"Revolutionary Romanticism: Henri Lefebvre's Revolution-as-Festival", Third Text, 27:2, 2013, pp.208-220.

Gavin Grindon
13 Pages
1 File ▾
https://www.academia.edu/10706390/_Revolutionary_Romanticism_Henri_Lefebvres_Revolution_as_Festival_Third_Text_27_2_2013_pp_208_220

This article examines Henri Lefebvre's concept of revolution-as-festival, its textual sources and its relationship to contemporary notions developed by Georges Bataille and the Situationist International. It is a companion-piece to the examination of Bataille's revolution-as-festival in Third Text 104, vol 24, no 3, May 2010. The author argues that Lefebvre's revolution-as-festival embodies the multiple methodological ambiguities of his ‘open’ dialectical approach, and his attempt to transplant Surrealist and Dadaist concerns into a Marxian framework. It is, paradoxically, these ambiguities that allow his revolution-as-festival to become a useful concept: firstly as a discursive making-visible and valorization of the art and culture of social movements; and secondly as a term through which to critically re-imagine this art and culture's limits and possibilities. This potential is borne out, not least, in the influence of Lefebvre's essay ‘Revolutionary Romanticism’ on the founding debates of the Situationist International.

“Alchemist of the Revolution: The Affective Materialism of Georges Bataille.” Third Text 24:3, 2010. pp.305-17.

Gavin Grindon

13 Pages

1 File ▾

https://www.academia.edu/240077/_Alchemist_of_the_Revolution_The_Affective_Materialism_of_Georges_Bataille_Third_Text_24_3_2010_pp_305_17

This article examines Georges Bataille’s notion of revolution‐as‐festival and his attempt, in his writing of the 1930s, to place theories of affect within the framework of Marxist philosophy. Against the various negative characterisations of this project, it looks at Bataille’s ideas in this period in context, in order to understand their vivid contradictions as an attempt to assert a positive project of affect’s utility to the Left, within and against negative categories in early twentieth‐century cultural and critical thought.

"Surrealism, Dada and the Refusal of Work: Autonomy, Activism and Social Participation in the Radical Avant-Garde," The Oxford Art Journal, 34:1, 2011, pp.79-96.

Gavin Grindon

18 Pages

https://www.academia.edu/477883/_Surrealism_Dada_and_the_Refusal_of_Work_Autonomy_Activism_and_Social_Participation_in_the_Radical_Avant_Garde_The_Oxford_Art_Journal_34_1_2011_pp_79_96

This article aims to explore the notion of activist-art, identifying it as a distinct tendency in Modern art through a re-examination of historical and theoretical approaches to the radical avant-garde, drawing on autonomist Marxist and materialist post-structural perspectives. First, through a critique of Peter Bürger's Theory of the Avant-Garde, I attempt to place the use of the idea of ‘autonomy’ by the avant-garde in its critical historical context not only in the negative sense of separation, but in the positive sense of freedom from restraint. I argue that for the avant-garde this took the particular form of a thematic engagement with the refusal of work. Secondly, I examine one particular form of this refusal: the engagement with social movements amongst Dadaists in Berlin. I set out a theoretical frame of ‘affective composition', in order to place avant-garde artistic production in relation to the art of social movements, whose production operates outside the institutions of art. I argue that not only is the avant-garde at crucial points influenced by the art of social movements, but that the Dadaists in Berlin attempt to imagine new forms of ‘activist-art’ which synthesise avant-garde and social movement performance and object-art in disobedient performances and performative disobedient objects.

"Fantasies Of Participation: The Situationist Imaginary of New Forms of Labour in Art and Politics", The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, 49-50, 2015, pp.62-90

Gavin Grindon

29 Pages

1 File ▾ ▾

https://www.academia.edu/21042822/_Fantasies_Of_Participation_The_Situationist_Imaginary_of_New_Forms_of_Labour_in_Art_and_Politics_The_Nordic_Journal_of_Aesthetics_49_50_2015_pp_62_90?pls=RWLSxnqyad

The Situationist International (SI) have become a canonical reference point when discussing artists' participation in political action or activism. This article attempts to decentre the SI from this position, by tracing their theories and representations of political agency and labour. I argue that their notion of agency is deeply conflicted, epitomized by the dual invocations 'never work/all power to the workers' councils. I examine how the SI's representations of agency betray an attraction to and fascination with 1960s reactionary fantasies around brainwashing, conditioning, control and torture. Their practical descriptions of a constructed situation, which 'makes people live' are, in fact, closer to torturous state control than total liberation. The notions of agency they mobilise draw on colonial and classist sources, which actually deny the agency of radical movements. As a result, the SI produce a series of weak fantasies of participation, in which agency is denied and 'demanding the impossible' is actually a demand to constitute and police the impossible. Artistic-political agency was both guarded centre and constituent other. The SI's policing of their identity, tied in name to the agency of 'situations', involved the ongoing exclusion and repression of other artists' more practically-engaged labour within social movements.