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Civic Agency and

Public Humanities

DORIS SOMMER

In memory ofJulius Sommetj my first and most memorable maestro.

2014 Duke University Press

All rights reserved
Printed m the United States of America on acid-free paper
Designed by Courtney Le1gh Baker and typeset in Arno Pro
by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sommer, Doris, 1947The work of art in the world : civic agency and
public humanities/ Dons Sommer.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-o-8223-5572-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
rs Bl'. 978-o-8223-5586-1 ( pbk. : alk. paper)
Arts and society. 2. Arts- Political aspects. 3 Creation
(Literary, artistic, etc.)-Social aspects. I. Title.
NX18o.S6S623 201 4
700.1'03- dc23
2013029330
J.

Contents

Acknowledgments xv

PROLOGUE. Welcome Back 1

ONE. From the Top 15

Government-Sponsored Creativity
TWO. Press Here 49

Cultural Acupuncture and Civic Stimulation

THREE. Art and Accountability 81

FOUR. Pre-Texts 107

The Arts Interpret

FIVE. Play Drive in the Hard Drive 135

Schiller's Poetics of Politics

Notes

157

Bibliography

193

Index

215

Acknowledgments

For their generous advice and forbearance with an evolving project, I am

indebted to Ken Wissoker and the readers for Duke University Press, Alice
Flaherty, Francesco Erspamer, James Chandler, Carrie Lambert-Beatty,
Carlo Tognato, Paolo Vignolo, Toril Moi, Srinivas Aravamudan, Francisco
Ortega, Virginie Greene, Diana Taylor, J. Lorand Matory, Kay Shelemay,
Evelyn Higginbotham, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Michael Fisher, Amrita Basu,
Jackie Bhabha, Jennifer Leaning, Lani Guinier, Jeffrey Schnapp, James
Honan, Michele Stanners, Dean Williams, Ute Mehta Bauer, Natalya Sukharnos, Gediminas Urbonas, Nomeda Urbonas, Helen Molesworth, Marcela Mahecha, Jose Falconi, Anitra Grisaldes, Betsy Bard, Alexis Kusy, Codruta Morari, Clara Schejtman, Michael Fisher, Annie S. Kaufman, Sara S.
Kaufman, Maria Acosta Lopez, Kathleen Woodward, Marshall Brown, Jane
,
Brown, Sara Guyer, Ian Baucom, Angela Perez Mejia, Celia Maria Velez,
Laura Hagopian, Julia Leifert, George Lipsitz, and Eben Werber.

PRoLoGuE.

Welcome Back

Larry Summers was still president of Harvard University but already anxious about keeping his job when I briefed him on the Cultural Agents Initiative to bring civic responsibility back to humanistic education. After he
had publicly speculated on women's limited aptitude for science, Larry's
presidential days were numbered, and some of us added one worry to another. Besides the sexism, we feared for the future of the humanities. Disputes about careers in science were igniting international scandal, while
waning budgets for arts and humanities hardly provoked whimpers. Empirical fields heated up explosively as creative areas cooled dangerously
down. Despite what little warmth we could muster for defending arts and
interpretation, the corporate climate of higher educatien stayed discouragingly chill. My gambit with President Summers was to kindle some concern
for humanistic education by stoking a dusty pragmatic defense. There was
nothing to lose, really, except for academic squeamishness about putting
art and accountability in the same sentence. After all, I could count on
Larry's respect for effective problem-solving. And I could also depend on
1
a long tradition of democracy that develops side by side with aesthetics.

bout Latin America," I began.

a
lot
"You kn owa
"Yes I do," he agreed.
"Good. Now imagine being elected mayor of Bogota, Colombia, in
in
the
hen-.:
the
most
violent,
corrupt,
and
chaotic
city
then
1995,
u.~sphere. What would you do.'>"
Larry thought it over: economic stimulati~n wouldn't work in that chaos,
because new investments would end up 1n the pockets of drug deale rs.
More anned police wouldn't work either, because corrupt police were also
in the dealers' pockets and would raise the level of violence. Conventional
remedies were useless, he admitted. And then Larry said something uncharacteristic.
"I don't know what I could have done."
That's when I told him about Bogota's brilliant mayor Antanas Mockus,
and also about Brazil's legendary artist Augusto Boal. Mockus had tackled
apparently intractable conditions by thinking creatively: aWhat would an
artist do?" was his motto. If that one failed, a humanist motto came to the
rescue: "When you are stuck, reinterpret." First Mockus replaced corrupt
traffic police with pantomime artists who turned traffic lights and crosswalks into props for participatory fun. Then he painted roads with fleeting
stars to mark traffic deaths. He "vaccinated" citizens against violence and
continued to invent collective performances of civic culture. Among the
cumulative effects of his citywide invitations to play were the reduction
of fatal car accidents by more than half, a drop in homicides by almost 70
percent, and a threefold increase in tax revenues to pay for public works.2
Mockus is a mayor who turned artist and interpreter in order to revive a
major city from the top down.
Boal worked from the bottom up as a theater artist and theorist. Elected
to city government, he staged public coproductions of urban life, including
"legislative theater." He also multiplied himself internationally by training
facilitators for nonactors who perform their worst problems and then improvise solutions for conflicts, mental illness, and unfair laws. In workshops
an~ in books, Boal abstracted the acting lessons into general principles of
soaal and psychological development. Both the top-down mayor and the
bottom-up artist link d

that
e creatiVIty to humanistic interpretation 1n ways
make them model cultu al
bl
se
of artist
r agents. They are maestros in the dou e sen
and teacher, creator and philosopher. Mockus and Boal knew how
2

PJlOLOCUE

art and interpretation overlap with civic education when they treated entire
cities as their classrooms.
Larry was impressed. I hope that you will be too, not only with artists
who promote positive change from the top down or the bottom up, but also
with their co-artists in contiguous fields who help to translate good ideas
into enduring practices.

A Start

The Work of Art in the World takes inspiration from arts projects that merit
more sustained reflection than they have gotten. These are creative works
on grand and small scales that morph into institutional innovation. Reflecting on them is a humanistic assignment insofar as the humanities teach
interpretation of art (to identify points of view, attend to technique, to
context, to competing messages, and evaluate aesthetic effects). Part of
the work is to train free, disinterested judgment. This faculty for pausing
to step back and take stock is basic to all disciplines. But the best training
ground for judgment is the carefree area of aesthetics. The reason is simple:
deciding if something is beautiful requires responding to an intense experience but obeying no established principles, and this decision is therefore
free from prejudice. Aesthetic judgment is an exercise in unbiased evaluation, a knack that science and civics need as much as art does. That's why
humanistic training is a fundamental contribution to general research and
to social development.3 (See chapter 3, "Art and Accountability.") Training free thought is an extension of teaching appreciation for art, along with
care for the world that art constructs and enhances. Therefore, interpreting art, appreciating its power to shape the world, can spur and support
urgently needed change. This is not a deviation from humanistic attention
to the mechanisms of art production and reception. It is a corollary and a
homecoming to civic education.
All of us would do well to consider art's ripple effects, from producing
pleasure to triggering innovation. And acknowledging art's work makes us
cultural agents: those who make, comment, buy, sell, reflect, allocate, decorate, vote, don't vote, or otherwise lead social, culturally constructed lives.
But humanists can fulfill a special mission by keeping aesthetics in focus,
lingering with students and readers over the charmed moments of freely
felt pleasure that enable fresh perceptions and foster new agreements.
More apparently practical people may rush past pleasure as if it were a
PROLOGUE

. t derail the progress of reason. We are haunted it se

temptation o
.
'
ems b
ur. b . superstition about enjoyment betng close to sin and a d
' Ya
ne enan
eterrent
nt But a countervailing lesson learned from }.Jfo k
I
Pme
to deve o

J.VJ. c us and
tural
agents
shows
that
pleasure
is
also
a
necessary
dime
.
cul
other
"
,
ns1on of
sustainable social change. (See chapter 1, From the Top. )
The appropriate question about agency is not if we exercise it, but how
intentionally we do so, to what end and what effect. (1\gent" is a te
h
. .
.
rm t at
acknowledges the small shifts m perspective and practice that Anto .
010
Gramsci described as a war of position in which organic intellect
uas
1including artists and interpreters -lead moves toward collective chan 5
dulgem
romantic
dreams about art remaking the world
ge.
It wont' do tom
Nor does it make sense to stop dreaming altogether and stay stuck
.
.
.
1ll cyniciSm. Between frustrated fantasies and paralyzing despair agenc
'
y 1s a modest but relentless call to creative action, one small step at a time.

~~of cour~e, has no obligation to be constructive, or to be good or bad

~thically sp~aking. And politically, artists can be progressive, regressive, o;

:between. Not necessarily useful or useless, art is instead provocative a
:n:~overnabl~, with a loose cannon kind of energy. It excites many a~d
mterpretive approaches, which leaves critics free to choose among
them, unless extra-artistic
d
to
ld
.
consi erations interfere. Were the already warm wor not m urgent need f
.
.
. . o constructive Interventions, and were exPlosive tenSions
not pomtmg toward
class reliui 1
more conflict (about race gender
' o-on, anguage dru s b d
'
'
might not occupy
: g ' .or ers, banks, water, oil), cultural agency
my Interpretive effi0 rt I h
.
arts projects featured h
s. n app1er circumstances, the
ere would not e
.
.
parently incorriuibl
d' .
ven eXIst, Since they respond to ap.
o e con Itlons But h
h
Interrupt those cond'ti
. ere t ey are- intrepid projects that
L__
I ons and stim I t
11
sllill'e some of the b d
u a e co aborations. I invite you to
ur en and the

moves that cross and d bl

excitement, to accompany the brilliant
~ rue.L:_
ou
e-cross
h
e..,U!Ulgelse.
nervous c eckpoints between art and

Like Lucy Lipp d'

With N

ar s art criticism whi h

elY York's Conce tuali
'
c shared revolutionary ambitions
panYW:ithgreatartistsinp d sts, The Work of Art in the World keeps cornapprenti hi 7
or er to discov
.
ces p. And like)0 hn D
er patterns that can inspire creat1ve
mote bro d b
ewey's
.
...1._
a .. ased art-maki .
pragmatic recommendation to proa\oiUJOWledge th
ng m order t 0 h
k
s e creative
.
s ore up democracy: this boo
PhUosophe f
contribution 0 f
'
0
rs aesthetics to
s many active participants, frorn
vegetable
anners on rooftop gardens. 8 But

staying close to the masters can offer new agents useful distillations of trial
and error, and also spike humanist interpretation with provocative questions. Many artists today link art to accountability, as in the exemplary cases
of Alfredo Jaar, KrzysztofWodiczko, and Tim Rollins. Admirable maestros
such as these consider the practical dimensions of public response to their
art. Shouldn't the question also arise for interpretation? If humanists ask
after creative processes and recognize interpretation as creative, it makes
sense to pause alongside artists and to consider what interpretation does in
the world.9 So much depends on how we read literature, objects, and events
that commentary often codetermines art's effects. I(There is nothing either
good or bad, but thinking makes it so" (Hamlet, 2.2).
More than a decade ago, while increasing numbers of talented students
were leaving literature to pursue something uuseful" (economics, politics,
medicine), I paused to think about the disappointments. Bereavement is a
familiar feeling for humanists, and stopping to ask why made me wonder
about being left behind. Is what we teach useless? Of course we can and do
defend literature as serious business. Along with other arts, creative writing shapes our lives by generating assumptions, private desires, and public
ambitions. At the core of human practices- from nation building to health
care, from intimate relations to human rights and resources-art and interpretation effect practical interests and explore possibilities. These worthy
but stock responses were not persuading disaffected students to stay, or
administrators to reallocate support.
My subsequent responses are admittedly personal, and they account for
the particular shape of this book. The admirable projects that I was fortunate to encounter and the modest forays that I am trying to develop make
up this individual exploration of a collective opportunity: to link interpretation to engaged arts and thereby to refresh a civic vocation in humanistic
education. Cultural agents are formed individually and I offer my case as
one of many. One at a time was Friedrich Schiller's approach to coaching
artists and interpreters in the construction of political freedom through indirect aesthetic practices. He addressed his Letters on the Aesthetic Education ofMan ( 1794) to a single reader and published the one-on-one mentorship in order to multiply generations of apprentices. I count myself among
them. From my first chapter to the last, a thread of theory spins through
comments on a variety of projects and winds up with renewed appreciation
for maestro Schiller, the artist and teacher. None of this seemed obvious to

PROLOGUE

the humanities to do more practical work, maybe

d
tud ts who abandone
,
k . the world is not yet a core concern for an academic
s en
because art s wor m
. . .
. k ti' al and pessunistlc.
field that remams s ep c
. . .
. . h b
intellectually gratifying In a world where, admitPessiroiSm as een
.
..
ars multiply: and natural resources wane. It feels
'
.
.
tedly, dispanties grow, w
. h B tan optimism of the will, beyond the despair of reagood to be ng t. u
.
.
.

l!C t
d social commitments and creative contnbutlons.lO
son, drives we owar
.

t
young
people
seemed
to
me
not
only
tedious
but
irreTeacbing desparr o
.
The
case
Includes
'bl
ared
to
making
a
case
for
cultural
agents.
spons1 e comp
.
.
apprenticeship to risk-taking artists. In one expenment, I. ~Ieced .together

an arts-based literacy program for underserved communities, using liter-

ary classics as pre-texts for making a painting, a poem, or a piece of music.

Whether the workshops engage grade school children, graduate students,
or senior citizens, participants experience how close creativity comes to
critical thinking. (See chapter 4, "Pre-Texts.")

Out of Bounds

The variety of projects that I'll mention (including mimes who direct traffic; legislative theater; classical music orchestras of desperately poor youth;
a poster blitz that broke the silence around AIDs; painting a town to revive it; garbage pickers recycled into publishers; among many others that
you may add) share a family resemblance. They begin as works of art to
12
arrest attention to particular issues; but they don't stop there. Instead,
they ripple into extra-artistic institutions and practices. Humanistic interpretation has an opportunity to trace those ripple effects and to speculate
about the dynamics in order to encourage more movement. It will mean
participating in activities that stray beyond the "text" or artwork while
maintaining the intellectual rigor and the acquired caginess of humanistic
close readings. Among the artistic achievements that beg close reading are
pragmatic projects (in law, medicine, crime prevention, economic development) that are fueled by the disruptive energy called art. For example,

Another adventure is a course in Harvard's general education curricu-

Rigoberta Menchu had been celebrated as an activist, a feminist, a defender

lum called Cultural Agents. It hosts a series of speakers who combine art

of human rights, in entirely thematic or anthropological terms that don't

with other professions (medicine, law, business, engineering, and government) to do admirable work.U Admiration, I learned from Mayor Mockus,

ask why her testimonio about civil war in Guatemala, published in 1984, was
so politically effective. But reading her rhetorically reveals a formidable lit-

is the basic sentiment of citizenship, a term I use in the sense of participa-

erary strategist, a significant dimension of her persuasive leadership. The

tion rather than legal status. (See chapter 1, "From the Top.") A medical

lesson in style is worth learning. 13

doctor and photographer "falls in love again" with her patients through the

Necessarily hybrid, conscientious cultural agency requires the collabo-

portraits she takes; a human rights lawyer becomes a landscape artist to

ration of various skill sets to hitch stale and unproductive social patterns to

create a sustainable alternative to drug-dealing; a biochemical engineer in-

the motor of unconventional interventions. The mixed media of unpredict-

vents an art-science laboratory to signal that the two activities go together.

able art and extra-artistic institutions that together compose constructive

The course includes a fair where local artist-activists and students pitch

cultural agency obviously don't fit into standard fields of study. On the one

problems to each other, form collectives, and codesign interventions for

law reform' the d'lSt nbutlon

f1
o ocal produce, racial profiling, date rape,
energy conservation, and so forth.

hand, the natural and social sciences may recognize effective programs but

lik
h
Humanities-inspired v t
en ures
e t ese are restructuring curricula
.
m Engaged Humanif
Ies programs, also in medical schools and business
schooIs, even in fledgli
.
.
.
h
..
ng programs In Public Leadership. EVIdently, the
lllllanities have import t
k
.
thr gh
. . an wor to do 1n these and other collaborations
ou out uruvers1ties and . .
CIVIc msbtuhons. Civic life depends on aesthetic tr .
amtng to develop ima .
.
thinking 18. normally what h gtnabon
and Judgment. This training in free

umanists say they do. It's a good start.

will probably overlook art as a partner to economic, legal, or health care advancesJ and therefore will miss a motor of social effectiveness.14 And on the
other hand, humanists concerned with defending art for its own sake are
likely to bypass social effects though they attest to aesthetic value.
This discord between pragmatics and aesthetics is doubly debilitating
since the "adjacent possible" counts on a combination of art and science.15
Development needs the imagination and judgment that the arts cultivatej
and the arts thrive on adaptive challenges that throw systems into crisis
and require new forms. Tracking hybrid creations means stepping beyond
established practices and linking onto creative experiments. I want to en-

PROLOGUE

.
. t take risks, to learn a lesson from art-making about
courage mterpretatiOn o
.
"
.
.
.
.
, h d d'rty through tnal and error. Try again. Fail again. Fail
getting one s an s 1
,.
. t' mantra (formulated by Samuel Beckett). Real teachers
better IS an art1s s
take ~sks, Paulo Freire urged at the beginning o~ P~dag~gy of the Oppressed
m Hegel "It is solely by nsking hfe that freedom is
fro
t

with a bold quo e

sponsibility and education. Art's purposelessness became the watermark

of its authenticity. Defenders of art for art's sake invoked Immanuel Kant

obtained." 16
An incentive to coax art interpretation out of solitary bounds and into

in which purposelessness is a first moment on the way to new moments of

agreement about collective purpose. For his student Friedrich Schiller, the

collaborations with other colleagues and with community partners is the

aesthetic detour was also an invitation/ obligation to make new forms when

otential to build general support for humanistic education. We need it.

old ones caused conflict. No one, in the unstable modern world, gets away

politics, economics, ecology, medicine, etc.) where particular skill sets are

with simply looking on.

The brackets that hold aesthetics back from civic education can open

recognized as necessary partners for hybrid collaborations that can pro-

up with provocations from model projects and from classics of human-

duce social change. Success in art and everything else depends on copro-

istic interpretation, starting with Schiller's Letters. Written during the

duction.
A still-spotty but spirited movement called Engaged Humanities is

French Revolution, the Letters warn against running headlong after reason because freedom is attainable only indirectly, through beauty and art.

taking the risk to explore what civics means for liberal education.17 More

Aesthetic education for all would allow the broad public to imagine, to

than the Public Humanities programs, which bring cultural events and

play, to pause for disinterested judgment, and then to "court agreement." 19

services to surrounding communities, Engaged Humanities and Public

Making and thinking about art could then trump inflexible reason, which

Scholarship programs take a cue to collaborate from artists. Now scores

is often a cover for ideology. Judicious citizen-artists know how to wrest

of particular college and university programs and also a network of over

new creations from conflict. They achieve freedom within constraints and

ninety colleges and universities -coordinated through the national con-

acknowledge the freedom that fellow artists display. A poet and philoso-

sortium Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life- promote

pher, Schiller shuttled between art-making and interpretation, imagina-

coproductions with diverse partners.18 (See also the Community Arts Net-

tion and understanding, to weave a collaborative and resilient social fab-

work as well as Animating Democracy's Project Profile Database.) One

departure from convent t c

Ion IS o teature arts proJects that have real social

effects but fit badly into existing academic fields. Another is to learn from
those projects in which c t'
. .
rea 1ve actiVIty- such as teaching- carries consequences that make us accountable.

ric. Though I'll mention other mentors and interpreters for the work of art

~umanistic interpretation can serve as an interdisciplinary courtyard (for

edness, the humanities left behind the risky optimism that drives civic re-

to ground this disinterested appreciation for beauty. But using Kant to cut
out purpose truncates his ambitious project. It was finally a civic project

in the world- including Wilhelm von Humboldt, Viktor Shk.lovsky, John

Dewey, Hannah Arendt, D. W. Winnicott, Paolo Freire, Antonio Gramsci,
Ji.irgen Habermas, Edward Said, Jacques Ranciere, Martha Nussbaum,
Grant Kester, Paul Bloom- it is Schiller who ties up the threads with his
daring proposition that creativity and aesthetic judgment are foundations
for democracy. Are you ready to apprentice yourself?

