a subsistence
existence, suffering for want of planning and surplus. This rather unfortunate choice of
rhetoric serves to strengthen the civilising process contained within capitalisms
hegemony. I have highlighted this example not so much to expose Marx for failing to
totally cast off the influences of his social-historical formation, but rather to show the
apparent naturalness of truisms, which appeal to biological conceptions so deeply
ingrained that we miss their imposed influence.111
The above critique by Baudrillard, outlined in The Mirror of Production, centres on his
demonstration that the terms used by Marx are contentious precisely because of their
existing significations.112 As with the problems of productive activity needs too are a
specific factor of consumer society, since they are stimulated by production.113 The
reinforcement within our rationalised society by referral at base to biological functions,
with the most self-explanatory being our need to eat, highlights the contentious
connotations of needs.114 The contention arises because the prevention of hunger is
considered as a need; causing food to be perceived as a commodity which is duly
fetishized.115 Whilst seeming a rather strong summation it is worth remembering that
* One suspects that regardless of any forecast Revolution a certain nation will still demand fresh batons to carry homeevery morning. For an expansion of this see The Revolution may happen but we will still drink tea109 Kate Soper, On Human Needs, p. 15.110 Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production,pp. 75111 Antonio Gramsci, The Modern prince and other writings, p. 182, Kate Soper On human Needs, pp. 15-17, 195112 Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production,pp. 58-60113
Kate Soper, On Human Needs, p. 83114 Kate Soper, On Human Needs, p. 87, Eivind Jacobsen, The Rhetoric of Food, in The Politics of Food, ed. MarianneElisabeth Lien & Brigitte Nerlich, pp. 61-66115 Karl Marx Capital: Volume 1, trans Fowkes, B., (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1990) pp. 125-127, pp. 163-166, ThePolitics of Food, pp. 67, 73-74
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food, despite its apparent necessity, is no different to any other commodity, for it is a
thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind.116
The rhetoric of food as commodity is one of three connotative groupings, along with
nature and culture, identified by Eivind Jacobsen.
117
The presence of these groupingsserves to highlight how the manoeuvring by different ideological groups, for
hegemonic dominance, is achieved by invoking established and emotionally loaded
connotations in the recipients mind.118 Whilst Jacobsens exposition serves admirably
to draw attention to the manipulation of a particular material circumstance, his
conclusion of a renegotiation of the nature-society divide falls back on his own
identification of problematic conceptions of nature.119 Succinctly put he details three
common notions of Nature that all imply a singular, universal Nature external to
society120: environmental realism based on a neutral science as interpreter of nature;
environmental idealism in which nature is posited as containing values; environmental
instrumentalism in which the motivation for sustainable practices are calculated
simply from the interests of individuals and groups.121
The first notion of a neutral science is patently untenable, as shown by Derrida in his
denouncement of the apparently neutral reasoning motivating the formation of
sciences; he does however suggest that it is possible to progress by
orientating thediscourse around the point of its disparity.122 The second, rather nave notion, is open
to criticism as to by whom are values chosen and imparted to nature, thereby
exposing the flaws of its idealistic agenda.123 The final notion is perhaps the most
useable of the theories, apart from its exposition of simple calculations and a radical
separation of humans from non-humans, subjects from objects.124 The calculating of
interests will however involve a consideration of needs that are required to be
satisfied.
116 Karl Marx, Capital: Volume 1, p. 125, Eivind Jacobsen, The Rhetoric of Food, in The Politics of Food, ed. MarianneElisabeth Lien & Brigitte Nerlich, pp. 69-70117 Eivind Jacobsen, The Rhetoric of Food, in The Politics of Food, ed. Marianne Elisabeth Lien & Brigitte Nerlich, pp.61-62118 Ibid, p. 61119 Ibid, p. 74120 Ibid, p. 64121
Ibid, p. 65122 Jacques Derrida, Structure, Sign and Play in the discourse of the human sciences in Writing and Difference,Jacques Derrida, trans. Alan Bass, (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978), p. 282-284123 Kate Soper, On Human Needs, p. 4124 Eivind Jacobsen, The Rhetoric of Food, in The Politics of Food, ed. Marianne Elisabeth Lien & Brigitte Nerlich, p. 65
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The satisfaction of needs, as outlined by Soper, only leads to the creation of further
demands in an attempt to satisfy the initial need.125 In primitive* societies this
conceptualisation of need does not exist as such, because survival is not a necessity
we have made it one instead what exists is symbolic exchange, acts which if not
exchanged do not occur.
