Doing Art Politically (A Summary)

In 2008, in a talk at the Royal Academy of Arts (London), Thomas Hirschhorn outlined a thesis for "Doing Art Politically". In it, he distinguishes between making political art (in terms of subject matter, or having a political effect) and doing art politically. For Hirschhorn where you stand, what your position is and how this relates to others is central to making art and for Hirschhorn this is making art politically - it is the political. This position is compatible with Ranciere's "aesthetic regime" of art, where "aesthetic art" has a politics of its own (politics of aesthetics) and although it might look similar to everyday objects (indeed, it might be appropriated objects from everyday life) the fact that it is art separates it from everyday life (and materials). Aesthetic art does not need to adopt political themes, because it is already political. It is political because it questions and alters what can be seen and said (and who can see or say what). So, while art and non-art overlap, they retain their essential differences. At the same time, because aesthetic art is innately political, it is impossible to separate the political from the aesthetic.

Hirschhorn divides his thesis into ten points, which I will now summarise in turn.

Doing art politically means giving form

This is very confusing. He is clear that this is distinct from making a form, but what “giving form” actually means is unclear, and yet he declares that the question of form is the most important question for an artist. If it is intelligible at all, perhaps it is really simple: Hirschhorn is talking about making art, and by making he includes art practices that do not “make” anything… hence “giving form”.

Doing art politically means creating something

Art is always an action, never a reaction.  Making art (politically?) means taking a position, beyond mere criticism… staking a claim. Therefore, to create something is to take a risk. This does not mean that art is uncritical – it can be critical, but must not become neutralised by being critical.

Doing art politically means deciding in favour of something

Hirschhorn believes that an artist has to make decisions.  Not choices like 'A' or 'B', 'Left' or 'Right' but "decisions".  Hirschhorn has decided that his work should 'touch' the four following areas at the same time:

1.       Love

2.       Esthetics

3.       Philosophy

4.       Politics

Note the similarity to Badiou’s four truth procedures… and that Hirschhorn often speaks of creating an “event” (small e though). He claims that while Love and Philosophy are positive, Aesthetics and Politics could be negative.  He talks about "touching the negative" (subject matter) and how, therefore it is important for an artist to remain positive: there's no point an artist complaining when they can "make a creation" (why contribute negativity?). It is unlikely that any one work of art will touch all four with the same intensity, but all four fields should be touched. Hirschhorn hints at making a universal art when he claims that he aims to “create a new truth beyond negativity, beyond current issues, beyond commentaries, beyond opinions, and beyond evaluations”. These aims set his art apart from politics, which is concerned with real action in the here and now, rather than eternal statements or truths. And yet…

Doing art politically means using art as a tool

For Hirschhorn Art is a tool used to confront reality, encounter the world we live in: a tool (or a weapon).  Hirschhorn declares that he wants to address and confront universal concerns. Although he feels he can only make art with what surrounds him in his own history and milieu, he aims to reach out beyond these by avoiding the particular and trying to touch the universal. In this way, he declares that art can be used as a tool to confront reality and encounter the world. Potentially, art can touch somebody, or something can be touched through art.

Doing art politically means building a platform with the work

He considers his art to be a platform that provides a site for dialogue or confrontation with the other. How do you reach the other? By using a door, a window or a hole. This gives us a clue as to how we might read his work. Hirschhorn aims to create holes in reality with the potential for a “breakthrough”.

Doing art politically means loving the material with which one works

Hirschhorn emphasises the importance of materials: he says that the artist makes the decision to use their materials and therefore must love their materials (without becoming kitsch, sentimental or obsessive). The decision about the materials is Political.

Doing art politically means inventing oneself guidelines for oneself

Hirschhorn employs enigmatic guidelines.  Examples include:

·       Less is less, more is more

·       Quality no, energy yes

·       Panic is the solution

·       Better is always less good

·       To be responsible for everything that touches his artwork

·       To be the first who has to pay for his artwork

·       Never won, but never completely lost

Doing art politically means working for the other

He claims that he makes work for "the other" (not for the majority).  For Hirschhorn "the other" could be someone you don't know, someone you're afraid of or the other self that you have and he claims not to make art for himself but "for Art first" and then for "his art".