Open Parentheses

The Work of Art in the World might have addressed only fascinating art

Attention to art's work . th

spite changes . c
m e world used to be basic for education. DeIn tortune, engaged h
.
civics until a
b
umanism remained a centerpiece for
recent ut prolon d d
"Art and Account b'li ")
.ge an pessimistic slump. (See chapter 3,
a I ty. To sim l'fy b
tal effects of art b
PI 'a out fifty years ago the instrumen.
ecame anathem
Cial concerns in ret
c.
a to many humanists who set aside so.
reat trom a nasty
and Ideologies. To c
postwar world of aggressive interests
sateguard aesth t. f
e IC reedom, beauty and disinterest-

PROLOGUE

'

projects and left interpretation alone. The projects are sure to charm you
with the surprise and pleasure that make them socially effective, while commentaries will lack luster by comparison. Attending to humanistic interpretation may seem ((unseasonable/' to cite Schiller on aesthetic education
during the Terror, at a time when departments of humanities downsize
or disappear altogether. To compound the external threats of budget cuts,
falling enrollments, and slim job pickings, internal campaigns of cultural
PROLOGUE

.
cerbate impatience with the formalist (rheand performance stud Ies exa
. . .
.
.
.
d 1' t' ) analysis of humanistic Interpretation. But If
torical, genenc, an sty IS IC
. . .
.
.
.
. t ead a book about artistic Interventions In social
it is useful or mterestmg o r
. . b
b oks can collect cases and abstract general prin _
challenges, It IS ecause o
.
h
B 1d0 es in his books. Good catalogues do that too.
ciples t e way oa
"'~e lay hold of the full import of a work ~f art only as we ~o through in

made up of artificial constructions that must continually be adjusted with

more and broader-based art-making.21
While schools still dedicate significant, if declining, budgets to the
humanities, perhaps we can refresh aesthetic education as part of civic development. This civic dimension goes beyond well-established research
about the academic advantages of teaching through the arts. At least since

our own vital processes the processes the artist went through In producing

Maria Montessori's spectacular achievements with disadvantaged Italian

the work. It is the critic's privilege to share in the promotion of this active
't "20 Th
J
h
t
ft
h
h
ese are o. n
process. His condemnation is t at e so o e~' arres ,~ I .

children at the turn of the twentieth century, through recent and impressive educational gains for Finland and South Korea as well as art-making to

Dewey's last words in Art as Experience. Why arrest that work of creative
criticism when it supports democratizing transactions with art? Dewey the

enhance research universities in the United States, cognitive development

22
has publicly acknowledged the benefits of creativity. Aesthetic education

pragmatist understood that pragmatism needs education; then he realized

also serves industry by supporting innovation, reorganization, and com-

that education needs art and that art needs interpretation. Through art we

munication. Business schools are beginning to explore these connections

23
and to understand that management is as much an art as a science. But

reframe experience, offset prejudice, and refresh our perception of what

exists so that it seems new and worthy of attention. And through humanistic interpretation we share the civic effect. Interpretive skills can lead to
informed judgments, appreciation of the historical context, and effective
communication.
Artists think critically to interpret existing material into new forms. How
else can one imagine and then realize a project- including social, politi-

beyond business and academic learning, aesthetic education has civic work
to do.24 Learning to think like an artist and an interpreter is basic training
for our volatile times. Together with professional artists, interpreters are
cultural agents when we explore art as "our greatest renewable resource"
for addressing the world's fundamental challenges of disease, violence, and
poverty.25

cal, or economic development? And interpretation is art's agent, tracking

irregular paths from artistic freedom to the public good and thereby stimulating more travel. Leading back and forth from creativity to civic purpose,
the paths now include digital technologies, applied research, and partner-

s~ps ~th public institutions; they develop novel entry points, routes, and
diversions
as part of artIS t'IC agency In
geographies
. both familiar and un..
familiar to Enlightened Europe.
Critical
thinking
is
both
di
.
.
a con tlon of and a complement to artmaking-world-making i D
'
f
n ewey s pragmatic and democratizing sense
o art as experience- that s k
ki
par s more exploration and more experience.
11a ng a 1ead from Schiller D
'd .
.
f
Th'
' ewey I entlfied all active citizens as creative
ar Ists. IS was radical in th . h
e eig teenth century and again in the 193os,
when D
h
ewey e1ped to inspire F kli
ployment
c
ran n Delano Roosevelt's massive emprograms I Or painters t
.
ter I "F
h
'ac ors, wnters, and musicians. (See chap' rom t e Top.") Today th hil
.
.
.
' e P osophical hne that links art to hberty is recovered b J
.
y acques Ranciere who d d
"
h .
. "
m politics. By ae th .
.
'
e en s an aest etlc regime
s ebc regime he means an awareness that human life is
1

Go
For readers who may bristle at the boundaries where art meets accountability, zealous to keep at least art free from instrumental purpose, I'll beg
some indulgence and ask you to continue for a bit. Perhaps the renewed
possibility of central billing for arts and interpretation, or maybe the historical connections between humanism and public life, or possibly a few
fascinating nomadic projects that follow from ripples of aesthetic effect will
persuade a change of heart. The chapters that follow begin with noteworthy
cases of art's work in the world, and they continue with a reflection on civic
responsibility before I respond personally to the opportunity/ obligation of
agency in my everyday work as a teacher. The book ends with Schiller, to
seal the disparate cases and considerations by resending his Letters on the
Aesthetic Education of Man, the "unsurpassable manifesto" for making art
work in the world.26
Chapter 1, "From the Top," tracks arts projects inspired by high-ranking

PROT.Or.tTP

11

.. al 1 d
ncluding Antanas Mockus, Edi Rama, and Franklin
politic ea ers, 1
.
"
,

ne question here 1s whether ungovernable art can

O
It
Delano Rooseve
collaborate with government. Another is how to account for the differratic and dictatorial effects of art. Chapter 2, ((Press
democ
ence b etween
Here," marks points of contact between aesthetic and political innovation
by featuring relentless grassroots projects that "melt u.p" from the sparks

- bottom up interventions, press 2j

-

useful humanism, press 3i

to do something practical, press 4i
aesthetic education, press Si
to talk to the operator, press [email protected].

of a particular art intervention to ignite large-scale social effects, as in the

In all cases, press here, wherever, because the lines will ultimately connect

works of Augusto Boal, ACT UP, and the Pro-Test Lab. Is art enough to

if you keep pressing.

produce social change? 27 Chapter 3 takes a pause to consider 'kt and Accountability" and casts a backward glance to reconnect aesthetics to civics
through the education of taste, otherwise known as judgment. Snapshots
of recurring debates between defenders of art's autonomy and promoters
of art's responsibility feature judgment as the tiebreaker. In chapter 4, ''PreTexts," I hold myself accountable as a cultural agent by translating civic responsibility into a quotidian register of classroom teacher. Along with the
pleasures of feeling useful through an arts-integration approach to literacy,
I learned how close creativity is to criticism and how user-friendly literary
theory can be as a reflection on art-making. Finally, chapters, "Play Drive
in the Hard Drive," circles back to Schiller in order to name the creativecritical faculty as an instinct that makes us human. Goaded by conflicts
between unfeeling reason and irrational sensuality, the play drive fuels all
arts interventions and humanistic interpretations with the combination of
optimism and respect for constraints that can encourage more work for art
in the world.
These pages remain open to your criticism and contributions, including
nominations of exemplary cultural agents. This is a "Beta/' or experimental,
version of the project to generate commentary and criticism, as Augusto
Boal said of his experiment with Legislative Theatre.28 He asked readers to
send in responses to his postal address. Following his lead, I invite you
to send suggestions for updates of The Work of Art in the World by e-mail
to Cultural Agents, [email protected].
And now, if you want to fast-forward to some issues in this book and
defer others you can p
h d 1 .
'
ress a ea se echvely as Boal instructed his readers,
though that menu has obviously changed:
For English stay tuned.
- l
'
' para espano presione un traductor.
If you want
- top down creativity, press
12

Ij

PROLOGUE
PROLOGUE

13

oNE.

From the Top

Government-Sponsored Creativity
When I feel trapped} I ask mysel what would an artist do?
-ANTANAS MOCKUS

Mime over Matter

"Professor Mockus, what gave you the idea to replace the traffic police with
pantotnitr1e artists?" It was an obvious question for the recent mayor of
Bogota, but if the student hadn't asked, I might not have learned that one
principle of the mayor's astounding success is his disar111ing sense of humor. He knows when to take a joke seriously and set off ripples of shared
fun. Antanas Mockus and I were co-teaching a graduate course at Harvard University during the fall semester of 2004. Foundational Fictions,
a course on the backdrop of nineteenth-century national novels, and th,e
work of other Cultural Agents framed his reflections on creativity during
two terms in office (1995-1997 and 2001-2003). Those novels, written by
political leaders to fan desire for national consolidation, were background
1
cases for considering art's recent work in public life.
Before Bogota elected Mockus in 1994 it was the most dangerous city
in Latin America, according to the U.S. State Department advisory not to
go there. At international airports, official warnings singled out Lagos and
Bogota as places too troubled to traffic in tourism. On this count, Bogo'

FIGURE 1.1.

Mime directs traffic in Bogota, El Tiempo, February 1995.

Source: El Tiempo archives. Bogota, Colombia.

Fallen star, to commemorate traffic death, Bogota, 1996.

Source: El Tiempo archives. Bogota, Colombia.

tanos themselves didn't doubt the North American advice to keep a safe

Lerner of Curitiba, Brazil, to highlight social practices that can be pressed

into service for collective healing.5 If the acupuncture shows even modest
relief, it signals the efficacy of collective action and encourages skeptics to
join the first movers.6 These treatments included painting city streets with
fifteen hundred fleeting stars/ crosses 1.2 meters long to mark the points
where people died in car accidents. It was a caution to pedestrians who
were used to taking "shortcuts" (shorthand for all sorts of corruption in
Colombia).
Citywide contests for the best poster promoting condoms went along
with distributing them in the hundreds of thousands. Gun shafts were sawn
into rings commemorating the violence that was thereby ritually relegated
to the past. "Rock the Parks)) concerts every week gave youth a regular
public stage to reclaim their space after dark. "Vaccine against Violence"
was a citywide performance-therapy against domestic aggression that had
reached "epidemic" levels. To follow the medical metaphor, epidemics call
for vaccines, those tiny doses of aggression that inoculate vulnerable victims against far greater violence. Over several weekends, nearly forty-five
thousand citizens lined up holding balloons on which they painted the
haunting image of the person who had most abused them. And then- on

distance from the city. Many had lost confidence altogether and emigrated
if they could afford to, so that- for example- their children could attend
school without personal bodyguards. The city seemed hopelessly mired in
a level of corruption that turns almost any investment against itself because
conventional cures of money or more armed enforcement would have aggravated, not mitigated, the greed and the violence. Stumped for a while,
like the poI
l'tIcaI scientists
an d economists,

Including
Larry Summers, who
admit defeat when I ask what they would have done, the new mayor took an
unconventional turn toward art. Mockus had been reluctant to call his ere-

ativity by its common name. But by 2oo6 "Por amoral arte" (For the Love
of
Art)
was
the
name
ofh
li

1
1
c
.
IS po tica p ahorm for the presidential elections
1n Colombia.2 The n t d
.
1
ex an near y successful 20IO campaign for the presidency was more cautious b t b
db
.
' u uoye y Citizens already primed to co create
3
PB~OJects with Mockus. 1hen an invitation from the curators of Berlin's 2012
Iennale confirmed his i t

1
.
.
n ernationa reputation as a creative artist.4
The mimes were only
f h
,
0
f
"
one
t e mayors many arts-inspired intervenlons or cultural acupunctu , d .
.
.
res unng hts first administration. The therapeutic term customizes " b
ur an acupuncture," coined by Mayor Jaime
16

CHAPTER ON

FIGURE 1.2.

FROM THE TOP

17

" . , doctors- they expressed rage) burst the balloon

reaching real and actmg
.
c .
)
.
f
(catharsis)
or
were
r
signed up 101 therapy programs
1
and either Ie1t re te
.
.
''
.
,
printed 35 o1 ooo lamtnated cards With a thumbs1
The mayor s team a so
.d
d ed "thumbs-down" on the other) for citizens to flash
up" on one Sl e an r
.
rova1 of traffic behavior and mutually regulate a shared
d
approva1or tsapp
. h 7 They discontinued the game after a season) however1 when
pubhc sp ere.
.
.
.
.
Moekus conce ded to critics that disapproval might Interfere With the development of self-esteem and self-efficacy. .
"
'
.
Another interruption of murderous routine was Women s Night Out."
Unlike the direct demands for women's rights in Anglo-American "Take
Back the Night/' Bogota's feminist project was indirect and playful. It encouraged sociability among women, who took to the streets, the bars, and
dance clubs while men stayed home. Seven hundred thousand women
went out on the first ((Night Out." The men balked but mostly obeyed the
order to stay indoors, probably reluctant to be taken for women. Those who
insisted on coming out clipped self-authorizing "Safe-Conduct Passes"
printed in newspapers. The morning after, headlines reported in bold caps
that, astonishingly for Bogota, there was only one homicide and no traf8
fic deaths. Another initially unpopular measure among men was the time
limit on selling alcohol. Bars closed by 1: oo a.m. 1 just when things would
have gotten lively, and violent. But once the media regularly reported fewer
homicides, resentments abated. For women, their night out showed that
respect for life and for the law did not sacrifice fun but instead made it
p.o~s.ible. And the men too began to enjoy the liberating effects of renewed
CIVIhty and improved domestic life.
sure, s.ocial reform and political pragmatism shrivel into short-lived, selfdefeatmg pretension F . d . h S hi
.
.
s. ne nc c ner knew that by I793, even before
hts Letters, wntten in
k .
"
h
I794, too Single-minded reason to task: In order
t at obedience to reason
b
.
tfi
may ecome an object of inclination it must represen or us the principle oif l
fi
'
.
which h . .
P easure, or pleasure and pain are the only spnngs
set t e znstzncts in m0 t "9 p .
among th .
.
wn. atn and fear of punishment are of course
e Incentives for 0 b d.
ate resentm t
. e Ience, Mockus also admitSj but they generen ' a1ong With a de t b11
l .
pliance sour b' . .
s a Zing resistance to law. Unwilling corns su Jectivtty with
..
bl
observances
.
opposttion to the world, while pleasura e
weetens social int
.
'
.
sure and neither did
.
egratiOn. Mockus doesn t entirely trust plea
Schiller who 11 d . "
. ,
or morality.IO B h
'
ca e It a very suspicious companion
ut t e uneas
.
Ypartnership can hardly be avoided, Mockus

taught in his seminar Hedonism and Pragmatism: Unhindered hedonism

leads from precarious pleasure to lasting pain, as lawlessness provokes scarcity and violence. And pragmatism without pleasure breeds an equally selfdefeating distaste for obligations.
Philosopher Mockus may once have overlooked this productive tension
between reason and passion so familiar to artists, because the field of philosophy typically discounts Schiller and even abbreviates Kant, leaving out
his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment.u Nevertheless, several essays by Professor Mockus evoke something of Schiller's paean to creative play and to the
counterfactual exercise of imagination.12 Mayor Mockus, however, never
doubted the efficacy of art. And on reading Viktor Shklovsky's '~t as Technique" (19I3), the formalist manifesto that identifies art as interruption of
habit, Mockus conceded that yes, he is an artist too.13 The mayor's knack
for interrupting quotidian corruption and cynicism animated his general
platform of cultura ciudadana. "Civic culture" combines pedagogy and
persuasion to "harmonize" the competing norms of moral, legal, and cultural practices, first by demonstrating the costs of "divorce" among them,
and then by cajoling citizens to reconcile formal with informal codes of
behavior.14
(Mtanas sees the city as a huge classroom/' his deputy mayor, Alicia
Eugenia Silva, used to say.15 That classroom looked like a vaudeville theater
when Mockus dressed up as ({Super Citizen" in tights and cape to talk on
TV, or when he'd perform civic messages in rap, or proudly wear a toy frog
(equivalent to a stool pigeon) to celebrate informants for their courage
to condemn a crime. This '(croactivity" brought culture close to morality
and in line with the law. Think of traffic in this framework of harmonizing formal with informal rules: It had long been legally wrong, sometimes
morally indifferent, but culturally cool to cross the street in the middle of
a block or at a red light. (Drug-traffic and related violence showed similar
asymmetries of legal intolerance, moral ambivalence, and cultural acceptance.) But the mimes who mocked infringements, and the fleeting commemorative stars that intercepted incautious pedestrians, raised moral
support for traffic law and cheapened the cultural cache of ignoring the
law, bringing all three codes into closer agreement.
Governments will inevitably attempt to direct creativity toward "harmonization/' and official preferences can come close to censorship, so artists typically resent the priorities and defend their freedom to dissent or to
simply ignore official interest.16 Among these artists, Victor Laignelet had

defense of contemporary skepticism: the book recommends the flexible

and pragmatic scientific method to test hypotheses that last only as long
as they are useful. Lyotard showed that scientists don't presume to establish fixed laws, and neither should anyone else. But, in the there and then
of Colombia's borderline situation as Mockus confronted it, Lyotard conceded that Law was in order.18

Risks and Res ults

If you ask Antanas Mockus how he came to art for civic education he may
modestly fail to mention the dissertation he wrote in philosophy, about the
power of (art-ifical) representation to mediate between personal perception and interpersonal communication. Published in 1988, the thesis describes an arc from Descartes's achievement of conceptual clarity by using
Super Civico.
Source: El Tiempo archives. Bogota, Colombia.
FIGURE 1.3.

linguistic artifice/representation to Habermas's invitation to communicative action: through representation, conflicting positions can play and construct universally acceptable principles.19 (Augusto Boal treated all repre-

kept his distance from government until Antanas Mockus made him think
again: "I askedmyselfwhatwould be gained and what lost by working with
the new mayor in a desperate city. My conclusion was that Antanas was
worth the gamble. He does not instrumentalize art for pre-defined ends, as
standard politicians do, but rather engages debate and polysemic interpretation through art. In any case, full artistic freedom made little sense in a
violent society that lacked freedom of movement and exploration." 17

sentation as theater, that is, to act and to know that one is acting. )2
"Whether or not Mockus mentions his significant contribution to philosophy, he will not fail to attribute his initiation in art to his adored
mother, a ceramic artist who raised two children on her own strength and
talent after her husband's early death. Mrs. Nijole Sivickas Mockus is a
Lithuanian immigrant of delicate proportions and solid determination who
still produces massive and dynamic ceramic sculptures every day though
she is into her eighties. Serving as her assistant from childhood through

Mockus himself would joke about the illusion of uncluttered freedom

his young adult years, Antanas would be instructed, for example, to in-

m a country as chaotic as Colombia. "In the United States or Canada I'd

probably be an anarch' t M
b' .
IS
Yam 1hon for Colombia is for my grandchildren to have the ana h t
.
b
rc IS option, ecause right now and for the immediate fu ture no one here w ld
. "
.
M k
ou notice. From this lawless limit conditlon,
oc us engaged Jean-F
. L
.
Th 1 al h'
ran~ols yotard dunng his visit to Bogota in 1995.
e oc p Ilosopher asked th F
.
dispost
b
.
e rench guest for his opinion about wh1ch
1
ton est su1ted cont
ence to the 1
emporary Colombia: one that favored obediaw or one that rese d . d
1
flexibility Th
.
rve JU gment in order to preserve politica
. e pomted questi
. df
Mockus's
.
on raise rom city hall represented a risk to
campatgn against " h
".
.
buying votes L t d'
s ortcuts In everything from jaywalking to
yo ar s book 7h p
' e ostmodern Condition was a fashionable

crease the dimensions of a work in progress by 10 percent. Years later, he

launched a municipal tax-paying campaign called "uo% for Bogota/' which

encouraged citizens to pay a tithe in excess of the taxes they owed. The city
needed the extra money to unclog and to rebuild itself, Mockus told voters
in his first mayoral campaign. He actually promised- not threatened- to
raise taxes in order to finance urgent public works, but an intransigent city
council refused to approve the increase. Mockus responded with a cleverly contradictory program: "Impuestos Voluntaries" (Voluntary Impositions/Taxes). Almost unbelievably, in a city where corruption had for
years dissuaded citizens from paying up, over sixty-three thousand families
paid in excess of their obligation. They added

10

percent to fund particular

20

CHAPTER ONE
FROM THE TOP

21

OMS 2012

--colombia

-Bogota

80

800
700

70

600

60
500

Numberof 50
homicides
per
40 ~-----------r---t ~-----\~--~
100,000
inhabitants

Revenue
(in millions)

400
+Additional US$700
million from the sale of
50% of the shares of the
local energy company

300
200

30

100

20

'90

10
......~~~~~'-'-.I....L..L...L....L...L..--L-J.--L.....L..i___j. _j_

'61

'65

'70

'75

'80

'85

J.. _ . . . .L . . .
'90

'95

j_. .

