«L’idée de communisme» retrouverait-elle, par temps de crise, une vigueur inattendue? Alain Badiou [1], Slavoj Zizek [2], Toni Negri [3], Michael Hardt [4], Jacques Rancière [5] et plusieurs autres grands noms de la philosophie politique radicale mondiale étaient réunis, ce week-end, à Londres, pour un colloque sur cette notion. Aude Lancelin a suivi les débats

On ignore si la tombe de Marx [6], située au cimetière de Highgate à Londres, a été spécialement fleurie durant ce week-end. Il est certain en revanche qu’un hommage autrement plus stimulant vient d’être rendu au penseur au cœur même de la capitale britannique. Trois journées durant, du vendredi 13 au dimanche 15 mars 2009, les plus prestigieux noms de la philosophie politique radicale mondiale, de Slavoj Zizek à Alain Badiou, Toni Negri, Michael Hardt, Jacques Rancière et bien d’autres, se sont succédé à la tribune de la «Birkbeck university of London» [7] pour réfléchir ensemble à l’avenir de l’idée communiste. Un amphithéâtre de neuf cent places avait été mis à disposition pour ce colloque à tous égards exceptionnel, sobrement intitulé «On the idea of Communism». Il aura à peine suffi à contenir une foule spectaculairement jeune, attentive et rieuse, venue de l’Europe entière avec carnets de notes, canettes de Coca light et caméscopes high-tech pour entendre les grandes figures d’un concept politique qu’on disait salutairement mort.

Doit-on voir dans cette étonnante affluence une conséquence des convulsions que connaît actuellement l’économie capitaliste mondiale? Il est certain que la désorientation actuelle se montre suffisamment profonde pour redonner un nouveau lustre aux objections marxistes. Ce n’est du reste pas le moindre de ses dégâts collatéraux, ne manqueront pas de grincer certains penseurs médiatiques hexagonaux. Prudence toutefois. On sait que les crises de cette ampleur peuvent faire sauter certains verrous idéologiques comme elles peuvent aussi déboucher sur le pire. Les Britanniques le savent bien, qui ont récemment connu des grèves ouvrières d’une ampleur inédite contre l’embauche de travailleurs étrangers. Une agitation inquiétante, vivement condamnée par Gordon Brown. Surpris par la réussite de leur propre démonstration de force, les organisateurs de ce week-end «rouge» non loin d’une City londonienne dramatiquement sinistrée se gardaient donc de tout triomphalisme.

©Ibo/Sipa

Slavoj Zizek

[2]

Un tabou est bel et bien en train de tomber cependant. Celui qui pesait sur le mot même de «communisme», criminalisé depuis la fin des années 70, usé et définitivement ringardisé au cours de la décennie suivante. Le 7 mars dernier, une semaine avant le colloque de Londres, le «Financial Times» lui-même, peu suspiciable de complaisances gauchistes, posait sans précautions la question: «Communism: an alternative to capitalism once again?» [9]. La veille, le journal avait déjà consacré un long portait au slovène Slavoj Zizek [2], présenté en véritable rock star marxiste. De plus en plus populaire en Angleterre, désigné parmi les 25 «top leaders» intellectuels mondiaux par les lecteurs du «Foreign Policy» l’an dernier, Zizek a également été nommé directeur international dudit «Birckbek Institute», faculté ayant toujours maintenu une tradition d’accueil à l’égard des intellectuels communistes blacklistés pendant la guerre froide(1). Une fonction honorifique qui lui aura permis de lancer l’idée de ce colloque avec le philosophe Alain Badiou [1], lui aussi en voie de médiatisation accélérée au Royaume-Uni.

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Alain Badiou

[1]

Quelques jours avant le début de la manifestation, ce dernier apparaissait d’ailleurs à la BBC dans un célèbre talk politique pour y défendre son best-seller post-élections présidentielles, «De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom?» [10], qui vient de paraître en anglais chez Verso. Détail cocasse, si le célèbre auteur de «l’Etre et l’événement» est aussi l’objet de polémiques en Grande-Bretagne, c’est pour une raison inverse aux motifs français ordinaires. Le samedi 14, une petite manifestation anti-Badiou accueillait en effet à l’entrée le public… mais celle-ci était organisée par un quarteron de vieux militants du PC britannique, reprochant au philosophe sa supposée trahison social-démocrate et sa rupture avec les objectifs révolutionnaires. Badiou go home, en somme. Un comble pour le grand platonicien d’Ulm, encore caricaturé par beaucoup de médias français en sulfureux promoteur d’un maoïsme muséifié refusant de tirer les leçons des tragédies passées. Une opinion que ne semblait pas en tout cas partager le public du week-end, dont certains étaient venus de très loin pour observer de près le dernier maître lacano-althussérien issu des années 60, comme on vient toucher un morceau de la Sainte croix.

Loin de tout folklore bolchevique cependant, l’heure n’était pas à la rumination nostalgique ni à la provocation anti-libérale grossière durant ces trois journées de haute densité conceptuelle. L’humeur n’était évidemment pas davantage à une tentative de sauvetage partiel du bilan indiscutablement calamiteux des Partis-Etats communistes du XXe siècle. Sur ce plan-là, tous les intervenants étaient d’emblée d’accord. Deux conditions sine qua non déterminaient leur présence à cette manifestation. Être disposé à envisager positivement un renouveau de l’hypothèse communiste aujourd’hui, et n’être le porte-voix d’aucune formation politique institutionnelle. Non à la militance hargneuse, place à la «patience du concept», selon l’expression du grand hégélien Gérard Lebrun citée par Zizek.

©Waechter/Caro Fotos/Sipa

Toni Negri

[3]

Moyennant quoi, et c’est en soi un événement, la totalité des personnalités conviées avaient accepté l’invitation, à l’exception de Giorgo Agamben, aux abonnés absents, et de la grande genderiste américaine Judith Butler [11], longtemps hésitante. Le philosophe Jean-Luc Nancy [12], prévu au programme, avait finalement dû renoncer la veille pour raisons médicales. Ainsi la gauche intellectuelle radicale était-elle représentée lors de ce meeting londonien dans ses multiples nuances, et ce jusqu’aux plus irréconciliablement opposées.

Rien de commun en effet entre Toni Negri [3], ancien activiste italien devenu depuis la parution d’«Empire» – une référence théorique majeure pour le mouvement altermondialiste et certains collectifs de précaires ou d’intermittents – et Slavoj Zizek [2], aux antipodes de l’acharnement negriste contre l’Etat-nation. Tous deux auront d’ailleurs une légère prise de bec au sujet de la politique menée par Lula au Brésil, défendue par Negri au détriment de Chavez. Rien de commun non plus entre son concitoyen Alessandro Russo et le même Negri, ardent promoteur du «oui» au traité constitutionnel européen.

D.R.

Bruno Bosteels

[13]

Avec son coauteur Michael Hardt, spécialement venu des Etats-Unis pour l’occasion, tous deux défendent en effet une forme de deleuzisme mutant, incarné en France par la revue «Multitudes» [14], qui tend à envisager positivement certaines formes du capitalisme avancé comme une possible production de «commun», le paradigme de cela étant fourni par Internet. Rien qui puisse donc les rapprocher des vues d’un Badiou, ni de sa garde rapprochée représentée ici par Alberto Toscano ou le jeune professeur de littérature à Cornell, USA, Bruno Bosteels, auteur le vendredi après-midi d’une remarquable intervention sur le «communisme à l’âge de la terreur», très informée de la situation passée et actuelle du gauchisme français.

