The State, the Spectacle and September 11: Iain Boal,T.J Clark,Joseph Matthews,Michael Watts

1124134

 Western Aesthetics

The State, The Spectacle and September 11

Retort (Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews, Michael Watts)

 

Thesis statement: "We start from the premise that certain concepts and descriptions put forward forty years ago by Guy Debord and the situationalist International, as part of their effort to comprehend the news forms of state control and social disintegration then emerging, still possess explanatory power"

 

1.      Topic sentence: "the episode became an emblem"

 

Emblem - imagery - shock and awe - symbolic production

 

2.      Topic sentence: "These are the ambiguities, generalized to the whole conduct of war and politics over the past four years"

 

The news forms of state control and social disintegration - notions - the colonization of everyday life - society of the spectacle

 

3.      Topic sentence: "none of this means that we think we comprehend the whole shape and dynamic of the new state of affairs, or can offer a theory of its deepest determinants"

 

Left-recent wars - Security Council - Lenin's and Hobson's studies of imperialism

 

4.      Topic sentence: "what is new in the current dark circumstance still largely eludes analysis"

 

September 11 attack - demonstration of military supremacy – recolonization - in Afghanistan and Iraq-an historical regression

 

5.      Topic sentence: "the version of "spectacle" with which we operate is minimal, pragmatic and matter of fact"

 

World - historical force - Paradise Lost - epigraph

 

6.      Topic sentence: "the notion 'spectacle' was intended then, as a first stab at characterizing a new form of, or stage in, the accumulation of capital"

 

Spectacle - human sociability - forms of recreation - patterns of speech - idioms of solidarity

 

7.      Topic sentence: "the choice of the word 'colonization' to describe the process was deliberate"

 

Capitalist production - globalization - colonization

 

8.      Topic sentence: "the point of the analysis was to bring into focus the terms and possibilities of resistance against the colonizing forces; this in a situation, the later 1960's where it was not foolhardy, even if ultimately mistaken , to imagine 'reassembling our afflicted power' and doing real harm to the enemy"

 

Form of politics - state formation - surveillance

 

9.      Topic sentence: "first, that slowly but surely the state  in the twentieth century had been dragged into full collaboration in the micromanagement of everyday life"

 

Market's necessity - state's obsession - tension - modern state's constant armored other directedness - perpetual emotion machines - TV - dim pioneer

 

10.  Topic sentence: "the modern state, we would argue, has come to need weak citizenship"

Maintaining – impoverished - hygienized public realm - idiosyncratic civil society

 

11.  Topic sentence: "there is no place left where people can discuss the realities which concern them, because they can never lastingly free themselves from the crushing presence of media discourse and of the various forces organized to rely it"

 

The mechanism - social verification

 

12.  Topic sentence: "too many times over the past four years these sentences, in their very anger and sorrow at the present form of politics, have echoed in our minds"

 

Precision bombings - effect on the spectacular -martyr pilots - triumphs of power - proved negative

 

13.  Topic sentence: "Debord had a robust and straight forward view of the necessity, for individuals and collectives, of learning from the past"

 

Construction - made of obdurate - three dimensional materials - two way temporality - the essence of the human

 

14.  Topic sentence: "but even Debord sometimes took comfort from the recognition that the state too lived the nightmare , and would suffer the consequences"

 

Uncertainties of power - the cunning of reason - Bush and Blair's rush to war - faulty intelligence

 

15.  Topic sentence: "what then politically and strategically took place on September 11,2011"

 

Electing – atrocities - digitalizing the date - American power - conjured away - Fall of the Wall

 

16.  Topic sentence: "hopeless symbolic gestures"

 

Effectiveness - symbolic action - spectacle – state – wounded - flailing blindly

 

17.  Topic sentence: "is it necessary to state that because we refuse to extract the September bombings from the cycle of horrors over which the US has presided since 1945, and believe it necessary, if we are to understand then politically, to treat the events of September as an occurrence in a war of images , it does not follow that we fail to recognize the events' obscenity"

 

Attacks – calibrated - indelible image - haunted

 

18.  Topic sentence: "it matters profoundly, we are convinced that the horrors of September 11 were designed above all to be visible"

 

