Art and Politics

Hope against Hopelessness for the New Year

I am often accused of being an optimist. I write “accused” because I take it as a mistaken characterization. I think it suggests that I am naïve and unrealistic. And as it happens, I don’t think I am naïve or unrealistic, and don’t feel particularly optimistic. I actually have a rather dark view of the human prospect, one of the reasons I am more conservative than many of my friends and colleagues. That said, I do know why people think I am an optimist. It is because I understand my intellectual challenge to be to find the silver lining within the clouds, to try to find ways in which it may be possible (even if unlikely) to avoid the worst. Thus, my study of the politics of small things, which started with the proposition that after 9/11 “it hurts to think,” and also thus, my investigation in my new book of the possibility of “reinventing political culture,” showing that political culture is not only an inheritance that constrains possibility, but also one that provides resources for creativity and change.

In Reinventing Political Culture, I make two moves: I reinvent the concept of political culture and I study the practical project of reinventing political culture in different locations: Central Europe, the Middle East and North America. I plan to use the book to structure a deliberately considered debate early in the new year.  At this year’s end, I thought I would highlight some past posts which examine the power of culture and the way I understand it pitted against the culture of power, which also exemplify the course we have taken this year at Deliberately Considered and a road we will explore next year.

First, there is the link between small things and the power of culture. In a small corner of Damascus we observed people creating an autonomous world for poetry. Clearly the present revolution there is not the result of such activity, though it did anticipate change. But I think such cultural work makes it more likely that the post authoritarian situation will be democratic and liberal.

I am convinced that art as art, rather than art as propaganda is crucial to the power of culture. Quality rather than political purpose, conveying a partisan message, is the fundamental basis of the power of culture. The independent value of cultural work makes it most politically powerful, informing our understanding of the world, helping us see alternatives. This is the case near and far, now and then.

Yet, I know that the instrumental use of cultural quality, wit for example, can be powerful, most clearly revealed in satire. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have helped me survive our maddening times. I became a Daily Show – Colbert Report junkie as a way to maintain my sanity after the re-election of George W. Bush. But Colbert and Stewart’s shows are so powerful because of the excellence of their work itself. Thus a cultural highpoint in television history was Stephen Colbert’s White House Press Corps roast of President George W. Bush (video below). He speaks truth to power, on the cultural grounds of humor. A big surprise is how this humor still is so important during the Obama years.

I think when it comes to the power of culture text is more important than context. But context still can matter. Much of what we say makes sense only when we consider where we say it and with whom. Thus I appreciate the posts by Vince Carducci on Detroit, its art scene and its meaning.

Vince and I disagree about the role of propaganda in art. He thinks, drawing upon his readings of the Situationists, and other radical cultural theorists that all art is one kind of propaganda or another. I think, drawing upon such imaginative writers as Czeslaw Milosz and Milan Kundera, that art, when it is art, is not propaganda. I know that I am shaped in my judgment by my intensive experience in the culture of Central Europe, while he is shaped as he is by his experience in his home town, as its troubles intensely reveal  the crisis of global capitalism and its culture. I think that neither of us knows the truth, that our debate opens deliberate consideration of the power of culture, as an alternative to the culture of the powers.

This has been an ongoing debate this year at Deliberately Considered in the posts linked here but in many others. I hope we will continue in the New Year. Do have a happy one. I am not particularly optimistic, but, as Leszek Kolakowski once put it, I “hope against hopelessness.”

6 comments to Hope against Hopelessness for the New Year

  • Jeff, Thank you for the opportunity to engage in this conversation. As I think about it, perhaps “propaganda” is too severe a word. What I have intended in using it is to say that all art has political implications on some level. Your reference to Marcuse’s idea of “the aesthetic dimension” is a good one. There’s a certain aspect of utopian thinking, basically Manheim’s positing of the role of the free-ranging intellectual who must choose whether to be aligned with what Raymond Williams terms the “emergent” or the “residual.” The former are the utopians and the latter the ideologues. But there’s still a normative judgment in that equation. This is where Geertz attempts to move into a more value-free semiotic discussion. Though I have to admit that in my heart of hearts I’m comfortable with Manheim’s razor and that’s where Ranciere is having a lot to say to me these days.

  • Jeff, Thank you for the opportunity to engage in this conversation. As I think about it, perhaps “propaganda” is too severe a word. What I have intended in using it is to say that all art has political implications on some level. Your reference to Marcuse’s idea of “the aesthetic dimension” is a good one. There’s a certain aspect of utopian thinking, basically Manheim’s positing of the role of the free-ranging intellectual who must choose whether to be aligned with what Raymond Williams terms the “emergent” or the “residual.” The former are the utopians and the latter the ideologues. But there’s still a normative judgment in that equation. This is where Geertz attempts to move into a more value-free semiotic discussion. Though I have to admit that in my heart of hearts I’m comfortable with Manheim’s razor and that’s where Ranciere is having a lot to say to me these days.

  • Lisa

    The way I think of you is this— you believe politics are possible and going on all of the time and that, for the most part, over time, democratic politics usually prevail (not always, as you pointed out in your post on the dangers of political paranoia). I like reading what you have to say because you believe politics are possible. I find myself increasingly cynical (sign of the times) about political possibility, believing that we live in a corporate oligarchy and that the world is driven by economic interest above all else and politics are a kind of illusion we need and will continue to need. So when I think of Colbert’s roast of Dubya— in effect, calling him out and letting him know that he would not make jokes or pander and JS did the same on that bow-tie guy’s show— I am uplifted. Satire is (for me) the sign of a healthy democracy— and it has to run both ways. When the NYer did the cartoon of Michelle as a militant and Barack as a radical, it was also funny. It was playing on a (ridiculous) perception, exposing a racist fear that runs deep in the national consciousness. It had to be ambiguous to be satire and not political propaganda. Anyway, you are somewhat optimistic but that is a good thing— or at least an inspiring thing.

  • Regina Tuma

    Jeff,
    Thanks for all of your effort on Deliberately Considered. I have always appreciated your pointing to the alternative perspective. I find myself confused and disheartened by our political scene–all the more important to make sense of it. Looking forward to more Deliberately Considered next year.
    Regina

  • Jeff, Was reading Eric Olin Wright’s overview of the Real Utopias Project and there’s a good quote in it from Gramsci on the struggle for social justice as requiring: “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of will.”

  • Scott

    First: Happy New Year to all!!!!

    Second: Many had, and currently are, pinning their hopes on OWS, and I had always envisioned change enacted by OWS as a cultural transformation, both politically and economically. And I think this is where hope needs to have an active component. On New Year’s Eve in Liberty Plaza, it was encouraging to see that the active component of OWS is alive and well.

    Yet I can’t say whether one acts and so is hopeful, or is hopeful so then acts, but with hopelessness nothing is possible and so nothing happens. Yet hope without action can amount to the same. This, needless to say, is to be avoided. I think many had hope in Barack Obama, but after he was elected, sat back and waited for change to happen, which was a mistake. Things usually don’t happen that way. Change requires action every step of the way; I hope (there’s that word again) this is a lesson that doesn’t need to be re-learned.

    That’s just my assessment; I look forward to reading Prof. Goldfarb’s book.

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