Doing art politically does not mean working for or against the market

Art can only exist beyond the laws of the market by maintaining its autonomy. Artists need support and assistance, but they must never become dependent on them.

Doing art politically means being a warrior.

He gives no explanation here – but note that connection between the warrior and militant (another nod to Badiou?) 

Why Leaving the EU is not Inherently Racist

It is almost four years now since Britain voted to leave the European Union. The UK remains divided and so called "remoaners" continue to dispute the result on a number of levels - some more legitimate than others. Since the result in 2016, Remain voters immediately accused Leave voters of being racists: they continue this accusation today - is it true?

The main argument against the accusation goes like this: 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU; how can Remain voters possibly know all of their motives? A subsidiary argument questions whether that many Britons (representing 52% of the country) are really racist. It is inconceivable that Remainers could know the motives of half the country (and no substantial research has been carried out), so they then concede that "not all Leave voters are racist, but all racists voted Leave". Let us analyse this oft repeated slogan. If "all the racists" voted Leave, then all Remain voters are necessarily not racist.

Freedom of Movement

The main reason given for implying that Remain voters could not be racist, is that they voted for freedom of movement and that Vote Leave centred on ending freedom of movement - thereby limiting immigration to the UK. This seems a logical and plausible argument, but does the EU really have freedom of movement? Here are five reasons why EU freedom of movement is not all it seems. 

1. Turning the Mediterranean into a "Cemetery for Refugees"

When Remain voters declare that they are not racist because they support freedom of movement, it is worth remembering that freedom of movement only applies to citizens from EU member states. What about the rights of non-EU citizens? Donald Trump's wall is rightly condemned as racist, but the EU already has its "wall" in the form of a sea. While migrants and refugees drowned in the Mediterranean sea, the EU (as an institution) did nothing. This led Turkey's president to accuse the EU of turning the Mediterranean into a "cemetery for refugees". 

2. EU Failure to Share Refugees (once they are on EU soil). 

During the migrant crisis, the EU left individual member States to act (alone). This led to the farcical situation where Greece (one of the EU's poorer countries and currently in severe financial difficulties) was left to process huge numbers of refugees - with no help from its EU family. Germany was one of the few countries to come out of the situation with any credit. Angela Merkel acted independently of the EU and against popular opinion to welcome in more than 1 million refugees. This led to a situation where Budapest’s Keleti railway station became overwhelmed with refugees bound for Germany - creating a scene reminiscent of Jews being forcibly put onto trains bound for concentration camps. Was this a case of freedom of movement (the refugees can go where they like), or a case where the refugees had to go to Germany, because nobody else wanted them? The evidence points to the latter, as Hungary was also allowed to reject all asylum requests at its border and in the Czech Republic the police wrote numbers on refugees hands. Far right governments in Poland, Austria and France all took measures to "protect" their boarders and limit migrants' ability to enter their counties: the EU failed to stop all this. 

3. The EU-Turkey Migrant Deal. 

The body of Alan Kurdi, September 2015 (Turkey)

The EU did nothing about the deaths in the Mediterranean... until the body of a toddler washed up on a beach in Turkey in September 2015. Alan Kurdi has been bound for Lesbos, but he never made it. What was the EU's response? In March 2016, the EU paid Turkey €3 billion and in March 2018 the EU agreed to give Turkey an additional €3 billion. In return, Turkey had to curb migrants crossing the Aegean sea to Greece; assess their refugees status; and return them to their country of origin if deemed to be not "in need of international protection". Additionally, the deal guaranteed that "every person arriving irregularly [...] to the Greek islands – including asylum-seekers – would be returned to Turkey" for processing. Where is the freedom of movement for refugees here? They have no choice; the EU does not want them and obliges them to return to Turkey. Putting asylum seekers back on boats resembles Australia's immigration policy that is so widely condemned as heartless. While the deal supposedly included an EU commitment to accept an equivalent number of refugees to those returned to Turkey, Amnesty International commented that deal damaged the EU's "commitment to upholding the basic principles of refugee protection and the lives of the tens of thousands it has trapped on Greek islands". Furthermore, Turkey rejected 2/3 non-Syrian asylum applications and deported them to their countries of origin: often zones of conflict (the common being Afghanistan). Amnesty International also note that the deal is being touted as a blueprint for further deals with other countries on the other side of the Med (Libya, Sudan, Niger and many others). The deal prevents refugees from making asylum applications in EU countries and pays other countries to deal with the problem. In effect, the deal keeps all the brown migrants outside the EU, and it is therefore fair to question whether a vote to remain inside the EU is intrinsically non-racist. 
The first three examples focus on how the EU restricts migration from outside its borders. This alone casts doubts about the credibility of claims that a vote to remain within the EU is inherently non-racist. How, you might ask, is preventing the freedom of movement of non-European black and brown people who are often Muslims progressive? This is to assume that the EU allows freedom of movement for its mainly white, Christian, European citizens, but this is not necessarily the case, as the next examples make clear. 