Visibility – marked - air terror - sponsored by terror - Dresden, Hamburg, Hiroshima - horror - unseen - presented - report

 

19.  Topic sentence: "September terror was different"

 

Believes - a picture worth a thousand words – effective – statecraft - circuits of capital - circuits of sociability

 

20.  Topic sentence: "and you will do it because there is no answer to our image-victory yet you have to pretend there is one"

 

Martyr pilots – demands – answer – military – vindicate - humiliation

 

21.  Topic sentence: "the terrorists followed the logic of the spectacle to its charnel house conclusion"

 

Debord's aphorism - encapsulation - World Trade Centre

 

22.  Topic sentence: "but we believe that only by recognizing what was truly modern in the martyr pilot's strategy-truly the opposite of a desperate, powerless, atavistic pinprick; truly the instigator of the state's present agony-will the Left be able to move toward argument with the new terrorism's premises and upshots"

 

Terror – machinery – amplify - visible happening of defeat - popular culture

 

23.  Topic sentence: "the logic of the pilots was part fantasy, we would argue, part lucidity"

Terrorist – succumbed - temptation of spectacle - exponents of idea - image power - rule imaginary earth

 

24.  Topic sentence: "now a new breed of bomber has understood that in the society they are attacking such networks of sociability are secondary"

 

Perpetrators - lack - means

 

25.  Topic sentence: "David Runciman has gone so far as to argue that what is happening amounts to a genuine mutation of the international system"

 

Hobbesian view - September attack - post Hobbesian age-insecurity - modern political life

 

26.  Topic sentence: "there are several things to be said in response"

 

Runciman's argument – reasonable – fearfulness - availability of weapons of mass destruction - embarrassment - used weapons - disintegrating arms market - material dominance

 

27.  Topic sentence: "we agree with Runciman that the September bombings are a distinctively modern symptom"

 

New structural feature - international state system - technological advance – rise - secondary market in arms

 

28.  Topic sentence: "let us simply assert here, with the problem of September specifically our object, that failed states seem to us a structural element of the international system"

 

Failed state – product - new universe of globalization - no ontological difference - successfully weakened and permeable states

 

29.  Topic sentence: "there is a link clearly to our previous argument about the necessity of weak citizenship of the state's internal health"

 

Weak state - imperial control dismantled - failed state - flourishing economy shatters - political entities - crash programs

 

30.  Topic sentence: "the events of September , it is common knowledge, were directly the creature of this world of despair"

 

Key phenomena- failed state- power of al-Jazeera - Islamist websites

 

31.  Topic sentence: "failed states are a hideous amalgam of the feudal, the Nasserite 'national', and the spectacular"

 

Cruel and mistaken ones – emerge - treadmill of pain and hopelessness

 

32.  Topic sentence: "to this list of the triumphs of power we should add one result which has proved negative: once the running of the state involves a permanent and massive shortage of historical knowledge , that state can no longer be led strategically"

 

Kissinger problem - tension - dispersal and vacuity of the public sphere - consumer society

 

33.  Topic sentence: "we do not believe that one can destroy the society of the spectacle  by producing the spectacle of its destruction"

 

Tactical dissent - strategic rejection of terror – image - event

 

34.  Topic sentence: "the spectacular state is obliged, we are saying , to device an answer to the defeat of September 11"

 

The invasion of Iraq - idea - sanctions - the manner

 

35.  Topic sentence: "Europeans were by no means the only rulers with a superiority complex vis-à-vis their subjects"

 

Displayed - systematic and self - conscious way - symbolic settings - ingenious

 

36.  Topic sentence: "an unusually wide range of symbolic settings"

 

Setting - ordinary, unimaginative - extraordinary - dehumanization - image

 

37.  Topic sentence: "it seems that the state does not know what to do in these circumstances"

 

Primitive accumulation – retrained – democracy - unexportable

 

38.  Topic sentence: "states can behave like maddened beasts, in other words, and still get their way"

 

Dimension of spectacle - interfered palpably - spectacular politics - the historical knowledge of defeat

 

 

Post-Partum Document by Mary Kelly : Laura Mulvey

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        Diana Joseph

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        1124108

                                                                                                           

 

Post-Partum Document by Mary Kelly

Laura Mulvey

Thesis statement:

As an artist she forces into public view the unacceptable combination of roles mother/artist – a slap in the face for old guard concepts of the artist as freewheeling genius; as a feminist she focuses on the contradictory emotions that necessarily come with motherhood, which have been almost taboo as a subject for art in male dominated culture.

