An In-concluded Modernity Project (III)

 “Hegel sees the modern age as marked universally by a structure of self-relation that he calls subjectivity ‘The principle of the modern world is freedom of subjectivity’… the term ‘subjectivity’ carries primarily four connotations: a) Individualism; b) the right to criticism; c) Autonomy of action; d) finally, idealistic philosophy itself: Hegel considers it the work of modern times that philosophy grasps the self-conscious (or self-knowing) idea.” (Habermas 17).

 “…Friedrich Schlegel mirrors the self-experience of a decentered self ‘for which all bonds are broken, and which only will endure to live in the bliss of self-enjoyment’. Expressive self-realization becomes the principle of art appearing as a form of life… “I live as artist when all my actions and utterance … is for me only on the level of mere semblance and assumes a shape which is only in my power’. Reality attains the status of artistic expression only through the subjective refraction of the sensitivity soul, it is ‘a mere appearance due to the I’. The criteria of art becomes expression and exteriorization of subjectivity. Outwardness is replaced by inwardness, the referent is replaced by the sign and the symbol, by the mark of individual emotions, feelings or by comprenhension.

Aesthetic valuation of works of art becomes then the problem of originality and authenticity. A work of art is valid as long as express true sentiments and feelings and as long as those feelings, sentiments and thoughts are unique. Extraordinary experiences and revelations becomes the norm of modern art. The artist needs to open the doors of perception and access a realm not usually available and that is alien to ordinary people and their life experiences. Any kind of tool to access that realm is welcomed, all sort of intoxicating substances and excesses. The expressivist model becomes the norm not only for art but also for any other kind of practices,  technology is also understood as an extension of the personal capacities of the human being and his need for exteriorization.

Another thing is the problem of time consciousness which for the modern is embodied in the fleeting of the moment and the expectation of the future. The modern sacrifices the present and lives for the future. This idea reached its aberrant forms in the ideology of communism, where the totality of ideological constructions based on the dream of a better future gives shape to economic, social and cultural structures. But the idea of the future has been shattered by the same Marxist-Leninist regimes that put it into practice. By the predictions of politicians such as Nikita Khrushchev the future of communism should have been realized long time ago, since the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. In the conditions of today the concern is not about construction of a better future but about survival. We don’t look at the future today as something we are trying to achieve but rather as something we are trying to avoid. The direction of our gazes and concerns is thus oriented toward the present. What can we do to avoid making things worse, that is all that is in our minds. The thought of a modernity project lay astray by the forces of political and cultural perversion takes the shape of the question of the possibility of a different kind of modernity, an authentic modernity that doesn’t carry the negative aspects of the old modernity. In the way we answer this question depends our future. We better say yes and do the right thing or we will not be able to tell the story. So for the new modern the idea of the future doesn’t exist in its old form of emancipation but in its new form of survival and hope. If there is any epochal new beginning is the beginning of hope of survival, not of progress.

The problem of the breaking of separation between disciplines and spheres of life gets entangled with the problem of survival since globalization makes up for a need for universal consensus. But universal consensus is not going to be achieved if regional religions and ideas about society, morality and culture gets on the way of universal harmony. It is impossible to achieve a reunification of different specialties not just at the level of the scientific, moral, juridical and aesthetic disciplines but also at the level of world religions and their understandings of the world. The power of religion as a unifying force in society becomes a global problem since the issue is not so much about religion being able to unify people –and art as a substitute for the power of unification  of religion—as different world religions and the impossibility –or possibility—to make them reach a common ground of understanding.

This common ground of understanding between different cultures and religions if it achievable would be so by the working of individual subjects struggling to overcome cultural differences and all kind of prejudices, racisms, sexisms and classisms. In this regard the new conditions of mass communication favor the subject trying to achieve understanding and harmony. The death of the subject belongs to a certain time in history and we are witnessing a rebirth of the subject at least in media and mass communications. Social media and the Internet opens up the possibility for active participation in public affairs since subjects becomes shapers of public opinions. The passive communication structure of sender—medium---receiver is replaced by a two-directional structure of sender-medium-receiver and back. The subject of media is not anymore the unidirectional passive consumer of filtered news and editorialized opinion. The subject of media today is an active shaper of policy making.

