Governmentality, Economics, Active Citizenship and Art: Reparations of an allodoxic media

Abstract

This thesis argues that compelling interventions from within the visual arts can be devised to empower citizens, directly or indirectly, with the skills and knowledge to make government play a better role in assisting with the stewardship and collective trusteeship of the commons. These actions can then in turn raise the expectations of other citizens about what is possible for the commons. In Australia, alongside most other Western liberal democratic countries of the worldat this time, there are inadequate institutional arrangements in place to prevent what is a radical shrinkage of support for the commons. One way of analysing this situation involves French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s (1930 – 2002) pioneering investigative frameworks and concepts that make visible the invisible processes through which power operates in society for social control. I have used this work of Bourdieu’s to articulate a framework (provided at the end of this thesis), which categorises the art activity as a working towards the maintenance and expansion of the commons. It does this by influencing non-spatial entities like governance and policy, although spatial forms may be one result of the tactics used. These works comprise situation-specific actions broadly categorised according to Bourdieu’s conceptual tools. The term allodoxia was first used by Greek philosopher Plato (427 – 347 BC) in the Theaetetus to refer to false beliefs arising from the misrecognition, and Bourdieu applies it to describe the results from violations of the autonomy of field production.The word derives from two Greek words ‘allo’ referring to a mixture, and ‘doxa’ to practices or teachings. However, I use the term allodoxia in a positive sense. Instead of Bourdieu’s interest in protecting the specificity of each field, I apply the term to art interventions that disrupt targeted areas in fields other than art, as remediations or vaccinations that intrude into privileged spaces. Positive allodoxia embodies active citizenship because it contends the misrecognition created by negative allodoxia that impacts on privileged space to expose and challenge the hegemonic processes of neoliberalism, globalisation and governmentality. Allodoxic artists seek to counter these agendas that constrain the art field by making systemic impacts outside the art field. Responding to threats and opportunities, they embed policy, rights and capable programs that are managed in sustainable ways in community stewardship. Allodoxic interventions use misrecognition because they are fundamentally activism claimed as art, and the cultural myths associated with artistic activity can be drawn upon. I am hoping that the logic of the restricted field of production that makes art conducive to formal experimentation and innovation, enables it to be accepted as a defined style and form. This is what I am working towards with the theorisation of a categorical place for allodoxic art I present in this thesis, which can be considered as the fourth wave of institutional critique and an evaluation model for new genre public art. Australian allodoxic art maps a comprehensive art field that has existed for over 40,000 years, providing various positions since the British invasion. Allodoxic art provides logic of a linear homogenous national time, grounded in Indigenous creative activity that is important for land rights movements internationally, and in particular for Australia where the legal notion was ‘terra nullius’ when invasion occurred. Within this context, allodoxic art responds to the self-reflexivity of the whole art field,whereby institutions and non-Indigenous artists can address the art field classification gulf that excludes Indigenous practice, and embrace the rich history of creative approaches of Indigenous peoples. As part of my situation-specific intervention practice and the development of a framework, I have also been drawn to the theoretical work of German political thinker Hannah Arendt (1906 - 1975). Arendt’s analysis of what is necessary for successful revolutionary activities, those that bring sustained change to institutional arrangements, informs the guiding principles in the design of the tactics. Ultimately any effort to assert the commons involves the embedding of individual and communal rights, and this requires some type of public witnessing in an innovative rupture that can be made durable as a guiding principle or as a program. The ideas I draw from Arendt and Bourdieu provide the means to create art that deepens people’s understanding of the importance of the commons, and that can foster a vigilant citizenry to bring about social change for their maintenance and expansion. Today, large numbers of disenfranchised people possess a re-invigorated anticapitalist spirit, and can provide pressure to value allodoxic interventions within the art field. This is not through the hegemonic processes of formal education that inculcate forms of power that share a common economic logic (as theorised by Bourdieu), but through an understanding and appreciation of active citizenship examples.