Rien de commun entre eux non, hormis l’horizon communiste justement. Hormis le souhait de ne pas laisser l’adversaire continuer à proclamer l’échec et la souillure définitive de cette idée émancipatrice sans laquelle, «il n’y aurait rien dans le devenir historique et politique qui puisse être d’un quelconque intérêt pour un philosophe», selon la phrase d’Alain Badiou [1] reprise sur l’affiche pourpre du colloque de Birkbeck. Ce souci-là, «le souci de ne pas se laisser imposer l’idée d’échec par l’autre camp, c’est de Gaulle qui me l’a inspirée», glisse le philosophe français. «Nous avons perdu? Non, nous n’avons pas perdu, a-t-il dit en 1940… Il est alors parti à Londres, avec rien dans les poches, rien sous la manche. Et quelques années plus tard, c’est en vainqueur qu’il est revenu à Paris.» Ici Londres, les communistes d’hier parlent à ceux de demain.

A.L.

(1) L’historien britannique marxiste Eric Hobsbawn, auteur de «l’Âge des extrêmes», y a notamment longtemps enseigné.

www.contretemps.eu
Le philosophe Giorgio Agamben présente Contributions à la guerre en cours de Tiqqun, aux Editions La Fabrique, un livre qui rassemble trois textes écrits il y a près de dix ans : “Introduction à la guerre civile”, “Une métaphysique critique pourraît naître comme science des dispositifs” et “Comment faire ?”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09zizek.html

TODAY is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Duringthis time of reflection, it is common to emphasize the miraculousnature of the events that began that day: a dream seemed to come true,the Communist regimes collapsed like a house of cards, and the worldsuddenly changed in ways that had been inconceivable only a few monthsearlier. Who in Poland could ever have imagined free elections withLech Walesa as president?

However, when the sublime mist of the velvet revolutions was dispelledby the new democratic-capitalist reality, people reacted with anunavoidable disappointment that manifested itself, in turn, asnostalgia for the “good old” Communist times; as rightist, nationalistpopulism; and as renewed, belated anti-Communist paranoia.

The first two reactions are easy to comprehend. The same rightists whodecades ago were shouting, “Better dead than red!” are now often heardmumbling, “Better red than eating hamburgers.” But the Communistnostalgia should not be taken too seriously: far from expressing anactual wish to return to the gray Socialist reality, it is more a formof mourning, of gently getting rid of the past. As for the rise of therightist populism, it is not an Eastern European specialty, but acommon feature of all countries caught in the vortex of globalization.

Much more interesting is the recent resurgence of anti-Communism from Hungary to Slovenia. During the autumn of 2006, large protests againstthe ruling Socialist Party paralyzed Hungary for weeks. Protesterslinked the country’s economic crisis to its rule by successors of theCommunist party. They denied the very legitimacy of the government,although it came to power through democratic elections. When thepolice went in to restore civil order, comparisons were drawn with theSoviet Army crushing the 1956 anti-Communist rebellion.

This new anti-Communist scare even goes after symbols. In June 2008,Lithuania passed a law prohibiting the public display of Communistimages like the hammer and sickle, as well as the playing of theSoviet anthem. In April 2009, the Polish government proposed expandinga ban on totalitarian propaganda to include Communist books, clothingand other items: one could even be arrested for wearing a Che GuevaraT-shirt.

No wonder that, in Slovenia, the main reproach of the populist rightto the left is that it is the “force of continuity” with the oldCommunist regime. In such a suffocating atmosphere, new problems andchallenges are reduced to the repetition of old struggles, up to theabsurd claim (which sometimes arises in Poland and in Slovenia) thatthe advocacy of gay rights and legal abortion is part of a darkCommunist plot to demoralize the nation.

Where does this resurrection of anti-Communism draw its strength from?Why were the old ghosts resuscitated in nations where many youngpeople don’t even remember the Communist times? The new anti-Communismprovides a simple answer to the question: “If capitalism is really somuch better than Socialism, why are our lives still miserable?”

It is because, many believe, we are not really in capitalism: we donot yet have true democracy but only its deceiving mask, the same darkforces still pull the threads of power, a narrow sect of formerCommunists disguised as new owners and managers — nothing’s reallychanged, so we need another purge, the revolution has to be repeated…

What these belated anti-Communists fail to realize is that the imagethey provide of their society comes uncannily close to the most abusedtraditional leftist image of capitalism: a society in which formaldemocracy merely conceals the reign of a wealthy minority. In otherwords, the newly born anti-Communists don’t get that what they aredenouncing as perverted pseudo-capitalism simply is capitalism.

One can also argue that, when the Communist regimes collapsed, thedisillusioned former Communists were effectively better suited to runthe new capitalist economy than the populist dissidents. While theheroes of the anti-Communist protests continued to dwell in theirdreams of a new society of justice, honesty and solidarity, the formerCommunists were able to ruthlessly accommodate themselves to the newcapitalist rules and the new cruel world of market efficiency,inclusive of all the new and old dirty tricks and corruption.

A further twist is added by those countries in which Communistsallowed the explosion of capitalism, while retaining political power:they seem to be more capitalist than the Western liberal capitaliststhemselves. In a crazy double reversal, capitalism won over Communism,but the price paid for this victory is that Communists are now beatingcapitalism in its own terrain.

This is why today’s China is so unsettling: capitalism has alwaysseemed inextricably linked to democracy, and faced with the explosionof capitalism in the People’s Republic, many analysts still assumethat political democracy will inevitably assert itself.

But what if this strain of authoritarian capitalism proves itself tobe more efficient, more profitable, than our liberal capitalism? Whatif democracy is no longer the necessary and natural accompaniment ofeconomic development, but its impediment?

If this is the case, then perhaps the disappointment at capitalism inthe post-Communist countries should not be dismissed as a simple signof the “immature” expectations of the people who didn’t possess arealistic image of capitalism.

When people protested Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the largemajority of them did not ask for capitalism. They wanted the freedomto live their lives outside state control, to come together and talkas they pleased; they wanted a life of simplicity and sincerity,liberated from the primitive ideological indoctrination and theprevailing cynical hypocrisy.

As many commentators observed, the ideals that led the protesters wereto a large extent taken from the ruling Socialist ideology itself —people aspired to something that can most appropriately be designatedas “Socialism with a human face.” Perhaps this attitude deserves asecond chance.

This brings to mind the life and death of Victor Kravchenko, theSoviet engineer who, in 1944, defected during a trade mission toWashington and then wrote a best-selling memoir, “I Chose Freedom.”His first-person report on the horrors of Stalinism included adetailed account of the mass hunger in early-1930s Ukraine, whereKravchenko — then still a true believer in the system — helped enforcecollectivization.

What most people know about Kravchenko ends in 1949. That year, hesued Les Lettres Françaises for libel after the French Communistweekly claimed that he was a drunk and a wife-beater and his memoirwas the propaganda work of American spies. In the Paris courtroom,Soviet generals and Russian peasants took the witness stand to debatethe truth of Kravchenko’s writings, and the trial grew from a personalsuit to a spectacular indictment of the whole Stalinist system.

