Marx and the Aesthetic

Program

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Conference Program

Artists’ Links

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MILENA BONILLA
http://milenabonilla.info/

PHIL COLLINS
http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/photography+%26+film/ART309751

PEDRO REYES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8kKN9O73Ok&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksv4Fy_PyoY

RAINER GANAHL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxaxcnTxZ8
http://ganahl.info

ZACHARY FORMWALT
http://www.zacharyformwalt.com/

HANNAH FORBES BLACK

COLIN DARKE

Jan Kandiyali – Aesthetic Production and the Division of Labour (University of Sheffield)

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Karl Marx predicts that a communist society will be one in which work will come to resemble something close to art, in the sense that it will be creative, done for its own sake and provide an immense source of meaning to the worker. On Marx’s view, one of the main obstacles to aesthetic production is the division of labour. Thus, it is of little surprise that in those rare passages where Marx does provide an insight into the future communist society, he describes it as a society that has abolished the division of labour, thereby allowing individuals to develop and deploy their creative powers fully. Agreeable as this may sound, there are several problems with this argument. Most obviously, whilst the division of labour had an injurious effect on the individual, it had also tremendously increased the rate of production, thereby creating the type of material abundance that Marx thought necessary for communism. But more philosophically interesting is the Hegelian idea that the division of labour is both an identity-forming and solidarity-producing process. In the division of labour, Hegel argued, people are forced to focus on some things and not others in their lives, thereby particularizing themselves as persons, and also come to rely on another much more closely, in such a way that breeds a form of social solidarity. After making these criticisms of Marx, the paper ends on an optimistic note as I suggest that Marx’s notion of aesthetic production is in fact compatible with the division of labour, albeit one of a certain kind.

Sami Khatib – The Aesthetic of ‘Real Abstraction’: Reading Das Kapital with Alfred Sohn-Rethel and Walter Benjamin (Jan van Eyck Academie/Freie Universität Berlin)

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Explaining the peculiarities of the value-form, in the original 1867 edition of Das Kapital Marx employs a compelling allegory: “It is as if among and besides lions, tigers, hares, and all other real animals, which as classified groups constitute the various genera, species, subspecies, families etc. of the animal kingdom, there existed also the animal, the individual incarnation of the entire animal kingdom.”

Taking its cue from this allegorical image, my paper explores the aesthetic of what Alfred Sohn-Rethel called “real abstraction”. According to Sohn-Rethel (1978), commodity abstraction is not merely of metaphorical nature; rather it is quite “literal”, designating the complete absence of all qualitative specifications: it is “real” and “not thought-induced”, that is to say, this abstraction is not reducible to the intellectual faculties of the Kantian transcendental subject. The paradox of the value-form refers to a real process of exchange, an actually performed equation (x commodity A = y commodity B) that acquires, at the same time, the form of thought, that is, abstraction.

Without going into further detail about Sohn-Rethel’s logical and genealogical inquiry into the identity of the occidental thought-form and the commodity-form, I propose to read Marx’s nonmetaphorical image of the animal kingdom as a Benjaminian allegory. It is not only of anecdotal interest that during their Paris exile in the late 1930s Benjamin and Sohn-Rethel were close intellectual friends (see Hörisch 1983). Taking up his earlier theory of allegory as outlined in his book on Baroque Trauerspiel (1928), in his Arcades Project Benjamin conceives of the Marxian commodity-form as an allegorical form of perception. The commodity as allegory is not a mere personification (or ‘animalisation’ as in Marx’s image) but an aesthetico-social mode of signification (valorization), by which contingent and meaningless fragments, signifiers without significant content, can actually form and perform a meaning (value) labelled with a price tag. As an allegory, the commodity is the frozen, congealed crystal – in Benjaminian terms, “mortification” – of a political-economic totality. If all commodities can stand in for each other and each commodity can be expressed by every other commodity, we enter the “sensuous-suprasensuous” (Marx) sphere of commodity language – an allegorical language in which abstraction acquires a quasi-natural concrete form. By virtue of this inversion, things as commodities express a social relation in an allegorical way: every commodity “says” something different than itself, αλλη-γορεω. Ultimately, if we read Benjamin with Sohn-Rethel and Marx, the allegory is the aesthetic form of real abstraction, that is to say, the abstract, yet really-existing “animal” – the real abstraction – has a priori to be presupposed to allow for the allegorical speech-act of commodity language: 20 yards of linen = 1 coat = x money. The equals sign is the animal.