What will become of the artist with new-found tools of social media and the Internet if not an active shaper of public opinion? The new artist goes outside the restrictions of aesthetics and becomes a trespasser of frontiers and boundaries, somebody who migrates back and forth between the different disciplines any time deemed necessary in order to exert influence in society. The expressivist model based on the individuality of the artist achieves a universalizing attitude not restricted to the aesthetic realm. The artist takes on a responsible role in society and sheds away its self-gratifying old modern attitude.

 

*This idea come from Jurgen Habermas’ “Modernity – An Incomplete Project” from which my paper borrow its title. Habermas says that “the differentiation of science, morality and art has come to mean the autonomy of the segments treated by the specialist and the separation from the hermeneutics of everyday communication. This splitting off is the problem that has given rise to efforts to ‘negate’ the culture of expertise. But the problem won’t go away: should we try to hold on to the intentions of the Enlightenment, feeble as they maybe, or should we declare the entire project of modernity a lost cause” (Habermas 1127). It seems to me that the main problem with the separation of disciplines doesn’t come from the need to specialization due to ever-expanding wealth of knowledge, but from society’s judgment of professions and professionalism.

The profession or activity of the artist is commonly associated with activities revolving around the idea of personal realization. Personal realization for the modern comes at the cost of practicality and instrumental reason. The abandonment of any reason of utility is the price to pay in order to step outside the grid of social relations, institutions and the state and open up to the true nature of the individual. The artist is thus perceived as the epitome of un-productivity, irresponsibility and amorality. On the other hand the respectability and social status that comes with the professions of the doctor, the lawyer and the scientist are seen as incompatible with the connotations of irresponsibility carried out by the figure of the artist. Thus no doctor or lawyer would dare to confess to his clients that he has a compartment were he dedicates time to the practice of art and aesthetic investigations.

Thus, one condition to make separate disciplines come together would be to shed away the negative connotations of being an artist and the aspects associated with it. Problem is that some artists think that they do need psychedelic experiences and over-stimulation in order to do their work --no matter how much drug use and over-stimulation has been exhausted by the history of art. Mass media also share a part of responsibility by implanting into the social mind and the artistic mind the idea of the need for drugs and alcohol to make good art. It doesn’t matter that all the good art that has been made through drug and alcohol abuse has been made already. Drug and alcohol fueled art has usually been shortly produced with the result that anyone else but the artist gets to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Artists need to be more socially conscious and abandon the idea that a life of art means a life of social and personal irresponsibility. Then the lawyer and the doctor would not have to worry about the consequences of being caught up as closeted artists.

An In-concluded Modernity Project (II)

Having laid out a worldview that is not based on the traditional oppositions of West/East, North/South, I’m now in a position to look at modernity and its emancipation program in a different way. The emancipation program of modernity calls for the freedom of the individual from economic restraints and the oppressions of society and its moral conventions. The discourse of modern art revolves around the ideas of identity and personal expression. The aim of the artist is to find, by giving form, the authentic self buried under a thousand layers of cultural history.  In the words of one of its paradigmatic figures, Paul Gauguin, Modernity’s aim as a movement is to realize where do we come from,  what are we and where are we going. Questions that in a cold war context were easily answerable but that in today’s situation are almost impossible to do so. Unless we look at modernity as an in-concluded distorted project, laid stray by forces of ideological interests.