126
This seemingly tautological definition of symbolic exchangeis clarified by Baudrillards description that the status of goods that circulate is close
to language. The goods are neither produced nor consumed as values. Their function
is the continuous articulation of the exchange.127
The positing of needs thereby permanently establishes the finality of both production
and consumption, for language is necessarily destructive through its delineation of
concepts, forcing them to fit criteria and thereby loosing any dynamic quality.128 This
limiting of symbolic exchange, by the articulation of the current concept of need,
hinders genuine engagement and operation on the symbolic level. This level equates
to the foundational social relations of production, where the value of symbolic
exchange is located and manifested.129 The ideal of social relations is succinctly
contained within Baudrillards anachronistic evaluation of an artisans operation:
the artisan lives his work as a relation of symbolic exchange, abolishing the
definition of himself as labourer and the object as product of his labour.Something in the material that he works is a continuous response to that which
he does, escaping productive finality.130
As already identified production has become a need, the object of a social demand,
like leisure, to which it is equivalent in the course of everyday life.131 The absent
centre of Marxism means that the need of the worker to be re-united with their
productive activity has little validity, or possibility of occurrence with our current
conception of terms. The validity remains however of the estrangement contained
within the socially instilled needto produce ourselves, which results from the shift of
the location of the need; the other is now embodied elsewhere than in the
individual unconscious.132 This estrangement through needs assists the masking of
125 Kate Soper, On Human Needs, pp. 47-50* I am using primitive here to designate those people who exist outside of a Western, capitalist, cosmology.126 Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production,pp. 74 75, 79127 Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production, p. 98128
Jacques Lacan crits: a selection pp. 67, 165129On Human Needs, Kate Soper, p. 52130 Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production, p. 99131 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, p. 26 and note132 Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society, p. 109
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the more profound realisation that we are alienated from the actual conditions of our
social-historical creation.
The alienation inherent in the external existence of the other is paralleled in the
conflicting positioning of needs developed by Lefebvre and Baudrillard. Whilst Lefebvreposits the study of the formation of needs as crucial for progress from social-historical
alienation, Baudrillard through contemptuously identifying the social-historical
specificity of production, consumption and needs views them as eliminable by
mental agility.133 The practical outcome is that Lefebvres position attempts to seek a
means to advance toward autonomy by superseding existing terms, possible only
through praxis. The approach of Baudrillard on the other hand, whilst presenting a
thorough and damning critique, serves mainly to show the limitations of current
terms. By combining the extremism of Baudrillard with Lefebvres pragmatism, we can
begin to arrive at a dialectical praxis that will not fall back into the catatonic sophism
of Baudrillards position, or remain within the potential idealism of Lefebvres.
133 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 163 and Jean Baudrillard, The Mirror of Production,p. 28-29, 32
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The Revolution may happen
but we will still have Art
The miss-recognition outlined earlier of the need for creative activity, as affirmation of
a falsely autonomous individual, can be seen most clearly within the mirage of artsoasis. The enticing aspect of art lies in the promise of providing satisfaction of the
craving for a definite break or rupture from the everyday, a chance to engage with the
imaginary. As Baudrillard posits in The Conspiracy of ArtDuchamps presentation of
the readymades served to transfer all of reality into aesthetics.134 This act also
permitted the liberation of art, but its democratisation only reinforced the privilege of
the idea of art, culminating in the banal tautology art is art .135 The result being that
the shift, from commodities for privileged aristocrats to conceptual acrobatics, has
both exposed and re-enforced the position of the signified Art idea as something
which does not signify anything at all, but [it] does signify. What we call art today
seems to bear witness to an irremediable void. Art is travestied by the idea136. This
universality of Arts non-significance made it appear naturalised, a signified quality
both induced and utilised by Conceptual Artists to make work that was ostensibly
democratic. The move to open Art to all was achieved through utilising language,
particularly printed text, which theoretically could be easily distributed. 137
Unfortunately this historical moment was failed by its own possibility, for the wholemyth of the total and revolutionary strike crumbles at the very moment when the
means are available but alas precisely because those means are available.138
The failure of the Revolution was in fact its greatest success, for the zeal of the
Revolutionaries made possible the saturation of reality with the potential for aesthetic
consideration. This legacy of the Conceptual Artists positions us as interlocutors, for
the text is held in language, only exists in the movement of a discourse.139 This is not
as enabling as it might seem, for the position of interlocutor functioning by a
turbulent intersubjectivity is the place occupied by the analysand attempting to
uncover and construct a continuous lineage of their history.140 To be positioned at the
point where a discourse of the other, especially one that is void, acts through us is
openly affirming the alienation manifest within our hyperreality.