Roger Foster – The Two Forms of Value Creating Creativity in Marx (City University of New York)

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In the Paris Manuscripts of 1844, Marx claims that ‘whereas animals produce only according to the standards and needs of the species to which they belong . . ., man also produces according to the laws of beauty’. On the basis of an interpretation of the Paris Manuscripts, my paper will develop the claim that the early Marx’s critique of capitalism is founded on an idea of aesthetic alienation. Rather than, as it is often taken to be, centered on an expressivist theory of economic production, I will argue that Marx actually undertakes the critique of work relations under capitalism from the perspective of what I will call the ‘sensuously engaged subject’. The Paris Manuscripts can then be seen as posing the problem of alienation in capitalism through the construction of a contrast between two forms of ‘value-creating activity’. One of these forms is economic activity governed by the logic of exchange value. I argue that exchange value is essentially a form of the cognitive appropriation of nature which works through the abstraction from particularity and the assertion of formal identity. The second form is what I take to be an aesthetic appropriation of nature which discloses meaning through the power of things to excite and to deepen sensuous engagement. I will argue that these two forms of value-creating activity are not conceived by Marx as independent alternatives. Rather, his reading of alienation supposes that capitalism fatally shifts the balance between these two interdependent forms of engagement with the world. The formal, narrowly cognitive and abstract operation of the understanding, which is actualized socially in the form of exchange value, takes over for itself the exclusive right to determine the significance of things, thus pushing out the aesthetic, sensuously engaged form of disclosure to the margins of the social world. As Marx puts it in the Paris Manuscripts, the Sinn des Habens begins to take precedence over the Sinn des Seins. This means, then, that the critique of capitalism in this work must be understood from an aesthetic point of view. ‘Alienation’, for the early Marx, is a process in which aesthetic forms of meaning disclosure are pushed out of everyday social practice, and survive only at the margins. I will argue that Marx’s critique of alienation points towards a re-aestheticization of social practice, understood as the promotion and development of sensuously engaged responsiveness to nature, as the crucial element in overcoming alienation. In the final part of the paper, I will briefly explore how Marx derives some of the main elements for this conception from earlier German romanticism (particularly Schiller), and I will also show how this reading is compatible with later, C20th Marxist aesthetics (I focus in my paper on Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse).

Anna-Katharina Gisbertz – Cells, Body, and the Power of Abstraction: Marx’s “Anatomy” of Economics between Aesthetics and Sense Physiology (Universität Mannheim)

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Karl Marx’s early journal articles and poems present a high ambition to write while he continuously reflects on the style of his writing as an author. Obviously, Marx wants to be read and understood. His most famous work “The Capital” claims to be an analysis in the sense of a micronomical anatomy. To avoid boredom he requires the “power of abstraction” (“Abstraktionskraft”) from his reader. This power replaces any empirical account such as a microscope, or chemical reactions, as Marx argues. How is this possible?

In this paper, I trace Marx efforts to deal with his “power of abstraction” on the level of language and writing. I argue that Marx uses certain aesthetic tools (metaphors, images, stories) in order to make his ideas plausible. I draw from a couple of facts in order to make my point: 1) The first volume of “The Capital” is a new version of Marx’ previously published article “Kritik der politischen Ökonomie” (“Critique of Political Economy) of 1859. The writing and rewriting of this article allows for a close reading of Marx’ writing style. 2) Marx is familiar with contemporary writings on aesthetics such as Friedrich Theodor Vischers Aestethics (Ästhetik oder Wissenschaft des Schönen, 1844-57). Already in 1857, Marx is asked to write an article on aesthetics for the New American Cyclopedia. His notebooks contain excerpts from other articles on aesthetics. Even though Marx does not turn in the article, he is aware of the aims of aesthetics at the time – on Darwin’s influence, on the power of empiricism and sense physiology on the arts and aesthetics. Vischer’s subjective aesthetics is a key work for later empirically oriented studies (“Einfühlungsästhetik”) such as those of Rudolf Vischer, Theodor Lipps, and Johannes Volkelt.