The modernist discourse has been based on the duets liberal/conservative, capitalist/socialist/, revolutionary/reactionary. This Modern construct has become hegemonic. May I pose the question of how much conservative, right win, Republican art can we see at museums and galleries today?  How many painting, sculptures, installations or performances have we had witnessed in the past decade praising the glories of capitalism, conservatism, the war in Iraq, George W. Bush and Republicanism? Is not rather the opposite, that every single piece we look at in every gallery or museum today is rather an indictment against capitalism and the institutions of society? The most recent example, Banksy and the Simpsons episode have been highly criticized by Nelson Shin and other South Korean cartoonists as stereotyping and false. This is the proof that the modernist anti-hegemonic discourse has become hegemonic, it permeates our life and it covers not only the museum and the high arts but also the media and the so-called popular culture. But I may point out that this hegemonic Modernism is the kind of modernism that has been favored since the WWI until today? What I'm trying to promote today is a new kind of Modernism, one that doesn’t wither away with the illnesses and intolerance of the old Modernism. One that doesn’t exclude and oppose but that includes and fuse. This new Modernism doesn’t accept the old view that separates capitalism and socialism, first from third world, west from east, white from black from yellow from brown.

At the level of language the lack of clear-cut geopolitical, oppositional conflict structures indicates that is not possible to find answers in positive/negative; foreground/background; form/content terms. It also means the end of clear-cut boundaries between the disciplines and specializations started by Modernity. The divisions between the scientific, moral, juridical and aesthetic domains start to fall apart. These disciplines blend together. The practice of isolated artists struggling with formal solutions in his/her canvases gives way to a completeness realized in an interdisciplinary practice. The aesthetic producer is also a social scientist, a political activist or even a psychologist or a neuroscientist. The domains of the aesthetic, the moral, the legal and the authentic and truth are covered by the same individual who refuse to limit his/her life to the workings and solution of one specific problem circumscribed inside the aesthetic domain. The practice of art must not be separated from the theory of art --as it already happened in conceptual art. Fragmentation is put to an end. Art comes closer to life.

Call to nationalistic impulses and emotions of all kind must cease since nationalist “national purity and monolithic cohesion is only achieved at the cost of literal and figurative death of cultural hetereogenity and the distortion of history. (Homi Babha).

Canvases and papers are also Facebook and Twitter. Medium and turpentine are also interfaces and the Internet, paint and brushes are also Photoshop and Ilustrator. Every word an artist trace into social media is a mark of art. Every enunciation is an extension of a personal expression and an affirmation of an orange, red, yellow, blue or green individuality against the grey of a homogenising society. Share and Like buttons function as a link to a shared “life world”. Social media is the arena where private opinion is discussed and public opinion start to take shape. The post-modern argument of loss of shared space may not hold anymore in view of social media and the Internet.

An In-concluded Modernity Project (i)

 

One feature of thinking based on Cold War habits is that sees the world in opposites. Worldviews are those of East versus West –the U.S.S.R. and its satellites on one hand and the U.S. on the other; the wealthy countries of the North against the poor, colonized or neo-colonized countries of the South.

Discourses on these kind of oppositions permeated international forums such as U.N. and UNESCO during  the 1960’s and 70’s and started to dwindle after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today Cold War rhetoric still remains as the bad buried corpse of a long forgotten era to be revived by outmoded regimes such as Cuba and Venezuela.

As much as we would like to announce oppositional worldviews to be gone we have to come to terms with the reality of a different kind of oppositional worldview. The East versus West and North vs. South contingency has been replaced by one that, without totally erasing the geographical differentiation, makes up for a difference that doesn’t separate outside form inside as clearly as it used to be.

Let me use the image of the aircraft carrier to make more explicit what I’m trying to say. In order to reach and destroy its enemies the U.S. built aircraft carriers to use jet fighters across the seas of the world. Whether in Viet Nam or Iran the boundaries of clear-cut enemy lines were easily accessible and destroyable. Not so much today since the enemy either comes from within or from a blurred nowhere. The enemy is blended among us or comes from the ranks of a population that is mostly innocent though it carries within the seed of threat.