But immediately after his victory in the case, when Kravchenko wasstill being hailed all around the world as a cold war hero, he had thecourage to speak out passionately against Joseph McCarthy’s witchhunts. “I believe profoundly,” he wrote, “that in the struggle againstCommunists and their organizations … we cannot and should not resortto the methods and forms employed by the Communists.” His warning toAmericans: to fight Stalinism in such a way was to court the danger ofstarting to resemble their opponent.

Kravchenko also became more and more obsessed with the inequalities ofthe Western world, and wrote a sequel to “I Chose Freedom” that wastitled, significantly, “I Chose Justice.” He devoted himself tofinding less exploitative forms of collectivization and wound up inBolivia, where he squandered all his money trying to organize poorfarmers. Crushed by this failure, he withdrew into private life andshot himself in 1966 at his home in New York.

How did we come to this? Deceived by 20th-century Communism anddisillusioned with 21st-century capitalism, we can only hope for newKravchenkos — and that they come to happier ends. On the search forjustice, they will have to start from scratch. They will have toinvent their own ideologies. They will be denounced as dangerousutopians, but they alone will have awakened from the utopian dreamthat holds the rest of us under its sway.

Dubbed by the National Review as “the most dangerous political philosopher in the West” and the New York Times as “the Elvis of cultural theory,” Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek has written over fifty books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory. In his latest book, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, Žižek analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to what he calls the farce of the financial meltdown. [includes rush transcript]

JUAN GONZALEZ We continue on the subject of the financial crisis with a man the National Review calls “the most dangerous political philosopher in the West.” The New York Times calls him “the Elvis of cultural theory.” Slovenian philosopher and public intellectual Slavoj Žižek has written over fifty books on philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory. His latest, just out from Verso, is called First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. It analyzes how the United States has moved from the tragedy of 9/11 to the farce of the financial meltdown.

Žižek’s latest offering, also excerpted in the October issue of Harper’s Magazine, opens with the words, quote, “The only truly surprising thing about the 2008 financial meltdown is how easily the idea was accepted that its happening was unpredictable.” He goes on to recall how the demonstrations against the IMF and the World Bank over the past decade all protested the ways in which banks were playing with money and warned of an impending crash. They were met with tear gas and mass arrests.

AMY GOODMAN: The message, he writes, was, quote, “loud and clear, and the police were used to literally stifle the truth.”

Well, Slavoj Žižek addressed a full house at Cooper Union here in New York City on Wednesday night and joins us now in our firehouse studio.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Thanks very much. It’s my pleasure.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Relate the protest to the—

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: You are even better than Fox News, which I usually watch. More amusing.

AMY GOODMAN: Relate the protests to the meltdown and why—how it was predictable.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: No, what interests me is, for example, Paul—sorry, Paul Krugman said basically the same thing, which tells us a lot about how ideology works today. He said, what if we make a mental experiment, and all the leading bank people, managers and so on, were to know how it would end two years ago? He said, let’s not delude ourselves; there would have been no change. They would have acted in exactly the same way.

This brings me, as a psychoanalyst, into the play, because I think this makes us aware as to what extent our everyday dealing is controlled by what in psychoanalysis we call the mechanism of fetishist disavowal. “Je sais bien, mais quand même…” “I know very well, but…” You know, we can know very well the possible catastrophic consequences, but somehow you trust the market, you think things will somehow work out, and so on and so on. It’s absolutely crucial to analyze this, not only in economy, but generally. This is the focus of my work: how beliefs function today. What do we mean when we say that someone believes?

So that I don’t get lost, let me tell you a wonderful story, which is my favorite story. I quote it also in the book. You know Niels Bohr, Copenhagen, quantum physics guy. You know, once he was visited in his country house by a friend who saw above the entrance a horseshoe, you know, in Europe, the superstitious item allegedly preventing evil spirits to enter the house. And the friend, also a scientist, asked him, “But listen, do you really believe in this?” Niels Bohr said, “Of course not. I’m not an idiot. I’m a scientist.” Then the friend asked him, “But why do you have it there?” You know what Niels Borh answered? He said, “I don’t believe in it, but I have it there, horseshoe, because I was told that it works even if you don’t believe in it.”

That’s ideology today. We don’t believe in democracy—nobody. You make fun of it and so on, but somehow we act as if it works. It’s a very strange situation, because there are—some of us old enough still remember them, old days when the public face of power was dignity, belief. And privately you mocked it, you made fun, and so on, no? Now we are, I think, approaching a very strange state, where the public face of power is becoming more and more openly indecent, obscene. Look at Sarkozy in France. Look at Berlusconi in Italy, who is systematically undermining, for over five years now, the minimum of dignity of the state power. I mean, you are again and again surprised how is this possible. You know, after those sex scandals, two weeks ago, his lawyer, Berlusconi’s lawyer, made a public official statement, where he said that the claims that Berlusconi is impotent are lies and that Mr. Berlusconi is ready to prove this in court. Now, how? How—what did he mean? You know, there is a level of obscenity, but this shouldn’t deceive us. We really live in cynical times, not just in this cheap sense they don’t take themselves seriously, but in the sense that—how should I put it?—the ironic self-undermining, making fun of yourself, is in a strange way part of the game. It’s as if the system can function even if it makes fun of itself.

JUAN GONZALEZ Well, I’d like to ask you, you say you are also critical of the progressive or the left response here. You say in your article in Harper’s, “There is a real possibility that the primary victim of the ongoing crisis will not be capitalism but the left itself, insofar as its inability to offer a viable global alternative was again made visible to everyone.” Could you elaborate?

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: I am a radical leftist. I like to call myself, in a very conditional way, a communist even. But I think one should, as a leftist, really concede the amount of the defeat of the left in the last twenty years. That’s the sine qua non condition of a possible review. So, yes, apart from very sympathetic things suggested by people like Stiglitz, Krugman, which are basically a return to Keynesian welfare state, and apart from some interesting—but I don’t think they are the solution—economic ideas, like the basic income or so-called renta básica in Brazil, basic rent, which is a utopia of its own, I think, I sometimes, apart from this, have a strange paranoiac idea that maybe this crisis was manufactured so that people will see that even if there is a crisis, the left really doesn’t have a global answer.

I see—what worries me is two things about the left. First, it’s more and more legalistic moralization. You know, it’s kind of a pure form of protest against injustice. Then the only thing you can do is legal forums and so on. In this sense, many of the ex-leftists are getting depoliticized. They no longer ask the truly basic questions. Like even now, all the outcry was, “Oh, those bank profiteers,” and so on. I totally agree with what we just heard. But don’t you think that the truth is a little bit more complex, in the sense of—you know much more about this than me, but the way I see it is that one of the roots of the present crisis is not just greed. It’s that after the digital bubble at the beginning of our millennium, the idea was how to keep prosperity, how to keep economy alive. And it was, as far as I remember, even a little bit of a really bipartisan decision: let’s make it easier in real estate, and so on, to keep it moving. So, you know, there is a structural problem beneath all this psychological topic of the greedy bankers, which is, that’s how capitalism works, my God, which is why even concerning our beloved model—Bernard Madoff, no?—I didn’t like it how they focused on him. Wait a minute. He was just the radical version of where the system is pushing you. Now, I’m not saying—I’m not crazy—“which is why we need to nationalize all banks and introduce immediately socialist dictatorship” or what. What I’m just saying is, let’s not get rid of the problem by too easily making it into a psychological problem. You know, you can be an evil guy, but there must be very precise institutional, economic, and so on, coordinates, background, which allows you to do what you do.

