Monday, December 5, 2016
The Messianic in the Law - exegesis of the maxim salus populi suprema lex esto
The Messianic in the Law: Rule, Exception, Health, and the Emancipatory Potential of the Legal Maxim Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto (University of Bologna Law Review)
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
Pseudo-Democracy > Reparations > Actual Democracy
originally published on CounterPunch
It is hardly a coincidence that the Declaration of Independence, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's On the Natural Variety of Mankind were all published within a year of one another, for each supports a necessary aspect of a larger, integrated project. Not only was the rationale for seizing political power (provided by the Declaration) supported by Smith's popular text (which justified rule by the wealthy business class). Because this wealth and power was contingent on slavery, and territories seized by conquest, Blumenbach's theory that the "Caucasian race" (a designation he coined, by the way) was the supreme race was also instrumental in justifying and reinforcing the new political economic order.
Prior to Blumenbach, the Swedish scholar Carl Linnaeus' theory that there were four geographically defined races provided the accepted taxonomical understanding of human diversity. Among his innovations, Blumenbach not only added a fifth race, he arranged the five in an hierarchy, placing the "Caucasian" at the top. And even though this pseudo-scientific theory has been debunked repeatedly over the years, by such mainstream sources as PBS no less, the superstition of racial superiority, inferiority, and genetics continues to influence thought. This, of course, is not to say that a person of African origin, for instance, and a person of European origin have no genetic differences. However, not only are there often greater genetic variations within a so-called race than between people said to belong to different races, what counts as a racial trait or characteristic is completely arbitrary. Indeed, racial classifications changed repeatedly historically according to the need to rationalize political and economic exploitation. Consequently, while there is no such thing as race in an anthropological sense, the concept of race does have a sociological meaning involving socially constructed identities and differences. In addition to Africans and Asians, for instance, the Irish were classified by the British as a different race in order to justify maintaining Ireland as a colony. And, in the 19th century, even the poor (that heterogeneous class) were regarded as a distinct race in the US - as were Italians, and others, who "became white" after World War II.
As such, it is not only the case that poverty and race, like race and wealth, cannot be easily disentangled. This entanglement, and the relations of domination it implies, demonstrates that poverty is, in general, not just a condition marked by the absence of economic power. Poverty refers to a lack – or, more accurately, to a deprivation – of economic and political power. Visible in high rates of incarceration, and epidemic levels of preventable diseases, among other socially produced injuries, in it purest form this weakness manifests as the slave. In light of this, it is no coincidence that the term injury is not just etymologically related but conceptually related to the notion of injustice. And justice, if it means anything at all, requires that the ongoing injuries of poverty be repaired. But how is a society to repair such injuries? What must be accomplished in order to correct the deeply entrenched and entangled injustices of the present social situation? What type of repairs, or reparations, must be made?
The concept of reparations, of course, requires clarification. In certain respects the concept overlaps with the equitable notion of restitution – according to which, if justice is to be effectuated, a party injured or harmed by another must be made whole (repaired) by the injurer. As Ta-Nehisi Coates has so eloquently argued, there is no question that the African American community has been monumentally harmed by the political and economic institutions of the United States. In addition to more recent forms of racial discrimination (and its obverse, racial privilege) such as redlining and blockbusting, few industries have not benefited, directly or indirectly, from racism. From insurance companies (such as Aetna) who profited enormously from the institution of slavery, to industrial and agricultural companies, not to mention banks, finance, and real estate interests, tremendous fortunes were made – and, importantly, continue to be enjoyed – from the systemic abuse and exploitation of millions of people. Not only did slaves build the White House, as Michelle Obama reminded us earlier this week; the labor of those slaves continues to reverberate in the walls and halls of the White House, and other structures, in the form of value (monetary, and otherwise). Derived from an injustice, this type of enrichment is articulated in the law by the doctrine of unjust enrichment.
Based on the ancient Roman legal maxim nemo locupletari potest aliena iactura, the doctrine of unjust enrichment holds that when one is enriched at another's expense a duty arises to rectify this by disbursing the unjustly acquired enrichment. To take a standard example, if X trespasses over Y's property every day, and saves a hundred dollars over the course of a year because of this, X would be unjustly enriched by a hundred dollars. Even if no concrete harm is suffered by Y, X would have to return a hundred dollars to Y. If we apply the mainstream doctrine of unjust enrichment, then, to the overall social situation, there is no question that the African American community ought to be reimbursed, and not merely for the collective injustice suffered. Those who profited from this suffering (and continue to enjoy the wealth and privilege derived from such suffering) should be dispossessed of their unjustly attained advantage.
In addition to the African American community, though, we must not neglect to consider the fact that the fields their ancestors slaved over were taken by force. Contrary to legally binding treaties, the conquest and appropriation of the continent not only involved the murder of millions, it continues to harm millions of Native Americans. Therefore, according to the doctrine of unjust enrichment, the fortunes derived from exploiting the continent (much of which is also currently accruing interest) ought to also be divested from those unjustly enriched, and returned to those unjustly deprived.
This, however, does not satisfy a radical interpretation of the doctrine of unjust enrichment. In spite of the fact that African Americans and indigenous people have suffered inordinately, and continue to suffer from poverty and other institutional harms as a result of historical wrongs, immigrants from across the world (Ireland, Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe, Western, Central, Southern, and Eastern Asia, and the rest of the Americas, among other places) have suffered generations of exploitation as well. From coal mines, to fields, to countless sweatshops and factories, generations of people have lost limbs, lives, and well-being producing tremendous wealth and power for a small class of people. All of which is to say, when discussing the issue of reparations and social justice, we must address the fact that (according to the doctrine of unjust enrichment, at least) most people in this society – the urban poor, the rural poor, the working class, the shrinking middle class – deserve some form of reparation.