Paragraph 1:

Topic sentence: Traditionally, the ability to produce children and the emotional relationship that ensues has been held up as the reason for women's lack of creativity.

Key words:

Mary Kelly's exhibition-Post-partum document – crucial contribution. Combination of roles mother/artist – freewheeling genius – motherhood – subject for art.

Paragraph 2:

Topic sentence: The exhibition was a direct provocation to conventional concepts of "art".

Key words: emphasis on work – than – art-object-for-critical-evaluation

Paragraph 3:

Topic sentence: The complexity of the language in Post-Partum Document and the many different ideas presented simultaneously did place a great burden on the spectator.

Key words:

Radical art practice – art works as purely objects – exhibition space to give documentation – the force of argument. Deprives object market value – meaning only if work put in by the artist – complemented by spectator – reading the documentation – understanding the theories.

Paragraph 4:

Topic sentence: Individually they may have been disparate without meaning, but linked and organized by the artists, the whole could take on a new level of significance.

Key words: real objects, records – collected together – evidence – particular economic situation.

Paragraph 5:

Topic sentence: In Post-Partum Document Mary Kelly uses her relationship with her infant son as her raw material.

Key words: exhibition two distinct parts – objects and records acting as factual evidence of the past – written separate documentation to give commentary and structure to the actual exhibits.

Paragraph 6:

Topic sentence: The completeness of the two is broken as the father as authority and the nursery school introduce the child to another world of "law and culture".

Key words:

First room – complementary relationship – mother's frustrated anxiety and the child's frustrated helplessness – smoothened by pleasure -  eroticism of physical interdependence – narcissistic satisfaction – completeness as a couple. Second room – child's gradual acquisition of language – mother cope with sense of loss – child social independence.

Paragraph 7:

Topic sentence: Her aim is to distance the emotion by putting the dilemma into a wider context: the way women's unconscious is shaped by patriarchy.

Key words:

Exhibits – reminiscent - women's traditional means of self-expression. Organises material – attempt to turn – unspoken and culturally repressed - everyday experience – into art – inspired by feminism and psychoanalysis.

Paragraph 8:

Topic sentence: Mary Kelly's use of psychoanalysis is a direct result of recent work by feminists and growing interest within the women's movement.

Key words: "feminity" – not as natural essence – complicated edifice – patriarchy demands – "masculinity" meaning and strength.

Paragraph 9:

Topic sentence: Mary Kelly evokes the impact that producing a child has on women whose unconscious desires are formed within the confines of the castration complex.

Key words:

Child grows – independence from mother – mother experiencing sense of loss – undergoing castration – re-learning the fact – negative place in symbolic order. Mother's possibilities - recognition and acceptance - or – rebellion. Rebellion – form of fetishisation of the child – refusing child's independence.

Paragraph 10:

Topic sentence: the exhibition throws a spotlight on the need to explore further the labyrinthine unconscious structures that lie behind the natural looking façade "motherhood", but Mary Kelly is limited by a theory biased – though not invalidated – by patriarchal assumptions.

Key words:

French psychoanalyst influence – Jacques Lacan – Post-Partum Document. Exhibition prevails – voice to the pain and pleasure of women as mothers – despised by dominant culture.

 

 

 

'On Non Objective Painting' & 'Popularity and Realism' : Bertolt Brecht

Neha Dhawan

1124114

Mapping of the essay

Bertolt Brecht, "On Non-Objective Painting"

Topic Sentence:

 I see that you have removed the motifs from your paintings.