The aim of this paper is to reread Marx’ Capital in the light of the mentioned empirically oriented aesthetics. Questions will address the confusion between empiricism and abstraction of the time, the relation of the writer to the world in terms of the dichotomy subjective/objective, and the question of the “whole” of the work, whether it is more than the sum of its parts. My methodology is inspired by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe as well as Joseph Vogl’s Poetologies of Knowledge in that I search for a hidden knowledge of diverse discourses such as Marx’ work and the works on aesthetics. I finally aim at reflecting on Marx’ ambitions to write (poetry, essays, science) in that I turn to a reader-oriented approach to Marx’ grand narrative.

Monique Roelofs – Antagonism and address: rallying aesthetic promises in Neruda (Hampshire College)

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The Marxist tradition in philosophy and the arts attributes a cultural promise to the aesthetic, namely the pledge that aesthetic activity engenders a culture for and by the people. How can this promise give antagonism an adequate place? By reading Pablo Neruda’s elemental odes and retooling conceptions of promising and address central to Marxist cultural criticism, we can make a reply to this question.

The Chilean communist’s odes posit the ideal of the harmonious co-existence of people, animals, objects, and plants in an egalitarian human community. Written between 1954 and 1959, the poems envelop the reader in a cycle of material interaction, desire, and love. Thereby they embody the promise of a culture for and by the people in everyday objects and events. This is evident in the odes to the chair, to the orange and to bread. These poems translate Marx’s slogan “Workers of all countries, unite!” into the material possibility and necessity of the pledge: “aesthetic agents of the world, go to build the culture of the future!” The poems offer an allegory of the cultural promise of the aesthetic.

The “Ode to Things” illuminates the aesthetic structure that holds up this promise. Weaving the reader into relationships that connect interpreters, creators, and things, this poem holds out the promise of humans’ intersubjective co-presence in a world they share with one another and their surroundings. Acts of creation and reception sustain ties of conviviality that are to bring together individuals and individuals and things. Such acts forge the bonds that underlie the cohesion of the promised community.

However, the elemental odes skirt fractitious elements, as the “Ode to the Table” illustrates. Neruda’s vision of interpretive and interpretable relationships expunges particularities that contest the projected harmony of the coming society, and restricts the desired aesthetic bonding within a universal public. The odes’ promise of culture nonetheless stands.

This is possible for three reasons: (1) the poems mobilize the trustworthiness as well as the unreliability of promising; (2) they draw on the promise’s anticipatory dimension; (3) they engage the reader’s collaboration in realizing aesthetic promises. Orienting us without guarantee to future possibilities, the odes are able to proclaim ideals of unity and generality, without having to come to terms with the antagonisms and differences that will have to find a place in the coming community and the struggle leading up to it. This means that behind the promise lurks a threat, a pledge to aestheticize a world in which certain differences are precluded from making the difference they should make. Theories of the aesthetic, accordingly, must register, in addition to the promise, the role of another mode of address, namely, the threat.

In engagement with Adorno’s notion of art’s promise, Althusser’s implicit conception of aspects of address, Benjamin’s address to cultural marginalia, and the address of Marx’s coat to Marx, which, Peter Stallybrass suggests, was of decisive influence for Marx’s address to the commodities, I explain where this leaves the cultural promise of the aesthetic.

Nicola Hille – Images of Marx in Painting: Diego Rivera’s murals (Universität Tübingen)