Because money and property wind up spreading poverty far more than wealth, instead of thinking about reparations as the distribution or redistribution of money, or other commodities (which are alienable), we should recognize that actual justice and peace requires a social arrangement that is not regulated by the drive for profit (i.e., actual peace requires non-exploitative social relations). Unlike the racist, sexist, pseudo-democracy of the Founders, an actually democratic society requires not just inalienable rights; the concrete preconditions for the realization of these rights must be inalienable (that is, not for sale), too. So, instead of the distribution of commodities, actual social justice demands that the goal of reparations ought to be the de-commodification of those conditions necessary for an actually just society. Instead of producing conditions (such as housing, nutritious food, water, health care, a healthy environment, education, and other resources and conditions) necessary for the realization of an actually just society in exchange for something else, then, (for profit), these conditions should be produced as ends, for their own sake, unconditionally.
Beyond calls for the demilitarization of the police (not to mention the abolition of the United States’ metastasizing prison system, debt amnesty, an end to endless war, and environmental justice), actual, concrete peace requires the righting of historical wrongs, and reparations. Instead of redistributing property, however, which only rearranges and reproduces injustice, actual justice (and actual democracy, as opposed to pseudo-democracy) demands freedom from the tyranny of property altogether - i.e., its de-commodification.
It is hardly a coincidence that the Declaration of Independence, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's On the Natural Variety of Mankind were all published within a year of one another, for each supports a necessary aspect of a larger, integrated project. Not only was the rationale for seizing political power (provided by the Declaration) supported by Smith's popular text (which justified rule by the wealthy business class). Because this wealth and power was contingent on slavery, and territories seized by conquest, Blumenbach's theory that the "Caucasian race" (a designation he coined, by the way) was the supreme race was also instrumental in justifying and reinforcing the new political economic order.
Prior to Blumenbach, the Swedish scholar Carl Linnaeus' theory that there were four geographically defined races provided the accepted taxonomical understanding of human diversity. Among his innovations, Blumenbach not only added a fifth race, he arranged the five in an hierarchy, placing the "Caucasian" at the top. And even though this pseudo-scientific theory has been debunked repeatedly over the years, by such mainstream sources as PBS no less, the superstition of racial superiority, inferiority, and genetics continues to influence thought. This, of course, is not to say that a person of African origin, for instance, and a person of European origin have no genetic differences. However, not only are there often greater genetic variations within a so-called race than between people said to belong to different races, what counts as a racial trait or characteristic is completely arbitrary. Indeed, racial classifications changed repeatedly historically according to the need to rationalize political and economic exploitation. Consequently, while there is no such thing as race in an anthropological sense, the concept of race does have a sociological meaning involving socially constructed identities and differences. In addition to Africans and Asians, for instance, the Irish were classified by the British as a different race in order to justify maintaining Ireland as a colony. And, in the 19th century, even the poor (that heterogeneous class) were regarded as a distinct race in the US - as were Italians, and others, who "became white" after World War II.
As such, it is not only the case that poverty and race, like race and wealth, cannot be easily disentangled. This entanglement, and the relations of domination it implies, demonstrates that poverty is, in general, not just a condition marked by the absence of economic power. Poverty refers to a lack – or, more accurately, to a deprivation – of economic and political power. Visible in high rates of incarceration, and epidemic levels of preventable diseases, among other socially produced injuries, in it purest form this weakness manifests as the slave. In light of this, it is no coincidence that the term injury is not just etymologically related but conceptually related to the notion of injustice. And justice, if it means anything at all, requires that the ongoing injuries of poverty be repaired. But how is a society to repair such injuries? What must be accomplished in order to correct the deeply entrenched and entangled injustices of the present social situation? What type of repairs, or reparations, must be made?
The concept of reparations, of course, requires clarification. In certain respects the concept overlaps with the equitable notion of restitution – according to which, if justice is to be effectuated, a party injured or harmed by another must be made whole (repaired) by the injurer. As Ta-Nehisi Coates has so eloquently argued, there is no question that the African American community has been monumentally harmed by the political and economic institutions of the United States. In addition to more recent forms of racial discrimination (and its obverse, racial privilege) such as redlining and blockbusting, few industries have not benefited, directly or indirectly, from racism. From insurance companies (such as Aetna) who profited enormously from the institution of slavery, to industrial and agricultural companies, not to mention banks, finance, and real estate interests, tremendous fortunes were made – and, importantly, continue to be enjoyed – from the systemic abuse and exploitation of millions of people. Not only did slaves build the White House, as Michelle Obama reminded us earlier this week; the labor of those slaves continues to reverberate in the walls and halls of the White House, and other structures, in the form of value (monetary, and otherwise). Derived from an injustice, this type of enrichment is articulated in the law by the doctrine of unjust enrichment.
Based on the ancient Roman legal maxim nemo locupletari potest aliena iactura, the doctrine of unjust enrichment holds that when one is enriched at another's expense a duty arises to rectify this by disbursing the unjustly acquired enrichment. To take a standard example, if X trespasses over Y's property every day, and saves a hundred dollars over the course of a year because of this, X would be unjustly enriched by a hundred dollars. Even if no concrete harm is suffered by Y, X would have to return a hundred dollars to Y. If we apply the mainstream doctrine of unjust enrichment, then, to the overall social situation, there is no question that the African American community ought to be reimbursed, and not merely for the collective injustice suffered. Those who profited from this suffering (and continue to enjoy the wealth and privilege derived from such suffering) should be dispossessed of their unjustly attained advantage.
In addition to the African American community, though, we must not neglect to consider the fact that the fields their ancestors slaved over were taken by force. Contrary to legally binding treaties, the conquest and appropriation of the continent not only involved the murder of millions, it continues to harm millions of Native Americans. Therefore, according to the doctrine of unjust enrichment, the fortunes derived from exploiting the continent (much of which is also currently accruing interest) ought to also be divested from those unjustly enriched, and returned to those unjustly deprived.