Important words and Phrases:

No recognizable objects – communists – reconstruct a world which is not habitable – if you were not communists but subject spirits of the ruling class, I would not wonder about your painting- if  you were subject spirits of the establishment, you would do well to fulfil wish of your patrons by representations rather opaque, general and uncommitted – 'one must enjoy one's work, irrespective of what it accomplishes, of how it is to be done, or why'- 'one can enjoy a forest even if one doesn't own it' – most beautiful and important perceptions are composed of lines and colours - Strong emotions as love are lost if their living conditions are too bad – court painters – general, vague, unidentifiable perceptions- perpetual object of lines and colours – It is clear that motifs, recognizable objects in the painting, must, in our world of class conflict redeem the most diverse perceptions – profiteer – lackeys – 'differently' – as fits the thing - 'Master'- 'I am mastering'-   'With our tube of oils and our pencils, we can only reproduce colours and lines of the things, nothing more.' -  Nor should you say: 'There is much good in art which is not understood in its own time.' – Man in our times has been a wolf to other men and to say then: 'This will not be bought in our time' – Only the wolves have money to buy paintings in our times – Our paintings will contribute to seeing that it will not be.

Thesis Statement of the Essay: It is clear that motifs, recognizable objects in the painting, must, in our world of class conflict redeem the most diverse perceptions.

 

Mapping of the essay

Bertolt Brecht, "Popularity and Realism"

 

Paragraph I

 

Topic Sentence: Whoever looks for slogans to apply to contemporary German literature, must bear in mind that anything that aspires to be called literature is printed exclusively abroad and can almost exclusively be read only abroad.

 

 Popular as applied to literature - curious connotation - the prevailing aesthetic, the price of books and the police have always ensured that there is a considerable distance between writer and people. - Unrealistic, to view the widening of this distance as a purely "external"- upper layers - oppressors and exploiters - bloody battle - an open battle - "public."

 

Paragraph II

 

Topic Sentence: The demand for a realistic style of writing can also no longer be so easily dismissed today.

 

 Ruling classes- in view of the immense suffering of the masses- difficulties of little groups has come to be felt as ridiculous, contemptible.

 

 

Paragraph III

 

Topic Sentence: Therefore it is obvious that one must turn to the people, and now more necessary than ever to speak their language.

 

Ally against growing barbarism—the people – popular art and realism become natural allies.

- broad working masses- faithful image of life from literature -comprehensible and profitable to them—in other words, popular - The concept of popularity itself is not particularly popular - It is not realistic to believe that it is.

 

Paragraph IV

 

Topic Sentence: It is precisely in the so-called poetical forms that "the people" are represented in a superstitious fashion or, better, in a fashion that encourages superstition.

 

 A remarkable unity -tormenters and tormented, exploiters and exploited, deceivers and deceived - it is by no means a question of the masses of "little" working people in opposition to those above them.

 

Paragraph V

 

Topic Sentence: The history of the many deceptions which have been practiced with this concept of the people is a long and complicated one—a history of class struggles

 

Popular art - art for the broad masses - "the people themselves," the mass of producers who were for so long the object of politics and must now become the subject of politics- powerful institutions, artificially and forcefully gagged by conventions - the concept popular was given an ahistorical, static, undevelopmental stamp.

 

 

Paragraph VI

 

Topic Sentence: Our concept of what is popular refers to a people who not only play a full part in historical development but actively—usurp it, force its pace, determine its direction

 

 Aggressive concept of what is popular

 

Paragraph VII

 

Topic Sentence: Popular means: intelligible to the broad masses, adopting and enriching their forms of expression /assuming their standpoint, confirming and correcting it / representing the most progressive section of the people so that it can assume leadership, and therefore intelligible to other sections of the people as well / relating to traditions and developing them / communicating to that portion of the people which strives for leadership the achievements of the section that at present rules the nation.

 

Paragraph VIII

 

Topic Sentence: Now we come to the concept of realism.

 

Old concept- many people- many ends- cultural heritage by an act of expropriation - not cling to "tried" rules of narrative, venerable literary models, eternal aesthetic laws - we shall use every means, old and new, tried and untried, derived from art and derived from other sources, to render reality to men in a form they can master - literary criteria for realism - "atmosphere"- Our concept of realism must be wide and political, sovereign over all conventions.

 

Paragraph IX

 

Topic Sentence: Realistic means: discovering the causal complexes of society / unmasking the prevailing view of things as the view of those who are in power / writing from the standpoint of the class which offers the broadest solutions for the pressing difficulties in which human society is caught up / emphasizing the element of development / making possible the concrete, and making possible abstraction from it.

 

 

Paragraph X

 

Topic Sentence: These are vast precepts and they can be extended.