The second thing, I also didn’t like the cry shared by left and right-wing populists of “help the Main Street, not the Wall Street.” Well, sorry, but those bank managers who emphasized, in capitalism there is no Main Street without Wall Street. In today’s industry, because of the competition and immense investment into new inventions and so on, without large accessibility, availability of credits, there is no prosperous Main Street. So this is a false choice. So, again, with all respect for the left and so on, I think we should avoid quick moralization, if we mean it seriously.

AMY GOODMAN: You write, “Is the bailout then really a ‘socialist’ measure? If it is, it takes a peculiar form: a ‘socialist’ measure whose primary aim is to help not the poor but the rich, not those who borrow but those who lend.”

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Yeah. I mean, this is my whole thesis, that capitalism always was socialism for those who are on the top. This is the basic paradox of it, no?

AMY GOODMAN: What about healthcare?

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Oh, now you touch my favorite topic. You know why? Because I think that here we see, when people—when I write on ideology, and people laugh at me—“Haha, didn’t you know this? We live in post-ideological era.” No, here you see ideology in its material force. We can—we should distinguish here two levels. On the one hand are those ridiculous right-wing paranoias, which, incidentally, I like to listen. They amuse me, you know, like that Sarah Palin idea of death panels. Some mysterious bureaucracy will decide, does your uncle live or not. That’s funny, I hope; at least for the time being, we can laugh at it. But then—

JUAN GONZALEZ Not in a big part of America, unfortunately.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then the real problem, where the Republican critique of healthcare plan really works is by appealing to this basic gut notion of freedom of choice. And I think this is a problem; we have to confront it. The first we should make it clear is that in order to exercise the freedom of choice—one has to repeat this again and again—an extremely—to really exercise this, an extremely complex network of social, legal regulations, even, I would say, ethical rules, which are somehow accepted, and so on, has to be—have to be here. In other words, often less choice, at least less public choice, at a certain level means more choice at a different level.

Let me return precisely to healthcare. My idea is that healthcare should be at a certain level, like water and electricity. You can also say that you usually don’t choose your water supplier, no? OK, now we can play the Republican game and say, “What a horrible terror! They are depriving us of the fundamental choice to choose the water supply.” But we somehow accept that there are some things where it is much more practical that you are able to count on them. Sorry, but I gladly refuse the big freedom to choose my water supplier, the same as for electricity, although there things can get more tricky. Why not add to this series health? Europe demonstrates it can be done effectively, not to diminish our freedom, but to leave you much more space of much more greater actual freedom, and so on.

So, you see, this is the danger of this ideology of choice, because, you know, this is, in one sense, a central category today. There is an old Marxist card, which is played again and again, of we are only offered false choices, not real choices, like Pepsi or Coke, whatever, instead of the real choices. OK, there is a truth in it. But there is also another problem of ideology of choice, that often we are bombarded by choices—you really are free to choose—without being given the proper background to make a reasonable choice. John Gray, the British cynical skeptic, whom I otherwise admire, wrote very nicely that we are today more and more forced to act as if we are free. And this causes a lot of anxiety and so on. You know, one should be very specific apropos of choices. I’m all for the freedom of choice. I would just like to see the small—those, you know, in the footnote, the small print, what are the precise conditions of choice, and so on and so on.

And so, again, although I have no illusions about what Obama can do and so on, I am still proud that already before elections I supported him, although this had no great impact here, of course. But in contrast to my very more radical leftist friends whose motto was “he’s just a nice human face on the same imperialism,” “he will even serve better the interest of capitalism,” or whatever, no, I think we see now, apropos the healthcare reform, that we are fighting the central battle here.

JUAN GONZALEZ I’d like to ask you, in terms of the somewhat pessimistic view you have of how the response to the crisis has been, there seems to be, continues to be, an entire continent that is heading in a somewhat different direction, South America and Latin America, in general.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: Here comes my critical leftism.

JUAN GONZALEZ Well, I’d love hear it, in terms—because there does seem to be in many of these areas, while the rest of the world is—the gap is increasing, at least there are governments throughout Latin America that are trying to decrease the gap and take a different role.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: They are trying. Are they really doing it? You know, I am—this is my skeptic. Some people already accuse me of being a covert neoconservative for what I will say now. Let’s not have any illusions. I claim that much of the attraction of the recent wave, Hugo Chavez and so on, of Latin American populism comes from this old desire of the left. Let’s be clear, many leftists today in the United States are relatively well-paid academics who fight all the dirty department career war, but they like to feel warm in their hearts. So it’s good to have as far away as possible another country where you can sympathize. “Oh, but things are really happening there.” You know, at some point in the ‘30s it was Soviet Union, Cuba, Chinese Cultural Revolution, Nicaragua. I’m afraid now that it is Venezuela a little bit. And I don’t buy the standard liberal critique, Chavez dictator and so on.

I just think Chavez started well. He did something of world historical importance. As far as I know, he was the first one of truly trying to mobilize people who were in favelas and so on, who were excluded from the public domain. He really tried to bring them into the political process. I claim if we don’t find a way to do this, we are slowly approaching a kind of a new apartheid society, where we will live in a kind of a permanent low-level civil war, where we will have some kind of irrational explosions like in France, the car burning in the Paris suburbs.

On the other hand, I’m a little bit more pessimistic as to what in the long term he will really achieve. I think he is now losing his way approaching this standard Latin American populism, where he, because of the oil wealth, is allowed to play the game of fiddle with oil, fiddle with money. I think, if you ask me, a much more interesting phenomenon is Bolivia. It’s much more authentic. They’re really being forced to invent something new. I always think that the genuinely utopian moments are not when you are doing OK and why not even better, are when you are in a deadlock. Then, in order even to survive normally, you are forced to invent something. But I thought you would say entire—so, no, I don’t see too much hope in Latin America.

But I see more hope at this moment with you in United States than with Europe. Europe is now, I think, in great decline. I had some hopes about Europe. Why? Because, to put it very simply, it still looks that we have two models now which are in competition, if I simplify the analysis very much: the Anglo-Saxon liberal market model and what we poetically call capitalism with Asian values, which means authoritarian capitalism. This is what every leftist, as I repeat it, should worry about, because let’s concede to the devil what belongs to the devil. Wasn’t it that, ’til recently—I’m sorry to tell you again, as a strange communist, you will say—there was one good argument for capitalism? After. It may have been that capitalism needed dictatorship for ten, twenty years—Chile, South Korea—but when things started to move, capitalism always engendered a push toward some kind of democracy. No longer. I claim that what is now emerging in the Far East started—it started in Singapore, this kind of so-called, again, authoritarian capitalism. I think something new is emerging: a capitalism even more dynamic—

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK: —than our own, but which, even in long term, doesn’t need democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: Slavoj Žižek, Slovenian philosopher, psychoanalyst, cultural theorist. His latest book is First as Tragedy, Then as Farce.