This, however, does not satisfy a radical interpretation of the doctrine of unjust enrichment. In spite of the fact that African Americans and indigenous people have suffered inordinately, and continue to suffer from poverty and other institutional harms as a result of historical wrongs, immigrants from across the world (Ireland, Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe, Western, Central, Southern, and Eastern Asia, and the rest of the Americas, among other places) have suffered generations of exploitation as well. From coal mines, to fields, to countless sweatshops and factories, generations of people have lost limbs, lives, and well-being producing tremendous wealth and power for a small class of people. All of which is to say, when discussing the issue of reparations and social justice, we must address the fact that (according to the doctrine of unjust enrichment, at least) most people in this society – the urban poor, the rural poor, the working class, the shrinking middle class – deserve some form of reparation.
Because money and property wind up spreading poverty far more than wealth, instead of thinking about reparations as the distribution or redistribution of money, or other commodities (which are alienable), we should recognize that actual justice and peace requires a social arrangement that is not regulated by the drive for profit (i.e., actual peace requires non-exploitative social relations). Unlike the racist, sexist, pseudo-democracy of the Founders, an actually democratic society requires not just inalienable rights; the concrete preconditions for the realization of these rights must be inalienable (that is, not for sale), too. So, instead of the distribution of commodities, actual social justice demands that the goal of reparations ought to be the de-commodification of those conditions necessary for an actually just society. Instead of producing conditions (such as housing, nutritious food, water, health care, a healthy environment, education, and other resources and conditions) necessary for the realization of an actually just society in exchange for something else, then, (for profit), these conditions should be produced as ends, for their own sake, unconditionally.
Beyond calls for the demilitarization of the police (not to mention the abolition of the United States’ metastasizing prison system, debt amnesty, an end to endless war, and environmental justice), actual, concrete peace requires the righting of historical wrongs, and reparations. Instead of redistributing property, however, which only rearranges and reproduces injustice, actual justice (and actual democracy, as opposed to pseudo-democracy) demands freedom from the tyranny of property altogether - i.e., its de-commodification.
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
The World Is a Gas Chamber
published originally on CounterPunch
The world is a gas chamber, and not just in the general sense that the world’s a type of chamber (a vaulted space) filled with gas (nitrogen, oxygen, etc.). The world is (or, rather, since the industrial revolution, has become) a gas chamber in the particular sense of a space filled with poison gas, that kills people, animals, etc. Yes, although they’re most notorious for killing people with hydrogen cyanide, gas chambers are also known to use carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide to kill whatever happens to find itself trapped within their confines.
And, did you hear? The carbon dioxide-reading research stations of the planet, including those in Antarctica, now register (and are expected to continue to register for decades) concentrations exceeding 400 parts per million. A level not seen in 4 million years, incompatible with life as we know it, the gas chamber we’ve made of the planet has just reached a new degree of lethality.
Unlike the gas chambers of the Nazi genocide (or, closer to home, the constellation of gas chambers used to execute – often innocent – prisoners throughout the US), the gas chamber that the world has become is not being filled with poison gas for the purpose of killing people, and other animals.
Yet, in spite of this lack of intent, widespread harm and death is a completely foreseeable consequence of our particularly exploitative political-economic system. That is, though widespread killing (the sixth great extinction no less) may not be committed with the specific intention of killing, it is done entirely knowingly (a state of mind sufficient to confer criminal guilt). The causal relationship has been beyond all reasonable doubt for years.
Classified by the World Health Organization as a leading carcinogen, the very air we breathe is responsible for not only lung and bladder cancer but for conditions ranging from emphysema and heart disease to mental illness and cognitive decline. And let’s not overlook the fact that the pollution streaming from countless power plants, livestock lots, tailpipes, and other sources of poison, also produces the devastating heat waves killing so many worldwide.
Like the super storms straddling the barrier between norm and deviation, the changing climate is not a cause of harms but an effect of the toxic runoff of our global political-economy. Organized around the pursuit of exchange value (money), as opposed to use value, the global political economy not only poisons the air, water, soil, and bodies of the human and non-human animals of the world as a matter of business, it leads as well to such ecocidal phenomena as deforestation, desertification, and the expansion of oceanic dead zones.
Monstrous in itself, the devastation of these ecosystems’ forests and marine algae (responsible for converting so much carbon dioxide into oxygen) exponentially compounds the toxicity and volatility of the gas chamber of a planet in which we’re all confined – a gas chamber that cannot be meaningfully dismantled until the prison (i.e., systems and relations of domination), which it’s an adjunct to, and outgrowth of, is dismantled as well.
The world is a gas chamber, and not just in the general sense that the world’s a type of chamber (a vaulted space) filled with gas (nitrogen, oxygen, etc.). The world is (or, rather, since the industrial revolution, has become) a gas chamber in the particular sense of a space filled with poison gas, that kills people, animals, etc. Yes, although they’re most notorious for killing people with hydrogen cyanide, gas chambers are also known to use carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide to kill whatever happens to find itself trapped within their confines.
And, did you hear? The carbon dioxide-reading research stations of the planet, including those in Antarctica, now register (and are expected to continue to register for decades) concentrations exceeding 400 parts per million. A level not seen in 4 million years, incompatible with life as we know it, the gas chamber we’ve made of the planet has just reached a new degree of lethality.
Unlike the gas chambers of the Nazi genocide (or, closer to home, the constellation of gas chambers used to execute – often innocent – prisoners throughout the US), the gas chamber that the world has become is not being filled with poison gas for the purpose of killing people, and other animals.
Yet, in spite of this lack of intent, widespread harm and death is a completely foreseeable consequence of our particularly exploitative political-economic system. That is, though widespread killing (the sixth great extinction no less) may not be committed with the specific intention of killing, it is done entirely knowingly (a state of mind sufficient to confer criminal guilt). The causal relationship has been beyond all reasonable doubt for years.
Classified by the World Health Organization as a leading carcinogen, the very air we breathe is responsible for not only lung and bladder cancer but for conditions ranging from emphysema and heart disease to mental illness and cognitive decline. And let’s not overlook the fact that the pollution streaming from countless power plants, livestock lots, tailpipes, and other sources of poison, also produces the devastating heat waves killing so many worldwide.