 

 Fantasy- originality- humour – invention- not stick to too detailed literary models- rigidly defined modes of narrative.

 

Paragraph X

 

Topic Sentence: Realism is not a mere question of form

 

 Sensuous mode of writing- realistic mode of writing - spiritual life of the characters - spiritual agitation of the heroes - Were we to copy the style of these realists, we would no longer be realists

 

Paragraph XI

 

Topic Sentence: For time flows on, and if it did not, it would be a bad prospect for those who do not sit at golden tables.

 

 Methods become exhausted; stimuli no longer work- Reality- modes of representation- the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new- oppressors do not work in the same way in every epoch.

 

 

 

 

Paragraph XII

 

Topic Sentence: Anyone who is not a victim of formalistic prejudices knows that the truth can be suppressed in many ways and must be expressed in many ways.

 

Paragraph XIII

 

Topic Sentence: I am speaking from experience when I say that one need not be afraid to produce daring, unusual things for the proletariat so long as they deal with its real situation.

 

People of culture - connoisseurs of art - "Ordinary people do not understand that." - the people will push these persons impatiently aside and come to a direct understanding with artists - agitprop art was a mine of new artistic methods and modes of expression – spiritual landscapes of bourgeois art - mistake to reject a style of representation because of a few unsuccessful compositions a style which strives, frequently with success, to dig down to the essentials and to make abstraction possible.

 

Paragraph XIV & XV

 

Topic Sentence: The criteria for popular art and realism must therefore be chosen both generously and carefully, and not drawn merely from existing realistic works and existing popular works, as often happens, by so doing, one would arrive at formalistic criteria, and at popular art and realism in form only.

 

Compare the depiction of life in a work of art with the life itself- formalistic procedure - do something for the intelligibility of new works - being popular - becoming popular.

 

 

 

 

 

Paragraph XVI

 

Topic Sentence: If we wish to have a living and combative literature, which is fully engaged with reality and fully grasps reality, a truly popular literature, we must keep step with the rapid development of reality.

 

Great working masses - industry and brutality of their enemies

 

 

Thesis Statement of the Essay: If we wish to have a living and combative literature, which is fully engaged with reality and fully grasps reality, a truly popular literature, we must keep step with the rapid development of reality.

 

 

MEl-132- Assignment

Hai sir
Here I attach my Assisgnment. Thank you sir for the classes

fr.sijupaul

Painting: The Task of Mourning: Yve-Alain Bois

Radhika Shenoy

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               1124119

THESIS STATEMENT:

[my paintings] are about death in a way: the uneasy death of modernism.

Sherrie Levine

PARAGRAPH 1        

Topic Sentence:

Nothing is more conservative than the apocalyptic genre

Jacques Derrida             

Nothing seems to be more common in our present situation than a millenarianist feeling of closure.

Supporting sentences:

Endless diagnosis of death(celebratory or melancholic)-death of ideologies(Lyotard), industrial society(Bell), the real(Baudrillard), authorship(Barthes), man(Foucault), history(Kojeve)-death of modernism(by everyone when they use the term post-modernism)-are these voices of mystagogy bearing the tone of Kant in About a Recently Raised Pretentiously Noble Tone in Philosophy? Derrida- Each time-no generic answer to this question-no single paradigm of the apocalyptic-no ontological enquiry about 'its' tone-different tone of the writings-misguided-perverse-to connect Barthes to Baudrillard, Foucault to Bell, Lyotard to Kojeve-examine the tone of the apocalyptic discourse.

Key words:

Feeling of closure, apocalyptic discourse.

PARAGRAPH 2

Topic Sentence:

I will focus here on a specific claim: that of the death of painting, and more specifically, the death of abstract painting.

Supporting sentences:

Two historical circumstances-whole history of abstract painting can be read as a longing for its death-recent emergence of neo-abstract painters-official mourners or resurrectors of abstract painting. First circumstance-when did it start?-where can we locate the beginning of the end in modern painting-feeling, discourse, representation of the end? New generation of interested painters-is abstract painting still possible? Is abstract or any kind of painting possible? is abstract painting, sculpture, film, modes of thought still possible? Apocalyptic question-is anything, life, desire, etc. still possible?