'00

'92

'93

'94

'95

'96

'97

'98

'99

'00

'01

'02

'03

Time

J. . .
'OS

'91

FIGURE 1.5.

Income from Tax Increases. Graph by Sumona Chakravarty.

Time
FIGURE 1.4.

Homicides Drop. Graph by Sumona Chakravarty.

projec~s: schools, parks, hospitals, transportation, and so forth, confident

that this mayor would not steal the money.
From, the time he took offi ce to t he time
.
he left his second term,
Bogota s tax revenues had .
d
Th
.
mcrease astronomically, almost 300 percent.
e same penod marked a h
d I' .
. affi
s arp ec Ine In homicides ( 67 percent) and
m tr c deaths (s 1 per t) 1 d
suits f h
cen n ependent studies corroborated the reo t e mayor's Observat
0 f c .
collect and al
ory
IVIC Culture, established in 1995 to
an yze surveys of r
'
.
were d .
CI IZens attitudes and behavior.21 Programs
esigned to address specifi
feedback to d t
. .
c survey results, and new surveys provided
h
e ermme If the pr
tinue 22 Regul
ograms s ould continue change or dis con.
ar reportin of e
.
'
'
feedbackeffect
.. g
ven small Incremental results had its own
, as Citizens began t 0 kn
disposed them t
..
ac owledge a measurable trend which
l
o participate more full 23 AI
yses prepared by s .
.
Y
ong with the qualitative anaOb
octo1ogtsts anth
I .
servatory's statist' .
'
ropo ogtsts, and political scientists, the
ICians and eco
.
nomtsts produced quantitative reports
22

CHAPTBJl ONE

that have cured me of a humanist's allergy to statistics. Numbers may be

the mayor's most eloquent evidence of the aesthetic effects he provoked.24
The documented results of cultura ciudadana prove that positive change
is possible even in apparently intractable conditions. During a memorable
moment of our co-taught course on cultural agents, Mockus made this
point with aplomb and understatement. We had invited Homi Bhabha to
speak on Frantz Fanon, about whom Bhabha has written brilliantly. The
talk made references to Antonio Gramsci, who located opportunities for
change at the margins of government, under its radar, in the cracks and
contradictions that exist between government and oppositional forces.
This was an apt figure for Gramsci's ((war of position/' waged in historical
conditions always ((rich with contradictions" in culture.25 Mockus listened
attentively, as he always does, and then made a single comment: ((There
are cracks and contradictions inside government too where wars of position can gain ground through cultural persuasion and alternative practices."
Here was a participant observer who had enough experience and imagination to ground Gramsci's hunches in reformist, rather than revolutionary,
politics. Governments need not be eliminated, either by armed force or by
FROM THE TOP

23

'

cumulative cultural revolution; they can be refonned through the intrinsic

dynamism of programs that coordinate active citizens With creative and
transparent leadership.
After the icebreakers of artistic acupuncture, Bogota's tnood changed. 26
Citizens voluntarily collaborated with government and expected good results. The success surprised everyone, including the tnayor. There Were
fiscal reforms (transparency and voluntary tithes), educational in1provements (with arts and evaluation), better law enforcement (Mockus and his
staff taught at the police academy), new public transportation (the Transmilenio), and water conservation (40 percent reductions that continue
today). Despair turns out to be unrealistic or lazy, a failure of determination and creativity.
Wh~n admirers from other cities eagerly solicit his advice but stay shy

of playmg games, Mockus recommends more creativity. And when the

.
I
.
h
y
Simp y copy an mtervention, as t e mimes were copied in more than one
hundred Colombian cities without any measurable effect, he urges more
serious analysisP Cultura ciudadana is not a recipe but an approach,
Mockus consistently tells them. It combines the ludic With the legal and
counts on analyses of local conditions. In other cities, programs should be
customized
or
replaced
by
new
games
2s The Trans 1 c
.

m1 en1o, .10r examp1e,

Is adapted from "Curitiba's rapid transit bus system, with its trademark
clear tubes for same level pre-boarding.... Bogota and Seoul have borrowe.d from the concept. Los Angeles and Detroit envy it." 2.9 1he point is
to think adaptively and
t 1 Wh
.
h b
crea tve Y
en critics object that Mockus cannot
be ng t ecause he thinks
_c
th . h .
counteuactually, he agrees with them but adds
at Wit out Imagining th
c
'
Am th
e counterractual, change remains unthinkable.
ong e many games that M k

main a spe 'al fir

oc us ptoneered, the traffic mimes reCI
st case. The mi
h
hilities 11
mes re earse an entire repertory of possi.
. wenty made-up artists .th
issue traffic ticket t
d
WI
no authonty to detain people or to
ss oppe buses m k d.
ingpublic. The a .
.
' oc e Jaywalkers, and beguiled a groweuective antics enco
d
keep playing. With'
urage Mockus and his inspired staff to
m ten years traffi d h
dred per year to s h d
'
c eat s decreased from thirteen hunlX un red. For tw0
ks
.
amateurs-gradually.
di
wee each mime would train twenty
me1u ng the h
1
among the eventual ~ h
orne ess and even professional police
b
our undred r

ecame a massive stage c d .

ecrlllts. Soon the grid of urban space
ligh
IOr ally fun k d
ts and crosswalks Th
po e at offenders of rules about red
fens
e spectacle
d
Ive residents who d .
create a public from discreet and deunng years of l I
aw essness had been avoiding eye

contact with one another. A public is formed in response to a spectacle,

as performance theory n1akes clearj it is not a pre-constituted body with a
general will to see a show.30 Even a previously formed public counts on previews and publicity as incentives to reconvene. In Bogota, the pantomime
perfonnances reconstituted a res publica that appreciated some pedestrian
ele1nents of the law. Now people came together in public to abide the law,
with pleasure. Active citizens are not spectators in the conventionally passive sense, nor are they disinterested observers- Kant's Weltbetrachters. 31
Instead, the jaywalkers, the laughing crowd, and the corrected crossers at
crosswalks were all spect-actors, in Boal's deconstructed neologism that
undoes the difference between the doers and the done to.
1he idea to replace the traffic police with n1imes didn't occur to Mayor
Mockus right away. In fact, he spent his first month in office practically
paralyzed politically, worried along with evetyone else about what to do in a
city so hot with crime that the law was going up in sn1oke. Voters had taken
a risk on the unlikely mayor. He was a distinguished professor of philosophy
and mathen1atics and recently the president of the National University, but
hardly a career politician.32 And now they wondered whether they had not
made another n1istake, along with the increasingly desperate conclusion
that staying in Bogota was a bad idea. It's not that academics are unknown
to politics in ColOinbia, where grammarians becan1e presidents during the
nation-building nineteenth century.33 And voters knew that Mockus had
son1e administrative experience. But neither Colombia's history of scholarpoliticians nor the administrative record of the university president could
have predicted his success at the polls. For one thing, Mockus doesn't fit the
notoriously conservative nineteenth-century mold. He chose to study and
teach mathernatics, he told n1e, rather than the humanities because math
doesn't depend on deep philological roots acquired over a privileged lifetimej it is an equal-opportunity discipline. Ask any Bogota no how Mockus
lost his job as university president to appreciate how surprising he can be,
and how close to calan1ity an inspired risk can run.
Before the (in)famous incident in 1993, Mockus had for three years cleverly n1anaged to facilitate conversations and even accords at the politically
volatile National University. How, you may wonder, did he overcome the
refusal of adrninistrators to talk to revolutionary students who would not
ren1ove their masks? He simply invited both parties into a roon1 and instructed the students to sit with their backs to the administrators so they
could speak freely to the wall. Mockus also devised games for players too

24 CHAPTER ONE

FROM THE TOP

25

.
. t to deliberate. One game was to tie the ends of a string t h
mtrans1gen
.
ot e
.
f e player and looping another stnng through the first to t. h
wnsts o on
'
'
Ie t e
new ends onto the wrists of a partner. The challenge to untangle the connection engaged the antagonists in physical contact so long that collaboration began to override the enmity.
The fateful affair began when Mockus tried to offer official remarks
at the inaugural ceremonies for the new faculty of arts. The dean had already been heckled into silence by the hostile student crowd. But President Mockus was not deterred. He must have counted on his talent for
inventing charms to establish civility, even though the students were at
their unruly extreme that night, determined to outshout the president and
to undermine any new university program. Mockus tried several moves to
quell the crowd, but each failed. Then, in a move that no one could have
predicted, the future mayor turned around, dropped his pants, and mooned
the crowd of noisy students. They were stunned into silence. Satisfied at
having won the skirmish, the president resumed a decorous posture and
delivered his speech to a quiet audience. The shock for him came later. The
next day, Mockus got to see his own bare bum featured on television during the nig~tly ne~s program. One of the students evidently came prepared
to shoot With a Video camera. In a single stroke, Mockus became embarrassi.ngly visible to all sectors of Colombian society and inappropriate as
pre~ldent of the National University. Now famous for his former job and
available
for
a
new
one
M
k
.
d
.
' oc us campatgne to become mayor of a desperate City willing to take a risk on the unconventional candidate
But during that fi t
ful

. d Th
rs unevent month in office, citizens felt disappomte . e new mayor h d d 'd d
d h
a ect e to address the high rate of traffic
eat s to show some success b
.
comm . d
e ore tackling entrenched interests and he
ISSione a study b the Ja
.
'
It tur d
h
y
panese International Cooperation Agency.
ne out t at at least 25 e
vented by
.
P rcent of the accidental deaths could be preImprovmg behavior am
.
study of the st t . .
ong pedestnans and drivers. A follow-up
ree s pmpomted as 1
the deadly crossw lks 34 w
tng e target for his cultural acupuncture:
a
tth the tr bl
couraged the Inst't t f
ou esome nerve exposed, Mockus en1 u e o Culture d 't
that would arouse sh
c .
an ounsm to design cultural pressure
arne
ror
tgnoring
Ik
and Tourism, by the
crosswa s, not fear of fines. (Culture
been a
d fu
government before Mway,k had
b
n un er nded afterthought for city
of I
oc us ecam
cu tura ciudadana) E h d
e mayor; under him it became the hub
frust
. ac ay for a
h h
rated director Paul B
mont 't e mayor asked the institute's
'
romberg, cror a good idea.
26

CliAPT

Bromberg finally confided to his father-in-law that he felt discouraged.

During dinner one evening he asked the old man for advice. Instead of help
Bromberg got a sarcastic dismissal, he told Mockus the next morning. The
ironic in-law had snapped: "When there's nothing to be done, it's time to
bring out the clowns." After this unhappy report, and a short pause in the
conversation, Mockus lit up. ((That's a great idea!" He would propose replacing some embarrassingly corrupt traffic police with a few funny mimes
poised to make people laugh at lawlessness. Citizens would learn to play
together in public space and to love the props of striped crosswalks and
red lights. The center city would for a while stop giving traffic tickets and
discontinue - for good- the bribes demanded by uniformed officers. As
more mimes trained to take over for traffic police, that unfriendly force
faced dissolution, nine (gestating) months after the experiment started.
Mockus had purposefully misinterpreted an old man's mockery as a
marching order. A metaphor for defeat was realized as an advance in the
war of position called Civic Culture. With characteristic and almost impish
innocence, like an artist, the mayor chose to hear a literal message on the
surface of the familiar figure of speech. Another time that Antanas chose
to listen badly on purpose was when he and Adriana Cordoba were planning their wedding, which took place in 1996. The dilemma was where to
get married, and the solution was to turn a dead metaphor into living language. Finding a spectacular venue would allow the public to participate.
There would be no list of special guests for the celebration but rather a general invitation to the city. Churches were out of the question, because the
still devout groom had been excommunicated for marrying and divorcing
a previous partner. Antanas asked his fiancee for a recommendation. She
teased him: ((If you want a three-ring circus, why not get married there?"
Antanas and his bride did just that-inside the tigers' cage as the tamer
whipped his wards away from the happy couple and from the terrified elephant they rode.
By making the common expression unfamiliar, defarniliarized by an intentional mistake, Mockus made a work of relational art that engaged an
entire city on the streets and at the circus. Sometimes, and probably often,
creativity follows from purposeful misunderstanding. This is why bilingual
and bicultural games are a source of endless fun and wisdom as they track
the artful failures of language.35 Misunderstanding, intentional or not, is
also why foreigners help to keep democracy dynamic, by asking unlikely
questions that stimulate justification or reform.36 Antanas Mockus, with

.
.
h
.
ame
and
his
Colombian
allegiance,
lives
a
cultural
c
h1s L1t uaman n
omplexity that matters for democr~cy. One effect is. ((~earning ~o listen better/'
as when he honors literal meamngs and also anticipates mistakes in multicu1tura1se tt1ngs37 For example, he wrote an essay on ((Cultural Amph'b
1 1ans" to establish the importance of translation as a skill in educationj and
1am convinced that this keen observation takes advantage of his own bicultural formation that shuttles between languages. Educators, he writes,
are fundamentally amphibious because they move material from one register of language and experience to otherSj without this agility for translation, teachers could not teach. The same ability to interpret elements of one
code in terms of another allows cultural amphibians to participate in legal,
moral, and cultural expressions without violating their personal integrity.
Amphibians help to bridge the dangerous divorce of law from morality and
culture by translating the reasons of one into the others. ((The idea of modern democracy is inseparable from the possibility that different reasons
may back up the same rules." 38
This is a significant departure from traditional Colombian politics,
which had advocated cultural coherence and consistency in legal reasoning. Intolerance for political and ethnic diversity went so far- according
to historian Alfonso Munera-as to sacrifice Panama to the United States
in 1903 though the future canal was predicting fantastic incomes. For con. servative Colombia, it was apparently worth the price to be rid of the cuiturally inassimilable and politically radical Afro-Colombians concentrated
in Panama39 The grammanan-statesmen

at the turn of the last century reviled local partie I r 1

..
. .
u an Ies m anguage and politics, just as they denounced
~ deVIations from Catholic dogma.40 Well into the twentieth century nonCatholic immigratio
.
.
'
1
. . . . n was severe y 1Imtted if not denied. Defending to the
letter Its hngmstic herit
f I . I
.
age o c assica Latin and Castilian Spanish Bogota
was known as the "South Am .
"41
'
N, _ ( .
encan Athens. By I886, conservative Rafael
unez twice president betw
8
l'b 1 d
een 1 8o and 1888) had replaced the earlier
I era an secular constitut'
.h
lasted
h
Ion Wit a Church-centered document that
more t an a centu I kn
while othe L t' Am . ry. t ac owledged Spain as the mother country,
r am
encan stat
d
.
insignificant.42
es cons1 ered her unnatural, castrattng, or
On this monocultural back
cal and develo
ground, Mockus advocated the pedagogipmenta1dynamism 0f
hb
procedural mode . c
amp i ious cultures to mark a new
rmty ror the cou t H
to draft Colombi ' C
. . n ry. e and other intellectuals helped
as onstitutiOn 0 f
.
I991 which, for the first time, recog28

CHAPTER ONE

nized minority cultural rights and honored local authority. As mayor,

Mockus would decentralize the administration of the socially fragmented
and sprawling city of almost eight million residents into twenty fairly autonomous locales. Local as well as general human rights would continue
to inspire his subsequent political campaigns. Those included another successful bid as mayor of Bogota in 2001 and three runs for the national presidency, in 1998, 2006, and 2010. Meanwhile he continues to direct Corpovisionarios, a consulting institute for public policy and idea generation.43

A Numbers Game

Theories about socially constructive art are still in stages of underdevelopment, given political skepticism about what art is good for and also hurnanistic defenses against usefulness. Grant Kester makes a significant contribution in ((Dialogical Aesthetics: A Critical Framework for Littoral Art/'
proposing new criteria for collaborative projects that negotiate the boundaries between aesthetic and social values.44 But taking statesmen into account as ((littoral" artists is a stretch.45 Either creative leaders seem too rare
to generate principles, or they appear practically diabolical. More people
have heard about Adolf Hitler, for example, than about Antanas Mockus.
Hitler, we know, was a mediocre painter and then a devastatingly successful director and lead actor of a historical epic that he made sure to choreograph, decorate, broadcast, and film. 46 Maybe the Spanish conquerors will
come to mind as exemplary administrative artists. They were consummate
architects and city planners on lands that were already populated but that,
as artists, they imagined to be empty canvases wiped clean. Add the pomp
of Catholicism, which dazzled believers and dignified violent conversions
from the Middle Ages into modern times, and also the general taste for refinement and beauty that justifies privileged classes to take advantage of
everyone else, not to mention the devious creativity of financial institutions
that have sunk the global economy into a general depression, and you may
conclude that the combination of art and power creates an unfair imbalance against civic decency.
But resistance to abuse also uses art: Painters and poets in concentration camps defended their human dignity as creative agents. Antifascist
Red Army posters outdid Nazi propaganda in design and impact. Indigenous New Christian artists smuggled old symbols of local cults to keep
their chain of worship unbroken. And other popular arts, from slave songs
FROM THE TOP

29

to graffiti murals, shore up cultural autono1ny and. self-worth against de..