Like the super storms straddling the barrier between norm and deviation, the changing climate is not a cause of harms but an effect of the toxic runoff of our global political-economy. Organized around the pursuit of exchange value (money), as opposed to use value, the global political economy not only poisons the air, water, soil, and bodies of the human and non-human animals of the world as a matter of business, it leads as well to such ecocidal phenomena as deforestation, desertification, and the expansion of oceanic dead zones.
Monstrous in itself, the devastation of these ecosystems’ forests and marine algae (responsible for converting so much carbon dioxide into oxygen) exponentially compounds the toxicity and volatility of the gas chamber of a planet in which we’re all confined – a gas chamber that cannot be meaningfully dismantled until the prison (i.e., systems and relations of domination), which it’s an adjunct to, and outgrowth of, is dismantled as well.
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Art World? More Like SeaWorld: The Use of Animals as Objects (as opposed to Subjects) of Art from Dali to Duke Riley
originally posted on CounterPunch
While the use of live animals as objects of art seems to be more common than ever in this second decade of the third millennium, and is central to such iconic works of contemporary art as Joseph Beuys' 1974 piece "I Like America and America Likes Me" (in which the artist spent three days in a gallery with a wild coyote), the practice is less than 80 years old. The use of living animals as objects of art, as opposed to subjects of art or objects of mass entertainment, can be arguably traced to 1938, when Salvador Dalí (ridiculed for his self-advancing proclivities by other surrealists by the anagrammatic nickname Avida Dollars) presented his installation "Rainy Taxi." In this work, a precursor to Edward Keinholz's 1964 "Backseat Dodge '38," two mannequins were placed in a taxi. A shark-headed chauffeur sat in front. In the back seat, surrounded by lettuce and chicory, living snails crawled over the female. While Dali's use of living animals was not widely emulated at first, by the 1960s the use of live animals in the art world became more common.
Best known for his "Cloaca," a "useless machine" designed to waste food by daily transforming it into synthetic excrement (which was then sold, of course), Delvoye has gained notoriety over his longstanding practice of tattooing pigs. Said to admire pig skin because of its resemblance to human skin (which he also tattoos, on the condition that he receives possession of the tattooed skin upon the tattooed person's death), Delvoye describes the tattooed pigs as "living canvas." "I show the world works of art that are so alive they have to be vaccinated," he's stated. In order to avoid animal protection laws he moved his "Art Farm" to China in 2004, where his practice continues. Asked about the charges of animal cruelty levied against his work, Delvoye has responded in interviews that the pigs are treated well - they're even fed ice cream - and probably prefer living long lives with tattoos to getting slaughtered, chopped up, and eaten.
Defenders of works such as "Horses," or the recent re-staging of superstar artist Maurizio Cattelan's 1994 installation "Enter at Your Own Risk...Thank You" (which features a donkey, as a type of self portrait, standing about in a manger-like space beneath a chandelier for much of the day at the Frieze art fair), who point out that the captive animals are well fed and treated humanely only illustrate the prevalence of the inability to recognize the state of capture, and being treated as an object, as constituting a harm in itself. Yet, in a social world in which people are not only commodified (i.e., objectified) and confined throughout the ever-lengthening workday, all the while pressured to spend their so-called free time deforming their experiences into further commodities (for the benefit of corporations like Facebook), it is hardly surprising that many see the treatment of an animal as an (art) object as completely normal. Relatedly, it hardly seems coincidental that Sir Gabriel (the name of the donkey at Frieze), as well as Tai (the elephant) also appear in mainstream movies and music videos alongside such figures as Britney Spears. All of which is to say, the aesthetic that these artworks seem to be realizing is not an actual aesthetic at all, but an anesthetic. As opposed to an actual aesthetic (which involves critique), anesthetic, like entertainment, functions to numb people, facilitating the smooth operation of the hegemonic order.
Establishment
critics like Saltz and Smith, among others, and artists like Riley, et
al, not to mention the gallerists, curators, and institutions comprising
the art world may imagine that they are practicing a critical aesthetic
by using living animals as objects, as material. If they examined the
situation a bit more deeply, however, they might recognize that this use
of animals simply reflects, and reproduces, the hegemonic 'anesthetic'
integral to this society's greatest harms.
Elliot Sperber is a writer, attorney, and teacher. He lives in New York City.
While
non-human animals (e.g. the bulls and horses depicted in the caves of
Lascaux) have been subjects of art for tens of thousands of years, in
the past few decades living animals have become not mere subjects but
objects of art. Unlike two or three dimensional representations of
animals, or even dead animals (the stuffed goat central to Robert
Rauschenberg's "Monogram," or Joseph Beuys' dead hare, for instance),
the use of living animals in contemporary art is becoming more and more
common. In just a few days this month alone, two well-publicized art
works were presented in two different parts of New York City using
living animals as material. Maurizio Cattelan (whose sculpture "Him"
just sold at auction for over 17 million dollars) had his 1994
installation "Warning! Enter at Your Own Risk ... Thank You," which
includes a live donkey, restaged at the Frieze art fair; and Duke
Riley's "Fly by Night," which involves 2,000 pigeons flying about over
the East River with lights attached to their ankles, began its six week
run.
While
many artists and critics maintain that the question of whether this use
of animals is abuse or not is difficult to answer definitively, it is
hardly debatable that the employment of animals (beings incapable of
consenting to spending days, weeks, or merely hours, confined to, and on
display in, galleries or museums - or, in the case of Riley's piece,
performing tricks over the East River) is exploitative, reflecting a
form of domination that does not simply regard living animals as
material so much as it deforms animals into material (into things that
legendary artist Richard Serra described,
in the statement accompanying his 1966 work "Live-Animal Habitat," as
comparable to objects such as sticks, stones, and paint).