134 Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, p. 90135 Ibid, p. 92136
Ibid, p. 126137 Tony Godfrey, Conceptual Art, (Phaidon Press Ltd: London, 1998), pp. 124 130138 Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, p. 39139 Roland Barthes, Image Music Text, p. 157140 Jacques Lacan, crits: a selection, pp. 54-55
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The vacuous signified Art denies the privileging of art objects, to the extent that the
object is no longer there, only the idea of the object. And we no longer take pleasure
in art, only in the idea of art.141 This transference was anticipated, and aided, by the
editorial introduction to the journal Art-Language. The introduction, through
considering what could qualify as a valid artwork, concludes that the determiningfactor is recognition, limited however to the language use of the art-society.142 This
tautological situation causes
a profound distrust of language, which is rejected because it has failed. Now
any refusal of language is death. Tautology creates a dead, a motionless
world.143
The world of Art is perceived therefore as one dealing with obsolete objects, and this
causes a perverse counter-operation in which any object rendered obsolete is
susceptible to conversion to Art, through an aesthetic of banality144. This atomisation,
and subsequent widely dispersed precipitation of art upon all surfaces, is recognised in
Joseph Kosuths innocuous assertion that art lives through influencing other art.145
The current contamination of reality by Art makes it feasible to dtourn Kosuths
statement on the nature of art; all art (after Conceptual Art) is poetic (in nature)
because Art only exists poetically.146
Whilst this assertion prefigured Baudrillardsextensive theorisation of arts simulacrum, there is another declaration by Kosuth that
suggests a more direct engagement with the formative circumstances. For Kosuth
aesthetics, as the consideration of morphological properties, is irrelevant to art and he
anticipated Baudrillards diagnosis in his assertion that being an artist now means to
question the nature of art.147 This statement contains within it the suggestion that a
critique of art carries the implicit critique of the society that supports it.
The difficulty, and redundancy, of criticising Art directly lies in its nullity; a
consequence of the desperate attempt by the art world to save itself through
confiscating banality, waste and mediocrity as values and ideologies.148 Instead we
141 Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, p. 92142 Terry Atkinson, Editorial Introduction to Art-Language, Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas,ed. Charles Harrison, Paul Wood, p. 890143 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, p. 153, William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of disgust, p. 97144 Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, p. 94-95145 Joseph Kosuth, Notes on Conceptual Art, in Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas ed. Charles
Harrison, Paul Wood, p. 856146 Ibid, p. 856147 Joseph Kosuth Art after Philosophy in Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas ed. CharlesHarrison, Paul Wood, pp. 854 - 855148 Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, p. 27
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would do better to focus upon the communities that continue to believe in Art, albeit
through a self-induced mythology.149
One of the most manifest and co-ordinated attempts to preserve Art can be found in
the establishment of the Turning Point Network for visual arts. The network iscomprised of regional groups that operate autonomously from the Arts Council, which
initiated the project in 2008.150 The aims of the Turning Point Yorkshire and Humber
project are that:
- The visual arts will thrive in this region through our collective vision,
strength, collaboration and profile.
- We aim to make the arts accessible to meaningful participation and
enjoyment by a diverse range of people visiting and working in the region.
- We want practitioners to stay and be attracted to a region which can offer a
range of resources for the development of skills, creativity, production,
exhibition and critical debate.151
The visual arts according to Turning Point Yorkshire & Humber include sculpture,
painting, the crafts, printmaking, drawing, photography, sound, experimental film,
live art, installation, contextual practice, arts in the public realm, artists video and
new media/emerging technologies.152 The collating of crafts with art practices usually
considered as High or Fine Art, through their challenging* nature, is predominantly a
strategic move, although it does serve to illustrate how the imaginary of Art continues
to retain a preoccupation with the morphological elements so optimistically excised by
Kosuth.
The motivation for such a move can be seen in the desire to encourage tourists; the
visual arts will be accessible to [] the diverse range of people who visit, live and
work in our region153, notice the emphasis on visit, since tourism is now the only real
source of income for localities.154 Practices that are perceived as challenging
invariably abstain from memorabilia, and so the economical contribution of the arts is
149 Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, p. 89150 Turning Point Yorkshire & Humber, About Turning Point Yorkshire & Humber [accessed 3 March 2011]151 A Voice for the Visual Arts: Strategy 2011 2014, Turning Point Yorkshire and Humber, [accessed 3 March 2011]152
A voice for the visual arts: Turning Point Yorkshire and the Humber Strategy 2011-14, p. 6* The satirical challenge draws from Baudrillards position that the viewer literally consumes the fact that [they] dono understand their culture, The Conspiracy of Art, p. 91153 A voice for the visual arts: Turning Point Yorkshire and the Humber Strategy 2011-14, p. 8154 Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, p. 120
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possible only if the challenging work is balanced by more craft based work. The
subsuming of craft under Art also serves to heighten the exchange value of the craft
objects, since they are now allied with the rarefied ideology of Art. This rather
regrettable alliance, since the craftsperson now has the alienated imaginary of the
artisan inflicted upon them, suggests that we have arrived at the point where Artreverts either to pure craftsmanship and technique [] or towards a primal
ritualism155 in order to justify itself.
