Month: November 2013

 

It was really interesting to consider the weight behind the term “culture” as I went through the readings this week. I think today, when someone employs the term in casual conversation, listeners definitely relate it to, as Rivkin and Ryan explain, “art, literature and […] music” (1233). However, I agree that a more profound and accurate definition definitely does include language and the arts, but also “the regularities, procedures, and rituals of human life in communities” (1233). To think of culture in this way, especially as we employ the term in speech, is more than to invoke associations with art; it really includes a lot more about the ways in which our societies are organized and structured. I also think it is very relevant to our studies to continue to keep in mind what we read and discussed last week in regards to language; language inherently carries a culture with it.

The excerpt that I found myself reflecting the most on this week was Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. I find this work very fascinating both because of how it jam-packs so many interesting concepts in a very succinct fashion, and also because of the historical context of this text is fascinating. I know that we are supposed to read text for text and not consider the historical context necessarily, but I think that in the case of Benjamin we simply cannot ignore what was happening in Europe at the time (of course, we should not let the historical context overshadow the text itself; I think it’s always just about maintaining a balance. Can we simply ignore the rise of fascism in Europe or the fact that Benjamin committed suicide in Portbou at the French-Spanish border, as he was being pursued by Nazi forces? I do think that we should take into account the context of the rise of fascism in Europe because there simply is no way that such an environment wouldn’t have an effect on society and on culture).

As I was reading the excerpt of Benjamin’s essay, I found myself thinking of different examples that I am familiar with and it really illuminated his arguments for me. For example, when he puts forth that “even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownerships” (1235), I couldn’t help but think of Picasso’s Guernica and its journey from Paris to New York (MoMA) to Spain (its now permanent home is in its purpose-built gallery at the Museo Reina Sofia (Queen Sofia Museum) in Madrid). I think it is worth it to follow Benjamin’s train of thought as expressed in the above quotation and try to apply it to this specific case. Any reproduction of the Guernica will lack this unique existence of its changes in locality. (I’d love to be able to put up a photographic reproduction that I took myself when I was in Madrid this past summer, but you are not allowed to take photos of the Guernica, so I hope that an image off the Internet and my photos outside of the museum will have to do).

  

This is especially important taking into account Picasso’s insistence that the paining was not to be delivered to Spain (he painted it in Paris) until liberty and democracy would be established in the country. Today at the Museo Reina Sofia, you can buy anything and everything with the image of the Guernica on it (see some examples in the images below) , though I imagine one of the most well-known reproductions is the replica that is at the UN headquarters in New York.

           

Created by Picasso after the indiscriminate bombing of the Basque village of Guernika in Spain by the German Luftwaffe, this painting depicts the horrors of that bombing. Today it is largely seen on a broader scale as a painting depicting the horrors of war in general, which is why it is significant that the image was covered when Colin Powell had to make his declaration of war…otherwise he’d have delivered a speech on war with the image of the Guernica in the background. All of these changes in physical location of the painting are crucial to what it has come to stand for, and only the original work itself carries this aura, as Benjamin would term it.

Another example that came to my mind as I was reading this part of Benjamin’s article is the recent discovery (announced on November 5^th of this year!) in Munich of more than 1 400 pieces of art (including works by such artists as Otto Dix, Henri Matisse and Max Liebermann) that were confiscated by the Nazi for being “degenerate”. This history of disappearance for such a long time is now part of “the history to which [a work of art] was subject throughout the time of its existence”, as Benjamin explains it – and undoubtedly, the “various changes in its ownerships” is a story that is still unfolding as millions of claims are starting to pour in. As art professor Meike Hoffmann explained, this is an “emotional discovery” as many of the individuals who are putting forth claims are of an advanced age, some are very ill in their old age, and the German government is being criticized for not having revealed this discovery as soon as they made it last year – some of the rightful owners might have died in the time that the discovery was made public (and not by the government’s choice, but rather by being leaked in a German newspaper. When officials went to an art collector’s apartment to investigate some charges of tax fraud, they reportedly found the more than 1 400 pieces of art, and the German government now has to answer as to why it took them so long to make this discovery public so that the rightful possession process could have been started earlier. Please see this BBC article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24818541 for more information).

