Page 90 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 90
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
independent activity or sometimes as a pursuit, supporting some social ac-
tion, which acquires additional symbolic power through artistic gesture.
As much as the “nature” of art changed through the period of modernism,
this change provided new readings of whichever art considered as classi-
cal art. Therefore, Bourdieu‘s interpretations of Flaubert’s literature repre-
sent a new instance of a reflection on art, which consequently enables ar-
tistic practice to work with social facts as its “material”. Our starting point
in Bourdieu’s explanation of his approach, however, does not imply that we
are about to undertake a “sociological”1 research; I am just aiming at tak-
ing a point of view in accordance with the above mentioned transforma-
tions in modern history. What I have in mind is much more an implica-
tion of a founding of the need for exposing the singular (work of art) in its
meanings, positions, intentions, readability, paradoxes, and so forth in or-
der to grasp an artist and their work of art as an object in the framework
of aesthetics. Of course, this framework is changing through time. Espe-
cially after Benjamin‘s intervention in the field of theory of mass culture,
the framework is expanding by widespread usages of the methodologies of
multi-disciplinary theory. So Bourdieu’s positioning of science in a rapport
to art gives way to a positioning of art, or at least of a particular work of art
in the order of politics within a social space. This claim should be read as
the hypotheses, upon which I am continuing to discern particular features
of the politics of art.
Reversal of a Perspective
Are we nowadays abandoning all links between art and human happiness?
It looks very much so that one can never get rid of ethics. The perspective
taken by Bourdieu – and not only him – does not abolish all these aspects; it
actually puts a stronger emphasis on them. However, one question remains
pertinent in its radical articulation in the last instance: have artists ever re-
ally existed, or were they just figments of theoreticians’ and critics’ imag-
ination? The answer depends on historical moments and on social chang-
es as well as on the shifts in economic and political (power) structures. On
this background, another question arises as well: who believes that art has
ever been truly defined and clearly determined? This, on the other hand,
does not mean that art “functions” without definitions. On the contrary,
1 It would also be a rather disputable matter to reduce the complexity of Bourdieu‘s
theory to “sociology” as it is designated in more mundane terms in other contexts,
where sociology quite often happens to be deprived of a serious theoretical frame-
work.
88
independent activity or sometimes as a pursuit, supporting some social ac-
tion, which acquires additional symbolic power through artistic gesture.
As much as the “nature” of art changed through the period of modernism,
this change provided new readings of whichever art considered as classi-
cal art. Therefore, Bourdieu‘s interpretations of Flaubert’s literature repre-
sent a new instance of a reflection on art, which consequently enables ar-
tistic practice to work with social facts as its “material”. Our starting point
in Bourdieu’s explanation of his approach, however, does not imply that we
are about to undertake a “sociological”1 research; I am just aiming at tak-
ing a point of view in accordance with the above mentioned transforma-
tions in modern history. What I have in mind is much more an implica-
tion of a founding of the need for exposing the singular (work of art) in its
meanings, positions, intentions, readability, paradoxes, and so forth in or-
der to grasp an artist and their work of art as an object in the framework
of aesthetics. Of course, this framework is changing through time. Espe-
cially after Benjamin‘s intervention in the field of theory of mass culture,
the framework is expanding by widespread usages of the methodologies of
multi-disciplinary theory. So Bourdieu’s positioning of science in a rapport
to art gives way to a positioning of art, or at least of a particular work of art
in the order of politics within a social space. This claim should be read as
the hypotheses, upon which I am continuing to discern particular features
of the politics of art.
Reversal of a Perspective
Are we nowadays abandoning all links between art and human happiness?
It looks very much so that one can never get rid of ethics. The perspective
taken by Bourdieu – and not only him – does not abolish all these aspects; it
actually puts a stronger emphasis on them. However, one question remains
pertinent in its radical articulation in the last instance: have artists ever re-
ally existed, or were they just figments of theoreticians’ and critics’ imag-
ination? The answer depends on historical moments and on social chang-
es as well as on the shifts in economic and political (power) structures. On
this background, another question arises as well: who believes that art has
ever been truly defined and clearly determined? This, on the other hand,
does not mean that art “functions” without definitions. On the contrary,
1 It would also be a rather disputable matter to reduce the complexity of Bourdieu‘s
theory to “sociology” as it is designated in more mundane terms in other contexts,
where sociology quite often happens to be deprived of a serious theoretical frame-
work.
88