.
coree
and
indifference.
Nevertheless,
1n
powerful
hand
'
.
s, art
humamzmg II
ort
unJust
advantages.
After
the
Enl1ghtemnent
whe
Supp
seems to
n creativity could get full credit for doing political work -- artists have often distanced themselves from gov~rnment ~rejects even. when they have gotten government support. Soc1al commitment for artists more likely means
opposition to political authorities than collaboration with thcn1 . (Sec cha _
p
ter 3, '1\rt and AccountabI'l'Ity.")
Hoping, however, to withhold art from government, or objecting to its
use because governments have used art harmfully, is like conden1 ning language because it can curse. Language arts, like others, arc born of innatc
and hardwired human faculties, so abstinence from art is a self-denying and
self-canceling caution against living. A more practical response to the dangers would distinguish art that does damage frotn art that docs good. Are
there family resemblances among cases? I think there are. Power-brokercd
art is most harmful when power is concentrated in political elites . An au t ocrat designs a personalized state that can be realized as long as the general population of nonartists executes the plan and dutifully rehearses the
script. The roles, props, and symbols come from agreeable artists. "My idea
of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me," BenJalnm
D ts
~aeli explained ...? Improvisation or levity-not to mention contestation
IS da.ngerously out of place in monolithic top-down art. It reJ ects SchiJl }
caution
t 1 1
cr s
S h agams ,, VJO ent Y molding human material into another>s work.
( ee c apter 5, Play Drive in the Hard Drive.")
The contrast I want to .
. b
suggest etween this auteur 1nodel of political
t d
ar an more democratic forms is in th
b
.
ticipatory .

e num ers. It IS a difference of par.

sea1em art-maki " d' .b .
formulation 4B b
,~g, a Istn utiOn of the sensible}} in Ranciere}s
. 11o orrow Sir Francis B
} .
.
muck not goode
t. b
aeons qmp about n1oncy, art "is like
J
xcep It e spread "49 B - r
..
Gil (200J-looS) d J
. razt s mmtsters of culture Gilberte
an uca Ferre1ra ( 2 00 8 20 )
when they fertilized tw k
'
10 understood the principle
ne or s of local r. b
Claire Bish
.
ar Ists m ottom-up programs. 50
op wornes that inclusiv
.
when consensus bu']d'
eness blunts arfs provocative edge
1 mg matters mo
h
.
she says, is double (d .
ret an aesthetic results. The danger,
espite Kester's rea.
) .
on personal projects a d

ssuranccs : Cl ther artists stay fixed

art' t' . .
n merely use the II .
Is Ic VISion is lost in
. .
co ectivc to fiiJ in the designj or
out ~
.
negotJatJOns.sJ B
. .
or a third possibility
. .
ut many dtstmguishcd artists hold
the coli
participants are

.
ectiVe project or ri
crcat1ve whether they stay with
PP1e out mto ne w works. The ACT uP experience

is a model of collaboration without submission to deadening consensuSj in

cases of disagreement, dissenters added spin-off projects to fuel the shared
movement without losing artistic steam. (Sec chapter 2, "Press Here.")
Artist-citizens become admirable to one another. No single artwork cancels out the value of many others, and each exercises a particular charm for
other creators. Another lesson we learned from Mockus during his Harvard stay (along with the pragmatics of pleasure) is that admiration is the
feeling that sustains democracy. A much stronger feeling than tolerance,
admiration is an aesthetic response of surprise and wonder that Boal, for
example, consciously coached on stage and on the street.52 Merely to tolerate is to continue to count on one's own opinions and simply wait until
others stop talking. Tolerant citizens can feel themselves to be the real
source of good judgment and imagine that the rights enjoyed by others
apparently issue from one's own generosity. Paulo Freire hated this kind
of self-celebrating munificence that confirms an imbalance of power between giver and receiver.53 Admiration shifts the balance of feelingj it favors
others without sacrificing self-love. To admire one}s fellow (artist) is to anticipate original contributions and to listen attentively. Mockus stimulated
admiration by creating, for instance, "TI1c Order of the Zebra}} (crosswalks
arc called zebras). Identifying decent taxi drivers, decent despite the personal dangers and the general divorce of law and morality fron1 culture, he
honored them with zebra-shaped lapel pins and car stickers. These insignia
of "moral giants}} gave admiration a multiplier effect. As business boomed
for the Knights of the Zebra, other drivers coveted membership and strove
to earn i t.54
Consider the difference between the chorus effects of fascism and the
ripple effects of democracy. Triumph of the Will projects the same single
voice as do Hitler}s newsreels, whereas Bogotcfs mimes and the traffic flashcards encouraged each citizen to improvise in games of tnutual regulation.
Nazi Germany did not promote general arts projects to stimulate debate
and deliberation among youth through theater and writing, as Bogota and
Medellin have done with "Youth Weaving Their Futures.'>ss Nor did the
Nazis issue a call to all children aged six to sixteen, as did Mexico and
Colombia, to create posters that bid "Good-bye to Tricks}} to denounce
corruption al every level.5 6 Fascist games targeted uniforn1 results. Hitler
himself attacked creative education by closing the Waldorf Schools, which
he called "a Jewish tnethod to destroy the nonnal spiritual state of the
people.}} 57 It is worth wondering whether a country alive with artists_ by

30 CHAPTER ONE

fROM THE TOP

31

practical considerations seem to trump this general principle of collective

creativity.

Paint the Town

t..

'...

-Renewable mimes from student demonstration, Bogota, 201 1.

Source: Guillermo Legaria, Getty Images.
FIGURE 1.6.

definiti.on nonconformists and risk-takers- is less likely to support dictators.hip than a nation of dutiful followers. I've asked this almost rhetorical
questi~n to po~itical scientists and political leaders; they generally concur
that.dictatorship frowns on creativity and embraces censorship.ss Schiller
put It this way '1\rt lik

.
' e Science, IS emancipated from all that is positive
afndhall th~t is humanly conventional; both are completely independen;
o t e arbitrary will of m Th
.. I
1
und
.
.
en. e po Itica legislator may place his empire
er an mterdict, but he cannot reign there." 59
The difference betwe d
.I
as much 'd 1 .
en Ictatona and democratic arts, then, is formal
as I eo ogical. Recognizing th . .
.
e Citizen as artist promotes rhizomes
or netwo ks f . .
.
.
r o CIVIc effervescence
creation. Logicall M k
. 'as against a pyramid of creator atop his
y, oc us obJects to b .
II d 1
{{
tant to develop coli . I
eing ca e a eader: It is imporecttve eadership
M'II'
to the results that
h'
I tons of people contributed
.
we ac Ieved "60 Th
..
IS similar to the ch ks d
e political appeal of citizen-as-artist
ec an balances 0 f d
.
decentralize execut'
emocrattc republics that hope to

Ive power but als0 t 0

.
ederai structures N D
coordtnate local autonomy with
ew eal artists a d
I
ana ogy-reallya syn d h
. n CIVIc 1eaders would play out this
ec oc e of arttst (
) (
h
as t ey negotiated the
d
part to the whole) democracymes an styles of bl.
pu IC murals. Sometimes, though,
32

With an urgent pragmatism that demanded quick results, Edi Rama took
liberties with democratic principles in Albania's capital city. Voted mayor of
Tirana on the Socialist ticket in 2ooo for the first of three terms, and chosen
International Mayor of the Year in 2004, Rama was voted out by 2011 in a
suspiciously close contest against the center-right Democratic Party.61 His
objections to fraud were justified and became a hot issue in his successful campaign to become Prime Minister in 2013. Though Rama had distanced some supporters by staging relentless protests in favor of his own
leadership,62 a winning block of Albanians endorsed his unusual project
for national recovery: an aesthetic make-over that moves from decorative surfaces inward toward respect and self-regulation. As mayor, Rama's
bold leadership style determined Tirana's priorities and even the designs
for painting the facades of depressingly grey buildings. But citizens collaborated too, officially and informally, to an unprecedented degree. Rama
seized the groundswell to frame his national campaign as politics from
the bottom up, no doubt to allay concern over his earlier and notoriously
auteur approach to public art.63
You hear him everywhere: a gravelly basso exhorting the lazy, seducing the skeptics, booming his way through a hip-hop track about Tirana that half the city seems to own. He is inexhaustible. He spends
his days repairing the body and soul of a shattered capital and his
nights prowling its streets, seeing that the work got done, and that
no one has been stealing street lights or dropping beer bottles or
cigarette wrappers- that people are behaving like citizens. Rama is a
Balkan original, and maybe the most original thing about him is that
he isn't really a politician. He is an artist who, you might say, took
Tirana for his canvas.64
Contemporary journalists observed that the mayor's art projects did what
they could, from the top down.
He claims still to be an artist first and most of all, and activities in
public service are an extension of his aesthetic sensibility into the

CHAPTER ONE
FROM THE TOP

33

realm of action and life. He shrewdly appraises the legacy of communism as a cultural and social toxin that cannot be eliminated except
over time, and perhaps a very long time. But he is helping restore Tirana society's immune systen1 and positive attitude by, for exan1ple,
the Return to Identity Programme, ruthlessly razing the haphazard
and often environmentally damaging outlaw buildings of all kinds
in order to produce a clean slate on which urban planning can occur
that will meet the needs of present and future generations.6s
Mockus too was unfriendly to unauthorized street-life, especially to sidewalk vendors. (What would they think of artist Krzysztof Wodiczko's
homeless shelters aIa carte: nomadic structures designed in consultation
with users in New York City? ) 66
For some critics Rama stretched the possibilities of democracy beyond recognition. "Political analyst Fatos Lubonja says the capital might
as well be renamed 'TiRama.'" 67 But the city that for half a century suf~ered Soviet stagnation, followed by a decade of mob-run speculation and
mfor~al b~i~ding that littered the city and poisoned its river, gave the de termmed VISionary a chance. Citizens let themselves be charmed by his
recovery project. Without hesitating, as Mockus had while asking "What
would an artist d0 '>" R
1
'
.
.
ama was a ready an artist and ready to start. ((The first

thing he~~~ as mayor was to order paint. He blasted the facades of Tirana's
gray Stalimst apartment bl ks . h
.
.
. .
oc Wit color- notous, Caribbean colorturrung buddmgs into patch
k f bl
lows and d
d h . wor s o ues, greens, oranges, purples, yel,
re s, an t e ctty itself10 t 0
h.
sampler"6s H
somet tng close to a modern-masters

e actually invited
d
.
tire blocks d
.
mo ern masters tn from 2002 to paint enan turn Tirana into
11
investors.69
a ga ery worthy of visits by tourists and
Decades of visual bli ht had 1
.
. .
"
challenged" says R
gb
eft Albanians Irntable and aesthetically
ama; ut he add th " h
'
Streets of newly p . d b . . s at t ey can be calmed by beauty." 70
amte uildm s b
.
fostered safer com
g ecame admtred public property and
1
.
merce. The chan
. .
.
oans and Investments 71 B h . ge encouraged stgntficant internat1onal
on the documentary fi y t e time he collaborated with artist Anri Sala
1
co ld
m Damm i i l (G
u report that there
co on ive Me Colors) 2003, Ram a
had hi
was no other ty
ac eved more depth d
CI
In all of Europe where citizens
They
ld
an subtlety 111
h .
wou gather in ffi
t etr conversations about color.
to consid h
co ee houses h
..
' omes, and newly recovered parks
er t e aesthetic
qua1I ties or f: 1.
34 CH
at mgs of freshly painted buildings,
APTER ONE

and to deliberate about designs for new projects on still-drab facades. Deliberating for the pleasure of it, with no apparent personal goal but the
free interchange of opinion, renews a taste for politics in the classical sense
of the word: a disinterested vita activa (see chapter 3, '~t and Account-.
ability"). And this aesthetic education of Tirana - proceeding, as Schiller
said it would, from freely admiring art to imagining how to make moretrained citizens to identify freedom as worthy of cultivation.
Rama must have learned from other painters and architects how to
transform ugly buildings into beautiful ones. An obvious but unacknowledged teacher is Friedensreich Hundertwasser, whose architectural makeovers in Austria in the 1980s gave new looks to the Rosenthal Factory in
Selb and to the Mierka Grain Silo in IZrems. For these projects Hundertwasser called himself an "architecture doctor." 72 And though he favored
organic lines on buildings and in manifestoes over the geometric patterns
that Rama features, the structural use of color on aesthetically ailing buildings is an undeniable family resemblance.73

of color therapists for cities includes painters of

Manarola on the Italian Riviera, of Guayaquil in Ecuador's highlands, and
Rio de Janeiro's favela Santa Marta?4 If elsewhere the idea of public color
campaigns seems merely decorative and misguided as public policy, it is
time to consider the potential of the work of art in the world.
The same citizens of Tirana who debated about color would actively
participate in public budget hearings to determine priorities for public
works?5 Other citizens refused to participate, but didn't worry about designs on their lives and freely denounced Rama for his bold interventionist
style. "It is unfortunate," even admirers told the mayor, "that everything
you have done is so closely linked with your team and to your wisdom and
individuality, rather than becoming strongly rooted as well with a working juridical system." 76 After two violent murder attempts, the objection to
heavy-handedness didn't scare the mayor. "I don't pretend to be an angel.
I'd never beco1ne mayor in Switzerland, where you have to have a referendum to go to the toilet," he says. rtThere I would stay in tny studio and
paint." 77 Citizens' involvement in decision-making tnay have been an unscripted development of Raina's projects. A Kantian common sense about
color as a constructive element in recovery led to discussions about priorities and programs. Until May 2012 the website tirana.gov.al hosted Ran1a's
THE EXTENDED FAMILY

FROM THE TOP

35

rchitectural makeovers, recoveries of public space d

colorful gall
. ..
.
' an
. meetings
.
to debate pnontles and allocations. But after losing the
public
. n to Lulzim Basha, the same web address now opens ont
ti
1
mayoral e ec o
. .
.
.
oa
'd
of
administrative
links
and
ptcture
gallenes
that
proJe
t
gn
h
monoc rome
c
.
fthe
new
mayor
from
practically
every
frame.
portratts o
ery 0 f a

Mockus had made sure to engage the broadest possible base of Bogota's
citizens in co-constructed arts projectsj and he delivered the results to
Enrique Penalosa, who realized many of Mockus's construction plans,
though they represented competing political parties. Sadly, Mayor Rama
didn't relay his work to the dubiously elected new mayor. Nor, presumably,
would Basha have received the offer of good practices from the opposition.
But now, Prime Minister Rama's bottom-up approach is a sign that the
public's developing common-sense, from aesthetics to participatory politics, may insure more continuity in public projects.
Sometimes though, bottom-up creativity can raise cautions even for
good governments, because art is unconventional and naughty by nature.
Understandably, leaders tread with care, or they waffle between defending
artistic freedom and channeling resources toward agreeable artists. Broadbased art-making has to deal with disagreements, differences of perspective, competing designs, and conflicting desires, all of which can derail
the goals that voters endorsed when they elected winning candidates.78 A
monumental case of this challenge to coordinate art with government is
America's New Deal, which wrestled "to reconcile artistic freedom with the
imperatives of bureaucratic control and public accountability." 79

The Home Front

The exemplary mayors fro B

, C ..
.
m ogota, unhba, Tirana, and many other cities
earn mternational admir f ~
. .
. .
b
a ton or revtvtng ctvtc commitments in cities jaded
Ygenerations of brok
.
gnm
en promtses. Few observers doubt that art played a
Sl
cant role in these st . 0 f
difficul . .
ones recovery. Perhaps art can work in other
1
.
t ctttes where citize
quite a ~ L .
. ns va ue creative practices. This hope prompts
ew atm Amencan I d
pressed With hi
ea ers to request advice from Mockus. Ims results, they i
. . .
tanttoriskf: il
magtne stmtlar programs at homej but reluca ure and their auth . h
.
this business of d . .
onty, t ey often hesitate. ((There's a trap 1n
a vtsmg leaders to I
"
. ((
respectable offi 'al
Pay games, Mockus admtts, because
ct s want good re It
d
sure in games that are d .
su s, an good results are not easy to enanng enough to break bad habits." 80
36 CHAPTER ONE

First world leaders are even more skeptical. For the same reason that
persuaded Rama to become mayor in Albania though he would have refused in Switzerland, his foreign fans and those of Mockus discount the
value of art in more stable societies. North Atlantic cultures are different,
they say, agreeing with Max Weber, less disposed to creativity than to selfrestraint.81 ((Traditionally, Americans harbored an attitude that art was a
luxury," made by the talented few and meant for the fewer who could afford to buy it.82 But a double irony plays out on this demarcation between
the rational North and the creative South. The first is that Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's New Deal, of course, promoted a massive program of social regeneration through art-making. The second irony is that the U.S. program
did learn a lot from Latin America. Though several influences combined to
support New Deal arts (Dewey's progressive education, settlement houses,
redefinitions of art coming from revolutionary Russia, European Group
Theatre),83 Mexico was the stunning model.
After an exhausting rash of revolutions that lasted from 1910 to 1920,
Mexico faced the colossal challenge to reinvent itself. Without a shared
culture there would be no general will to do the work, so recovery started
in earnest when President Alvaro Obregon appointed Jose Vasconcelos as
minister of education (1921-1924). Leaving his brief stint as rector of the
National University, where he had a not come to work for the university but
to ask the university to work for the people," 84 Vasconcelos took up his new
job with a missionary zeal that irked many but achieved broad and lasting
results. His comprehensive program included (1) public schools for children and adults, where teachers became his ((artist-apostles"; (2) the publication of all manner of affordable books to stock a new network of libraries;
and (3) murals about Mexico by masterful Mexican painters who helped
to revive local arts. The still illiterate masses were heirs to enviable artistic traditions, including Aztec and Mayan murals, and they responded to
grassroots creativity that facilitated communication and fueled patriotism.
Vasconcelos took a lesson from John Dewey on pragmatic refonn, though
later he dismissed the North American as a soulless utilitarian, almost by
national definition.85
The United States, according to Vasconcelos, had missed its chance to
become the democracy that Hegel imagined would materialize to the west
of Europe. Squandered on an incorrigibly racist society, the spirit of democracy moved even farther west to Mexico. Vasconcelos credited his country with forging a unified ((cosmic race" to crown human evolution with
FROM THE TOP

37

.t~ t La raza c6smica: Afisio11 de Ia raza iberoamericar

equality. Hrs mam t:s o,
,
. _
.
1a
. d . dl, equivoc.1l. It rehearses all the old Iacist attnbutions
(1925 ), 1s .1 nutte )
.. . .
.
.
. .
. 11 . t bhcks .uc hard wotkels, Indtans are subrnts~Ive and
(whites are mte rgen ' '
.
'
.
)
s
,lements
ot
one
new
race.
But
the
book
also
celebrates
accommo datmg a, t:
.
.
. . 1 t b tes while northern eugemcs carnpa1gns were recornmrxmg t 1e at n u '
, .
. . .
.
1ptirit)' Ra-a
men d.mg racra
- cosn11ca became .pi acticaiJy required reading
all over Latm Ameri'ca ' as countries were pullmg then1selves together' tt"V,
.mg to scram ble heterogeneous populations
into coherent
national cultures
.
. .
.

Mexico's accomplishment ot an arts-based hybnd1ty to support national

reconstruction evidently inspired FDR and his staff to adopt and to outdo
the model. \Vith adjustments to taste and scale, the United States followed
.Mexico's recipe for reviving patriotism: mix aesthetically cornpel1ing regional culture with a measure of common heritage to leaven national purpose.86 One recent account traces FDR's art-making atnbitions back to
George \Vashington and Abraham Lincoln, but Roose,elt's adviser~ looked
to contemporary .Mexico: 8- ''The founders of the P\VAP (Public Works of
Art Project, 1933-1934) believed it to be a grander and even more promising
impetus for the arts than the Iv1exican mural project of a decade earlier."ss
Even grander would be the sequel, the \VPA's (\Vorks Progress Admini~tration) Federal Art Project (FAP, 1935-1939).s9 In visual arts alone the
project would employ about five thousand artists and adn1inistratorl) ,, ho
together produced more than 225,000 works of art and decorated eleven
90
th~usand public buildings. The FAP also sponsored performing artists:
wnters, narrators, playwrights, actors, musicians, composers, film n1akers,
as well as interviewers who rccorded an d comp1.1ed perc;onal men101rs
. of
twenty-three hundreds ,. , c
1
91
un I\ mg 10rmer saves. Carlos Fuente apparently
thought that the United St t d'd
d
.
a es I out o Mexico. He doe n't even mention
h1s own country when h xh
e e orts us all to make a "new New Deal of global
governance that must b . I .k R
c.
h
egm I c oosevelt and the American people did
rom t e bottom up."92
Instructive ripples fro b h .
.
.
" ,
.
Race" i. R b. .
m ot proJects combmcd 111 Puerto Ri co. ( Comic
s u en Rios Avila's ve .. t
.
come to th b
rsron or an Island where North and ~outh
ge er ut don't mix )93111
.
vision deed
..

roughout the I9SOI), the DIVED CO (DI

ucacJOn comunitar ) d l
on programs i M .
Ia eve oped variations on the w PA and
. n exrco where m111 p
.
sons 1earned fr
' Y uerto R1can arti<-.ts stud iedY' Le~.,
om years of fnistr r 111
. F ,
.
Rosskam to dr fit h
a Ion
DRs Nev.. Deal prepared Edwin
a t enivEnco'st
.
fend artistic freed
h
oundmg document, mak111g <-.urc to de om, w Ich sup
dI .
porte astmg achicvetnen ts. 9 s
38

CHAP I ER ON f.