4. Bulgaria and Romania

Many people are surprised to hear that Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU in 2007. This is because the EU put restrictions on their freedom of movement that were not lifted until 2014, leading many people to falsely believe that these countries joined the EU then (rather than in 2007). The policy was driven by the fear of mass immigration from poorer countries into richer ones. The very principle of EU freedom of movement comes with restrictions. This policy discriminated against 29 million people based on their country of origin, regardless of their individuals' wealth. Discriminating against people based on where they come from seems like racism. The argument here is that EU freedom of movement was not universal between 2007-2014, and yet "EU Freedom of Movement" is lauded as a reason why Remain voters are not racist.

5. The Collective Deportation of Roma people

The collective deportation of Roma people (mainly from France and Italy) makes a mockery of EU claims to Freedom of Movement - even for its own citizens. As with the treatment of Romanian and Bulgarian EU citizens, this example undermines the EU principle of the right to equal treatment. Not only is the EU happy to discriminate based on your country of origin (in the case of Bulgaria and Romania), but it is also happy to discriminate on the grounds of ethnicity (in the case of the Roma). It is diffident to argue that this is not racist - let alone progressive. 

Why are Remain voters necessarily not racist?

The Remainer slogan that "not all Leave voters are racist, but all racists voted Leave" is often accompanied by the assertion that if you voted Leave, you are tainted by the company that you keep. This converts the concession that "not all Leave voters are racist" back into "all Leave are racist"... this time because of their association with racists (who all voted Leave). If we accept the logic of this position, then all Remain voters are tainted by the association with the five points above, which demonstrate that the EU is not so progressive when it comes to freedom of movement (or indeed racism) as Remain voters would like to think. 

When a remained puts an EU flag filter on their social media profile picture - to virtue signal that they are on the right side, the non-racist side - they are effectively saying that they are okay with the EU policies described above: restriction of freedom of movement if you come from a poor country; deportation of Roma; inaction when migrants drown in the Med; leaving individual States to act alone and bear the brunt of asylum applications; and a deal to prevent non-European refugees from even making asylum applications in the EU. 

The logical, evidenced-based, argument that EU freedom of movement is not as progressive as Remainers like to think has been given (at length) to make a simple point: that it is plausible that some Remain voters might be racist, and therefore it is untrue to assert that "all the racists voted Leave". But all this ignores the fact that we cannot know how many racists there are in Britain, who they are and how they voted. The argument - that "not all Leave voters are racist, but all racists voted Leave" fails on the same level that "everybody who voted Leave is racist": lack of evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: let us next examine what evidence is given to support claims that Leave voters are racist. 

Vote Leave was Racist

Unable to substantiate the claim that "all the racists voted Leave" (how could they? How is it possible to know how many racists are in Britain, who they are and who they voted for?), Remainers change tack and provide evidence, instead, that Vote Leave was racist. One of the most deplorable images that comes to mind is Nigel Farage's anti-immigration poster (pictured above). The implication is that if we remain in the EU, at a later date Turkey will join and subsequently the UK will be powerless to stop millions of Turks coming to live in Britain. The first point to note is that Nigel Farage was not part of Vote Leave. This is a semantic point, because Farage and UKIP were certainly on the same side as Vote Leave and Farage was able to appeal to fears about immigration and link these to the referendum. Furthermore, Vote Leave did play on similar fears, as reported in The Guardian, and has been accused of racism, as reported in The Observer. Even if Vote Leave was racist, the argument that voting Leave becomes racist by association falls down, for the reasons given above. 

