What Lies Beyond the Mirage: Gazing into hyperreality's hegemonic imaginary

8/7/2019 What Lies Beyond the Mirage: Gazing into hyperreality's hegemonic imaginary

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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


but we will still buy our bread


but we will still have Art


but we will still flush our toilets


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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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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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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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

What Lies Beyond the Mirage: Gazing into hyperreality's hegemonic imaginary

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