Page 89 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 89
counter-identification and politics of art
that the part of his work, dealing with art, demonstrates and opens more
than just a possibility for articulations of many different perceptions of ar-
tistic production. At the same time, this means that an artistic activity be-
comes determined in a field of the reflexive symbolic practice, which is un-
doubtedly recognised and anchored in his sociology.
Therefore, when Richard Shusterman, commenting on Bourdieu and
his quest for a “generative formula” of art, says that “there are other mod-
els of understanding and interpretation that are more immediate and expe-
riential” (Shusterman, 2009: p. 6), he overlooks Bourdieu’s point. Bourdieu
indeed does not deny the existence of “other models”, but he draws our at-
tention to the approach, which is (not rarely quite aggressively) excluded by
many such other models. His focused analysis, therefore, cannot be taken
as any “reducing [of] all artistic creation and appreciation to social mecha-
nisms” (Ibid.). On the contrary, Bourdieu shows how certain perceptions of
art, based on some philosophies such as Heidegger’s and Gadamer‘s, exact-
ly reduce art to categories of the “ineffable”. Additionally, it does not mat-
ter whether they are linked or not at all to the notion of beauty. What they
do is to suppress the awareness of unavoidable agencies in a social space,
including so-called social mechanisms and the role of schemas of percep-
tion. Later in his text Shusterman demonstrates himself how art is readable
in the coordinates of the social space, acknowledging “an impact” that art
“has on our social and ethical attitudes” (Ibid.: p.7).
Anyway, such misunderstandings and/or shifts of emphasis and focus
mark the field, into which my writing in this chapter is inscribed. It seems
to me, that putting art into any relation to politics implies a whole range of
notions and categories within a framework of a concept of society and es-
pecially within the framework of the idea of culture as a homonym of the
notion of “society” – at least from the period of the 1960s, when the concept
of culture was increasingly becoming a part of cognitive maps of society.
Hence, this approach to art does not “reduce” it, but it actually expands the
field of its relevance and broadens the framework for understanding of it.
Some political concepts in a framework of so-called politics of recog-
nition were attached to distinct social groups, which were characterised by
their “cultural” features. “Above all the idea of recognition has been used
to develop an alternative to normative thought grounded in what has been
called the ‘philosophy of the subject‘” (McNay, 2008: p. 61). Besides this,
the idea of recognition played a significant role in shaping the field of pol-
itics in practical terms and, as it happened, art entered this domain as an
87
that the part of his work, dealing with art, demonstrates and opens more
than just a possibility for articulations of many different perceptions of ar-
tistic production. At the same time, this means that an artistic activity be-
comes determined in a field of the reflexive symbolic practice, which is un-
doubtedly recognised and anchored in his sociology.
Therefore, when Richard Shusterman, commenting on Bourdieu and
his quest for a “generative formula” of art, says that “there are other mod-
els of understanding and interpretation that are more immediate and expe-
riential” (Shusterman, 2009: p. 6), he overlooks Bourdieu’s point. Bourdieu
indeed does not deny the existence of “other models”, but he draws our at-
tention to the approach, which is (not rarely quite aggressively) excluded by
many such other models. His focused analysis, therefore, cannot be taken
as any “reducing [of] all artistic creation and appreciation to social mecha-
nisms” (Ibid.). On the contrary, Bourdieu shows how certain perceptions of
art, based on some philosophies such as Heidegger’s and Gadamer‘s, exact-
ly reduce art to categories of the “ineffable”. Additionally, it does not mat-
ter whether they are linked or not at all to the notion of beauty. What they
do is to suppress the awareness of unavoidable agencies in a social space,
including so-called social mechanisms and the role of schemas of percep-
tion. Later in his text Shusterman demonstrates himself how art is readable
in the coordinates of the social space, acknowledging “an impact” that art
“has on our social and ethical attitudes” (Ibid.: p.7).
Anyway, such misunderstandings and/or shifts of emphasis and focus
mark the field, into which my writing in this chapter is inscribed. It seems
to me, that putting art into any relation to politics implies a whole range of
notions and categories within a framework of a concept of society and es-
pecially within the framework of the idea of culture as a homonym of the
notion of “society” – at least from the period of the 1960s, when the concept
of culture was increasingly becoming a part of cognitive maps of society.
Hence, this approach to art does not “reduce” it, but it actually expands the
field of its relevance and broadens the framework for understanding of it.
Some political concepts in a framework of so-called politics of recog-
nition were attached to distinct social groups, which were characterised by
their “cultural” features. “Above all the idea of recognition has been used
to develop an alternative to normative thought grounded in what has been
called the ‘philosophy of the subject‘” (McNay, 2008: p. 61). Besides this,
the idea of recognition played a significant role in shaping the field of pol-
itics in practical terms and, as it happened, art entered this domain as an
87