JOSEP RAMONEDA 19/08/2009
El País

La ciudad “como lugar de una humanidad particular”. La expresión es del historiador Marc Bloch. El filósofo Claude Lefort la recoge en un ensayo sobre Europa como civilización urbana. El argumento podría explicarse así. Al final de la Edad Media, las ciudades se conforman en Europa como lugar de comercio y de libertad. Poco a poco, en torno al mercado, una clase social naciente, la burguesía, genera un orden legal nuevo que acabará minando el poder feudal; al mismo tiempo, los siervos que se emancipan de sus señores encuentran protección en un espacio cada vez más libre. La expresión que siglos más tarde formulará Max Weber, “el aire de la ciudad hace libre”, va tomando forma. “La libertad de la ciudad”, escribe Lefort, “significa la disolución de los vínculos de dependencia personal, pero también la posibilidad de cambiar la propia condición, a favor del trabajo, de la capacidad de iniciativa, de la educación o de la oportunidad”. Para Lefort esta comunidad urbana es específica de Europa y explica, en parte, el salto que ésta dará en el Renacimiento. Mientras la ciudad europea es lugar de comercio y libertad, la ciudad china es el territorio de la burocracia y del mandarinato. De ahí que Lefort sustente que la unión política de Europa, si algún día llega a ser completa, será el producto de una civilización secular de carácter profundamente urbano.

La mediocridad se ha adueñado de la Unión Europea por falta de líderes comprometidos

Es en las ciudades donde aún resulta posible que el espacio público ejerza de lugar de encuentro

2. El proyecto europeo surgido del descenso a los infiernos que fue la II Guerra Mundial se construyó sobre el tabú de la guerra civil: que los europeos no volvamos a matarnos entre nosotros. Pero los países de Europa son viejos y arrastran demasiada memoria, demasiadas marcas inscritas en sus cuerpos por las armas de los vecinos. De modo que en ningún momento ha dejado de sentirse la tensión entre un singular proyecto de superación de desencuentros en un marco de soberanía compartida y la carga histórica de los Estados-nación, un invento de doscientos años de antigüedad que la propaganda ha tratado de hacer eterno. Y, sin embargo, se ha avanzado. Durante la guerra fría, Europa creció como un club selecto, protegido por el paraguas nuclear. Más tarde dos nuevas exigencias aparecieron por el camino: la globalización y el hundimiento de los regímenes de tipo soviético. Ya no era sólo el empuje político y moral del inicio del proceso, irrumpía la necesidad económica. La globalización, que es por encima de todo un cambio de escala de la economía, exigía tamaño: sólo una Europa unida puede tener voz en el mundo multipolar del siglo XXI. Al mismo tiempo, era un deber de la Europa democrática acoger a aquellos países que habían sufrido el secuestro del imperio comunista soviético. Europa, por fin, volvía a estar entera: Praga, incluida.

Estos dos nuevos factores han dado complejidad al proceso. Las dificultades no impidieron llegar a una insólita cesión de soberanía por parte de la mayoría de los Estados: la renuncia a la moneda propia a favor de una moneda única. Pero desde entonces ha ido creciendo la confusión. La ampliación no se ha digerido, la Administración Bush, con la irresponsable complicidad de algunos dirigentes europeos, utilizó los países del Este para abrir una fractura en el continente por la guerra de Irak, y la crisis ha venido a despertar las eternas querencias endogámicas del discurso de las patrias. En tiempo de dificultades, la tentación de escudarse en lo próximo, en los referentes tradicionales, es muy grande. Al fin y al cabo, la economía está globalizada pero la experiencia de los ciudadanos sigue siendo fundamentalmente nacional y local.

Pero la crisis cae sobre mojado. El rechazo de la Constitución Europea por parte de Francia y Holanda acabó con el tiempo de los eufemismos y de las medias palabras. Por fin, emergía a la superficie lo que se decía en voz baja: Europa tiene un serio déficit democrático. El orden de los tiempos ha sido acertado, los ritmos, no. Fue sensato empezar la casa por abajo: construyendo primero la unión económica, para entrar después en la unión política. Sin lo primero, lo segundo era prácticamente imposible. Pero la incorporación de la ciudadanía se hizo tarde y mal. Y ésta tuvo la sensación de ser invitada a ratificar algo que se había cocinado a sus espaldas. Lo pagó la Constitución, porque dos países con tradición política hicieron saltar la apuesta. Desde entonces, cunde una sensación de estancamiento y retroceso. Con una doble impresión: la mediocridad se ha adueñado de la Unión Europea por falta de líderes comprometidos. Y los Estados-nación se resisten e intentan tirar de las riendas del proceso en plena incertidumbre.

3. El Estado-nación no ha sido invento cualquiera. Ha sido el marco de la democracia en Europa. Pero ha perdido eficiencia y, al mismo tiempo, es un lastre para dotar a Europa de una mínima identidad común. Sin duda, la elección de presidente por sufragio universal directo sería un importante factor de integración política. Pero ¿el presidente de la República francesa o el Rey de España están dispuestos a aceptar una autoridad democrática por encima de ellos?

La cultura nacional es una cultura cerrada y unitaria. Se basa en la presunta homogeneidad de los ciudadanos que pueblan el Estado. Pero esta idea de comunidad está hoy completamente obsoleta, en sociedades que por su composición ya no pueden esconder su heterogeneidad. ¿Es la hora de volver a este “lugar de una humanidad particular” que es la ciudad europea? Las ciudades son identidades abiertas frente a las naciones que son identidades cerradas. ¿Pueden ser los nodos adecuados sobre los que tejer una red de identificación básica europea? “Las ciudades”, dice Baumann, “son espacios donde los extraños viven y conviven en estrecha proximidad”. La seducción de la ciudad viene de que la variedad es promesa de oportunidades.

La ciudad es el lugar en el que viven la mayoría de ciudadanos europeos. Y ciertamente se ha convertido, para utilizar la expresión de Baumann, “en un vertedero de problemas engendrados y gestados globalmente”. El fantasma de la incertidumbre generado por la globalización y por la ideología del miedo amenaza a la ciudad con la fractura. Hay ciudades en el mundo donde los distintos sectores sociales viven encerrados, separados por murallas y barreras, sin apenas contacto alguno. La urbanalización, para utilizar la expresión de Francesc Muñoz, la separación de urbs y civitas (François Choay) por la vía de la ocupación indiscriminada del territorio por la urbanidad dispersa, miles y miles de casas pareadas y sus jardines, amenaza la ciudad densa, territorio de anonimato y libertad. Pero Europa, a pesar de todo, ha conseguido mantener la intensidad de sus ciudades. Y ha tendido a asumir los conflictos y a convertirlos, en lo posible, en factores de oportunidad. Al fin y al cabo, lo que ha sostenido la peculiar forma de ser de las ciudades europeas ha sido el Estado del bienestar y éste será a escala europea o no será.

4. Es en las ciudades donde ocurren los cambios. Es en las ciudades donde todavía es posible que el espacio público ejerza de lugar de encuentro y contacto, indispensable para el reconocimiento mutuo, que es la base de cualquier forma de convivencia realmente posible. Y son las ciudades las que hacen de nodos de conexión. Europa pronto tendrá inscrita en su geografía una trama de trenes de alta velocidad con las grandes ciudades en sus vértices. La movilidad es un factor esencial para la construcción europea, que tiene en este terreno un retraso enorme respecto a Estados Unidos.

Pero la ciudad es sobre todo el lugar de una identidad abierta. El lugar en que es posible encontrar un denominador común entre los extraños que la componen. Que es una identidad mínima muy parecida a la que requiere la reconstrucción de la conciencia europea. Una identidad basada en el reconocimiento al otro y en la defensa de un modelo europeo que tiene todos los elementos de la cultura urbana: la soberanía compartida entre extraños; la solidaridad política; la diversidad y el conflicto como portadores de oportunidades y de cambio, y la negociación y el diálogo, como manera de relacionarse. Sin necesidad de inclinarse ante ningún dios menor, sea la patria o la religión de turno.