In
a historical period witnessing sustained public outrage over the
abusive treatment of animals by entities such as SeaWorld, the use of
animals as material in the art world raises, among others, the question
of whether art galleries, museums, and their wealthy patrons (not to
mention the general public) have any reason to regard the cultural
production of the art world as being somehow qualitatively superior to
such ostensibly "lowbrow" (and abusive) institutions as zoos and
so-called marine mammal parks. (In many respects, the claims to
aesthetic and ontic seriousness that pervade the art world make their
installations and performances qualitatively worse. For, more than
simple emanations of the economic order cannibalizing the planet, these
institutions serve - on multiple levels of abstraction - as this order's
ideologues and enablers.)
While the use of live animals as objects of art seems to be more common than ever in this second decade of the third millennium, and is central to such iconic works of contemporary art as Joseph Beuys' 1974 piece "I Like America and America Likes Me" (in which the artist spent three days in a gallery with a wild coyote), the practice is less than 80 years old. The use of living animals as objects of art, as opposed to subjects of art or objects of mass entertainment, can be arguably traced to 1938, when Salvador Dalí (ridiculed for his self-advancing proclivities by other surrealists by the anagrammatic nickname Avida Dollars) presented his installation "Rainy Taxi." In this work, a precursor to Edward Keinholz's 1964 "Backseat Dodge '38," two mannequins were placed in a taxi. A shark-headed chauffeur sat in front. In the back seat, surrounded by lettuce and chicory, living snails crawled over the female. While Dali's use of living animals was not widely emulated at first, by the 1960s the use of live animals in the art world became more common.
The
controversial Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch's religiously-oriented
"actions" began, for instance, in 1962. Initially involving the
butchering of carcasses, viewers of his performances would ultimately
see professional butchers, overseen by veterinarians, publicly slaughter
animals. And while it may seem counterintuitive, Nitsch, whose Orgien
Mysterien Theater hasn't incorporated public slaughters since 1998, is
regarded by himself, and many others, as an animal protector. Only
killing animals already slated for commercial slaughter, Nitsch regards
the horrors involved in commercial farming as "the biggest crime in our
society."
By
the mid 1960s, as previously mentioned, contemporary giant Richard
Serra was using rats and mice as objects in his "Live-Animal Habitat."
And by the end of the decade, in the year the US symbolically penetrated
the moon with its flag pole, Jannis Kounellis produced his now
legendary installation "Horses," an installation that involved tethering
a dozen horses to the walls of a Roman garage.
In
the years following Beuys' iconic 1974 piece, live animals continued to
feature as objects/materials of art. Among the most controversial of
these is Kim Jones' 1976 "Rat Piece," in which Jones burned three caged
rats to death in a Los Angeles performance. A year later, in 1977, Tom
Otterness (known mostly these days for the cartoonish public sculptures
for which he's paid millions)
created "Shot Dog Film," in which he adopted a dog from an animal
shelter, tied it to a fence, and shot it to death. As the 20th century
came to a close, and the 21st got underway, the use of animals as
objects, as opposed to subjects, of artworks appeared to be more
prevalent than ever.
In
the year 2000, for instance, Marco Everistti exhibited his
installation, "Helena and El Pescador," in Denmark. Intended as a
critique of the brutality of the world, the installation was comprised
of ten blenders, each containing water and a live goldfish. Attendees
were given the choice of turning on the blenders and killing the fish,
or pardoning them. Two fish were soon liquefied. Ultimately, the
blenders were unplugged. And while many have condemned Everistti for
placing vulnerable creatures in harm's way, replicating the brutality he
was critiquing, the counterargument - that it is a bit ridiculous to
get all bent out of shape by the killing of a few goldfish while
socially accepted things, like the vastly more violent commercial
fishing industry, and commercial farming industry, among other
industries, are busily contributing to the sixth great extinction - is
not entirely unpersuasive.
At
any event, while it may not be difficult to find some merit in Marco's
"Helena," or in his more recent work involving living goldfish, or in
Nitsch's work, it's hard to find much merit at all in the work
incorporating animals of international graffiti mystery artist Banksy.
Though the most recent one is already a decade old, Banksy has produced
at least two artworks that use live animals as material. In a 2003
exhibition, in East London, he included a work comprised of pigs
spray-painted to look like police, a cow painted with Andy Warhol faces,
and sheep spray-painted in the black and white stripes of concentration
camp inmates. And at the 2006 Barely Legal exhibition in Los Angeles,
attended by such celebrities as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, his
installation "Elephant in the Room" incorporated a then-38-year-old
elephant named Tai. Intended to bring awareness to global poverty, the
literal elephant was spray-painted to match the pink floral pattern of
the room's wallpaper.
In
"Elephant in the Room," Banksy not only subjected Tai to the violence
of capture, being painted, and to the indignity of being displayed as a
painted object. On top of this, the paint turned out to be toxic -
adding further injury. While "Elephant in the Room" was the subject of
protest, and the toxic paint was scrubbed off, considerable irony
inheres in using an elephant in such a way in order to bring awareness
to global poverty, since poverty is but an effect of an economic order
that turns people, as well as nearly everything else, into commodities -
into things.
A
year after Banksy's "Elephant in the Room," the late Mike Kelley (one
of the most influential American artists of the early 21st century)
produced his installation "Petting Zoo." Based on the biblical story of
Sodom and Gomorra, "Petting Zoo" incorporated, among other objects, live
goats, sheep, and ponies. And rather than merely looking at these
creatures, viewers were invited to pet the animals (according to the
statement accompanying the piece, this is supposed to be relaxing). As
problematic as "Petting Zoo" may have beeen, however, Kelley's and
Banksy's works seem benign compared to Costa Rican artist Guillermo
Vargas' infamous 2007 installation (in which a starving a dog was tied
to a wall, just out of reach of a bowl of dog food), or the artworks
made from living animals created by Belgian conceptual artist Wim
Delvoye.