Fl GORE t. 7

Panel from the frieze "Construction" in the Bowery Bay Sewage

Disposal Plant in Qyeens, New York, sculpted by Cesare Stea for the Works
Progress Administration, 1939. The Granger Collection, New York.

Most accounts of U.S.-government-sponsored art acknowledge the inspiration from Mexico's spectacular muralists, though striking omissions
occur.96 But the accounts hardly mention other Mexican models for the
FAP, such as the overhaul of public education to feature the arts, or the
massive state publishing project that encouraged local writers. The great
Mexican muralists were impossible to ignorej Diego Rivera, David Alfaro
Siqueiros, and Jose Orozco had already dazzled private collectors, and
they would fire up government agencies. The messenger benveen the art
world and the administration was George Biddle. Brother of the president's New Deal adviser, Biddle had been FDR's classmate at Harvard Law
School before becoming a painter and going to Mexico to apprentice himself to Rivera. 9 ~ l1npressed by the public arts programs there, Biddle suggested to the president in 1933 that a mural should embellish the new Justice Department building in Washington, DC. The Treasury Department
approved the commission, a first step toward developing the PWAP and
then the FAP.98
Drawing on John Dewey's exhortation to make art available to all, the
director of the FAP, Holger Cahill, said in 1936: "The organization of the
Project has proceeded on the principle that it is not the solitary genius but
a sound general moven1ent which maintains art as a vital, functioning part
of any cultural scheme. Art is not a matter of rare, occasional masterpieces."
The Department of the Treasury objected, arguing that the government
should commission outstanding artworks, not provide relief to mediocre
artists_99 Cahill knew what was at stake:
f.RO~I

THF TOP

39

The Project has discovered that such a sitnple n1atter as finding employment for the artist in his hometown has been of the greatest
importance. It has, for one thing, helped to stetn the cultural erosion which in the past two decades has drawn most of America's
art talent to a few large cities. It has brought the artist closer to the
interests of a public which needs him, and which is now learning to
understand him. And it has made the artist more responsive to the
inspiration of the country, and through this the artist is bringing
every aspect of American life into the currency of art.10o
The partnerships that Cahill brokered between local artists and community
leaders through the WPA mural project raised hackles on both sides. I nevitably, the government's offer to artists equivocated between promotin
aesthetic value and insisting on the political merit of locallore.101 But th~
resultin~ pride .of ~lace a~d the pleasure in beautified communities helped

to sustam patnottsm durmg depressing times, according to WPA leadership. New Deal artists also "saw their art as part of a national movement
a p~sitive f~rce that would further both the acceptance and availability o~
art m Amenca but also uplift the morale of a depressed nation." 102 Making
art d~monstrated that national renewal was possible, despite conditions of
scarcity. Even the anno
.
ymg negotiatiOns were constructive, reaffirming the
d
.
emocratic process in each Iocale.I03
at

Mt~st aclcou.nts of the reasons to establish the WPA's artwork stop here

na tona reVIval and work l. f B

'
and more M h. II'
re te . ut surely there is another, paradoxical,
ac Iave Ian reason for s
.
worst economic . . h
.
upporhng so many artists during the
cnsis t e Umted St t h
.
remarked to Roo
h " .
a es as yet expenenced. Biddle had
seve1t t at artists h
,, 104
makes the rather p ..
d
ave to eat, too.
But this argument
flVI 1ege assumpti
th
.
.
profession even if .t
on at artists stick to their chosen
. .
I means starvin
B.1ddl
pamtmg. But othe
.
g.
e had the money to continue
r artists have been kn
when they are hung Th
own to take up even menial jobs
.
ry. e government
ld h
pamters and poets to d. d.
cou
ave hired down-and-out
m I .
tg Itches and b .ld b .d
(
ous IVIngphotograph c
Ul
n ges. Colombia's most fah
h
er, ror exampl t
~use auling boxes at the a e . e, urned up in a New York City waremtscalculated," Nereo Lo g of etghty-five. Why was he working there? "I
so I sp t II
pez Meza smirk d ttl h
en a my money.")
e t ought I'd be dead by now
Instead, it seems m
ment bee
ore credible that ar .
hsts got support from the governause they might oth .
erwise have
d
4o CHA
use art to agitate (more) against

the governn1ent. Why else would a penurious state develop programs, hire
administrators, and run political risks about decorous lines being crossed
with public n1onies? True, the allocation for a mural was usually a minuscule 1 percent of the cost for a new building/ 05 and the combined expenditures over eight years for Federal Arts Projects came to only $35 million
(hardly n1uch of WPA's more than $4 billion per year) for a mere forty
thousand employees (barely a dent among 33 million WPA workers). 106
Nevertheless, this minority of artists was provocative enough to mire Congress in long sessions of penny-pinching control.
The fact is that many artists were left-leaning socialists, or communists,
or sympathizers.107 The times were rife with revolutionary artists, internationally. Strategic disavowals from FAP's administrators didn't convince
conservatives who denounced artists as dangerous and unworthy of welfare
commissions. Maybe conservatives hadn't heard how much trouble Rivera
and Siqueiros had made inside Mexico, leading violent protests in the official Art Academy and reducing capitalists to cartoon characters in communist publications.108 But the Los Angeles mural by Siqueiros was notoriousj
it showed an Indian nailed to a double cross topped with U.S. coins and
an eagle. More notorious was Rivera's homage to Lenin in the mural he
painted for Rockefeller Center.109 Those works were covered over to avoid
more scandal, but conservatives had good reason to remain vigilant.
Perhaps predictably, the noisiest government interference was with theater artists who were making a spectacle of social protest. (The Writers'
Project got almost equal harassment in the notorious ((Dies Committee." 110 ) When WPA director Harry Hopkins hired Hallie Flanagan for the
Theatre Project in 1935, he promised there would be no censorship. But
he broke that promise six months later.111 Tensions peaked in 1937 around
Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock. Flanagan wasn't sure she should risk
producing the relentless class critique in a clin1ate of violently repressed
strikes, though Orson Welles goaded her on, intending later to move the
show to Broadway. After the WP A revoked support for the show, and closed
the theater where it was to open, Blitzstein and Welles reconvened the
crowd in another theater. They also fired up the fired actors to deliver sizzling performances.U2 Liberties like this one led to escalating allegations of
communist influence and sometimes to ridiculous accusations.
Congressman Joe Starnes of the House Committee on Un-Axnerican
Activities, for example, famously grilled Flanagan in December 1938. He
was sure that she was protecting a core of communist infiltrators. To sig-

PTER. ONE
FROM THE TOP

41

crerent open and nonideological spirit of the proJect she

d
na 1a very Iw
'
'
por~
trayed "a certain Marlowesque rnadness" among the actors and Writers
vVith the Elizabethan reference she hoped to demonstrate a

highbro~

rather than populist preference. Alongside popular tastes and massive pro~

undue private power over private affairs and, to our misfortune, over public affairs as well." 119 Public support for creative critics seemed a risk worth

ductions (to employ thousands of theater workers) Flanagan had also cui~

taking, and it usually paid off. Artists generally understood ((that because

tivated friendships with T. S. Eliot, who donated Murder in the Cathedral

to the Federal Theatre Project, 113 and later with George Bernard Shaw and
Eugene O'Neill, who contributed rights to all their plays.114 Adding Orson

the murals were commissioned by the government for the public, 'a lack
of controversial political subject matter is certain. Ideas will derive either
from history or from the peculiarities of present-day life."' 120 Mexico had

Welles's direction of revived classics, Flanagan was describing variety, capa~

made that bet a decade earlier and continued to support artists in conve-

ciousness, and a winning combination of high art with broad appeal. But

niently disarming ways. Commissioned, salaried, and otherwise sustained,

Congressman Starnes heard his suspicions confirmed. ((You are quotin

Mexican artists have long understood this deal.

The lifeline that channeled artistic energies toward the New Deal would

from this Marlowe. Is he a Communist?" A bit flustered, Flanagan said sh!

meant Christopher Marlowe. By now Starnes had lost his patience: ((Tell
us who Marlowe is, so we can get the proper reference." us This con1 edy in
Congress recalls an incident that Augusto Boal reports about a Brazilian
censor who insisted- after hearing about the seditious staging of Oedipus
Rex- that the author be brought forth to defend his work.ll6
TI1e New Deal watchdogs were usually less crudej they claimed the con-

tract~al rights of a client to approve the services of a provider. Here public

~omes were allegedly paying troublemakers to make trouble. The strategtc question that the government must have considered is whether paying

t~em would control the trouble. Maybe leftists were being funded because
t. ely. mad~ ~ublic shows of their opposition to injustice, hunger and so-

.
cta meqmtles That
'
1
. .

way, revo utwnary theater also performed the magnammtty and tolerance 0 f th
could
.
eJr government sponsor, and the New Deal
capture even antigovernm t
. . .
en protest as part of its program. Everything wo ld b
u e possible msJde th N
D 1b
.
it, to paraphras pd C
e ew ea ut nothing tolerated outside
e 1 e1 astro on th C b
no stake in the st t h
e u an Revolution.l1 7 If artists had
a e, t ey would su 1 h

But performing p t .
re Y ave tned harder to destabilize it.
ro est m official sc

ists confessed in th .
enanos mttigated the message, as artetr tormented r fl .
during hungry tim
h
e ectwns. Putting them on the payroll
es, t e state might
.
way oflife- rebeJI
arrest -In defense of the American
tous energies that
I
.
ernment.118
wou d otherwtse explode against goYRoosevelt's reformist h
.
effi
.
r etonc met th
b 1
''
ort and m spite of our
e re e s halfway: In spite of our
and
h
talk,
we have n 0 t
d
we ave not effectiv Jr.
wee ed out the over-privileged
de
e1Y 11 ted up th
d
ar mandate from th
e un erprivileged .... We have ... a
e people, that A
.
men cans must foreswear the concep42

tion of the acquisition of wealth which, through excessive profits, creates

tangle, though, between artistic freedom and the demands of the state.
TRAP (Treasury Relief Art Project, 1935-1938) was literally the acronym of

a government agency that employed and controlled down-and-out artists

to decorate twenty-five hundred public buildings. 121 During an interview in
1965 painter Charles Alston remembered resenting government interfer-

ence that inevitably compromised his art. But his contemporary, Edward
Biberman, bought the deal. Artistic freedom, he admitted, is never absolute.122 Most art historians take Biberman's side, endorsing the results of
moral and financial support for artists during the Depression. However
contentious the negotiations became between federal authorities and the
Writers' Project, and although Congress closed down the Theatre Project
before all the other projects fizzled out just before World War II (officially
ending in 1942)/23 scholars today generally conclude that the processes and
the products were worth the effortsP4
But some cringe at the force-fed patriotic content and the opportunism that allegedly choked aesthetic initiative and finally doomed the collaboration. This difference in judgment runs parallel, I think, to alternative
approaches to reading a novel. There are readers who focus on how the
novel ends, whether the protagonist wins or loses a questj and others read
for ((form," attending more to the complexities of plot and to the variations of language than to resolutions. Is it funny that critics of the government's artistic constraints turn out to care more about the ideological
theme of artistic freedom than about the aesthetic forms that responded to
constraints? An endgame observation by historian Jane DeHart Mathews
concludes that art is inherently incompatible with accountability. Flanagan's "fiery" leadership is Mathews's best case: the same verve that produced admirable theater doomed the Theatre Project to a congressional

CHAPTJl

-R ONE

FROM THE TOP

43

.
.1 , believes that creativity cannot abide interference
dcath.tl5 Ami smcc s 1c
. .
.
.
,
,.
t
ProJ'ect
seems
more
significant
than
Its
years
of
erethe end oft lle 11. lc~l re
.
.
. . 1): 11.11. i McKinzie is equally skeptical about the benefits of
attve act1v1ty. '-~c c
.
.
..
t t isual arts.t26 By the 1970s n1ost art htstonans were sure
offic1a1suppor o v ' '
. .
.
e could not survive offiCial mtruswn, and the few who
.
1
that acst11ctlc va u
began to linger over the formal qualities of w PA painting were dismissed
127
as iconoclasts or rcbcls.
But recently, defenders of the WPA underline its contributions to formal
experimentation. John O'Connor and Lorraine Brown argue, for exa1nple,
that the Federal1hcatre Project showed how innovative and powerful national theater could be. Among its controversial formal innovations was a
genre borrowed from communist agitators in Europe, the ((Living Newspaper."1211 (Augusto Boa! would use Newspaper Theatre, too. 129 ) Large casts,
using multimedia, staged contemporary social issues researched by WPA
journalists. Some of the Newspaper's experimental techniques became lasting contributions to stagecraft: photographs, projections of anin1ation and
film sequences, offstage loudspeakers to add comn1ents, questions, crowd
noise. With occasionally local variations, particular ueditions" of the Newspapers would often play simultaneously in several cities to create a national
buzz. Probably the best-known edition, produced in eleven cities, was OneTIIird of a Nation. It played out FDR's haunting concern for the country: uy
see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished." 130 Because
the WPA's mandate was largely to provide for artists (and maybe to contain
them), rather than to yield returns on investment, the government actually
enabled
a
greater
level
of
th

f
d
. "
"
aes etic ree om than did risk- averse private
fundmg. Try-out theater in New York City, for instance, amounted to a
luxury at the time as writer d d'
san trectors explored new n1aterial that they
could later pitch to com
.1 d
h
mereta pro ucers. TI1e first experiment was sold
tot e movies, and the second to a Broadway producer_l3t
In the aftermath of the
h . .
WPA, t e C1v1c promise of aesthetic education
apparent1y met a precocious d B ffi . .
Lyndo J
en ut o ctalmterest revived by 1965 when
)
n o11nson established th N . I
and the Nat
E d
e atlOna Endowment for the Arts ( NEA
ona1 n owment ~ h H
..
hadfallenbeJ d
ort e umamttes(NEH).111eUnitedStates
1111 t11e USSR in th
.
the government h d
e compet1t10n for space exploration and
ope to reenergiz 1
.
tional pride Gle S b
e earnmg and creativity, along with natold a Sena~e conn ~a org, the head of the Atomic Energy Commission,
cr
mmtttee: ~~We ca
or esthetically in a
ld .
nnot auord to drift physically, morally,
wor m which th
e current moves so rapidly perhaps
44

CHAPTER ON!!

toward an abyss." 132 1he NEA was careful to keep funding decisions free
from almost any consideration but artistic excellence.tn To an important
degree, the hands-off policy responded to a developing retreat of art and
interpretation into private subjectivity. Art had practically developed an
allergy to any strain of usefulness.
'l he founding NEA language was less about civic capacity than about
identifying a great country by its great culture. A section called "Prohibition against Federal Supervision" promised not to medd leP 4 But freedom
came with a caveat: "Public funds provided by the Federal Government
must ultimately serve public purposes the Congress defines." 135 Ronald
Reagan planned to abolish the NEA soon after his election in 1980, but desisted after other conservatives including Charlton Heston defended the
agency. Ten years later, scandals about Robert Mapplethorpe's "obscene"
photographs and Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" again threatened the Endowment during debates as acrimonious as the anticommunist WPA hearings!16 And renewed legislation in 2006 conceded to the religious right that
"obscenity" should not be funded! 37 Surviving in the NEA language is an
echo of Dewey's defense of art as life lived critically and creatively, but the
zeal is gone and so is the connection between art and civic agency.
Many North Americans may know something about Roosevelt's arts initiative, but most don't know its significance. General histories of the period
downplay art's accomplishmcnts. 138 lf citizens knew more about how art
works in this case and in others, they might sense a wealth of resources for
social development and dctnand more creative education as well as extracurricular arts programs. We could learn to anticipate inspired interventions and even coax our in1agination to create them. More books like Art
Worked: The New Deal, Art and Dernocracy (2009) by Roger Kennedy will
help to train expectations. Kennedy celebrates the monumental econ01nic,
environmental, and also spiritual effects of New Deal arts, though the case
seems exceptional to him rather than a link to others.
A revival of the New Deal's decision to keep art at work during hard
times seemed possible in March 2009. 139 With the American Recovery and
Reinvestn1ent Act the Obama administration appropriated an extra $50
million to the NEA "to be distributed in direct grants to fund arts projects
140
and activities which preserve jobs in the non-profit arts sector." ln August, the NEA's con1munications director placed a conference call to engaged artists, encouraging them to address the administration's concerns:
health care, education, the environment, specifically preventative care,
fROM THE TOP

45

child nutrition, community cleanups, trail ma~ntenance, reading tutoring,

and homelessness. But the effort was aborted In the face of accusations of
intended misuse of government funds and misdirected instrumentalism for
art. "It was a scandalous breach of the NEA's founding legislation, possibl

care~

a violation of lobbying laws and just plain disgusting to anyone who

141
about the independence of the arts." The outraged critics accused the
administration of narrowly partisan and propagandistic intentions, though
the issues were concerns of a country that elected Obama. The president
would manage to recover some of Dewey's dedication to art in educationJ
but in the arts he lost ground to right-wing defenders of autonomy.l42 Is
it in principle illegitimate to encourage artists to engage issues of social
justice? And if autonomy were a sacred value, would Mapplethorpe and
Serrano have seemed outrageous?

more cases of art to the rescue. Jorge Gaviria, who worked for the city, told
us about his prison program for ex-combatants, youth who never developed regular work habits and don't expect to live past the age of twentyfive. He asks them what activity they would find exciting. Invariably they
answer with some form of art. One prisoner dreams of playing guitar, another of painting, or dancing, or acting. Then Gaviria arranges for instructors in the chosen media to come early, every day, over long periods. He
also told us about his arts-based high school for three thousand at risk students. Astoundingly, none of them drops out of school, while dropout rates
soar almost everywhere.
Expecting art to work should be part of violence prevention and of education more generally. Otherwise experts continue to overlook a ubiquitous low-cost resource. Everyone noticed the art effect the next day during

What Do You Expect?

"Don't worry," assuaged the gracious facilitator at a

Or maybe it competes annoyingly with social scientific agendas, the way

successful homeopathic cures compete with professional doctors. Art was
the elephant at the Medellin meeting, and informal conversations added

2008

meeting of UN

Habitat's "Safer Cities." I had commented that the theme of art was miss-

our visit to Comuna 13 when a band of preteen musicians greeted us with

a contagious concert.145 There is wisdom to cull from Medellin's marginal

ing from the.expert discussion on violence prevention, though examples of

communities and from Bogota's civic creativity, Tirana's beautification, the

~ filled thetr presentations. We were in Medellin, Colombia, a model for

cnme prevention since Mayor Sergio Fajardo reduced the homicide rate by
90 percent.
. Among his many programs was a system oflibrary-sports com-

1
p ex~s bmlt"along the divide between rich and poor. uTomorrow" my host
contmued, we will spend the h 0 1 d .
'
d
'll
w e ay m what had been a violent hotspot
an you see that all the yo th 1 d
. "
.
u ea ers are artists. My worry deepened of
course, because If he alread kn
h
'

put art togeth

.h
y. ew t at the leaders were artists and didn't
er Wit prevention for th
dence change his . d
e expert panel, why would more evimm or my conce ~ E .d
. .
don't seem to
h
rn. VI ence IS 1n but decision-makers
process t e informatio b
.'
.
lem is prejudice rath h
n a out arts effectiveness. The prober t an a dearth of d t 143 p
pirical facts don't ex t
il
a a.
ragmatists know that ernIS unt we notice th
And
turally constructed e
.
em.
noticing depends on cui"
xpectat 10 ns.l44
Safer Cities" helps to b k
municipal governme t cr~ er collaborations between at-risk youth and
n s. Ihes can d 1d
or on armed police. Th dcr
ec e to spend money on art projects,
h
e Iuerence will d
.
t e alternatives. The u . . . .
epend, 1n part, on arguments for
I
N llllhahve typ 11
P anners, law enforcers
.
lea Y engages advice from urban
wh
h
' economtc devel
opers, and psychologists, none of
om ave foregrounded th
e arts. Maybe art Iacks the glamour of gravitas.
46

CHAPTER ONE.