I also think Benjamin’s concept of “situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic”, which he terms the “aestheticization of politics” is also very important. I think Benjamin was describing, at the time, what later historians’ studies have identified as one key ingredient of the Nazi regime in Germany – the way that art was employed in the mass rallies in order to create heightened frenzy; one of many examples would be the lighting techniques used at the rallies that really gave the impression of larger crowds than were actually in attendance. Similar in a way to Benjamin’s concept of the aura, I think that this is impossible to fully comprehend today, but I do think that Ottawa’s War Museum has the closet possible reproduction (in Benjamin’s terms) that I’ve come across in Canada. As Benjamin would highlight, this is impossible to reproduce in my blog post, but alas, I shall attempt it anyway. What the War Museum has is this one room that has nothing – and this is the important part – in it but a replica of one of Hitler’s cars of the era (Mercedes Benz limousine) in a solitary room; that is the only actual object in the room. What it does rather have on the walls is pictures of mass audiences at a Nazi rally and lights – the room is very dim and as you walk into the dark room and see the car, the manipulation of the lights really creates a feeling in the museum visitor of really being in the middle of a Nazi rally…really effectively demonstrating the way that, as Benjamin explains in his article, the regime aestheticized politics for their purposes.

Standing in that room creates one of the most eerie feelings that I’ve ever experienced in my life – my first instinct was to get out and do it right away, because I did not want to feel like an accomplice in that staged rally, as it can be conceptualized in one way – and I think that uncanny feeling is exactly what the exhibit wanted to create. It really powerfully demonstrates the aestheticization of politics that Benjamin talks about, and should you ever have a chance to visit the Museum of War in Ottawa, I definitely recommend it.

    

 

It was really interesting to consider the weight behind the term “culture” as I went through the readings this week. I think today, when someone employs the term in casual conversation, listeners definitely relate it to, as Rivkin and Ryan explain, “art, literature and […] music” (1233). However, I agree that a more profound and accurate definition definitely does include language and the arts, but also “the regularities, procedures, and rituals of human life in communities” (1233). To think of culture in this way, especially as we employ the term in speech, is more than to invoke associations with art; it really includes a lot more about the ways in which our societies are organized and structured. I also think it is very relevant to our studies to continue to keep in mind what we read and discussed last week in regards to language; language inherently carries a culture with it.

The excerpt that I found myself reflecting the most on this week was Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. I find this work very fascinating both because of how it jam-packs so many interesting concepts in a very succinct fashion, and also because of the historical context of this text is fascinating. I know that we are supposed to read text for text and not consider the historical context necessarily, but I think that in the case of Benjamin we simply cannot ignore what was happening in Europe at the time (of course, we should not let the historical context overshadow the text itself; I think it’s always just about maintaining a balance. Can we simply ignore the rise of fascism in Europe or the fact that Benjamin committed suicide in Portbou at the French-Spanish border, as he was being pursued by Nazi forces? I do think that we should take into account the context of the rise of fascism in Europe because there simply is no way that such an environment wouldn’t have an effect on society and on culture).

As I was reading the excerpt of Benjamin’s essay, I found myself thinking of different examples that I am familiar with and it really illuminated his arguments for me. For example, when he puts forth that “even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownerships” (1235), I couldn’t help but think of Picasso’s Guernica and its journey from Paris to New York (MoMA) to Spain (its now permanent home is in its purpose-built gallery at the Museo Reina Sofia (Queen Sofia Museum) in Madrid). I think it is worth it to follow Benjamin’s train of thought as expressed in the above quotation and try to apply it to this specific case. Any reproduction of the Guernica will lack this unique existence of its changes in locality. (I’d love to be able to put up a photographic reproduction that I took myself when I was in Madrid this past summer, but you are not allowed to take photos of the Guernica, so I hope that an image off the Internet and my photos outside of the museum will have to do).

  

This is especially important taking into account Picasso’s insistence that the paining was not to be delivered to Spain (he painted it in Paris) until liberty and democracy would be established in the country. Today at the Museo Reina Sofia, you can buy anything and everything with the image of the Guernica on it (see some examples in the images below) , though I imagine one of the most well-known reproductions is the replica that is at the UN headquarters in New York.