If we were asked to stretch and put a name to the antagonistic forces of the world today we would put in one side that extreme forms of violence and destruction called terrorism and on the other those who oppose their victory at any price --including the price of civilian victims—the anti-terrorism humanity.

When we think about cities and places victims of terrorist attacks the first thing that comes to mind are cities and places of Europe and the U.S., also Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, A quick look at Wikipedia will shed names out the list of usual suspects such as India, Russia, Israel, Greece, Philippines, Serbia, Rwanda, Colombia, Thailand, Burma, Turkey, Yemen, Algeria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Argentina, Oman, North Ireland, North Ossetia, West Bank, Denmark and Nigeria. Victims of terrorism belong as much to the wealthy countries of the First World as to the poor countries of the Third world.

Terrorism is blind; it doesn’t care who eliminates because people are only tools of disruption. Thus, worldviews based on opposition make sense only conceptually but not geographically. Poor people are as much as victims of terrorism as wealthy people. I could venture further and say that the real victims of terrorism are from the ranks of the poor since they are the ones that fly in commercial airlines or ride trains and buses to commute to work or go home. The rich doesn’t take the subway, they fly in their private airplanes or ride in the comfort of their chauffeured vehicles and helicopters; they are oblivious to terrorist attacks.

A look at a chart from the University of Maryland Start database on global terrorism will tell us that the since 1970 to 2008 the major proportion of terrorist attacks have occurred in Iraq. In second place comes India and in third place Sri Lanka; followed by Colombia, Peru, El Salvador, Pakistan, Phillipines, Guatemala, Turkey, United States, Lebanon, North Ireland, Spain and Chile.

The relation between attacks and number of victims achieve the highest contrast in Iraq, Sri Lanka, India, Colombia, Peru, Salvador, Pakistan and Guatemala, all of them third world countries. In a rich countries such as the U.S. there are few victims in proportion to the number of attacks. The reason for this is that places and cities with high population density are more likely to be more efficient target for terrorist attacks. The ratio of person by square meter determines the outcome of an explosion. It is not the same to detonate a bomb in Time Square during a Friday evening or Grand Central Station at 5 pm than in the morning in the first case or at noon in the second. By the same token increased security and anti-terrorist measures in cities like New York and London would make less likely the event of a terrorist attack than in a city such as El Salvador, Ciudad Guatemala or Belgrade, to name a few. Density of population, time and security are factors that determine the effectiveness of a terrorist attack.

http://www.start.umd.edu/start/

The period between 2004 and 2007 has seen a worldwide spike in terrorist incidents  --although not at the levels of 1995. The main burden of increase on terrorist attacks has been carried by the South Asia region with approximately 1600 incidents in 2007 and the Middle East and North Africa region with around 1400 cases in the same year; followed by the U.S.S.R. and the newly independent states with 215; Western Europe with 190; and at the end of the sad trail North America and Eastern Europe with approximately 40 incidents each in 2007 and the region of Australia Oceania with 7 cases. The great majority of terrorism cases have occurred and are occurring among the population of third world countries, especially those of the South Asia, Middle East and North African regions. In short, terrorism is feeding upon the poor of the world, not the wealthy ones.

Based on this data, the opposition rich versus poor; North versus South; East versus West doesn’t hold any longer. Terrorism is a movement of the poor against the poor. Terrorism is self-cannibalistic.

Sure, terrorism aims to disrupt the cycle of production and appropriation of wealth by the rich, but in doing so it has no other choice than to attack the foundations of the production of wealth and with it its most vulnerable objects, the producers. Workers that produce the wealth of the first world and the third world elites are easy to reach in the public transportation systems, in the places were people gather to buy food or clothes they need; in the buildings that give place to the bureaucracies of the state and in the resorts where workers and proletarians of all kind seek relaxation after a whole year of intense labor.