More: Can science reinvent the economy?

Can we pack an entire economy, with all its complex human and political interactions, into a computer? Physicist Dirk Helbing of ETH thinks so – as long as we’re bold enough in going about it.

He points out that financial systems aren’t the only monsters we’ve let out of the box. How traffic flows in and around huge cities simply cannot be grasped by mathematical analysis, but computer models let millions of virtual vehicles interact on realistic road patterns – and often discover potential problems before they occur in reality.

The complexity of today’s economy, Helbing suggests, demands a similar approach. “We’re not currently using the best capabilities of science,” he says. “We need to bring together scientists from different fields and put together tools that can be used as a kind of wind tunnel for testing out social and economic policies.”

The approach has already proved its worth on a small scale. Several years ago, when the state of Illinois decided to deregulate its electricity market, it wanted to avoid California’s disastrous experience, when the disgraced firm Enron manipulated prices, created shortages and caused rolling blackouts. The state authorities hired Charles Macal and colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory to build a sophisticated model of Illinois’ power market, incorporating suppliers, consumers and regulators, as well as the full network along which power flows.

The team first interviewed the various market participants to learn their behaviour. Each was represented in the model by virtual agents who could act on those strategies, but also learn on their own. Running the model, the team found that the initial legal framework for deregulation had flaws which made it vulnerable to Enron-like manipulation. The state successfully altered its plans, and the approach has since been used in similar cases in Croatia, Portugal and South Korea. Some stock markets, such as NASDAQ, have used it in planning changes to their trading rules.

Groups in the US and Europe are already building similar models of whole economies, including millions of individuals, families, firms and banks, as well as government regulators. Helbing and colleagues have lodged a proposal with a European Union funding body to start building the extensive communities of researchers and collaborations – between economists and other social scientists, physicists, lawyers and computer scientists – that would be needed to simulate whole economies effectively.

With growing computing capacity and greater understanding of complex systems, they suggest it should be possible within a decade to have functioning models of the global economy to which policy-makers could look for sound insights with which to penetrate the overwhelming complexity of today’s markets.

More: Can science reinvent the economy?

What is a revolutionary? The writings of Marx and Engels both use the metaphor of revolution as the “locomotive of history”. Is, then, the revolutionary a standard bearer of progress, a pace setter, a frontrunner?

None of the above, because in a world ruled by a turbo “devaluation” where only the new has market value, where commodity production spirals out of control, the “train of time” is a deadly trend. Alexander Kluge instead opts for Walter Benjamin’s idea of the revolution as mankind “pulling the emergency brake“. We must hold up the torch of reason to the problems at hand, and the true revolutionary is therefore the one who can unite future and past, merging two times, two societies, the artist who montages stories and history. And so we come to Alexander Kluge and his art.

Kluge’s monumental “News from Ideological Antiquity. Marx – Eisenstein – Das Kapital” is a 570-minute film available only on DVD which is based on the work of two other montage artists, James Joyce and Sergei Eisenstein. These two met in 1929 to discuss filming Marx’s “Kapital” which had been written 60 years beforehand. Now, eighty years on, Alexander Kluge joins the party and takes up where Eisenstein failed, because neither Hollywood’s capitalists nor Moscow’s Communists were prepared to send the necessary funds his way.

Most of the film consists of involved discussions between Alexander Kluge and other Marx-savvy writers and artists. Poet and essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger compares the soul of man with the soul of money, author Dietmar Dath explains the meaning of the hammer and sickle on the Soviet flag and, from the standpoint of the Stoics, leaps (rather than marches at an orderly pace) into industrialisation, the actress Sophie Rois makes an impassioned appeal for Medea, differentiating between additive and subtractive love, filmmaker Werner Schroeter stages a Wagner opera featuring the “rebirth of Tristan in the spirit of battleship Potemkin”, philosopher Peter Sloterdijk talks about Ovid and the metamorphosis of added value, a man at the piano analyses the score of a strike song while workers and factory owners face off in an opera by Luigi Nono, the poet Dürs Grünbein interprets Bert Brecht’s aesthetisation of the Communist manifesto in swinging oceanic hexameter, cultural scientist Rainer Stollmann emphasises the myriad meanings of Marx’s writings as science, art, story telling, philosophy, poetry. And social theorist and philosopher Oskar Negt looks sceptical when asked whether it’s possible to find the right images for all this stuff when you’re less interested in pedagogical content than the encompassing theory.

Scholarly stuff, wide and deep in scope, yet bold and playful. But even if your own study of Marx is no more than a faded memory, it is hugely enjoyable to watch and listen to these experts as their “thinking gradually deepens through talking” and to watch Kluge interject, hopping adroitly from one thought to the next, surprising his interlocutors, catching them off balance, sending them off on new trajectories. We never know how much agreement and variance is hidden in Kluge’s objections. His a Socratic approach to questioning, curious, open to everything, and so wonderfully subtle that at the end always find yourself wondering whether he had been driving at a particular target all along. Alexander Kluge is a great manipulator, an industrious loom, who weaves the most far-flung observations into his system.

He is not filming “Das Kapital” but researching how one might find images to make Marx’s book filmable. The quest is the way is the destination. The model for his underlying structure is Joyce’s “Ulysses” where the entire history of the world is packed into a day in the life of his hero, Bloom. In Kluge’s hands this becomes a collage of documentary, essayistic and fictional scenes, interviews and still photos, archive images of smoking factory chimneys, time-lapse footage of pounding machines and mountains of products, diary entries and blackboards scribbled with quotes referencing constructivism and concrete poetry.

Coincidences, collisions. Back to back with a short film in which director Tom Tykwer stirs things up in a Berlin street, two readers struggle to recite the following sentence, slipping in and out of synch with increasing desperation: “Whenever real, corporeal man, man with his feet firmly on the solid ground, man exhaling and inhaling all the forces of nature, posits his real, objective essential powers as alien objects by his externalisation, it is not the act of positing which is the subject in this process: it is the subjectivity of objective essential powers, whose action, therefore, must also be something objective.”

No sooner are we shown “how the history of industry and the established objective existence of industry are the open book of man’s essential powers, the perceptibly existing human psychology” than we have the history of capitalism is explained to us as a giant extension of the fairytale about the devil with the three golden hairs – every thing is a human being being cast under a spell. And the beginning of Mae West’s film career runs parallel to the leap into industrialisation – a form of aesthetic slapstick in which not cream pies fly through the air but ideas and concepts.

Unlike Eisenstein, who was driven to desperation by the herculean task of cutting the 29 hours of “October” into a 90-minute film version and turned to drugs into the process which left him temporarily blind, Kluge cooly sticks to his guns and his nine hours. And it’s not a minute too long.

*

This article was originally published in Tagesspiegel on 8 January 2009.

Helmut Merker is a film critic.