The evocation of local identity, as another exchange value inflation factor, is
strengthened by an imaginary of craft; which appears as traditional, staid and local.
In comparison Art expresses an advancing culture, importantly the existence of an
intellectual patronage perceptive enough to finance Art. The support of the Visual Arts
is in part due to the propping up of capitalisms hegemony by the ideological project
of free choice.156 Art, along with play and anti-art which through its rejection of Art
serves only to enforce it is necessary to a capitalist society, particularly in its
confirmation of an oppositional term to counter and confirm the naturalness of work.
The call by Turning Point for Arts place within society serves only to fulfil Lefebvres
observation that Art draws closer to everyday life, but only to discreditit, under the
pretext of giving it a new resonance.157 The attempt by Turning Point to confirm Arts
value to society causes it to occupy time that would otherwise be spent producing-consuming. Subsequently it must be raised (and here we see the hegemonic operation
of capitalism) to the same level, so that through incorporation it is neutralised,
becoming just another productive-consumptive activity. Furthermore Art, play and
anti-art all operate through their evocation of the imaginary to provide a disjuncture
from the everyday, which positions them precisely at the point to satisfy the demands
for successful entertainment.158 Art thereby becomes a leisure activity, with open
studios, gallery days orientated toward children and Arts and Craft fairs all vying for
attention. This establishing and supporting of an arts community, underpinned by the
speculative surplus income anticipated from tourists, hardly seems like a sustainable
program.
155 Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of Art, pp. 126-127156 Zygmunt Bauman, Work, consumerism and the new poor, pp. 30-31157 Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life: Volume 1, p. 130158 Ibid, pp. 32 35, 123, 162, Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation pp. 1-3, 45. Also of interest in this regard
is the notion of the faux-nave Holland Cotter, Art Review | Performa 07Art Is Brief. You Just Have to Be ThereTheNew York Times, 9 November 2007, [accessed5/6/2010], a notion particularly evident in the work of Nathalie Djurbergas evident in her Milan exhibition: Snakesknow its yoga, also Paul McCarthys Pig Island: an extraordinary new installation making its world debut. A giant totalartwork , exhibition pamphlet. Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan, 2011
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To strengthen its position and longevity Turning Point asserts that the importance of
the Visual Arts lies in their ability to:
demonstrate how we can enable others to become active and responsible
citizens and help society and the economy become bigger, better andstronger.159
This optimistic articulation serves however to affirm that the affective potential of Art
is now absent. The cuts of arts funding can be seen as an indication of the reduction
of their perceived value to society, an expense that cannot be justified and also a
critical project that no longer has any relevance. The redundancy of the critical project
has been enabled by the attempt to impute the political importance of the visual arts.
Unfortunately through re-establishing regional identities the political relevance is
neutralised;
The instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic
production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on
ritual, it begins to be based on another practice politics.160
Through appearing to be motivated by politics the manoeuvre of Turning Point, andother advocates of the importance of Art, have managed to justify the disappearance
of the need for maintaining a cultural intelligentsia, required to occupy those who
might otherwise foment a genuine counter-hegemonic order. The intelligentsia have
been sublimed to a position where they are no longer able to threaten the hegemonic
order, since they have been integrated into a hyperreal imaginary.
The loss of surplus capital affects a re-orientation and withdrawal from certain areas
of the imaginary, resulting from a rationalisation of needs required for social and
material existence. Since Art has been emptied of any social significance it disappears
from sight as a necessary consumable. This invisibility of Art is seen in the rather
sinister assertion that audiences and participants need to be cultivated and
nurtured.161 The tone resembles the capitalist mantra expressing the need for the
propagation of compliant consumers.
