Anti-fascist Art Theory
A Roundtable Discussion

Larne Abse Gogarty, Angela Dimitrakaki and Marina Vishmidt
http://tinyurl.com/tvj89n7

Introduction

The conversation that follows, among three art theorists whose work
focuses on emancipatory politics on the left and who participated together
in recent art events in Europe examining the resurgence of fascist politics,
poses this question:1 what might be the connection between the increasing
normalisation of a political landscape strewn with fascist elements and the
complex positioning of art between (or possibly, across) the status quo
and its subversion? Here, ‘art’ is understood as the totality of practices
that give us the ‘art field’ rather than just artworks, while the ‘political
landscape’ is seen as being articulated, one way or another, through the
hegemony of neoliberalism. The question as such implies that we
inhabit a critical moment in the trajectory of the antagonisms inherited
from the twentieth century. Our moment is defined by extraordinary ideological fusions and transpositions; technological ultra-mediation of subjects and cultural milieus premised on supremacy; the increasing appeal
of exclusionary far-right authoritarianism and counter-emancipatory positions; multiple enactments of social hatred, discursively performed as well
as violently actualised on anyone who qualifies as socially abject. Th
juncture where new articulations of a fascist mentality are forming puts
the doxa that capitalist markets are best served by liberal democracy to
the test, while the left is, at large and also in art, found implicated in the
reproduction of the capitalist horizon. The roundtable is intended as an
effort to think against the advance of this cultural and political dynamic
and propose, as a first step, possible vectors of critique for bringing
together a self-consciously anti-fascist art theory. The discussion focuses
on three main themes: a) art vis-à-vis power relations in capitalism, b)
the role of technology in subject formation, c) sexuality and whiteness.