WPA's legacy, and more examples that I won't mention but that perhaps
you will. All of them channel hostility into art and thereby into learning.
These and other cases can inspire a range of development programs, but the
particular relevance for violence prevention and youth development merits
urgent consideration worldwide. Postwar chaos and dissolution of families
make gang life ever more common. In their search for identity, their indefinite futures, economic scarcity, social inequality, and sometimes undecided
genders, youth are nonconformist and rebellious, like artists. Feelings of
aggression are normal, especially in unfair conditions, so authorities would
do well to stop wishing those feelings away.
Art honors the explosive energy, Hallie Flanagan explained to her congressional interrogators: ult is the very essence of art that it exceed bounds,
often including those of tradition, decorum, and that mysterious thing
called taste. It is the essence of art that it shatter accepted patterns, advance into unknown territory, challenge the existing order. Art is highly
explosive. To be worth its salt it must have in that salt a fair sprinkling
of gunpowder." 146 The sprinkling can accun1ulate dangerously if governments don't provide outlets for artistic ((symbolic aggression." Behaviorist
research clinches the connection between violence and a lack of creativity
FROM THE TOP

47

by observing" that murderers have a characteristically underdevelo pe d capacity for play. 14 ~ One takeaway. lesson for civic leaders is to multiply opportunities to develop that capacity. Youth generally accept the invitation to
play and_ to make a~, for obvious reasons. Art t~riv~s on nonconformity,
exploratwn, expressiOn, and the development of mdiViduality.
Vexed as the national and international debates have been' there IS
good
news at the city level in the United States, and it connects to the go o d news
abroad. lvlayors are beginning to acknowledge and to promote sustainable
development sparked by art's agency. 148 Jaime Lerner' three-time mayor of
Curitiba and twice governor of the state of Parana' began h 1s T ED ta lk m
.
2008 by saying that cities are not a problem they are a solut
An
.
. .
.
. '
lOll.
y City
can be saved w1thm three years and this will revive entire countnes.
149 Th e
lessons can be abstracted, U.S. consultants say, in a manual fo
. b"l" FO
r CIVIC SUStam~ I tty.- ~ev:s from Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los An eles
to ltnk the arts
urban revival, confirming economist Rictard
Flonda
.
. s observattons m 711e Rise oif the Creative Cl ass ( 2002 ) . Consider
practiCally devastated Braddock, Pennsylvania At an Ideas Fest' 1.
;'vf j h
.
lVa In 2010
l
a} or o .. n F~tterman spoke "about how art could bring social chang~
~o: town decimated by violence and poverty.tSl The burly giant ( 6'8")
a spent two years at Harvard's Kennedy School of Go
h
he rna hav
. .
vernment, w ere
the m:del oefgobttenfthe I.nspirations he acknowledges: Florida's book and
.,
ur an armmg pro t D
Bronx rooftops.tsl B t th " Jec s m etrOit s wastelands and on South
u e two-pronged a
h" f
.
pproac o art and agriculture
could multiply t
m o an entire menu of t h .
.
collected tips from . t
.
ec ntques 1f the mayor had also
m ernattonal cases Ad d ft
.
education and social

eca e a er Fetterman studied

po1ICY at the Kenned s h 1
Edi Rama spoke th
b
Y c oo , Antanas Mockus and
.
ere a out overhauli
h .
.
\1Sual and perform
ng t eir complicated cities through
mg arts. Professor El K
mitting that she often t h h
ame amarck introduced them, adaug tt atpoliti
.
cs was an art but had not taken the
connection seriously e
h 153
.
noug . Perhaps h 1 f
potsed to expand st d
.
sc oo s o government are now
u ent tool kits with
the developing world Th
.
more art and more resources from
. ere IS work t 0 d 0 h
ere at locallevels.t54
From the top auth r
w h
'
on tes can facilitate
It more art, collective t
ki
sa er and more productive cities
Th
ar -rna ng that 1
e next chapter explor b
en ISts citizens as coproducers.
'd
es ottom-u
.
SI e and even in opposit'
P coproduct10ns that often begin outIon to government.

contm~es

48

CHAPTER ONE

"~th

Two. Press Here

Cultural Acupuncture and Civic Stimulation

An artist has not always to finish his work ... so he may succeed in making
the spectator his co-worker. -

HAVELOCK ELLIS,

Tiu Dance of Life

Press the name of your destination on a Paris Metro map and it lights up at
the points between the station you entered and the one you are going to.
The light-up technique now appears in museum displays about science and
history, in business plans, and -no doubt- in military maps. When the
electric pulse sends sidetracks beyond a straight or sinuous line, the constellation of bright paths suggests how a creative act can spark responses
throughout a city. Urban acupuncture is Jaime Lerner's name for pressing
on a collective nerve to illuminate a whole body politic. Antanas calls it cultural acupuncture to underline art's agency.
Some vibrant examples are the tags that teens paint on public walls to
provoke cities that may respond with mural contests and commissions
rather than with repression.1 As public constituents, the youths press for
recognition; and getting it can rouse them to become leaders, teachers,
and entrepreneurs who mentor other young citizens of say, Philadelphia
or Chicago.2 Graffiti-inspired murals in the United States stir the imagination of officials in Paris3 and set off a street artist to paint and paste portraits of angry immigrants at home before taking his "Face to Face" project

stine 4 Melbourne's government cashes in on graffiti to

1
P
d
to lsrae1an a e

. 5
..
.t
hich encourages more art-making. But BeiJing may be
attract touns s, w
.
.
g Slte for wall-tagging
arhstSj their mentor is Mao He
the most st unnm

holds the record for the longest graffiti piece, four thousand characters of
revolutionary slogans that covered public surfaces in the

I920S

and ignited

momentous change.
Consider also "Eloisa Cartonera" as acupuncturist. Making new books
from old cardboard was Eloisa's artistic response to the bankruptcy in
Buenos Aires in

2001

when cardboard collectors filled the hungry nights.

The storefront publisher may not have intended to ignite a chain reaction,
but by now the initiative has inspired over thirty resource-poor collectives
to publish literary riches all over Latin America, with new sites opening
in Asia and Africa. When the Cartonera in Lima failed to sell its beautiful
cheap books, "Sarita" pressed to create more readers with an art-centered
pedagogy. The approach moved Harvard University's Cultural Agents Initiative to develop "Pre-Texts" and to train teachers in Boston, Mexico,
Colombia, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Hong Kong, and Zimbabwe among
other sites. (See chapter 4, uPre-Texts.") These responses to art with more
art create networks that multiply good practices by pressing a point and
stimulating far-flung activities.

Change Artists
Whether or not a work of art intends to change behaviors, its effect is pro-

voc~tive. Art reframes relationships and releases raw feelings that rub
agamst convention. Wall tags raise hackles about invisibilityj cheap artisanal books show up el"t'
I 1st Id eas ab out who should read good literature. A

(
fresh feeling and a crif 1th
h
1
.
Ica oug t can g are at economic, racial, generational environmental)
d.
'
pre Icaments that triggered an artwork. In other
words, aesthetic effects
.
f
.
are cnses o comprehension, breaches between
habit and understandi
Th
D
.
ng. ere are at least two kinds of responses, John
ewey pomted out to the 1
t
'
a most perverse pleasure oflosing cognitive con1 E. h
~0 It er you appreciate the stimulation of emotional and mental faculties as a satisfying re-encha t
d"t
f
n ment of the world and stop there (in the tra.
.
1 ton o art for art's sake).
e

.
' or your feeling kindles curiosity and arouses
nergy or making more art Th.
.
.
than t h
IS second optiOn deserves more attentiOn
I as gotten outside the art
ld Th
d
velops skills d.
. .
wor every activity of art-making ean 1magmat10n it
a1
' wrests some creative control over maten
SO

CHAPTER TWO

and social constraints that might otherwise seem paralyzing. Artists are
never simply victims of circumstance. And their agency sets off creative
responses: Authorities who reframe graffiti "vandals" as artists are creative
agents too, along with the youths who violate decorous invisibility. A publisher who puts her finger on pedagogy as an answer to disappointing book
sales links education to art. To follow through from the call of social challenges to the responses of aesthetic innovation is to stimulate collective
change.
Some, probably many, artists today harbor ambitions to set off chain reactions from art to social change? Typically, though, they stop at an initial
moment of provocation, assuming that their work is done once an art piece
goes public. When I convene local artist-activists in "Cultural Agents Fairs"
to mentor students, much of the proposed work tends to short-circuit until
workshops press toward aftereffects. Short-circuiting is what Ben Davis
of Artnet unkindly calls the ((lazy posturing of the (my art is my activism'
kind." 8 If artists collapse politics into art, rather than turn one or the other
onto a connecting tangent, they assume that making art is already a political move. Habermas makes this complaint about surrealism for thinking
that absurdity is a straight shot to liberation. (See chapters, "Play Drive in
the Hard Drive.") Staying off tangents doesn't get us very far. Boal knew
that when he developed hybrid "Legislative Theatre." Inspirations may start
onstage, but they continue in legal chambers ((to follow the normal route
for their presentation." 9 Political art turned in on itselfwinds up "unhappy/'
Carrie Lambert-Beatty concludes.10 Her example is the Yes Men whose brilliant impersonations of newscasters and expert witnesses exposed the devastating greed of big business. But their widely broadcast campaign against
Dow Chemical, for example, had no practical aftereffect.11
Compare similar tactics of falsified news in Argentina's "Tucumin is
Burning/' a "counter-information" operation of 1968 that ignited participation from growing numbers of journalists and broadcasters. The repressive Argentine government was promoting hype about Tucuman becoming a model "place of prosperity and development" while it approved
a transnational takeover of the sugar industry that would bust the unionsP
Taking advantage of the imminent First Biennial of Avant-Garde Art in
Buenos Aires, Roberto Jacoby and fellow artists, sociologists, economists,
and technicians from Buenos Aires and Rosario traveled to Tucuman to
gather testimonies and data. At the art show, they presented .films, photos,
documents, recordings, statistics, graphic propaganda of the unions, audioIt

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51

J ,

i 1n unusu.11degree of popular p.uticip.1tion." u The

\'1SU.11S1 de., ,lllll ~,1!I1C l '

"

.
l )St'd down the exhibition, but the cxpenence fueled del
m'.xt "i ,1y t 1e .11 my t l
. .
l
. J
_ C}' (soon to be hrut.1lly repressed, tt ts true) .1nd seeded
nunus tot uemOLt 1

.. , c. 1" e.:tllctics th 1t still flourishes in creative coll.1borations

1
.1 new

U!'ellt

"

'

].Koby continues to invent joint schemes, including "Venus," a "cotnple.ment.lr)' currency" that looks like pl.ly money .HH.i byp.1sses "leg.1l tender"
when the law is linked to cxploit.ltion. 14 1his is Argentina's version of a fast1
"

growing ,1rts .1lten1.1tive to government-issued tnoney.

" Nonudic .ll'tists like }Koby and Pedro Reyes (sec ch.1pter 31 "Art and
Accountability") move from one field to another .1s they gather forces. They
pursue a project from its aesthetic or political starting point onto contiguous nups to recruit professionals in order to achieve real soci.1l results. One
pressure point lc.1ds to .1 repercussion, .1nd then to othcrs 1 .1s the .u-twork
becomes .1 vehicle for unscripted "melt-ups," as Dougl.1s Rushkoff calls the
effectY, "Efforts like these scale up in two w.1ys. First, they arc shared with
or copied by other groups in other communities around the world. Rooftop
gardens can work in any city to lower energy bills and clean the air while
providing food and jobs.... lvlore significantly, the impacts of their highly
local efforts trickle up" in what business plans might call interlocking directories of services and government support. 17 Effective innovators press
hard to connect strategic dots.
I want to focus on three diverse examples of trickle-up innovation Theatre of the Oppressed, ACT UP1 and the Pro-Test Lab . . with n1entions
of others to encourage more cultural-agent spotting. Multiplying the profiles will identify their family resemblances and invite you to press on.

Stage Conflict

"Why have all you people come tonight?" Augusto Boal asked as he sat
on the edge of a stage at Harvard University in December 2003. "Do you
know what is going to ha ppen."' . . . N o "'.... And you can1c anyway? " H e
was already an old man but still irresistibly boyish and bubbly five years
before he died Just shy of etg
htY Wh o e1se could get a public of professors
"
r:
"
d
and
students
to
play
.
.
.
games ror actors and nonactors, to loosen up an
nsk look1
ng
ndiculous"'
11

h
f
11
,

S ts not a r etorical question. In fact n1any o

Boa! s trainees can perfor111 th
.
e contag10us n1agic. Multiplying hirnself was
part of Boal's genius and C lt l A
'
u ura gents had invited hin1 to tnultiply dur.
mg ten days of workshops 't0
. .
.

pnme parttctpation in the sltits his tramces

h.ui prepared} Boal told two stories that night. One was about a peasant
leader in Brazil's desperately poor Northeast who was ready to take up arms
after young Augusto performed a revolutionary play. rfl1e other story stars
,1 sumo-sluped Peruvian woman who hufled and puffed her disapproval of
the Br.1:rili.1n director. 18 Boal had told those stories many tin1es1 including
the widely read versions in his foundatiotul 'II~t.afrc cif the Oppressed ( 1974),
.1g.1in two decades later in 11zc Rainbow c~f Desire (1995) 1 and then again in
his autobiography Hamlet and the Baker's Son (2001).19
Like traumatic experiences or epiphanies1 these pivotal encounters
shocked Boal into turning a professional corner, and they haunted him
throughout a career as animator1 joker, facilitator, therapist1 and legislator. Boal was not the first to experiment with interactive theater1 but he
was the one who abstracted the principles into an infinitely portable and
effective practice. By 1932, the Ronunian- born psychotherapist Jacob Levy
Moreno was settled in the United States .1nd touting "psychodrama" for
patients to act out their neuroses .ltH.i get dram.1tic rclief. 20 Later, movements for political enfranchisement would stage political therapy: in 1959,
the San Francisco Min1e Troupe began to defend free speech; the Bread
and Puppet Theater started in 1961 to protest the war in Vietnam; the Free
Southern TI1eater became the cultural wing of civil rights in 1963; lt's All
Right to be a Wornan Theatre validated feminism in the early 1970s. And El
Tcatro Campesino was founded in 1965 to build the United Farn1 Workers
Union.21 TI1e Teatro's experience as partner to a political n1ovement runs
parallel to that of Yuyachkani in Pent.n In both cases, labor leaders discounted theater as merely representative or entertaining, not constitutive
of the moven1ent. But Teatro Campesino's founder Luis Valdez knew how
theater played midwife to the nascent union, performing plays about pressing issues on the flatbeds of trucks, improvising with volunteers while insisting on aesthetic quality. TI1e shows stopped, Valdez remembers, because
the leaders "were not focused on the arts; they allolt'cd the arts to happen.
It was viewed as a tool and not a service. So the chaotic birth of our independence began." 23
Meanwhile in Brazil, theater was also experimenting with collective processes1 before the dictatorship ( 1969 1982) stopped the action. Boal didn't
stop directing a radical theater company until he was arrested in 1971 and
tortured in a n1ilitary prison.21 In exile, he made his most radical n1ove,
converting from Marxist director to nont11igned facilitator. The change
achieved a distilled sin1plicity that can do without professional actors or
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53

a shared ideology. Boal's conversion began when Virgilio- that unforgettable northeast peasant- had been moved by the revolutionary actors'
chant "Let's spill our blood." Later that night, he invited Boal and his comrades to join a raid planned for the next morning. Boal explained reluctantly that the actors' rifles weren't real but made of plastic, and that_ he
admitted with deep embarrassment- the members of his troupe were not
really fighters. "Oh," said Virgilio, t(the blood we spill is my blood"i and the
white cast- so very white, Boal remembered with shame- would pack up
their phony guns and return to Rio before the violence they incited could
explode.
Unmasked and contrite, Boal abandoned his vanguard method for an
experiment with what he called t(simultaneous dramaturgy." 25 It was basically Playback Theatre with an open end: The director invites an oppressed
person to narrate his or her story up to a crisis point. He scripts and stages
the story for actors and then asks the audience to suggest solutions, which
he writes up on-site for his actors to try out. That approach fell apart in the
Andean highlands.
At the beginning of Boal's long exile from Brazil he directed a literacy
program in Peru. There, he formed a local theater company which, one evening, staged the dilemma of a woman whose deceitful husband would return the next day. Furious at the man, but afraid to be abandoned and even
more vulnerable, the protagonist faced a predicament that the play would
try to resolve. From the audience, a woman whom Boal describes as overpowering and menacing interrupted each unconvincing ending: (IYou have
to be very clear with that man," she bellowed. Every timid adjustment the
director tried confirmed her scorn for Boal1 until she lost patience, turned
her back on the stage, and lumbered toward the door. Equally exasperated, Boal ran after her with a challenge to show him, onstage, what she
meant by t(being very clear." Replacing the wife, the lumbering nonactress
gave the unfortunate husband figure a blow so smart that it literally floored
him. The smack also toppled what remained of Boal's top-down approach
to theater.26 His feeling for this woman, fear mixed with admiration, was
close to awe) an unusual aesthetic effect for the veteran director but a foundation for ethicsP
From then on, Boal would encourage the public to take the stage in what
he called (IForum Theatre," an innovation that features the t(forum" as part
of the play instead of a post-performance discussion. The one-act tragedies

homelessness) were no longer composed by a playwright but by groups of

local subjects, about their own lives. Boal's lasting contribution is to recognize nonprofessional actors as both subjects and objects of politics, as he
would say with a penchant for philosophical registers. One of his charms
was to bring higher learning down to dirt level. He made philosophy fertile
and available for everybody, like an infectious joke.
Boal was getting perspective on a range of possible paths to social justice from a broad base of creative agents, each one the subject and object
of drama. (One-on-one development is a general theme of education for
artist-citizens in the company of Schiller, Dewey, and Ranciere.) "With
Virgilio, I had learnt to see a human bcing1 rather than simply a social class.
... With the big Peruvian woman1 I learnt to see the human being struggling with her own problems, individual problems1 which though they may
not concern the totality of a class, nevertheless concern the totality of a
life." 28 Following these lessons, the venue for Boal's politics could no longer
be a stage of trained actors raised above a public to excite one-way empathy
with heroes. Now nonprofessional actors in any shared space would sympathize in an interchange of feelings between spect-actors and their tormented representations?9
Instead of training actors to follow directions, Boal began to train facilitators to animate self-representation and reflection among participants
who would become new facilitators and continue the multiplication. During his own lifetime, Boal became an international legend, not only because
his innovations are brilliant and useful1 but also because he practically gave
them away1 welcoming replication1 insisting on it. The ambition of his cultural acupuncture was to make the world throb with pointed, local, creative
energies. Facilitators don't presume to know where the pressure points are1
but only that they exist and can be brought to crisis onstage. For Boal, the
dynamism of the word "crisis" comes out best in the Chinese ideogrami
it juxtaposes the character for danger with the one for opportunity.30 He
pressed on the contradiction in crisis as the very stuff of theater} its life's
blood. t(The essence of Theater is the conflict of free wills!" 31 Boal quoted
Hegel - lest readers mistake his lightness of touch for intellectual levityin order to claim that acting is the best acupressure for stimulating freedom.
"What are your worst problems?" is an opener for facilitators. The sitespecific answers and their dramatizations proceed inside favelas} marginal
schools, mental hospitals} prisons} community assemblies} practically anywhere. Spect-actors watch the tragedy played by neighborsi they listen ac-

that play out dilemmas (about poverty, disease, violence, abuse, exclusion,
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55

tively for opportunities to interrupt an action that is moving toward disaster. Once the play ends tragically, the facilitator invites the audience to
watch a rerun until a volunteer shouts "Stop! " in order to replace a character and improvise a change to the script, which prompts other actors to improvise corresponding changes. Then more replacements follow until time
runs out. Inspirations hardly ever do.
Trying out possible scenarios is literally how Dewey described deliberation. He understood it as a theatrical exercise and would have recognized
Forum Theatre as an ingenious medium for pragmatic ethics. The imaginative tryouts of various possible actions can explore consequences without
doing harm. "Deliberation is a dramatic rehearsal (in imagination) of various competing possible lines of action ... . [It] is an experiment in finding
out what the various lines of possible action are really like . ... Thought
runs ahead and foresees outcomes, and thereby avoids having to await the
instruction of actual failure and disaster. An act overtly tried out is irrevocable; its consequences cannot be blotted out. An act tried out in imagination is not final or fatal. It is retrievable." 32 After playing through these tryouts in Forum Theatre, the facilitator may play the "joker" - Dewey might
call him ethical philosopher- to goad participants toward ascesis, a classical term for the derivation of general principles from particular conilicts.33
Theatre of the Oppressed