The sleight of hand that shifted the argument from leaver voters being racist to Vote Leave being racist quickly slides into examples of Vote Leave lying, misleading, Cambridge Analytica, and so on: all perfectly good reasons to discredit Vote Leave, but not evidence that Vote Leave was racist, and certainly not evidence that all racists voted Leave. 

All this belies the point that it is obviously possible for Remain voters to be racist (there were more than 16 million of them, statistically it is probably that some were racist) Racists are perfectly capable of voting for their economic interests over their preferences to limit immigration. In some cases, they will even benefit from cheap EU labour - this does not mean that they cease to be racist. Consequently, not all racists voted Leave (if some voted Remain).

It is Possible to Vote Leave for Reasons Unrelated to Immigration and Racism

It seems almost surreal to have to make this point, but the case for Brexit has mainly been made by those on the right - from Farage to Boris, Gove, Cummings and so on. Those who argue that "all the racists voted Leave" often refuse to accept that there is any credible, non-racist, argument in favour of Brexit. There is a left-wing case for Brexit (known as Lexit) that was barely reported during the campaign - and when it was reported it was usually to discredit it. The point in summarising this position is not to convince anybody that it is right - the point is to assert that it is possible to have voted Leave for reasons other than racism. It goes something like this:

1.    The EU is an undemocratic technocracy. 

2.    The EU imposes privatisation and market liberalisation. It is possible to have State-owned industries, but we could not reinstate British Rail as an integrated, monopoly public service, under EU law. Article 107 TFEU allows for state aid only if it is compatible with the internal market and does not distort competition. The EU TTIP deal with the USA demonstrates how the EU could force the UK to open up the NHS to "competition" (effectively privatising the NHS). TTIP (now lying low) would have been a corporate raid sanctioned by an unelected government. 

3.    The EU imposes austerity on its members - the treatment of Greece is given as a key example and also evidence that the EU is hostile to left-wing governments. The EU also imposed austerity on Ireland, Cyprus and Portugal. The banks come before citizens when push comes to shove. 

4.    The single currency has had devastating effects on EU citizens. It prevented Greece from devaluing, resulted in Cypriots having to surrender their savings and it raised the cost of living for many. 

5.    Youth unemployment is high (43% in Greece, 39% in Spain and 35% in Italy) as a result of the Euro and EU austerity measures. 

6.    The UK currently exceeds EU Workers' rights: The vast majority of our rights belong to the labour movement, not the EU.

7.    The market is placed above the worker: the EU has served metropolitan business elites better than it has served the working classes. 

8.    The EU is, primarily, a neoliberal, free market, trade block: leaving it would allow us to pursue a more socialist agenda (if we voted for that). 

While this list is selective, it does provide eight reasons to vote for Brexit - none of which are racist (or stupid, ignorant, bigoted etc). This, coupled with the indictment of EU policies on freedom of movement and asylum application processes demonstrates why voting to leave the EU is not inherently racist. 

Why people are unemployed?

Some see the unemployed as lazy, entitled, scroungers who take without putting into the system. This post looks at why people are unemployed, positing some reasons (other that those above) why people might be unemployed.

Francis Alÿs. Turista (1994)

1. Some unemployed people are temporarily between jobs.

People might be made redundant, finish fixed term contracts or face unemployment when their employer ceases trading. According to the Office for National Statistics, the UK unemployment rate is 3.8% (May-July 2019 - the most recent figures at the time of writing). Those who like to scapegoat and demonise the unemployed might be surprised that this figure is so low. Even if 100% of these people found employment tomorrow (and were obliged to take it), the unemployment rate still would not be 0%, as other people would be made redundant /finish fixed term contracts and other employers would creese trading. It is therefore unrealistic to have an unemployment rate of 0%... unless you don't count the short term unemployed. Let us suppose that only 1.2 of the 3.8% currently unemployed fall into this category. That still leaves 2.6% of the population unemployed: why aren't they working?

2. Some unemployed people are working, but are not being paid.

JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter while signing on. Clearly, this was time week spent. Even if you don't like the books or the films, the London School of Economics estimates that the Harry Potter brand is worth £4bn to London's economy. Rowing herself recently dropped off the Forbes billionaire list, with Forbes citing Britain's higher tax rate and Rowling's $150 million charitable donations as the reason. Clearly, Rowling has paid back more than she took out.