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The prominent Mexican painter Diego Rivera (1886 –1957) was an active communist. His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in Mexican art. Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals among in Mexico and the United States (San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City). In the autumn of 1922, Rivera participated in the founding of the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors, and later that year he joined the Mexican Communist Party (including its Central Committee). His murals, subsequently painted in fresco, dealt with Mexican society and reflected the country’s 1910 Revolution. Rivera developed his own native style based on large, simplified figures and bold colours with an Aztec influence clearly present in murals at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico City begun in September 1922, intended to consist of one hundred and twenty-four frescoes, and finished in 1928. Rivera’s radical political beliefs, attacks on the church and clergy made him a controversial figure even in communist circles. Leon Trotsky lived with Rivera for several months while exiled in Mexico. Some of Rivera’s most famous murals are featured at the National School of Agriculture at Chapingo near Texcoco (1925–27), in the Cortés Palace in Cuernavaca (1929–30), and the National Palace in Mexico City (1929–30, 1935). In the autumn of 1927, Rivera arrived in Moscow, accepting an invitation to take part in the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution. The following year, while still in Russia, he met the visiting Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who would soon become Rivera’s friend and patron, as well as the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art. Rivera was commissioned to paint a mural for the Red Army Club in Moscow, but in 1928 he was ordered out by the authorities because of involvement in anti-Soviet politics, and he returned to Mexico. In 1929, Rivera was expelled from the Mexican Communist Party. In November 1931, Rivera had a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Between 1932 and 1933, he completed a famous series of twenty-seven fresco panels entitled Detroit Industry on the walls of an inner court at the Detroit Institute of Arts. During the McCarthyism of the 1950s, a large sign was placed in the courtyard defending the artistic merit of the murals while attacking his politics as “detestable.” His mural Man at the Crossroads, begun in 1933 for the Rockefeller Center in New York City, was removed after a furor erupted in the press over a portrait of Vladimir Lenin it contained. In December 1933, Rivera returned to Mexico, and he repainted Man at the Crossroads in 1934 in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. This surviving version was called Man, Controller of the Universe. In 1940 Rivera returned for the last time to the United States to paint a ten-panel mural for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. In my paper for the conference ‘Marx and the Aesthetic’ I will concentrate on three of Rivera’s murals that depict Karl Marx in a prominent way.

Lu Xinghua – The Hangzhou Capital Film-Action (Tongji University)

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“Our products”, Marx writes in his comments on James Mill, “would be so many mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential nature.” The metaphoric of mirrors that reflect our essence (our species being) expresses a certain cinematographic impulse. Alexander Kluge has taken up this impulse in his “News from Ideological Antiquity”. But there are reasons to believe that the project of filming Capital is still not fulfilled.

With a series of events the Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thought at the China Academy of Art (CAA) in Hangzhou picks up the idea of Kluge and tries to continue the yet unfinished project of a Capital film. International artists, curators, theorists and students collaborate on a contemporary cinematographic vision on Marx’ Capital. But other than Kluge’s work, which is, ultimately, dominated by interview sequences on the metaphoric and reception of Marx, the Hangzhou project “Film Action. For A Not Yet Existing Film” focuses on dimensions of practice that Kluge had denied: Economic production and exchange, political interventions and a form of teaching that understand itself as interaction and intervention itself.

The key question of the project is the politics of community under conditions of developed capitalism. How can we conceive of forms of sociability that reach beyond the logics of capital and institute alternative modes of sharing the world? And how do these forms of sociability imply different forms and dynamics of the aesthetic as well. Marx was clear about the fact that capital constitutes a specific “form of objectivity” (which he also called “gespenstig”, “phantom-like”). It is therefore not only a manner of instituting the social but also implies a mode of subjectivity, a specific logics of perception.

The central idea of Film: Action is that to understand capital means to develop alternatives. Therefore Capital does not exist yet as a film and Film Action will not bring this film into life but rather outline the conditions of its possibility. Against the background of these complications the talk will give outlines of the discussions and experiences of the Film Action project and try to develop perspectives of Marxism as an aesthetic ontology.

Sven Lütticken – Filming Capital and Filming ‘Capital’ (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

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In my talk “Filming Capital and Filming Capital,” I will focus on a number of recent film and video essays by directors/artists such as Godard, Alexander Kluge, Allan Sekula and Noël Burch, Hito Steyerl and Zachary Formwalt. Not all of these works explicitly reference Eisenstein’s plan to make a film version of Marx’s Capital, as Kluge’s News from Ideological Antiquity does, but in one way or another they can all be seen as employing Eisensteinian dialectical montage to chart the flows of capital and reveal its abstractions in concrete images and juxtapositions. As far as time permits, I will discuss some of the different aesthetic strategies employed in the films, and focus on the dialogue with Marx in some of them.