           

Created by Picasso after the indiscriminate bombing of the Basque village of Guernika in Spain by the German Luftwaffe, this painting depicts the horrors of that bombing. Today it is largely seen on a broader scale as a painting depicting the horrors of war in general, which is why it is significant that the image was covered when Colin Powell had to make his declaration of war…otherwise he’d have delivered a speech on war with the image of the Guernica in the background. All of these changes in physical location of the painting are crucial to what it has come to stand for, and only the original work itself carries this aura, as Benjamin would term it.

Another example that came to my mind as I was reading this part of Benjamin’s article is the recent discovery (announced on November 5^th of this year!) in Munich of more than 1 400 pieces of art (including works by such artists as Otto Dix, Henri Matisse and Max Liebermann) that were confiscated by the Nazi for being “degenerate”. This history of disappearance for such a long time is now part of “the history to which [a work of art] was subject throughout the time of its existence”, as Benjamin explains it – and undoubtedly, the “various changes in its ownerships” is a story that is still unfolding as millions of claims are starting to pour in. As art professor Meike Hoffmann explained, this is an “emotional discovery” as many of the individuals who are putting forth claims are of an advanced age, some are very ill in their old age, and the German government is being criticized for not having revealed this discovery as soon as they made it last year – some of the rightful owners might have died in the time that the discovery was made public (and not by the government’s choice, but rather by being leaked in a German newspaper. When officials went to an art collector’s apartment to investigate some charges of tax fraud, they reportedly found the more than 1 400 pieces of art, and the German government now has to answer as to why it took them so long to make this discovery public so that the rightful possession process could have been started earlier. Please see this BBC article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24818541 for more information).

I also think Benjamin’s concept of “situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic”, which he terms the “aestheticization of politics” is also very important. I think Benjamin was describing, at the time, what later historians’ studies have identified as one key ingredient of the Nazi regime in Germany – the way that art was employed in the mass rallies in order to create heightened frenzy; one of many examples would be the lighting techniques used at the rallies that really gave the impression of larger crowds than were actually in attendance. Similar in a way to Benjamin’s concept of the aura, I think that this is impossible to fully comprehend today, but I do think that Ottawa’s War Museum has the closet possible reproduction (in Benjamin’s terms) that I’ve come across in Canada. As Benjamin would highlight, this is impossible to reproduce in my blog post, but alas, I shall attempt it anyway. What the War Museum has is this one room that has nothing – and this is the important part – in it but a replica of one of Hitler’s cars of the era (Mercedes Benz limousine) in a solitary room; that is the only actual object in the room. What it does rather have on the walls is pictures of mass audiences at a Nazi rally and lights – the room is very dim and as you walk into the dark room and see the car, the manipulation of the lights really creates a feeling in the museum visitor of really being in the middle of a Nazi rally…really effectively demonstrating the way that, as Benjamin explains in his article, the regime aestheticized politics for their purposes.

Standing in that room creates one of the most eerie feelings that I’ve ever experienced in my life – my first instinct was to get out and do it right away, because I did not want to feel like an accomplice in that staged rally, as it can be conceptualized in one way – and I think that uncanny feeling is exactly what the exhibit wanted to create. It really powerfully demonstrates the aestheticization of politics that Benjamin talks about, and should you ever have a chance to visit the Museum of War in Ottawa, I definitely recommend it.

    