But there aren't that many JK Rowling, are there? Maybe not, but if only one in 1,000 authors on the dole become billionaires, they pocket an average of £1 million pounds each. That's not a bad investment, is it? Even if we funded 10,000 authors for the same return, that would be economically viable. This argument focuses exclusively on economic return, but unemployed authors contribute in so many other ways. Some will write good books. Others will go on to work in other fields where knowledge of what is like to graft away as a writer will be useful:
perhaps as teachers or journalists. They also enrich society by their being able to think and live differently to those for whom full time work occupies so much of their time and effort.

Not convinced that there is an army of unemployed writers working to better our society? Fair enough. Their numbers might be fewer that I'd like to imagine. But what about artists? University lecturers in fine art are expected to first gain professional experience before they can teach it. This might be feasible for architects and designers, but most artists (especially at the beginning of their careers) will run at a loss. "The artist's apprenticeship" is a term applied to these early years working to build a reputation with no income other than unemployment benefit. JK Rowling might have become a billionaire in her own lifetime, but her contribution to culture age the UK economy will live on, and is immeasurable. Look at how Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso and others still contribute towards the French economy today. Impressionists emblazon banknotes; tourists flock to see Monet's garden; or where Van Gogh painted "that cafe" abdicate his bedroom; still more tourists pay to visit the Picasso museum in Paris. Now that both Picasso and Van Gogh were immigrants that have become synonymous with France's image as a country of artists.

Some of those 3.8% unemployed will be writers, artists, poets, inventors, scientists, or even future entrepreneurs. It's impossible to tell how many. Let us suppose that they account for another 1.2%. So now we have a remainder of 1.4% of the populating not working, for reasons yet to be ascertained.

3. Some people cannot find work, or hold down a job, because they lack the most basic skills and/or motivation.

It is well-known that many low-skilled jobs (as well as some not so low-skilled jobs) have been replaced by machines and, more recently, robots. Many of the people who would have worked in repetitive and often mundane agricultural and manufacturing jobs can no longer find jobs. Some of them can retrain, of course, but some cannot: they simply lack the communication skills to work in the service industry, or the IT skills to work in many other sectors.

Others, who were more highly skilled workers, have seen their industries diminish. Where they had valued skills, they are now no longer needed. This feeling of being undervalued, coupled with their former pride in their work and a loss of identity (they identified as coal miners, or ship wrights etc) can prove to have devastating consequences, such as depression. It can be difficult to motivate yourself to apply for a job in a call centre, or McDonald's when you previously had a purpose building warships, for example. Although many people seem to have little sympathy and feel that such unemployed people should stop feeling sorry for themselves and take any job on offer, the psychological effects cannot be so simply dismissed - especially with older workers who find it harder to retain and feel that they may never work again.

We are still feeling the effects of de-industrialisation. Some of those who lost their jobs, their professions, in the 1980s really did never work again. This must have had some effect on their children, who will have internalised their parents' bitterness and this will have doubled down in the cases when they too found it hard to find work.

Could this category account for the remaining 1.4%? After all, it's not a huge percentage. 

There are others, it's true, who are unemployed for less relatable reasons. There are criminals, benefit cheats, the lazy, the entitled and the scroungers. But having read the case above, what percentage of the 3.8% do you really think they account for? 

Lacan's Gaze: A Summary

To contribute to this post, or challenge malaised's summary, please leave a comment. 

How can an object gaze back at a subject? Clearly it cannot, since it has no eyes. Therefore, I propose two hypotheses that might help understand Lacan's theory. Firstly, since Lacan was a psychoanalyst, we might consider that the perceived Gaze emanating from the object is in fact coming from with: from our unconscious. Secondly, we might do well to recognise that Lacan's doctoral thesis was about paranoia – once more the Gaze (if it exists at all) might be in our own head.

Lacan reworked Freud's concept of the mirror phase, where a child first recognises itself in its reflected self or in another child. According to Freud's theory, this is an important developmental stage where the child begins to understand the boundary between itself and the outside world.