(TO) is an art of the single subject representing

the many; it speaks in "the first person plural." 34

Who said that tragedy means an unavoidable disaster, and that the only
good outcome is feeling relieved of the rebelliousness that got the hero into
trouble? Was it Aristotle? 35 Well, Boal jabs, what did you expect from someone who practically worked for the State? 36 The clever interventions by
spect-actors who set off agile improvisations by the nonprofessional actors
show that the truer definition of tragedy is failure, or control, of the imagination. (Leaders of Occupy Wall Street noted the same cause for despair:
"It was a lack of imagination. There was too small a repertoire." 37 ) Meanwhile, the participants on- and offstage can sense a double dose of magic:
insoluble woes morph into artistic challenges that spur healthy competition for creativity as one intervention outdoes another (art is no zero-sum
game) i and participants experience new admiration for creative neighbors
who together invent more moves than any one player can imagine. Admiration for fellow social actors is a leitmotif we learned from Mockus too. It
welcomes contributions by the many and supports democracy. Boal gave

one player from another, "its original sense of wondering at, standing back
from something in astonishment. ... Surprise is in itself a rebellion; it says,
'No, I do not accept this as normal.' " 38 Our jaded times need more of this
aesthetic effect.39
By the time he wrote The Rainbow of Desire, subtitled, The Boal Method
of Theatre and Therapy, Augusto had been living in exile for fifteen years.40
France became his second home. He went there because he had to leave
Portugal once "the Revolution of Carnations withered.'' 41 He had gone to
Portugal in flight from Argentina, where General Videla started his own
dirty war after the one in Brazil sent Boal packing. Several Latin American
countries were locked down in dictatorship, and artists pressed where they
could. The CADA collective in Chile is worth mentioning. Its "No more
... (fill in your chosen abuse)" graffiti would appear on officially whitewashed walls day after day.42 Young Alfredo Jaar chose exile instead of hideand-seek with Augusto Pinochet's agents, after provoking them relentlessly
with one question on billboards, painted highway lanes, and faceless filmed
interviews: Are you happy? 4 3
That Europeans were unhappy too shocked Boal, who was living in Paris
and traveling in the region. "In Europe, I started hearing about species of
oppression not discussed in Latin America: loneliness, isolation, emptiness, and lack of communication- very different from strikes, shortage
of water, hunger and violence.... There were more suicides in Scandinavia, where matters of basic subsistence were resolved, than in the southern hemisphere, where dictatorships murdered people, but where fewer
people pointed weapons at their own heads."44 Statistics continue to show
a rate of suicide in developed Europe three times that of Latin America.45
Suicide was the pressure point that connected theater to therapy for
Boal. Until then, he had located his work in Brecht's line of experiments
to distance the public from bourgeois ideology, not in the line of Ibsen's
psychological drama. But now, Brecht's techniques for dislodging audience
sympathy from the action onstage served to develop theater as psychological therapy. With his wife, psychiatrist Cecilia Thumim, Boal put patients
and normally neurotic subjects onstage inside and outside hospitals. The
subject of distress would double as the agent of relief. One actor at a time
would tease out personal conflicts between desire and fear. Teasing elements apart is just what theater does, Boal explained, simply by staging a
proble1n. More dramatically than ever, he appreciated the "aesthetic space"
of theater, where actions are performed and recognized as performance.

admiration an aesthetic cast by attending to its formal effect of distancing

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57

Patients are often overwhelmed and trapped in internal conflict. But theater externalizes conflict in ways that the protagonist can explore. Even
before a joker invites spect-actors to play out interventions, the very fact
of playing oneself doubles the subject's perspective. Actors know that they
are acting.
The same person can be both victim and viewer of victimization.
l\-1ore than the entrenched narrated content of the tragedy, the protagonist becomes a narrating subject at a critical distance from the character.46
(Emmanuel Levinas had an ethical preference for narrating, ((saying/' over
inflexible content that is "said." 47 ) Boal calls this dynamic doubling "metaxis/' which means belonging to two worlds at the same time.48 With characteristic flair, he announced that therapeutic theater is a ((Copernican
Revolution," because the subject is no longer the center of his universe but
a moveable piece in a dynamic system of stars. Unmoored from habit, he
or she can join forces with others, including psychiatrists.4 9 The staged process can produce relief, called catharsis. Deliberately and from the hospital ward, Boalliberates this medical term from Aristotle's coercive theater
where desire is pathological and relief means purgation of nonconformist
energy. Boal instead defines catharsis as the expulsion of the very "cop in
the head" that Aristotle had engaged to torment protagonists and to terrify
their spectators.50
The path from vanguard political theater- that peaked for Boal in the
196os- to socially interactive Forum Theatre, followed by the Rainbow's
subjective drama, came full circle back to politics when Boal returned to
Brazil and invented "Legislative Theatre." Having lit up points along his
path, Boal produced what amounted to a floodlight on theater's liberating
work: from representation to reflection to imagining change. The cumulative effect moved the vice governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro to invite
Augusto and Cecilia back to Brazil, to develop theater education in a new
statewide network of Centers for Integrated Popular Education.51 By 1986
oppositional Boal was working for the government! It was a dream come
truej he wrote about integrating theater into basic education. But it lasted
only until the next election.52 The following years were a struggle on decreasingly fertile ground. Grassroots TO companies dried up because members couldn't pay bus fares, because facilitators were afraid of the crossfire
in favelas, because injustice became so habitual that people were losing the
energy of indignation. By 1992, Rio's Center for Theatre of the Oppressed

seemed light years behind the shining moment that brought Boal back.
Only foreign visitors were interested in the afterglow.
Even so, we lived in great hope, which is, as the saying goes, the last
thing to die.
It died.
One day we decided to put an end to the Center1 to carry out
compassionate euthanasia on our moribund dream. How best might
we lay this dream to rest, after its death? We didn't want a sad, tearful burialj we preferred something in the New Orleans style. A musical funeral, a funeral which would have a joyful aspect-a bang not a
whimper.
By coincidence, 1992 was an election year and elections in Brazil- in marked contrast to many European and North American
countries- are an erotic moment in national life.53
During the political campaigns that year1 TO 's tragicomic antics ramped up
to a good-bye bash reported in avid media outlets. A spectacular funeral
procession for democracy1 classroom simulations of materialist history
lessons on Ipanema's beach1 quick-change artists whose bikinis winked
underneath nuns' habits, were all coveted photo ops for newspapers and
newscasters focused on a group that seemed poised to win an election.
Against genuine or histrionic protests- that he was a man of the theater
not of politics, that the funeral and other "invisible theater" events were
"only" arts interventions- Boal ran for city councilor on the Workers Party
ticket. He won and took office as vereador of Rio de Janeiro in January 1993.
Boal fills some funny pages with scenes from that allegedly unintended
campaign, including his distress at the possibility of winning. Nevertheless1
he took advantage of the office to develop art's potential over the next four
years. It was an unprecedented opportunity to create a hybrid of theater and
procedural politics called "Legislative Theatre." ''As the function of vereadors
is to create laws and to ensure the proper enactment of those that already
exist, the people's participation in this process could be achieved by means
of theater: transitive democracy." 54 Democracy in the Greek polis belonged
to the few free citizens "the fasces, or small bundle of sticks," and in contemporary politics the bundle collapses under abusive "pragmatism." ss But transitive democracy can engage economically and educationally uneven populations, respecting the rules of each without missing their points of contact.56

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59

His autobiography, published in 2001, pinpoints some practices that link

art and politics: doubling the protagonist as subject and object of drama,
multiplying the effects of theater by training facilitators to animate "rehearsals for life" with nonprofessional actors, cajoling the public to derail
tragedy and to admire a range of inspirations, all add up to an expansive
aesthetic education in everyday life, in psychiatric therapy, and now also in
procedural politics. "We formed nineteen groups doing theater as politics,
as opposed to the old political theater; we presented thirty-six bills, and
promulgated thirteen laws. Thirteen times, in Rio de Janeiro, the desire of
the population became law. Perhaps that has been the Theatre of the Oppressed's main conquest: transforming desire into law."

57

After publishing the story of his full life, unstoppable Boallaunched a

new and final adventure in deliberate homage to Paulo Freire, The Aesthet-

ics of the Oppressed (2oo6). The focus here broadens from theater to general arts education.58 One school-based activity was to paint personalized
images of Brazil's national flag. A YouTube video shows an eight-year-old
boy painting the standard image and then covering it in shades of gray that
deepen to black. "It's because the country feels like a prison to me, dark and

teachers, citizens and spectators, for sessions from which everyone takes
away more than they brought.64
Among the countless contributions of Boal's acupressure (including
the collective ]ana Sanskriti that just celebrated 25 years of TO in villages
around Calcutta, where twelve thousand peasants had gathered to hear
Boal speak in 2002) I can report on sequels he sparked close to home: Following Boal's Harvard workshops in 2003, Betsy Bard facilitated a summer
theater program at the local high school. 65 After seeing the high school
production, doctors Felton Earls and Maya Carlson developed a Forum
Theatre approach to AIDS prevention and treatment for youth in Tanzania.66 Meanwhile, Cultural Agents offered "Pre-emptive Acts" for the Equal
Employment Opportunities Commission so that law enforcers and human
resources officers could rehearse responses before discrimination explodes
into actionable cases. Similar workshops support MIT's Interfaith Fellows
Program.67 Colombia's Ministry of Justice invited cultural agent Carmen
Oquendo to facilitate for its LGBT rights campaign.68 And plans are under
way to make Forum Theatre an alternative to just talking about race and
gender at Harvard College.

airless," he explains to the facilitator while texturing the thick paint into a
jail-like grid.59 Another activity, just to mention one more, was to recycle
junk into sculptural self-portraits that explored environmental and personal adaptation and sustainability.60 (Jaime Lerner's urban acupuncture
included teaching children to recycle, so they could teach their parents.)
In some significant way, these stimulations follow from the acupressure
that Freire administered. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1969) he pressed on
top-down teaching to level hierarchies into horizontal relationships. Respect without deference would curb authoritarian habits and cultivate student initiative. Freire's best disciple took the theater as his classroom; he
brought directors down to the level of jokers. Contemporaries and friends
during Brazil's dictatorship, Freire and Boal were tired of revolutions that,
true to their literal meaning, go around in circles.61 Freire chided teachers
who bank data in students presumed to be empty depositories; and Boal
scorned directors who stage spectacles that pacify the public. Anyone who
works for the people rather than with the people does them a patronizing disservice.62 In complementary manuals, Freire and Boal orchestrated
polyphony in schools and onstage. You can log onto a combined PT 0
(Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed) website to clinch this relationship.63 Boal's last father, as he calls Freire, knew how to convene pupils and

ACT UP

It can be a hard history to tell, hard for the survivors who still choke up
when they talk about the losses though they cannot stop telling. Mostly
it is hard for historians who are used to holding a narrative together on
the anchor of singular heroes and villains. 69 The protagonist of ACT UP is
a loose collective of mostly arts activists who fought the AIDS epidemic.
Wisely anonymous, their activities would have been short-lived if each artist had taken credit for brilliant work in the homophobic and triumphant
corporatist environment of the late 198os and early' 90s. Like Boal's theater
and Lope de Vega's Golden Age drama about an entire town that takes responsibility for confronting abuse/0 ACT UP protected itself from persecution with a "first person plural." Here was no charismatic Martin Luther
King Jr., no Mahatma Gandhi, or Harvey Milk, or Cesar Chavez; no icon
of leadership, but rather a rush of iconoclastic artworks that disturbed the
superficial calm of New York City.
The headless nature of this story keeps ACT UP from making appearances in history books, observers will say. And it is true; there seems to
be no one point on which historians might focus to light up a sequence
PRESS HERE

60

CHAPTER TWO

61

arts
interventions
into
far-reaching
effects
in
f
of events that move d rom
.
.
nd public space. A result of thts narrative fail,
.
.
.
medicine, law, commerce, a
.ons of citizens won t eas1ly find the mformat 10n
t
ure is that new genera 1
.
.
.
the 1r own feelings of outrage, msptre responses, and acthat could tngger
.
derable accomplishments of coordtnated arts activknowle d ge tI1e cons1
.
..
h
me 1de a of the civil rights movement and of the femi1sm. C 1ttzens ave so
.
. movemen t, but hardly a notion about their sequeltn ACT UP, though
mst
. tmpacte
.
d h ea lth care for everyone in the United States and laid claim to
1t
ghts Wh1"}e the "plague" of AIDS continues to ravage enorh
1

. .
.
.
.
genera uman n
. ns - at least thirty-three nnlhon worldWide
With a dispromous popu1a t10
.

t e nu mbers ofnonwhite citizens in the Umted States-we

need to
portwna
.
connect the dots between current disaster and future solutiOns. Or should
we conclude from the decrescendo ofU.S.-based activism that the disease
'

and the inequalities it diagnoses don t engage our

. .
CIVIC

concerns.

In fact, AIDS continues in the spotlight, now that the threat of infection
has become universal. What falls out of focus, survivors of the early crisis

York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis,

On the opposite wall, a

backlit transparency glared: "Call the White House. 1 (202) 4 s6 1414. Tell
Bush We're Not All Dead Yet." Helen Molesworth projected this reminder
throughout the powerful exhibition that she managed to curate after hunting down artworks that most ACT UP participants considered to be ephemera. 1he work had use-value, not the exchange-value of collectible art. Yet
one of the impressive results of the exhibition is appreciation for the usevalue created by art. The call to action came through in the stunning visual
quality, the witty turns of phrase, public choreography, and the general aesthetic sophistication of artists who knew how to activate their arts. One display case in particular documents the painstaking development of work by
1987-199].

one of the movement's art collectives, Gran Fury, with paste-up drafts of
posters, variations on the pink triangle logo, and notes to the printer. Pieces
from the New York Public Library, to which ACT UP donated its archives,
from Rochester University's Library, and almost-forgotten personal stashes

guard of intervention. The movement, which erupted three hundred mem-

were collected by Molesworth to display once-ubiquitous posters, stickers,

MTV -style videos, and hundreds of filmed interviews from the ACT UP
Oral History Project.

bers strong after a first call to arms in 1987, may be too particular (in both

Together the evidence commemorates artistic agency during plague

meanings of minority and queer) for straight readers to take to heart. "They

years that would otherwise have been entirely tragic. On wall text, the gallery displayed precise and escalating numbers of yearly deaths from AIDS

years complain, is the history of homosexuals as both victims and the van-

don't give a shit/' says popular playwright Larry Kramer.71

I am convinced that the majority's reluctance to remember goes even
deeper and is overdetermined by another bad habit: not only a refusal to

adding up to 15o,ooo, more than the number of U.S. soldiers who died in
the Vietnam War. The devastation of AIDS never inspired the City of New

register the experience of a sexually nonconformist population but also an

York to publicly commemorate the dead, Molesworth winces, in contrast

indifference to art as an agent of change. Does one prejudice link onto

to the commemorations of September u, 2001, though all the victims are

innocent. ((We Are Innocent" reads an enormous banner that straddled

the other? Perhaps homosexuals are disrespected in the history of AIDS

activism because they are associated with art. Would their social capital
be greater if they represented, say, finance? The abundant evidence of aes-

New York streets in 1989. With the exhibition- and gallery talks, conferences, poetry readings, and course development- this engaged curator cre-

thetically arresting art as the vehicle for ACT up's effective eight-year cam-

ated a stir against the silence that mutes a movement founded over twenty

paign doesn't command much attention in standard accounts of the epi-

years ago, forty years since the Stonewall Riots of 1969 set off the gay rights

demic. And silence about homosexuality is haunting, in good measure,

movement in the United States. The exhibition hoped to revive the throb of

precisely because of the enduring artwork. Think about the relentless leit-

energy that circulated through ACT UP in order to animate students, teach-

motif Silence=Death, plastered on every available wall, stuck on stickers

ers, and other visitors who can again act up against indifference.
The show is not nostalgic, Molesworth insisted if anyone asked. Hor-

and pins, worn on T-shirts, and projected in neon lights as a window display at the White Columns Art Gallery.

ror years of the epidemic are not magical times to be recovered, she chas-

The neon version of the pink triangle pointing upward from a base

tened us. But her decision to dedicate the show to the movement, rather

that spells out Silence=Death was on display at the Carpenter Center for

than feature particular artists, amounts to framing the exhibition as homage

the Visual Arts in the fall of 2009, as part of the exhibition

62

CHAPTER TWO

ACT UP

New

to creativity in difficult times. Unlike the sudden victims of 9/u, the

ACT

PRESS HERE

63

.t
1 ) . , ()tts 111 (i concentrated time to re.1ct to dis<1Ster .1nd lc)
\.JParttSS 1l.Htllll 1
. {) . .011 t nued
sometimes nosthumous, .Ktion. Molesworth
1
1
open rou t es l L
,
r
. .
. .
. h. , 1. )tll sn'Lt 1cuhrconverl'etKe between poltttc.ll acttvtsm and
pu ts lll'l ng~.: l . r ... '
'
b
.
.
art, itwiting us to press for future results. Her curaton.1l work ts .1 second
degree .KtiYism, a re:-;ponse to the .u-tworks .uHi to their impressive effects,

th.~t links interventionist ,ut directly to students, to the spheres th.lt they
will dcYelop, to visitors, and even to readers of reviews such as "Blunt Instruments: Collectives' AIDS Art Made an lmp.Kt with Just .1 Few Strong
lnuges."~2 By a subsequent, terti.1ry ripple dlect I feature her work in my
courses .md in this book on arts interventions that don't give up. M.1ybe
readers will dare to design new .1rts interventions, or just register the connections between art and activism as voting citizens. In both her case .1nd
mine, hum.mistic interpretation extends art's itnpact.
"Act up!" w.1s the challenge launched by Larry Kr.1mer at New York's
Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center early in M.uch 1987 . A
crowd had come to he.u him talk .1bout his art, but Kramer lud tired of
talk while the A 1us epidemic raged. He turned his session of the speakers'
series into .1 pl.ltform for planning direct action:" 1 he audience must have
expected the confront.ltiotul style; he was famous for it. 'lhe angry energy
h.1d just been st.1ged in shout- down scenes of his .wtobiogr.1phical play
1/rc Nomrall /cart at New York's Public 1he.1ter?'1 13ut that M.1rch evening,
Kramer's disturb.1nce played more like a Forum ,..l heatre intervention than
a scripted dr.1ma. His message to the A 1 DS tragedy was "Stop!" 'I hen he
got on history's stage to change the script and set ofr a new dynamic. Other
spect-actors joined to improvise more developments. By Man.:h 24 1 the
new AIDS Co.1lition to Unleash Power was demonstrating on Wall Street
against pharmaceutical profiteers. After seventeen arrests .1nd a follow up
infiltration of the New York Stock Exchange, the pril:e of treatment fell by
20 percent .md the rood and Drug Administration (FDA) shortened its
drug approval process by two years."'5
1hc weekly meetings of ACT uP convened in sp.Kious Cooper Union
Hall, where the New York 300 put into practice their readings on "radi
cal democracy/' which featured Freire's petbgogy along with counter
hegemonic political theory?6 Anyone could take the floor for ten minutes,
only ten. If the speaker wanted to continue, perrnission w.1s decided by ma
jority vole. All decisions were reached that way. Por ex.lmple, when impres ~
sive actions were planned on Wall Street, in St. Patrick's c.1thedral, at
the FDA - a minority could not block the action. Instead, dissenters would