Best known for his "Cloaca," a "useless machine" designed to waste food by daily transforming it into synthetic excrement (which was then sold, of course), Delvoye has gained notoriety over his longstanding practice of tattooing pigs. Said to admire pig skin because of its resemblance to human skin (which he also tattoos, on the condition that he receives possession of the tattooed skin upon the tattooed person's death), Delvoye describes the tattooed pigs as "living canvas." "I show the world works of art that are so alive they have to be vaccinated," he's stated. In order to avoid animal protection laws he moved his "Art Farm" to China in 2004, where his practice continues. Asked about the charges of animal cruelty levied against his work, Delvoye has responded in interviews that the pigs are treated well - they're even fed ice cream - and probably prefer living long lives with tattoos to getting slaughtered, chopped up, and eaten.
The
year in which the world was supposed to end, 2012 turned out to be a
big year for employing animals as an art medium - objects, as opposed to
subjects, of artworks. In addition to Miru Kim's Beuys-inspired "I Like
Pigs and Pigs Like Me" (in which the naked artist spent 104 hours
cavorting with pigs in a gallery at the international art fair Art
Basel), and conceptual artist Darren Bader's "Images," which used cats
as sculptures, and Belgian artist Jan Fabre's cat throwing controversy,
2012 included Damien Hirst's "In and Out of Love" at
the Tate Modern in London, which incorporated, and famously resulted in
the deaths of, over 9,000 butterflies.
Hirst,
who is one of the most commercially successful artists of all time,
Banksy, and Delvoye, are not the only internationally recognized "art
stars" using live animals as material. In 2014, celebrity artist Cai
Guo-Qiang triggered outrage by gluing iPads to the shells of three live
African sulcata tortoises in his "Moving Ghost Town" at the Aspen Art
Museum. And, a year later, in 2015, French conceptual artist Pierre
Huyghe exhibited artworks incorporating living animals at both the
Museum of Modern Art and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
(His work on the roof of the Met incorporated an aquarium housing a
lamprey, among other creatures; while, 30 blocks away, his 2012
sculpture "Untilled," a reclining nude whose head is made from a buzzing
beehive, was exhibited in the MOMA sculpture garden. But these were
hardly the first artworks Huyghe has made out of living animals.)
While
such establishment art critics as Roberta Smith and Jerry Saltz (chief
art critics for the New York Times and New York Magazine, respectively)
would probably express some degree of disapproval over Kim Jones' "Rat
Piece," or Delvoyes' tattooed pigs, they nevertheless do not seem to
object to treating animals as objects - i.e., to a practice normalizing
domination and exploitation. Indeed, Saltz (whose peculiar understanding of feminism involves his "old belief" - as he puts it in his encomium to Hillary Clinton -
that misogyny is "hard wired into us, primitive, primal, deep," rather
than historically and culturally produced, as more critical critics
recognize) positively raved about
the 2015 restaging of Kounellis' 1969 installation "Horses." And
it should not come as a surprise, I suppose, that a person whose social
media portraits depict him in the embrace of Bill Clinton should enjoy
the feeling of walking amidst a dozen powerful, yet disabled, animals.
That is, it is entirely consistent that someone who appears to delight
in power would enjoy the experience of participating in a grand bondage
scene. And though they may be provided with better care than the
creatures unfortunate enough to be held captive at SeaWorld (each horse
was attended by, as Saltz put it, "three loving grooms"), the horses are
nevertheless still tied to, and facing, a wall for eight hours a day,
on display for the amusement of the public.
Defenders of works such as "Horses," or the recent re-staging of superstar artist Maurizio Cattelan's 1994 installation "Enter at Your Own Risk...Thank You" (which features a donkey, as a type of self portrait, standing about in a manger-like space beneath a chandelier for much of the day at the Frieze art fair), who point out that the captive animals are well fed and treated humanely only illustrate the prevalence of the inability to recognize the state of capture, and being treated as an object, as constituting a harm in itself. Yet, in a social world in which people are not only commodified (i.e., objectified) and confined throughout the ever-lengthening workday, all the while pressured to spend their so-called free time deforming their experiences into further commodities (for the benefit of corporations like Facebook), it is hardly surprising that many see the treatment of an animal as an (art) object as completely normal. Relatedly, it hardly seems coincidental that Sir Gabriel (the name of the donkey at Frieze), as well as Tai (the elephant) also appear in mainstream movies and music videos alongside such figures as Britney Spears. All of which is to say, the aesthetic that these artworks seem to be realizing is not an actual aesthetic at all, but an anesthetic. As opposed to an actual aesthetic (which involves critique), anesthetic, like entertainment, functions to numb people, facilitating the smooth operation of the hegemonic order.
Duke Riley's "Fly by Night," which will be performed each weekend at the Brooklyn Navy Yard until June 12,
illustrates this anesthetic aesthetic well. Described by Roberta Smith
in her New York Times review as a "performance by 2,000 pigeons,"
she also compares the "performers" to "sailors on deck" of a ship.
Perhaps she should have added that, as has been the case historically in
naval projects, these sailors have been conscripted. They did not join
this performance willingly. They only participate at all, and take
flight, because people, waving large sticks at them, force them to fly
about, lights attached to their ankles, for the crowd's amusement. Smith
described it as "a revelation." And though it may have been visually
striking (retinal art, as Duchamp might dismissively put it), as opposed
to an anesthetic, a critical aesthetic requires actual criticism -
which involves, at the very least, attentiveness to the pervasive,
stultifying influence of ideology.
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Free Stuff = Free Society
originally published on CounterPunch
Waiting in line to get into the Bernie Sanders rally in Brooklyn the
other day, an interesting conversation about the relationship between
colleges and democracy caught my ear.
Corey, who was more than a little skeptical about the economic feasibility of Bernie Sanders’ platform, was saying that it didn’t make sense for a society to provide free college. Free college, he maintained, would benefit the youth at the expense of everyone else.