In this weeks reading, once again we are encountered with the difficulty of defining term and concepts. Like in other weeks this week there are many terms the main on is colonialism. I found the text by Ania Loomba to be very interesting because she starts by stating how the definition of colonialism is hard to define. The first definition she gives is a dictionary definition: “a settlement in a new country… a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state; the community so formed, consisting of the original settlers and their descendants and successors, as long as the connection with the parent state is kept up.” (1100) of course like with any definition of colonialism we faults. Loomba sates that ” This definition, quite remarkably, avoids any reference to people other than the colonizers, people who might already have been living in those places where colonies were established. Hence it evacuates the word ‘colonialism’ of any implication of an encounter between peoples, or of conquest and domination. There is no hint that the ‘new locality’ may not be so ‘new’ and that the process of ‘forming a community’ might be somewhat unfair. Colonialism was not an identical process in different parts of the world but everywhere it locked.” (1100). It is so praising that a dictionary definition the term would be defined in such a passive and non confrontational way. When of course history has shown that colonization has been one of the most bloody processes that human history has encountered. Loomba continues stating that colonization is nothing new and that before the European colonization many other like the Romans, China, the mongols and many others had been colonizing vast amounts of territories, but the question arises what was different with the European colonization and one explanation proposed by Marx is that the Europe colonization has gone hand in hand with capitalism. In other word money and goods is the difference there were a trading of goods and work force that was traded between the colonized and colonizer. Of course this is what made the encounter more violent because greed played a big role in colonizing. there was less goods that is why colonization was so important. Loomba later defines colonization as “So colonialism can be defined as the conquest and control of other people’s land and goods. But colonialism in this sense is not merely the expansion of various European powers into Asia, Africa or the Americas from the sixteenth century onwards; it has been a recurrent and widespread feature of human history.” It was not just a need of territory but of goods. Later the article talks about imperialism which can be related to monarchy and how this was necessary before giving way to colonialism which was hand in hand with capitalism and also gave way to neocolonialism. He later state a that ” Modern colonialism did more than extract tribute, goods and wealth from the countries that it conquered – it restructured the economies of the latter, drawing them into a complex relationship with their own, so that there was a flow of human and natural resources between colonised and colonial countries. This flow worked in both directions” this is interesting because this interrelationship that Loomba talks about has give way to globalism and interdependence not only within colonized and colonizer relationship but between other colonized and colonizing countries.

For me it was the ambivalence of the language that caught my attention in this reading. Language can be, both, liberating and oppressive, depending on how it is used, and by whom it is used. The English book is, of course, the Bible, which has been forced upon the colonized people, in order for the English colonizers to gain more power and authority is a perfect example of how language can be misused and abused. The Book is itself a symbol of God and religion, however, the colonizer, who is in control of the Book, is also in control of how it is communicated to the colonized people. Thus, by manipulating not only language, but religion as well, the colonizer is able to gain power.

In Bhabha’s “Signs Taken for Wonders,” the English book is presented as an unintended vehicle of hybridization and ambivalence. In its original context it was a direct product of its culture, but in the colonial context its initial meaning started to change as it underwent “an Entstellung, a process of displacement, distortion, dislocation, repetition” (1169). In this way, the book paradoxically became an ambivalent object,– no longer a fetishized sign of colonial power that glorifies the European predominance but rather an emblem of “colonial ambivalence” that suggests the weakness of colonial discourse and its susceptibility to “mimetic” subversion. Colonial domination has unintended effects because the dominated groups appropriated colonial ideas and concepts and transformed them according to their culture. The book acquires a wholly different form losing something and other things might be added as it has been re-written by the native. This process produces ambivalence which could be faced with mimicry, or the imitation of the white man by the native. Therefore, instead of presenting the fixed nature of Colonial rule, the book becomes an emblem of colonial ambivalence which empowers the colonized subject and allows them resisting the oppression from the colonizer in terms of hybridization, a way of strategies of subversion. Bhabha says: “Hybridity is the name of this displacement of value from symbol to sign that causes the dominant discourse to split along the axis of its power to be representative, authoritative. Hybridity represents that ambivalent ‘turn’ of the discriminated subject into the terrifying, exorbitant object of paranoid classification – a disturbing questioning of the images and presences of authority” (1176).

Reading the article on post colonialism by Anne McClintock an obvious question surfaces, and that is, when is post colonialism situated. An even more commonsense understanding would state that post colonialism follows colonialism. But McClintock constructs her argument around this concept seen rather as a paradox. Why paradox? Because, for her any concept that includes “post” is rather a period of crisis, where progress is questionable. Any “post” word assumes a certain prevalence of a futile movement where everything becomes relative. For McClintock the term becomes almost irrelevant, because it is first hard to define colonialism. It seems that colonialism is an ongoing process and what means post colonial for some countries in respect to their European influence, may be interpreted as simply colonial with respect to the new colonizing neighbors. If the classical binary axis of power seems dated, McClintock doesn’t trust the binary axis of time either, but rather tries to say that the concept of post colonialism “occurs in an entranced suspension of history” (McClintock 1186). The assonance that McClintock perceives in this term is when it is used synonymously with a post-independence historical period. The concept becomes even more abstract when she refers to the definition given by the book The Empire Writes Back where post colonial literature is defended on a few different aspects. The very last of them states that post-colonialism should be understood as everything that happened from the very beginning of colonialism which means from 1492 on. In that respect every nation would have some grasp of colonialism in its roots. She goes on saying that the term received value on marketing the success of the term post- modernism, but she can not perceive the notion of progress within the concept itself.