According to Lacan, the mirror stage is followed by a transition from the 'Real' to the 'Imaginary'. These terms can be likened to Freud's Id and Ego respectively. During the imaginary/Ego stage the infant still believes that it is attached to its mother. It is only when it surpasses this stage and enters the 'symbolic order' (Freud's super Ego) that it represses the imaginary stage and recognises difference.

It therefore seems a reasonable assumption that his Gaze theory can be understood in terms of his concept of the mirror stage – that is, the mistaken identity of oneself in an object (reflection or another baby, but also perhaps many other objects). This is also reminiscent of Freud's concept of the uncanny – especially the instances involving automatons or dummies.

Lacan and Freud have been criticised by feminists for their patriarchal view regarding gender – especially in their definition of the female through its lack of a phallus. Julia Kristeva has used the Lacanian triad of real/imaginary/symbolic orders to propose a new reading of the psyche that is maternal in nature.

The Gaze in Film and Art

As early as 1975 Laura Mulvey discussed how representations of men and women in film could be analysed using Freudian psychoanalysis. She identified roles in films and the associated pleasures experienced by male viewers. She argued that these pleasures related to the construction of the male psyche, but she also went much further by identifying how this reveals and reinforces patriarchal bias in film... and also in psychoanalytic theory. According to Mulvey, the male viewer identifies with the male protagonist in much the same way that the child identifies itself in the mirror stage. The male viewer takes pleasure in the objectification of the female protagonist (both by the male actor and the male viewer) and feels a sense of power as he overcomes the threat that the female represents: the threat of the lack of a penis, or symbolic castration.

Margaret Olin applies Mulvey's work to art. Olin's contribution is to propose that the male Gaze can be subverted if the sadistic power of the Gaze or the manipulation of imagery is exposed. She proposed that single point perspective heightens the power of the Gaze whereas multiple viewpoints (fragmented perspective) has the opposite effect.

Although all the theorists discussed so far were writing in the 20^th Century, the Gaze that they described presumably existed long before it was identified as such. Not only should we be able to find examples in art history, but, in fact, we can find counter examples. Manet provided a challenge to the male Gaze in paintings such as Olympia (1863) and Bar at the Folies-Bergere (1882). In both paintings the Gaze is very much focussed on the woman, who is gazing straight back at us. Both paintings also allude to prostitution.

Umberto Eco on Interpretation and Over-interpretation: A Summary

To add to this article, or to challenge Malaised's account of the text, please leave a comment below. 

Overview

In 1990, Umberto Eco gave a series of three lectures on “Interpretation and Overinterpretation” as part of the Tanner Lectures in Human Values at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. (Eco, 1990) The lectures were later reproduced as the first three chapters in an edited book entitled Interpretation and Overinterpretation (1992) edited by Stefan Collini. In these lectures, Eco outlines his concerns about over-interpretive bias in contemporary theory. In his introduction, Collini characterises these concerns as “the way some of the leading strands of contemporary critical thought… appear to him to license the reader to produce a limitless, uncheckable flow of ‘readings’”. Eco asks if there are limits to what a text can be made to mean, and whether the author’s intentions should play a part in defining these limits. The limits, he concludes, are not located in either the author’s intention or the reader’s interpretation… but in the text itself. Eco’s lectures are followed by three response chapters by hermeneutic pragmatist Richard Rorty, deconstructionist Jonathan Culler and novelist-critic Christine Brooke-Rose. Eco concludes the book by responding to these challenges.

Interpretation and History

In the first lecture, “Interpretation and history”, Eco seeks to reveal, or even undermine, postmodernism’s relativist foundations. His goal is to find the middle ground between totally relativist and totally dogmatic approaches to interpretation. In his words, between a “radical reader oriented theory of interpretation” where Rorty has noted:

“the critic asks neither the author nor the text about their intention but simply beats the text into a shape that will serve his purpose. He makes the text refer to whatever is relevant to that purpose. He does this by imposing a vocabulary – a grid in Foucault’s terminology – on the text which may have nothing to do with any vocabulary used in the text or by its author, and seeing what happens” (1991, p. 151)

and on the other hand, “finding the original intention of the author”, which may be impossible to discern or irrelevant for the interpretation of the text. (1992, p. 25) Eco locates postmodern theories of interpretation within a history of ancient hermeticism and gnosticism. Both his ancient and postmodern examples consider the study of signs and symbols to be unproductive, as they are unable to reveal truths, but only displace them elsewhere. (1992, p. 35) Eco could be describing Derridian Deconstruction when he notes that:

“The reader must suspect that every line […] conceals another secret meaning; words, instead of saying, hide the untold; the glory of the reader is to discover that texts can say everything, except what the author wanted them to mean”. (1992, p. 39)

Acknowledging that in voicing his concerns he has put forth caricatures of the worst kinds of radical reader oriented theory of interpretation, Eco nonetheless asserts that caricatures can be good portraits. (1992, p. 40) The possibility to reject absurd interpretations or agree on reasonable ones disappears when endless possible meanings become acceptable: this, for Eco characterises “overinterpretation”. The reason for the apparent return (or persistence) of anti-rationalist relativism, however, is not addressed. Nonetheless, he sets up the next two lectures by claiming that somewhere there are criteria for the limits of interpretation and that he intends to find and delineate them.

Overinterpreting Texts

In lecture two, “Overinterpreting texts”, Eco argues that overinterpretation can occur even when there are multiple valid interpretations of the text. For Eco, it is not the reader who produces meanings in the text, but the text which produces the “model reader”. This is what he calls the “intention of the text”. The model reader must take their cues from the text, meaning that not all interpretations are valid and that some will be rejected as preposterous. Eco claims that a text can “foresee a model reader entitled to try infinite conjectures” but that this reader is “only an actor who makes conjectures about the kind of model reader postulated by the text”. (1992, p. 64) Eco proposes “the intention of the text” as a solution to the excesses of interpretation based on an overestimation of the possibilities of similarity and analogy (with an implicit nod in the direction of Foucault).

Between Author and Text

In the third lecture, “Between author and text”, Eco makes the case for a “liminal author”. The author is “liminal” insofar as he exists on the threshold between the intention of the author and the linguistic intention displayed in the text. The author is shaped by his “cultural and linguistic background”; (1992, p. 69) the reader, he tells us, must therefore respect these boundaries.

All three response chapters take up positions contra Eco. Unsurprisingly, Rorty makes a passionate case for interpretation, disputing Eco’s distinction between “using” a text (for irony or parody, for example) and “interpreting” a text. (1992, p. 93) Culler takes on both Eco and Rorty. He suggests that the most extreme over-interpretive moments can be the most significant, as it is in such moments that greater literary and social understandings lie. (1992, p. 110)

Rorty’s challenge forms the main part of Eco’s response. Eco ends by asserting that “Hiroshima was bombed and that Dachau and Buchenwald existed” (Eco et al., 1992, p. 150)– thus implicitly linking over-interpretation to post-truth. He concludes that the author’s intention may, indeed, set limits to the work’s interpretation.

References

Eco, U. (1990). Interpretation and overinterpretation: World, history, texts. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Presented at the The Tanner lectures on human values, Clare Hall, Cambridge.

Eco, U., Brooke-Rose, C., Culler, J., Collini, S., & Rorty, R. (1992). Interpretation and overinterpretation (Paperback; S. Collini, Ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rorty, R. (1991). Consequences of pragmatism: Essays 1972-1980. Hemel Hempsted: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (or the narcissism of Caractacus Potts)

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a film about a father of two young children whose mother has died. The father, Caractacus Pott, (Dick Van Dyke), is an apparently independently wealthy inventor who doesn't believe in playing by the rules - although he is not rich, he wouldn't consider working for anybody else, and owns property and some land in an unspecified idyllic village, for example).