Translation: lp
Alexander Kluge: Nachrichten aus der ideologischen Antike. Marx – Eisenstein – Das Kapital. Filmedition Suhrkamp, 3 DVDs, 570 minutes, 29,95 Euros

17.04.2009 – Joana Gorjão Henriques
Depois desta crise com contornos de dilúvio, o que se abre à cultura? Há cenários que já podemos desenhar

Em época de crise, o melhor mesmo é ir às compras na própria casa. Desenterrem-se leituras eternamente adiadas, leia-se finalmente o “Ulisses” de James Joyce que anda por ali há séculos. Os livros podem ser caros, mas ler ainda continua a não ser assim tanto. Até porque um livro pode sempre passar por muitas mãos. E há as bibliotecas, a “forma de entretenimento mais barata de todas”, lembra John Carey, professor de Inglês em Oxford, ao “Guardian”. Por esta lógica, a leitura – não o mercado dos livros – será uma das actividades que menos sofrerá com a crise económica mundial. Mas nem tudo é lógico e nem tudo se pode prever. O podemos esperar, então, dos próximos anos?

Já temos algumas luzes. Diariamente encontramos notícias a apontar no mesmo sentido: cortes em todas as áreas da cultura. Grandes fundações na Europa reduzem orçamentos em 20 a 25 por cento; sólidos festivais de teatro (como o de Edimburgo) enfrentam problemas financeiros; museus, como o Getty Museum de Los Angeles, deixam de ser “luxuosos”; leilões de arte voltam a entrar em baixa, depois de anos incólumes às flutuações do mercado; cadeias de vendas de discos, como a Virgin, fecham as últimas lojas nos EUA…

“Toda a gente com memória das recessões dos anos 1970 e 1980 sabe que já estivemos aqui, embora não exactamente aqui”, escreveu o crítico de artes plásticas Holland Cotter no “New York Times”, num artigo com o título “O ‘boom’ acabou. Longa vida à arte!”. “Mas há razões para acreditar que a actual crise é de uma magnitude diferente: maior e mais profunda, um buraco negro global.”

Os apoios e o lado artístico

Serão os próximos anos um “buraco negro global”? Vamos voltar a considerar a cultura um luxo?, questionava Jonathan Jones, crítico de artes plásticas do “Guardian”. “O que vai acabar, e muito rapidamente, é este sentimento de exuberância cultural que floresceu nos últimos 15 anos”, defendia. Será?

Há indicadores, tendo em conta as tendências dos últimos anos, diz o Lab for Culture da European Cultural Foundation, em Amesterdão, no seu relatório sobre a forma como a arte e a cultura vão responder à crise. Por exemplo: maior procura de bens e serviços culturais mas menos apoios estatais, modelos competitivos de outras áreas a serem aplicados às artes ou a procura de novos modelos de negócios. Partindo do pressuposto de que as crises podem trazer novas oportunidades, este “think tank” prevê o aparecimento de novas instituições, lideranças, modelos de apoio e formas de organização.

“São tempos difíceis e a cultura é a primeira a ser reduzida”, diz-nos ao telefone Yudhishthir Raj Isar, sociólogo e especialista em Economia da Cultura, co-autor, com Helmut K. Anheier, de “Cultures and Globalization: The Cultural Economy”. “Mas é preciso distinguir entre os apoios e o lado artístico, as indústrias criativas que são negócio. Sabemos que na sociedade contemporânea a cultura se tornou essencial.”

Argumento, aliás, cada vez mais usado por vários países numa economia da cultura globalizada onde, como lembra James English, em “The Global Economy Prestige”, a decisão dos júris dos festivais de Cannes ou de Sundance “não apenas influencia a selecção de filmes em outros festivais de todo o mundo como pode alterar, em minutos”, as decisões dos Óscares.

Mas a mudança mais decisiva será nos apoios financeiros, que vão sofrer cortes e “uma grande pressão para que [os projectos subsidiados] sejam mais lucrativos”, lembra Isar.

Grandes projectos que, nos últimos anos, foram um “boom” – espaços como a Ópera de Sydney, do arquitecto dinamarquês Jørn Utzon, prémio Pritzker, ou museus, como o Guggenheim de Bilbau – “vão estar sob escrutínio”. “As pessoas vão querer saber por que é que este tipo de investimento é feito. É uma tendência: os grandes projectos vão ter que ser muito bem justificados.”

Paralelamente, Yudhishthir Raj Isar prevê que a profissionalização da cultura vai aumentar e que se vai passar a agir de forma mais empresarial. Algo, aliás, que os americanos não percebem bem, diz o professor na Universidade Americana em Paris, porque “para eles a cultura foi sempre negócio” – e há americanos, como Bill Ivey, conselheiro do Presidente Obama, que defendem que os subsídios devem “estar onde a cultura acontece”, seja na televisão ou na Internet (perspectiva que representa uma mudança na política americana de apoio à cultura, sublinha o “The Art Newspaper”). “Na Europa, por causa do Estado-providência, sempre considerámos que o valor artístico era superior ao bom negócio. Esta pressão vai encorajar as instituições não lucrativas a terem mais criatividade”, diz Isar.

O que não se aplica a todas as áreas: por exemplo, em espectáculos, os lugares são limitados, logo “há áreas que nunca terão lucro”. Nesse caso, a pressão maior é para reduzir de custos, angariar “sponsors”, usar os espaços para exploração comercial.

A melhor resposta que estas instituições podem dar? “Serem inventivas, fazerem poupanças, venderem mais lugares, diversificarem a oferta. Há muitas situações em que o que está a ser apresentado é elitista ou em que o espaço não está a ser rentabilizado – por exemplo, quando têm espectáculos apenas em alguns dias da semana e estão fechados nos outros. Em Sydney, não havia tradição de ópera, era difícil ter ópera todos os dias – depois, até bingo se fez lá.”

Por mais ou menos criativas que as instituições sejam, a realidade vai ser esta: “o consumo artístico vai baixar”, sobretudo em áreas como a chamada alta cultura, por exemplo, a ópera, que tem investimento e consumo caros. Mas áreas como a música pop não serão tão afectadas, prevê.

Samuel Jones responsável pela cultura do Demos, “think tank” britânico, concorda com Yudhishthir Raj Isar quanto aos apoios: diminuirão, mas talvez já não este ano porque muitos contratos foram assinados antes. No entanto, é mais optimista. Defende que a cultura se destacou internacionalmente e que, com a Internet, se tem vindo a tornar mais importante. “Há uma abrangência social e uma intensidade que nunca tivemos. As pessoas vão estar mais conscientes dos preços dos bilhetes, sim. Mas, por outro lado, a cultura tornou-se um bem de que precisam.”

No Ocidente, sobretudo nos EUA, vai assistir-se a uma discussão em que se defende cada vez mais que a cultura contribui para a economia, defende Yudhishthir Raj Isar. Vai assistir-se não, já se está a assistir. Nos EUA, grupos ligados às artes fizeram “lobby” para que a Administração Obama aprovasse um reforço de 50 milhões de dólares para o National Endowment for the Arts, instituição que apoia as artes – e conseguiram. O argumento? Que nos EUA há 100 mil grupos de arte não lucrativos que empregam seis milhões de pessoas e contribuem anualmente com 167 mil milhões de dólares para a economia.
O reforço é um dos sinais de que a política cultural regressa nos EUA no século XXI, ao fim de longos anos, com programas de estímulo económico a iniciativas de diplomacia “soft”, defendia o “The Arts Newspaper”.