Reading the article on post colonialism by Anne McClintock an obvious question surfaces, and that is, when is post colonialism situated. An even more commonsense understanding would state that post colonialism follows colonialism. But McClintock constructs her argument around this concept seen rather as a paradox. Why paradox? Because, for her any concept that includes “post” is rather a period of crisis, where progress is questionable. Any “post” word assumes a certain prevalence of a futile movement where everything becomes relative. For McClintock the term becomes almost irrelevant, because it is first hard to define colonialism. It seems that colonialism is an ongoing process and what means post colonial for some countries in respect to their European influence, may be interpreted as simply colonial with respect to the new colonizing neighbors. If the classical binary axis of power seems dated, McClintock doesn’t trust the binary axis of time either, but rather tries to say that the concept of post colonialism “occurs in an entranced suspension of history” (McClintock 1186). The assonance that McClintock perceives in this term is when it is used synonymously with a post-independence historical period. The concept becomes even more abstract when she refers to the definition given by the book The Empire Writes Back where post colonial literature is defended on a few different aspects. The very last of them states that post-colonialism should be understood as everything that happened from the very beginning of colonialism which means from 1492 on. In that respect every nation would have some grasp of colonialism in its roots. She goes on saying that the term received value on marketing the success of the term post- modernism, but she can not perceive the notion of progress within the concept itself.

It is interesting to see in this week’s reading both Ania Loomba and Anne McOintock devoted to rethinking and reconsidering the basic terms of colonial studies, by challenging the conventional definitions and clarifying the complexity within the terms.

Ania Loomba started by a reiteration of the term “colonialism”, emphasizing on the historic spread of colonialism and the distinction between pre-capitalist colonialism and capitalist colonialism. She draws on the theory of Marxism to explain the unprecedented global power and effects of modern European colonialism: the capitalist colonialism, by restructuring the economy of their colonies, developed a more interactive and a more deeply penetrating relationship with the colonized countries in order to gain the profits to sustain the growth of European capitalism and industry.

Imperialism, as Loomba continues, is considered as the advanced stage of the development of colonialism: the superabundance of accumulated capital in European colonizers is been moved to the non-industrialized countries and used to sustain the growth of these countries. This global system ensures economic dependency and control even without direct colonial rule.

The post-colonialism, according to Loomba, can’t be properly defined if we don’t take into account the diverse situations and conditions concerning each individual colony as well as the differences or hierarchy inside the population of a colony: the word post-colonial cannot therefore be used in a single sense.

She also discussed the impact of post-structuralist view of history on the post-colonial studies, which rejected the idea of a single linear progression of history and instead advocate a multiplicity of parallel narratives. This coincides with Anne McOintock’s examination of the term “post-colonialism” which also noticed the variety and complexity of the post-colonial situation in different countries.

Anne McOintock insists also on the “multiplicity” of post-colonialism, and she points out that this term itself seems to fail to discredit the idea of “progress” and fail to denote this multiplicity. The prefix “post” suggests a linear structure that orients around the axis of time, the term corresponds hence to and even depends on the idea of linear historical progress. According to McOintock, the term “post-colonialism” suggests too often a premature celebration and runs the risk of obscuring the continuities and discontinuities of colonial and imperial power. The use of the term “post-colonialism”, suggests McOintock, becomes unstable when the ideology of “progress” collapsed with the failure of US economy and Soviet Union. Therefore finally she calls for “rethinking the global situation as a multiplicity of powers and histories” and for innovative and historically nuanced theories which can help us reinstate the discourse of history.

I was very interested in how Loomba began her analysis. She started off with the definition of colonialism.  As she mentioned, it didn’t refer to those inhabitants already there but the new comers, the ones that led to capitalism and changed the lives of many.