The sad truth is that since labor force is available everywhere, by destroying the producer, terrorism is not interrupting the appropriation of wealth by the capitalist, it is simply creating a way to replace it, the most dramatic way for sure, but one among the others such as lay off, accident and retirement.

To look at rich third world countries as enemies of third world countries is at least a distorted look at reality, at most a plain lie. To state that the oppressor and destroyer of the working class and humanity is capitalism and its relations of production is ironic since the real oppressors and destroyers of the proletariat in the big cities are the terrorists that use them in order to overthrow the capitalist elites and the status-quo.

Our aim is: To rise out of the distortions of reality and re-orient ourselves in search of realization of an in-concluded modernity.

 To look at the world with unbiased eyes, untainted by the pre-figurations of ideology and the ire of planted emotional impulses.

To disrupt the workings of political propaganda and settled worldviews.

To look in the eyes of the true enemy: terrorism.

To force a deal with productivity and distribution of wealth upon capitalism and state.

Clementi’s Immoral Deficiency.

What they did to Clementi at Rutgers was despicable. A show of perversion of a society that considers immoral to have your sexual way and abominable to be yourself. I believe that Clementi’s suicide decision had to do not only with the shame brought about by public exposure of an act that would have been considered normal and even boring by many if it wasn’t for the cultural fusses attached to it. The cultural mind of the masses enjoys to make an act of freak circus from what in their eyes doesn’t constitute normalcy. A dwarf; an elephant man; Saartjie the “Hotentote Venus”, become evidence of nature’s capacity for deviation and reinforce our ideas of self-excellence. A group in society looks at itself in the mirror of extraordinariness falling back satisfied by the confirmation that they are not part of the so called abnormal. Insecurity about which group we belong made us curious of freak circuses. We need to find testimony that we have a close to normal stature -compared to the smallest person in the world. That we don’t have a small penis compared to the Pygmy’s. That we are not gay compared to what Clementi is doing in the live Internet broadcasting. We confirm that we are not what we suspect we are, that we are not too fat or too skinny, too white or too yellow, too wide or too narrow; always in comparison to somebody else. That is why they needed to make a circus and live broadcast what otherwise would be ordinary, even boring. If it weren’t for our own needing insecurities they would have never dreamed of getting an audience.
What is most disturbing about Clementi’s case is not only the betrayal from his roommate and his Internet freak-show audience. It is the lost of trust in humanity. It is not only that you have to carry on with an artificially constructed sickness. It is also the burden of having been proved that you cannot trust anybody. That the person you live with, share your space, lunch, dinner, bathroom, library, cafeteria, coffee, is your worst enemy. Your comrade may be the snake under your bed.
Clementi was too young to develop cynicism. The freak circus people and their audience cut short his time to let grow and strengthen his ability to do damage, to destroy, to be a real sonofabitch. un hijoeputa. As time goes by developing your survival skills implies recognition that there are people out there that enjoy humiliating you. There are people out there who are so unhappy about themselves --and the things they have allowed society do to them-- that the only relaxation they can find and the only piece of happiness they can get comes from hurting others, putting them down, degrading them in the public eye. They use the apparent abnormality of an act or a person to create a false sense of security regarding themselves, their height, color, intelligence, achievements or sexual orientation.
If Clementi only had two or three more years to develop capacity for perversion he would have thrown his victimizer off the Washington Bridge -rather that throw himself. He was too sane to do that. His lack of moral immunoglobulins allowed for moral disease to get hold of his body. He suffered from a syndrome of deficiency of immorality and that was what killed him in the face of a bunch of malicious elements. Sometimes you have to develop disease in order to conquer disease, the same way that you need to be inoculated with typhoid cells in order to create defenses against typhus.
Exposed as a freak for being talented. Exposed as a freak for being an artist. Exposed as a freak on the Internet for being gay. It proved too much to deal with for young Clementi. Immoral deficiency can kill you.