That’s just not true at all, his interlocutor, Ramona, responded. It makes perfect sense. Not only is an educated society good for its own sake, the thing that doesn’t make sense (unless you’re one of the few people making money off of it) is an educational system that results in debt peonage. Relieving debt is good not just for students, but for society in general.
Corey replied by suggesting that, among other problems, free college would lead to surges in enrollment. After glancing at his smart phone, and appearing to tap out a text message, he asked whether or not Ramona thought, as he did, that if everyone had free access to college no one would work and the entire economy would collapse.
On the contrary, she rejoined. Just think about all the problems such an arrangement would actually solve. Colleges have medical clinics that provide health care for students, right (not to mention some of the most sophisticated hospitals in the country)? If everyone were a student, and all students had access to this health care, this could help to correct our health care crisis. Also, universal enrollment in colleges could help fix society’s housing crisis – because everyone in a free college could theoretically live in free housing. All these buildings around here, she said, pointing to the rows of four and five floor walk-ups, this whole part of town could be part of a new campus. You could just nationalize it all, or inter-nationalize it all, and this could all be free housing. All of these empty shops and spaces could be classrooms and workshops.
Oh come on, said Corey. Who would work in these medical clinics?
Who? repeated Ramona. Why, the people that live here. The students – and the professors and researchers – who live in the community would work in and maintain these things. Why not? Students at the medical schools could run the clinics as part of their clinical education. If there’s some problem with a pipe or the electrical stuff that the people in some building didn’t know how to fix, they could just ask students in the engineering department, or the architecture department, or some other relevant department. The Con Ed plant across the river, she said, pointing to the smoke stacks in the distance, that could be run by the colleges, too. There are a lot of ways to go about developing a community college economy. And because no one would have to pay rent or tuition or anything, people wouldn’t be compelled to get shit jobs producing garbage. You’d just have to do a couple hours a month helping with the transportation or sanitation systems or something, like a co-op. This would all be very good for the general ecosystem, too.
I don’t know, said Corey, taking a sip from his paper coffee cup. You can’t have a whole economic system based around colleges. What about food? Who would grow it? What about national security?
Are you serious? Colleges grow food all over the place! Agriculture departments grow food. This is even done in elementary schools. It wouldn’t be difficult at all for each college to grow its own food – in fields, greenhouses, rooftops, wherever – these streets. You could even grow food on the East River by creating floating gardens that would be watered from the bottom up by evaporating river water. I was just reading about this community college in Greenfield, Massachusetts that has this program creating food security for the entire community. There’s your national security (or maybe we should call it human security). The various campuses, you know, could trade whatever surpluses they have among one another, so you’d have more variety. The various film schools could have festivals and competitions showing their best stuff. You could have a whole international – or post-national – network of colleges around the world. I’m not saying it would be simple; but it would be a more fair, and healthy, and fun way of doing things, in my humble political opinion.
Actually, Ramona continued, there’s no reason that the college (the public, community college, within a global network of colleges, or something like that) shouldn’t be the basic organizational form of a society that’s actually democratic. Even the word college, you know, is derived from the Latin collegium, which means society, or community. So, you see, so-called free college isn’t about free stuff; ultimately, it’s about a free society, a self-governing society. Isn’t that what this is all about?
Corey took another sip from his cup, then said: I can’t tell whether or not you’re joking.
Because the line started moving, I wasn’t able to hear Ramona’s reply.
Corey, who was more than a little skeptical about the economic feasibility of Bernie Sanders’ platform, was saying that it didn’t make sense for a society to provide free college. Free college, he maintained, would benefit the youth at the expense of everyone else.
That’s just not true at all, his interlocutor, Ramona, responded. It makes perfect sense. Not only is an educated society good for its own sake, the thing that doesn’t make sense (unless you’re one of the few people making money off of it) is an educational system that results in debt peonage. Relieving debt is good not just for students, but for society in general.
Corey replied by suggesting that, among other problems, free college would lead to surges in enrollment. After glancing at his smart phone, and appearing to tap out a text message, he asked whether or not Ramona thought, as he did, that if everyone had free access to college no one would work and the entire economy would collapse.
On the contrary, she rejoined. Just think about all the problems such an arrangement would actually solve. Colleges have medical clinics that provide health care for students, right (not to mention some of the most sophisticated hospitals in the country)? If everyone were a student, and all students had access to this health care, this could help to correct our health care crisis. Also, universal enrollment in colleges could help fix society’s housing crisis – because everyone in a free college could theoretically live in free housing. All these buildings around here, she said, pointing to the rows of four and five floor walk-ups, this whole part of town could be part of a new campus. You could just nationalize it all, or inter-nationalize it all, and this could all be free housing. All of these empty shops and spaces could be classrooms and workshops.
Oh come on, said Corey. Who would work in these medical clinics?
Who? repeated Ramona. Why, the people that live here. The students – and the professors and researchers – who live in the community would work in and maintain these things. Why not? Students at the medical schools could run the clinics as part of their clinical education. If there’s some problem with a pipe or the electrical stuff that the people in some building didn’t know how to fix, they could just ask students in the engineering department, or the architecture department, or some other relevant department. The Con Ed plant across the river, she said, pointing to the smoke stacks in the distance, that could be run by the colleges, too. There are a lot of ways to go about developing a community college economy. And because no one would have to pay rent or tuition or anything, people wouldn’t be compelled to get shit jobs producing garbage. You’d just have to do a couple hours a month helping with the transportation or sanitation systems or something, like a co-op. This would all be very good for the general ecosystem, too.
I don’t know, said Corey, taking a sip from his paper coffee cup. You can’t have a whole economic system based around colleges. What about food? Who would grow it? What about national security?
Are you serious? Colleges grow food all over the place! Agriculture departments grow food. This is even done in elementary schools. It wouldn’t be difficult at all for each college to grow its own food – in fields, greenhouses, rooftops, wherever – these streets. You could even grow food on the East River by creating floating gardens that would be watered from the bottom up by evaporating river water. I was just reading about this community college in Greenfield, Massachusetts that has this program creating food security for the entire community. There’s your national security (or maybe we should call it human security). The various campuses, you know, could trade whatever surpluses they have among one another, so you’d have more variety. The various film schools could have festivals and competitions showing their best stuff. You could have a whole international – or post-national – network of colleges around the world. I’m not saying it would be simple; but it would be a more fair, and healthy, and fun way of doing things, in my humble political opinion.