159
Statement, Turning Point Network: For a stronger visual arts [accessed 3 march 2011]160 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthologyof Changing Ideas, eds. Charles Harrison & Paul Wood, p. 522161 A voice for the visual arts: Turning Point Yorkshire and the Humber Strategy 2011-14, p. 12
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The concern with images of reality caused the inducement of a coma in art162, such
that a successful, i.e. saleable, piece of Art can be judged by its accessibility to the
re-evocation of the initial pleasure induced by the idea of Art. The successful
artwork enables the re-activation of this pleasure, re-enforcing the fetish character ofthe piece in a constantly reflexive discourse.163 Should circumstances change
significantly, altering our perception, we become unable to re-experience the initial
pleasure found through the work and so we must face, or negate, the truth that the
object of our desire has moved.164 The now emptied vessel remains however, and we
seek to dispose of it as quickly as possible, for without pleasure over-powering our
objections we are disgusted by the reminder of our perversion.
162 Jean Baudrillard, The Conspiracy of art, pp. 118-119163The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, pp. 247-251164 Kate Soper, On Human Needs, p. 48
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The Revolution may happen
but we will still flush our toilets
Toilets are more than just waste removal devices, they are manifestations of a
particular ideological treatment of the body and its products. Their presence illustrateshow a hegemonic order can impart its influence through the most familiar of everyday
institutions. The view developed earlier that we are loathe to acknowledge our
corporeality can be seen as the motivating influence behind current attitudes to bodily
functions. Our biological operations are the common denominator, through them we
are reminded of our equivalence, despite whatever ideals we may hold.165
The effect of the civilising process in the transition from public to private, from
external to internal, from child to adult, from expulsive to repressive166 can be viewed
as an operation to strengthen individualism by imposing autonomy. The subtlety of
coercion enacted by individualisms hegemony lies in the positing of choice, which
ensures compliance. The predictability of the choice is guaranteed, for the sole
purpose of any norm is to use the human agency of free choice to limit or altogether
eliminate freedom of choice.167 Whilst we could choose to behave like King Charles II
and his courtiers, leaving at their departure their excrements in every corner .168 our
scholarly boorishness would hardly be appreciated. Instead we seek a familiar form ofdisposal that re-establishes as quickly as possible the impermeability of the bodys
surface.169
We are told from early childhood that an interest in our excreta is disgusting, but like
all abstract concepts introduced at an early age we fail to appreciate the advice given
until we experience the actual heat of a flame. The exasperated final response of
parents just because, thats all170 demonstrates the failure of language over reality in
the tautological statement. As already covered tautology induces a rejection of
language, which leads to a dead world.
Dead things are threatening to us because they deny symbolic exchange whilst
remaining full of morbid significance, for the signifier has completed the literal
165 William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, pp. 99-100166 Ibid, p. 173167 Zygmunt Bauman, Work, consumerism and the newpoor, p. 29168
Lawrence Wright, Clean and Decent: The Fascinating History of the Bathroom and the WC, (Routledge & KeganPaul: London, 1966), p. 76169 William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, pp. 58-59, Peter Harper & Louise Halestrap, Lifting the lid: Anecological approach to toilet systems, (C.A.T. Publications: 1999), pp. 11 - 12170 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, p. 153
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confirmation of its initial fate; it is already classified and is obliterated in being
named.171 Here the obliteration turns on itself, causing a metaphysical destabilisation
of the signifier through loosening restrictions on its play of signifieds.172 The morbid
significance is now the oppositional term to the vital significance, challenging the
restrictions imposed by classification. This threatens to render the worldindecipherable through the negation of all terms by their opposite, an occurrence we
fear and avoid by excising the dead term through renaming. This containment is
affected by waste, which derives its neutralising power from the evocation of barren
land deprived of life.
The corollary for our own output is that if we ingest food, viewed as either fuel or
nutrition, then what results must logically be the un-usable sediment, the innutritious,
waste.173 Perceived in this manner we are able to negate the resentment experienced
at our limited control over bodily functions and our subservience to those non-
excellent functions. Ordinarily we are accustomed to having our physical functions
under such control that we are confounded when the alienation of the body comes to
the fore from exhaustion, injury or intoxication. Any subservience felt occurs because
our alienated products, rather than being at our disposal, exert authority over us if we
miss-dispose of them.174 We are forced, despite hegemonys mirage of choice, to obey
an external authority in what has become one of the most intimate and personal ofactivities.175
The discussion of intimacy as regards bodily functions would be incomplete without a
mention of Helen Chadwicks Piss Flowers. Whilst the piece is vulnerable to the
critique articulated by Baudrillard of arts appropriation of the banal, it goes beyond
the kitsch of appropriation and reclamation, residing as an index of an affectionate
gesture between two lovers. The piece quite literally inverts several factors
simultaneously, from the preservation of voids melted into snow, to the thrusting
vertical form of the female inscription and the delicate peripheral indentations
delineated by the male. The poignancy of the piece lies in the honesty and humility of
its creation, the recogni