Nómadas

A política cultural regressa nos EUA, retrai-se na Europa. E para lá do Ocidente? Nas artes plásticas, por exemplo, na Ásia, o consumo “tem sido feito no contexto de espaços de prestígio, projectados por arquitectos estrela – Xangai, Singapura, Pequim, Japão estão a construir centros para uma classe média que é um novo público para estes sítios”. Mas também aqui o consumo vai diminuir, acredita Isar.
A crise vai, de certeza, ter impacto na circulação global de pessoas, lembra a curadora e historiadora da arte sul-africana Ruth Simbao, e isto, “por seu lado, vai afectar a forma como as exposições são organizadas e programadas”.

“Em termos de arte africana, por exemplo, as exposições apresentadas nos EUA e na Europa vão assentar mais em artistas africanos da diáspora – isto já é uma moda e irá aumentar à medida que os apoios baixam. Os artistas africanos que vivem na Europa e EUA vão cada vez mais ser olhados como representantes africanos, o que é um problema.”

Mas a verdade é que “todos somos cada vez mais nómadas”, diz Isabel Carlos, a nova directora do Centro de Arte Moderna da Fundação Gulbenkian, que foi este ano curadora da Bienal de Sharjah, no Dubai. “Do meu conhecimento da diáspora do Médio Oriente, a maior parte dos artistas que têm possibilidade de viver do que fazem vivem nos EUA, em Londres e em Paris, saem dos seus países para terem uma carreira artística. Até podem continuar a viver no seu país, mas sempre com pontos de saída.”

O que a crise pode trazer de positivo é criar “cada vez mais parcerias entre as instituições, união de esforços”, considera Isabel Carlos. “É a continuação de uma globalização. Cada vez menos uma instituição isolada poderá produzir eventos culturais grandes. Há a possibilidade de cada vez mais ficarmos dependentes uns dos outros.” O que para um país como Portugal “é bom” porque “nunca tivemos grandes parcerias com os estrangeiros a este nível, o que é inevitável, não só do nosso ponto de vista mas também do internacional”. A curadora da Bienal Sydney de 2004 acha mesmo que isto é o que “a cultura em países pequenos poderá receber de bom desta crise” porque até os “grandes estão em crise” e precisam dos pequenos.

Por outro lado, acrescenta Ruth Simbao, “esta pode ser uma oportunidade para artistas e curadores africanos desenvolverem os pontos fortes locais e para se concentrarem no seu próprio carácter local, assim como na sua relação com os outros países africanos e com o ‘Sul global’”.

O que já aconteceu, conta, com a bienal da Cidade do Cabo, que começou em 2007. Inicialmente concebida como exposição internacional de arte africana contemporânea, teve que baixar o número de “grandes nomes”, focando-se no público local e na necessidade de criar uma arte pública sul-africana. “Vejo isto como uma oportunidade para os artistas locais, curadores locais e público local. Desde que os bons críticos continuem a falar e a divulgar projectos locais, estes podem competir a uma escala internacional sem ter que ser proibitivo em termos de custo.”

Ruth Simbao acredita que, mais do que nunca, o aparecimento de excelentes pensadores e críticos de arte “é crucial”. “Porque podem relacionar os projectos produzidos localmente a uma escala global – essa ligação faz-se através da palavra digital e com isso é possível partilhar com o mundo uma versão da arte africana social e economicamente muito mais diversa do que a que tem sido mostrada nas megaexposições homogeneizadas do mundo rico.”

Experiência, comunidade e Internet

Que a crise pode ser um cenário de oportunidade parece ser o tom geral. Também Samuel Jones defende a ideia de que em época de decadência a cultura floresce e a arte pode ser um espaço para as pessoas discutirem. Resumindo: são tempos difíceis mas “muito interessantes”. Que fazem com que as instituições procurem novas formas de comunicação com os seus públicos, criando espaços onde as pessoas não vão apenas fruir qualquer coisa, deixam a sua contribuição. No fundo, assiste-se a uma mudança de paradigma, com a óbvia mediação da Internet, em que a voz de quem “consome” se torna tão relevante quanto a de quem produz. “Há museus em que não se fazem apenas ‘downloads’ de ‘podcasts’ com as explicações sobre as obras; fazem-se ‘uploads’ com os nossos olhares sobre elas. É preciso criar espaços com símbolos em que as pessoas se revejam. Não se trata apenas de informar as pessoas, trata-se de proporcionar contactos, relações de proximidade”, exemplifica.

O teatro é, por isso, um exemplo do que os espaços culturais podem vir a ser porque sempre proporcionou a noção de comunidade ao ter, lado a lado, um grupo de pessoas que partilha a experiência de ver um espectáculo. Hoje, companhias como a Royal Shakespeare Company, diz, não estão interessadas em apenas mostrar espectáculos, estão interessadas em que as pessoas participem, não apenas através das conversas a propósito dos espectáculos. “A forma como os ‘sites’ na Internet estão a ser usados, a abrirem-se aos comentários, a facilidade com que se cria uma conversa intergeracional é uma nova era e uma oportunidade muito maior para as pessoas se expressarem. E quanto mais as pessoas se expressarem, mais essa vontade cresce.”

Mais arriscada é a experiência da Symphony Space, em Nova Iorque, que vai levar os telemóveis para dentro do teatro: convida o público a votar no intervalo, através de SMS, nas personagens que devem casar em “Così Fan Tutte: Defining Women”, a partir de Mozart.

Holland Cotter, no “New York Times”, lembra que no século XXI o acesso digital ao conhecimento vai provocar uma mudança na forma de pensar e na produção da cultura visual. “O que é que os artistas vão fazer com isso? Irão as indústrias culturais agarrar-se ao formato analógico tradicional, para continuarem a insistir que o material, os objectos compráveis são a única forma legítima de arte – que é, na verdade, do que realmente se trata o revivalismo da pintura dos últimos anos?”
A mudança não está para acontecer, já aconteceu, mostra Don Tapscott, no livro “Grown up Digital” sobre a geração “pós-baby boomers”, que se define por ter sido a primeira a crescer na era digital e que agora tem no máximo 32 anos e no mínimo 11. Porque em todo o mundo a geração digital, “a primeira verdadeiramente global”, “já está no mercado de trabalho, em todos os nichos da sociedade”. “Está a trazer ao mundo o seu músculo demográfico, a sua agilidade nos media, o seu poder de compra e político, novos modelos de colaboração e familiares, empresariais” – e muitos deles envolveram-se na política pela primeira vez com a campanha presidencial de Barack Obama.

Basicamente, o futuro vai depender desta geração e, segundo Tapscott, ela define-se por oito características: os seus elementos “prezam a liberdade e a liberdade de escolha. Querem personalizar as coisas, torná-las deles. São colaboradores naturais, que gostam de uma conversa, não de conferências. Vão escrutiná-lo e à sua empresa. Insistem na integridade. Querem divertir-se, mesmo no trabalho e na escola. A velocidade é normal. A inovação faz parte da vida”.
Ao longo de todo o livro, destacam-se algumas ideias: organização em rede, participação-colaboração e experiência. Ou seja, em todas as esferas da sua vida, esta geração procura participar e ter experiências. Um exemplo, vindo do cinema: querem fazer críticas aos filmes mas também contribuir para os conteúdos com os seus vídeos no YouTube.

A Internet poderá ajudar a dar a volta à crise ou agravá-la? “A ‘avant-garde’ floresceu numa época de recessão”, lembra Samuel Jones. “Não existia Internet. Isso é a grande diferença. Como seria se tivessem tanta liberdade de criar e consumir como hoje, se tivessem o YouTube? Este é um momento em que muitas certezas estão a ser postas em causa.”

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