Actually, Ramona continued, there’s no reason that the college (the public, community college, within a global network of colleges, or something like that) shouldn’t be the basic organizational form of a society that’s actually democratic. Even the word college, you know, is derived from the Latin collegium, which means society, or community. So, you see, so-called free college isn’t about free stuff; ultimately, it’s about a free society, a self-governing society. Isn’t that what this is all about?
Corey took another sip from his cup, then said: I can’t tell whether or not you’re joking.
Because the line started moving, I wasn’t able to hear Ramona’s reply.
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Sowing the World with Salt
originally published on CounterPunch
While the historicity of the practice of sowing a vanquished enemy’s
fields with salt is the subject of considerable dispute, there is no
disputing the fact that it exists as a symbol. Beyond the canonical
examples (such as the biblical account of the Israelite judge Abimelech
sowing the mutinous city of Shechem with salt in the second millennium
BC, or the more well-known story of the Roman general Scipio Africanus’
sowing conquered Carthage with salt in the second century BC), spreading
salt over the fields of a defeated adversary has come to signify
thorough, undisputed conquest.
As such, one may be forgiven for wondering why the new Rome, with its Senates and its Capitols, and its world-spanning empire, has not sought to emulate the old Rome by pursuing just such a practice. Aside from the various territorial and economic problems this consideration raises, however, the fact of the matter is that the present political-economic order is already considerably far along in sowing the fields of the world with salt. In addition to the salinization of the world’s fields resulting from rising oceans attendant climate change, much of the world’s land is being salinized by industrial fertilizers and other forms of pollution, not to mention the far more quotidian practice of irrigation farming.
The historical irony, of course, is that these ecological injuries are not the contemporary political-economic order (global capitalism)’s specific aim. They are the consequence of a number of short-sighted, market-based, technology-oriented factors. Nor do they symbolize the end of a war. Unlike in ancient times, by further diminishing access to water, limiting crop yields, and threatening biodiversity, among other harms, sowing the world with salt has little to do with ending wars. Instead, it creates them.
As such, one may be forgiven for wondering why the new Rome, with its Senates and its Capitols, and its world-spanning empire, has not sought to emulate the old Rome by pursuing just such a practice. Aside from the various territorial and economic problems this consideration raises, however, the fact of the matter is that the present political-economic order is already considerably far along in sowing the fields of the world with salt. In addition to the salinization of the world’s fields resulting from rising oceans attendant climate change, much of the world’s land is being salinized by industrial fertilizers and other forms of pollution, not to mention the far more quotidian practice of irrigation farming.
The historical irony, of course, is that these ecological injuries are not the contemporary political-economic order (global capitalism)’s specific aim. They are the consequence of a number of short-sighted, market-based, technology-oriented factors. Nor do they symbolize the end of a war. Unlike in ancient times, by further diminishing access to water, limiting crop yields, and threatening biodiversity, among other harms, sowing the world with salt has little to do with ending wars. Instead, it creates them.
Monday, September 14, 2015
Forget Security
Originally published on CounterPunch
From national security to social security, and from economic security
to water security and food security, the early 21st century concern
with security reflects modes of interacting with the world that create
and recreate the very harms that the various forms of security seek to
correct. The demands of “economic security,” for instance (which, in
typically uncritical fashion, excludes basic considerations from its
concept), leads to practices such as fracking and rainforest clearance,
not to mention more mundane, widespread contaminants, which in turn
imperil “water security,” among others.
To some degree, the etymology of the word security illuminates why this is the case. Derived from the Latin se cura, which means free from care, being secure in many respects means being carefree. However, one must not overlook the fact that being carefree does not simply mean being free from worry. It also drifts into another meaning – that one doesn’t have to think about troubling things at all. That is, being carefree slides into being careless. These meanings are inextricable.\
In addition to its more direct violence, managing the world and society in accordance with the interests of security not only discourages people in general from thinking too much about the issues we collectively face (allowing deeply ideological, racist structures to flourish). In organizing society around the principle of security (of carefreeness and carelessness) we neglect a duty of care to the world and to one another that reproduces the toxic, hostile world we all inhabit.
Rather than accepting the validity of this ideology of security (inseparable historically from ecocidal and genocidal levels of carelessness) we ought to cultivate a politics of attentiveness and carefulness. And maybe, by caring in concrete practice (as opposed to caring in mere theory), we can overcome the problems that we’re told we can correct by means of security.
Elliot Sperber is a writer, lawyer, and adjunct professor. He lives in New York City, and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com
To some degree, the etymology of the word security illuminates why this is the case. Derived from the Latin se cura, which means free from care, being secure in many respects means being carefree. However, one must not overlook the fact that being carefree does not simply mean being free from worry. It also drifts into another meaning – that one doesn’t have to think about troubling things at all. That is, being carefree slides into being careless. These meanings are inextricable.\
In addition to its more direct violence, managing the world and society in accordance with the interests of security not only discourages people in general from thinking too much about the issues we collectively face (allowing deeply ideological, racist structures to flourish). In organizing society around the principle of security (of carefreeness and carelessness) we neglect a duty of care to the world and to one another that reproduces the toxic, hostile world we all inhabit.
Rather than accepting the validity of this ideology of security (inseparable historically from ecocidal and genocidal levels of carelessness) we ought to cultivate a politics of attentiveness and carefulness. And maybe, by caring in concrete practice (as opposed to caring in mere theory), we can overcome the problems that we’re told we can correct by means of security.
Elliot Sperber is a writer, lawyer, and adjunct professor. He lives in New York City, and can be reached at elliot.sperber@gmail.com
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