File spoon-archives/avant-garde.archive/avant-garde_1995/avant-garde_Jun.95, message 18


Date: Tue, 6 Jun 1995 11:39:35 -0400
From: whitfb-AT-amanda.dorsai.org (Whit Blauvelt)
Subject: Re:  Fascism


Malglossia wrote:

>>> Disparagement,  impatience, attack are not quite _it_: it is
>>> when they combine with the view of art as religion, the artist
>>> as priest who links "the people" to a higher order of reality 
>>> - then, it seems to me, the mix begins to resemble fascism.

I replied:

>> Shamanism then must be divorced from art because it is "archaic" and because
>> historical fascists made some use of its forms? This seems an argument that
>> anything which has been used badly cannot then ever be used well. It also
>> seems akin to imperialist rationales for destroying shamanic societies - or
>> at least smashing their idols.

Mal.:

>Why?  Where is the link?  First of all, we are talking about art now,
>here, not in a shamanistic society.  Secondly, the passage you quote
>explicilty talks about a specific _mix_, not about shamanism or
>archaicism per se.   

Yes, I'm agreeing with you that the mix is inappropriate - in politics - I'm
disagreeing with you on where the artist belongs. I'm arguing the artist
_must in essence be a shaman_ and that the argument you're making against
mixing politics with the archaic also should be applied to mixing politics
with art. The substance of art resembles the substance of the shamanic
closely enough to be dangerous in the same way when mixed with political
substances.

Mal.:

>Art may derive from one thing or another, but it is my feeling that people 
>who invoke these derivations as a foundation for their artistic position 
>usually do so for political purposes, as a kind of legitimizing myth for 
>their disparagement of the social order.  

The shamanic always serves to disolve the political order in favor of an
intuited higher order, while paradoxically allowing the political order to
re-form itself strengthened from the challenge (except, of course, when the
shaman hijacks the politician's role, or vice versa, and this ecological
relationship fails). Rock in the 60s was successful art - and a serious
political threat - because it was shamanic; not because it was practiced by
politicians. What hangs and sits in the Whitney is no political threat
because it is not shamanic, it's practicioners having renounced that role
for politics. Shamanism _is_ the threat to politics. It _is_ the other
order. The Romans were right to fear Jesus - not because he was a politician
(and recall "render unto Caesar" and all that), but because he was a
resolutely apolitical shaman.

>I wish you'd stop picking on
>one side of my argument and reducing it to absurdity; it would be
>much more productive if you either helped refine the argument, or
>tore into it as a whole; I am sure it could benefit from that. 

Actually, since I'm deriving a parallel but different theory, I'd hope you'd
be flattered. These ideas only occurred to me from trying to make my own
sense of the elements you've introduced. Sorry if my input isn't as useful
to you as yours has been to me.

\/\/ I-I I T         = < [  whitfb-AT-dorsai.org  ] > =          nyc usa



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