Key words:

Abstract painting.

PARAGRAPH 3

Topic sentence:

The question about the beginning of the end and the question about the (still) possibility of painting are historically linked: it is the question about the (still) possibility of painting which is at the beginning of the end which is at the beginning of the end which has been our history, namely what we are accustomed to name modernism.

Supporting sentences:

Enterprise of modernism-abstract painting-emblem-couldn't have functioned without an apocalyptic myth. Freed from all extrinsic conventions-abstract painting-bring forth pure parousia of its own essence-tell the final truth thereby terminate its course. Pure beginning, liberation from tradition, zero degree-proposed by first generation of abstract painters-as an omen of the end. Through Historicism and essentialism of abstract painting-the enterprise of abstract painting understood its birth as a calling for its end. Malevich-no question of painting in Suprematism-painting ended long ago-artist prejudice of the past. Mondrain-his painting was preparing for the end which would occur once absolute essence of painting was determined. Abstract painting-do not imagine the feeling of the end is solely a function of its essentialism-necessary to interpret essentialism as the effect of larger historical crisis-industrialization-appearance of  photography and mass production-caused the end of painting. Mass production-end of painting- misc-en-scene – invention of the readymade. Challenge-mechanical apparatus of photography and mass production-painting had to redefine its status, to reclaim a specific domain.

Key words:

Abstract painting as emblem of modernism, zero degree, industrialization, photography, mass production.

PARAGRAPH 4

Topic sentence:

The beginnings of this agonistic struggle have been well described by Meyer Schapiro: the emphasis on the touch, on texture, and on gesture in modern painting is a consequence of the division of labour inherent in industrial production.

Supporting sentences:

Industrial capitalism-banished hands from the process of production-work of art-manual handling-workers compelled to demonstrate exceptional nature of their mode of production. Courbet to Pollock-a practice of one-upmanship. Present day 'returns to painting' a farcical repetition of this historical progression.

 

PARAGRAPH 5

Topic sentence:

Benjamin once noted that the easel painting was born in the Middle Ages, and that nothing guarantees that it should remain forever. But are we left with these alternatives: either a denial of the end or an affirmation of the end of the end?

Supporting sentences:

Theory of games-Hubert Damisch-dissociates generic game from the specific game (play). How can one determine what in their exchange is in the order of play and what is in the order of the game? It does not propose homogeneous time either. This strategic approach deciphers painting-agonistic field-nothing is ever terminated or decided once and for all-dismisses all certitudes of absolute truths  upon which apocalyptic discourse is based-fiction of the end of art-confusion between the end of the game itself and that of such and such a play.

Key words:

Theory of game, Generic game, Play.

PARAGRAPH 6

Topic sentence:

One can conclude then, that, if the play 'modernist painting' is finished, it does not necessarily mean that the game 'painting' is finished: many years to come are ahead for this art.

Supporting sentences:

Complicated situation: play 'modernist painting' was the play of the end of painting-a response to both, feeling of the end and working through of the end-historically determined by the fact of industrialisation. To claim 'end of painting' is finished is to claim that this historical situation is no longer ours-depicts naivety when it appears that reproducibility and fetishization have permeated all aspects of our life: have become our 'natural' world.

Key words:

Industrialization, reproducibility, fetishization.

PARAGRAPH 7

Topic sentence:

Mourning has been the activity of painting throughout this century.

Supporting sentences:

'To be modern is to know that which is not possible anymore', Roland Barthes. Work of mourning doesn't necessarily become pathological-feeling of end-produced a cogent history of modernist painting-probably promptly buried by us. Painting might not be dead. Vitality will be tested once we are cure of our mania and our melancholy-belief in our ability to act in history-accept the project of working through the end rather than evading it through elaborate defence mechanisms-settle our historical task-the task of mourning. Potential for painting will emerge in the conjunctive deconstruction of the three instances which has been dissociated by the modernist painitng-predictions are made to be wrong. Desire for painting remains-not entirely programmed or subsumed by the market-sole factor of a future possibility of painting-non-pathological mourning. Robert Musil-if some painting is still to come, if painters are still to come, they will not come from where we expect them to.

Key words:

Mourning, conjunctive deconstruction of the three instances which modernist painting has dissociated.