The Potts children (Jeremy and Jemimah) don't go to school - that would run contra to Pott's fiercely independent streek. He prefers for them to learn through play. He does not homeschool them; rather, they run about unsupervised... left to their own devices.
One day they encounter Truly Scrumptious (the female character who will eventually become their surrogate mother) . Scrumptious is appalled that Potts lets his children runaround unsupervised, and she is fearful for their safety when she nearly runs them over. The father however has no such concerns. He believes that a little danger is no bad thing in a child's upbringing and that they will learn to care for themselves rather than being suffocated by a mollycoddling nanny State.
Scrumptious and Potts become friends and take the children to the beach. From this point on on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a dreamlike fantasy. Scrumptious learns that, far from being the uncaring father that she assumed him to be, Potts is a deeply devoted parent. He has endless patience, time and love for his children. They learn through imaginative play with him. For example, they fantasize about seeing a pirate ship just off the coast. The idyllic world of learning through play quickly becomes darker, when they travel to the land of Vulgaria where a mad ruler, Baron Bomburst, has banned children, so that he alone can have all the toys.
Bomburst employees a sinister Child Catcher who runs around imprisoning children in a cage on the back of his cart.
The film concludes when the Potts family join forces with a toymaker (Benny Hill) to free all the children imprisoned by the Baron and fly home in their magical flying car.
It is noteworthy that the evil child-snatching baron story is Potts' invention. The Child Catcher personifies Potts' fear of losing his children, just as he has lost his wife. The Child Catcher is the darker side of Potts' personality. Far from rescuing his children from the boredom of a life at school, he is like a narcissist who wants to keep his children close, to serve his own ends. Their infantile fascination with his many failed or commercially unviable inventions makes him feel important and provides him with an audience 24/7. As is common with people suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, his children really serve to make him feel more important and to alleviate his fear of being left alone. At the same time, paradoxically, he is far from over-protective. Once the children are out of sight, they are out of mind and only of interest to their father once he has need for their attention.
Therefore, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang can be read as a warning about the potentially self-serving motives behind home schooling.

Steam Punk & Colonial Nostalgia

Asylum Steampunk Festival (Lincoln 2019)

If you walk around the streets of Lincoln during the annual Asylum Steampunk Festival (the largest and longest running steampunk festival in the world), you will hear that the steampunks – easily identifiable by their dress – speak in many different languages. While the appeal of steampunk has certainly broadened its horizons, one cannot help but feel that it is most warmly received by white Europeans, nostalgic for empire. 

Clad in pith helmets, these intrepid explorers lament that America has overtaken the European powers to become the dominant global superpower. Steampunks long for a return to the good old days of European supremacy that were only ever possible because of colonisation. Steampunk as a fantasy where Europeans continue to dominate the world using (new) pre-digital technologies. Outsourcing labour leaves Europeans with a nostalgia for the days when they could actually make and repair things. Nostalgia is evident in the dressing up (not just literature) – people want to have a go at living this alternative reality. 

Dr Arliss Loveless

Critics will rightly point to the reception that steampunk has in the United States. Films such as Eli Roth’s The House With a Clock in its Walls (2018) and Barry Sonnenfeld’s Wild Wild West (1999) are testament to steampunk’s popular appeal in America. Arliss Loveless, the baddie in Wild Wild West, is a racist played by a British actor. The British baddie is, of course, a Hollywood tradition who (potentially) represents the way that contemporary Americans continue to view the old world as a threat. On the surface racism in Wild Wild West (both the British and confederate varieties) is a bad thing to be combated. However, this belies the colonial nostalgia of Wild Wild West and, indeed westerns more generally. Will Smith’s character James West might be black, but the metanarrative here is that, together with the white folk, he will wipe out the indigenous peoples to establish a white European colony. 

It should not be surprising that the Antebellum South is receptive to steampunk ideas. This analogue era was prosperous because of slavery; this was halted by progressive new ideas and technologies. The Antebellum South was an agricultural society, somewhat resistant to the industrial north. As such, it represents a pre-industrial, and therefore pre-steam power, mentality. This seams not to matter in Wild Wild West, where white colonial nostalgia takes precedence over nostalgia for steam power. This illustrates my first point: steampunk’s nostalgia for the analogue is a proxy for its nostalgia for white European supremacy. 

In the United States, this means European ways and traditions supplanting indigenous and non-European customs – the zenith of which is reached in The House with a Clock in its Walls, which depicts a mainly white New England society underpinned by ancient European superstition, magic and folklore. All of the main characters are white, and the architecture speaks not to America (the Art Deco Empire State Building, Diners and so on) but to Britain. In Europe, the difference is that America itself becomes a proxy for that which supplanted European supremacy, adventure and colonial expansion. After all, steampunk is trapped in the Victorian age – the peak of European colonial domination.