design .w .1ltenutivc action and bro.1den the movement. '1 he spirit of autonomous lc.Hicrship rcpe.1ted through specific collectives. Intentionally
outr.1geous names gave an edgy charm to .1ssaults on murderous respectability: Gr.w Fury, Silence De.1th Project, Cang, and Fierce Pussy used
guerilla m.ukcting techniques to re.1ch a m.1ss .wdicncc. "1 n subway cars,
tt".lnsit st,ltions, t.1xi c1bs, outdoor billboards, and bus p.mels, their whec.\tp.lsted posters and crack and peel stickers powerfully communicated ACT
up's outrage and were ubiquitous throughout New York City. P.1iring text
.wd im1gc with penetrating anger ,1nd se.1ring wit, A<.'T up's art collectives
targeted specific individuals and institutions at the local ;lnd tutionallcvel,
advoc.1ted for safer sex and gay and lesbi.1n rights, .l!Hi galv.mizcd broad band support for the A IDS activism movetnent." 77
M.uginalized in political histories, ACT uP fills ~1.1ges of art history.
(Docs this dissuade other historians from t.1king it seriously?) ll1e visu~ll
sophistication of activists commands the attention of art scholars just
.1s it had arrested citizens on the street. 'I:1king tc'thniqucs from notable
contemporary artists, such .1s blowing up .His the w.1y Richard Prince did
wtth his Marlboro cowboys, citing the tormented doll tlut Hans Hellmer
twisted into .1 swastika for the poster "A Lns: tin 6t," ,1nd borrowing B.1rbara
Kruger's favorite font for Gran Fury's "Re.1d My Lips," puts ACT UP .utists
on the crest of a contemporary art w.we. lnside the colkctivcs, .1nonymous
ACT uP artists competed with the best .1dvertising t.1lent to outshine commercial messages with bold Jnd often tragicomic visu<ll arrests. "He Kills
Me" identifies .1 portrait of Ronald RL'ag.w. "MEN, Usc Condoms, Or Bc.1t
It," re,Hi the big block letters on ,1 fluorL'SCl'tll yellow b.Kkground. rl hese
strategies of rcpurposing existing forms, ".1ppropri.1ting," and disrupting
visu.1l .1nd vcrb.1l regimes became fund.uncnt.1l to the history of postmodern aesthetics, impossible to narr.1tc without .Hidrcssing Gr.1n Fury, for
ex.1mplc. Outside the collectives and under their proper tumcs, the S<lmc
.utists produced first rate formal and .1bstr.1tt work, doubling between politital and nonpolitcal .ut in .1 fecdb.Kk loop that dcmonstr.1tcs the connections between critique ~1nd creativity.
Apprenticeship to both civil rights .md thl' women's movement linked
ACT uP to a M.nxist tradition of''imm.lnl'nl nitiquc," .walysis tlut locates
contr.Hiictions in the ruling discourses (of citizenship, medical rcsponsi
bility, equal rights) .1nd demands .1ccount.1hility. 'lhc c.ll'lier movl'mcnts
h.1d <llre.1dy ,H1ded performance to politic.1l philosophy: civil disobcdi
encc for civil rights, br.1 burning for feminism, and L'g.1litarbn circles at
I' R I S S liE R l\

64

C II A I' 'I' Hit 'I WO

65

expected to speak. This choreography of

meetin s where everyone
.
'
g
. .
.15. 1 rt of Molesworth s show. She filled a gallery
consciousness-r.usmg '"' P
.
.
.
. J
t 015
.. tlnt showed concurrent testlmomes of acttvwith fourteen vwco mom
'
.
. . 11 . i seven or eight intemews of about an hour each
ists. Each mom tot P } e<.
.
,
.
'nee
from
n1orning
until
the
gallery
closed.
As
and then rcpeate d tI1c ~equc
.
.
..
d
, ..11other of the testimomes they were aware of thu-\'1Sitors ,,ate11e one or r
.
.1t tl1e same time and of the total 103 narratives that
teen more playmg
'
.
tl1110
. J of the core New York collective. The concurrent nar.
rcprescnt onIY.1
.
.
.
.
. t.tnu 0 u.s 111 cmories and mterpretat10ns constitute an aesratwns
o t. <.:i"tSt:On
. an d e tl11c,1
. 1""c)11evement of the exhibition. The gallery perforn1ed
t11et1c
1d OCI''lCY
t l1c ra d tea em
t"t commemorated. Standard histories n1ay not have
found the appropriate narrative form to frame the moven1ent's hydra-like
.5
wa

progress, much less its incursions into n1edicine, law, and cor~unerce. ~ut
two artists, S.uah Schulman and Jim Hubbard, captured the d1ffuse quahty
of ACT uP in their Oral History Project. And curator Helen Molesworth
designed the simultaneous display, suggesting (as did Boal) that narrative
8

impossibility may be a failure of will or of imagination?

Freire's pedagogy was a turning point away from vanguard stories of
progress. He invited activists to pursue analysis but not to stop there, because critique is useful only if it links onto a developing sense of personal
and collective potential. The ACT UP women who staged the "Cosmo" affair took Freire's advice when they moved from analysis to action. In January 1988, Cosmopolitan had published a dangerous article by Dr. Robert E.
Gould entitled "Reassuring News about AIDS: A Doctor Tells Why You
May Not Be at R.isk.'' 79 A few women who had been tneeting at "dyke
dinners" hoped to engage Gould on scholarly grounds. TI1ey pointed out
several misleading medical facts, the lack of peer review in the popular
women's journal, and the doctor's credentials as a psychiatrist, not an in~
ternist. TI1eir research substantiated a demand to retract the article. When
he refused, the "dykes" decided to "shut down Cosmo." It was the first time
that ACT UP women organized separately, both for the confrontation with
Gould and for the 150-person protest at Cosmo. The action got good n1edia
attention, and the collected footage appears in the video "Doctors, Liars,
and Women." Cosmopolitan finally issued a partial retraction.80
Showy and efFective actions like this one, and the ones on Wall Street,
at the National Institute for Health, and other sites continued, inspiring
thousands to join ACT uP in more than seventy cities nationally and worldwide.81 So it seemed on first blush, to judge from a poster, that the Cana~

dian government joined the tnovement. The poster warned compatriots

not to repeat U.S. mistakes and gave outrageously direct advice not to swallow a certain sexual secretion.82 But on second and deeper blush, it becomes clear that the ACT UP artists of Gran Fury plagiarized Canada's federal insignia to underwrite the poster. In any case, Canada would be a main
stage for the activists. In 1989, hundreds of U.S. participants came to Montreal to interrupt an international AIDS conference. Disconcerted when no
arrests followed, ACT UP improvised a new performance. It announced the
"first Treatment and Data report calling for a parallel track to speed access
to drugs." 83 The pharmaceutical industry capitulated.
Tl1at rnade the front page and started a round of talks both with
government and industry to make expanded access a reality. BristolMyers called the ACT UP Treatment and Data Committee and said
that they wanted to provide [the drug] ddl through expanded access
and, amazingly, wanted the ACT UP members to assist in developing
the protocol.
Tl1e program provided ddl to over twenty-five thousand people
with AIDS at no cost until the drug was approved. Data from the expanded access program provided important safety data. Not only did
we succeed in getting the drug out, but we also proved our argument
that expanded access progran1s and working with patient activists
84
could make for better science and faster drug development.
This exetnplary case of acquired expertise in medicine, law, and commerce
repeated throughout ACT uP's history. Larry Kramer recounts an earlier
moment when straight activist Iris Long joined the Treatment and Data
committee. Appalled at their lack of scientific information, she trained several 1nen1bers. "And they branched out and met other people in Boston
and at the NIH. So that by the time-a few years later - 1 would take Mark
85
[Harrington] to a n1eeting, they would think he was a doctor." While
ACT UP was a major n1ovement, activists became their O\\~n informed a~d
eloquent advocates. The urgency pressed artists into professional sefVlCC
heu
of doctors an d 1awyers. Tl1e d.tsease m..'"'Y l11ve
111
been too new or too
.
.
. bl e pro1esstona
c
1s, so activists "achieved concrete
.
sttgn1at1zed
to engage re 1ta
fi c researcl1, nsttt"'nce
law health care dehv1
"
' '
..
cl1anges in me d ica l and sCienti

d
d
d
eft'ectivc
methods
for
pohttery, graphic design, and mtro uce new an
cal organizing.'' 86 An1ong the ripples the movement made was the expan ACT uP raised demands for
. of universal hmnan rights. In acad cmtcs,
ston
PRESS HERE

66

CIIAPTHR TWO

67

studies too and it inspires civic humani. blty

1
d
'
.
.
d .
q ueer studies, perhaps lSa It' effects through
direct action an Interpreties through lessons ab out ar s
d
tation.
. .1 . ht Th 1
p learned a lot from CIVl ng s.
ey earne to
U
T
TI1e mem b ers o f AC
.
..
t
t'on
through civil disobedience, to occupy pubhc space
1
press citizens m o ac
buildings The new movement also tnultiplied pubd
on streets, b uses, an m

.
.
. sites
. b y add'mg advertising and the virtual space of 1ned1a. Along With
1c

Internationally though, AIDS receives sustained and growing attention1 perhaps disproportionate attention from the perspective of women's
health, for which AIDS is a complication in the general disaster of genderbased violence. Rape is an epidemic for which medical and legal remedies
treat only symptomsj violence against women demands the kind of cultural
acupuncture that ACT UP pioneered.
At the end of Molesworth's gallery talk1a young man asked about musi-

massive demonstrations at strategic locations, ACT UP plastered the pub-

cal creativity during those ACT UP years. The question stirred a memory of

lic sphere with provocative art that seemed to be selling so.mething (a flip
strategy of the advertising campaign that Oliviero Toscan1 developed for

"utopia" for her in clubs like the Paradise Garage1 where music mash-ups
paralleled the postmodern pastiches of visual artists. The dress, the music,

Benetton where selling clothes was a prompt for circulating socially urgent

drugs, dancing/ the joy and the admiration that her quickened voice evoked

messages) .s7 And bold performances by veteran artists were sure to get on

certainly seemed nostalgic despite her disavowal, contagiously so. I gave

TV's universally viewed six o'clock news. For example, the demand inside

into a reverie about Latin dance halls during those years. They were acu-

the stock exchange to "Sell Wellcome"- the pharmaceutical company that

pressure sites that made syncopated/ socially uneven crowds throb together

kept their AZL treatment prohibitively expensive-floated up on an enor-

with the same music. And though I cannot yet follow through to significant

mous banner attached to balloons1 while bullhorns insisted on the message. Better yet1artists documented the visually arresting actions on newly

reforms and improved social conditions that the clubs must have facilitated, I know that they expanded the interracial space to make new hybrid

affordable video cameras. One of the lessons learned from civil rights was

families . Allow me an irrepressible memory and a few more connections

that filming arrests makes them safer. Police don't want to play bad guys

between music and social movement.

in the movies.
Perhaps it's unfair to wonder if ACT UP schooled itself in the civil rights
form of nonviolent activism1 but not enough in the content of racial justice.88 Of the more than a million HIV infections in the United States today1

Dance-Hall Democracy

the rate for African Americans is seven times higher, three times for Latinos, than for whites.89 It would be tragic to speculate that the decrescendo

a floor. It was in "centrally isolated/' as the locals say1 Ithaca/ New York,
where a friendly gay club went Latin on Wednesday nights. Once a week

of the New York movement coincides with the release in 1996 of afford-

we broke up the bucolic boredom that helps to make Cornell University so

able treatment for the mostly white activists and their younger social class-

intellectually restless.

mates. Uncannily, or cynically/ the treatment beckons with the name of

AR: ( antiretroviral drug treatments). Art historian Douglas Crimp ex-

~.lams t~e

demise of ACT UP from exhaustion and mourning after the

lffimedlate emergency" became a "permanent disaster."9 To be fair, the

movement had fallen apart f

I
rom tnterna pressures by 1993, years before
ART was developed Kra

mer accounts or the demise more critically, as a

case of trag1c hubris when th
.
e Increastng1y sophisticated Treatment and
Data spokesmen declared i d
d
h
n epen ence from the movement. Neverthe1ess/ t e current statistics and th
.
N ~ k
e pauctty of nonwhites in the images of
elw dotr
Dl s activists suggest that a general feeling of white entitlement
h e pe 0 me ACT UP.91

:I

68

CHAPTER TWO

"~De d6nde es us ted?" I asked the best Latin dancer I ever followed around

"Sorry. I don't speak Spanish/' my partner said.

"Where are you from?" I code-switched.
"From Bosnia. My name is Nedim."
That stopped me short. He had kept me in step through changes in rhythm
and turns I only half anticipated, but now he lost me. Confused, I went back
to my cultural roots in Brooklyn, where salsa began. Throughout the 196os
and '7os 1 in this north-of-the-Caribbean island, deterritorialized music was
mixing one rhythm with another, guaguanc6 interrupting rumba to. slide
t o merengue anticipating
rumb as
return. Th e weaving created an InterIn
ethnic fabric that had us all covered. Though the Bronx and Manhattan
PRESS HERE

69

 t hot for salsa Brooklyn stays central, maybe

must have been spots JUS as
'
,
. t L ry Harlow- "el nino judio de Brooklyn -made
because master plants ar
.
.
.
lly open to cultural chameleons bke me. Years
the mus1ca1 m1xes especta
. .
.
C 1 1Agents the Smithsonian Institution, and the Ameri'
later m 2005, u tura
'
ld elebrate Harlow and other unlikely salseros in "The Jewcas SoCiety wou c
92
ish Latin Mix: Making Salsa."
From the provisional Latin quarter of Ithaca, my thoughts continued to
wander to other clubs in less exotic cities for Latin music where dancers create oases of sociability. A kind of utopian Jetzeit, to use Walter Benjamin's
word, flashes through memories of dance halls in Monterrey, Montevideo,
and Montreal, in Santo Domingo and San Juan (where the guy in a baseball cap and too chubby to be Elvis Crespo turned out to be the real thing),
where dance floors are the spaces of urban utopia. By that I mean that
everyone fits in, not by looking and acting the same, but by improvising
variations on a given theme. Ernesto Laclau might describe the design as
"universal" in the contemporary sense, a shared context that accommodates differences. Its saucy name suggests how salsa depends on differences
of origin, rhythm, mix. It's an inspiration for democratic politics. Seriously.
"What would a better world look like?" I teased Arjun Appadurai after a
scholarly meeting about worldwide equitable development. The obstacles
were clear to academics, but the desired vision was not. "Do you want a
glimpse of utopia?" I took the urban anthropologist dancing that night, to
the Copacabana of glorious memory. The legendary club is no more, but
on that night, the Copa was still making its public appeal with a long line
of patrons waiting to get in. Like an antechamber to heaven where roughened souls prepare for the exalted other side, the line primed celebrants
of neon lights and electrifying music by congregating us in mixed formations. Dark people, light people, every shade of Africa and Asia, combined
s~metimes with white, some old ones, more young ones, maybe a mother
WI:h young girls or a madam with youngish girls, mixed couples and hybnd sin~les, ~lamorous gowns and skintight jeans, the lineup seemed as
endless m vanety as in le ngth ~vanety
r.
.
.
1s
not Informality.
Latin dance halls
are governed. by a tact
.. ga.fieiras make explicit: at the
1 cont ract th at Brazil1an
. .
entrance, a hst of rights and t t.
"
res nc 10ns Insists on exemplary participation.
"11
pt
Gentlemen will be respectful and not get drunk" d "L d'
nVIt t.
d
, an
a 1es WI acce
l
1
a tons to ance fro
.
m gent emen who ask appropriately."
The democratizing effect of Af L .
th c b 1Ar
ro- ahno dance was clear even before
e u an vvars of Independ
h
ence, w en black leaders got whites to follow
70

CHAPTER TWO

in step. Readers of novels like Cecilia Valdes set 1n th e 1830s know th at the
popular bailes de cuna-where classes mixed freely-had already developed a Cuban taste
for freestyle
partnering But the revol u t.10nary camps
.
.

turned dances 1nt~ a .ma~n s.tage for democratic performance. Campaign

diaries tell of two s1m1lar 1nc1dents where dance was the cipher for democracy. During the Ten Years' War, a black officer was snubbed by a white
woman and he threatened anyone who would dance with her. Twenty years
later during Cuba's successful war against Spain, a rejected black officer
((gave a long speech on valor, patriotism, and equality, and he condemned
her refusal as anti-patriotic."93
Arjun and I finally passed the bouncers who frisked the men and stared
down the women. Then we saw the miracle inside: Beyond the floor-toceiling fluorescent palm trees and before the stage where a twenty-piece
orchestra alternated with another one just as fabulous, everyone was dancing to the same music, gracefully, with variations that kept partners attentive to each other and aware of admirable neighbors. Liberating for a feminist like me, dance-hall democracy is an appreciation for strong partners
and a relief from self-reliance. My freedom is in the counterpoint between
voice and exit, deciding whether or not to stay for the next number.
Nedim was an admirable partner, which brought me back to our halting conversation.
"Did you learn salsa in Bosnia?" I asked incredulously.
"No, actually, it was in Germany."

primed the struggle in the Prague Spring of 1968.

During the permissive 196os hundreds of "garage" rock bands filled the city
and lasting groups like the Plastic People of the Universe made counterculture count for civil disobedience after the Soviet invasion in August 1968.
By September, half a million troops from the Soviet Union and four Warsaw Pact countries marched into Prague. Without arms, funds, or friends,
the Czechs managed to resist the invaders for eight months. ((There are, of
course, the Molotov cocktails and human roadblocks," writes artist Paul
Chan. But there were wily tactics too: ((pornography thrown at young and
h tened sold1ers
patrolling
the streets, ( to d.ISt ra ct them from shooting
fng
.
)
.
(
.
h
h
t
ds
'Why
bother
to
occupy
. .
at pedestnans and graffiti hke t e one t a rea '
POPULAR MUSIC ALSO

our State Bank? You know there's nothing in it'). My favorite: Wtthm a few
PRESS HERE

71

hours of the invasion, all the street signs in Prague are painted over. The

to be jn every public school in the country by 2015 .99 At the Inter-American

tanks wander directionless through the streets for hours, then days, and

Development Bank where Abreu pressed for loans, there were objections

then for the rest of the occupation, because all the maps in the city are de-

to classical music as an elite and exclusive art. But follow-up studies of

stroyed as well." 94
The Plastic People continued to rock in secret and out of town, includ-

more than two million young people concluded that every dollar invested
in El Sistema was reaping about $1.68 in social dividends.10o

ing at Vaclav Havel's country house. Several members of the band were
put on trial in 1976 and two musicians went to prison. General outrage inspired Havel to draft the human rights manifesto, Charter 77 The notori-

Pro-Test Lab

ous trial rippled in waves of solidarity for the persecuted musicians and also
for Havel's leadership. The tide would topple the communist government

They figured it would be impossible to fight city hall. Authorities in Vilnius had already sold the.last movie theater to developers. So two local

in November 1989, during an uprising called the Velvet Revolution. Why

artists made saving the cinema called "Lietuva" (Lithuania) into an art

Velvet? The name was borrowed from another rock band. When Lou Reed,
founder of the Velvet Underground, came to Prague in 1990, Havel asked

project. That way Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas wouldn't measure success on reclaiming the theater but on seeing how far they could go. This

him, "Did you know that I am president because of you?" 95

aesthetic criterion freed them to launch an impractical project. They also

acknowledge another- extra-artistic- reason for pressing past despair. It
is an ethical imperative to protect public space. No amount of subsequent

music now includes the classics,

blackmail and bullying deterred them from the exhilarating obligation to

counterintuitive though it may seem. A.5 surely as rock resisted the Soviets

participate in a free, post-Soviet society. The Urbonas project runs on the

in Eastern Europe, classical music breaks the ice of class differences in

Venezuela, thanks to El Sistema of musical education pioneered by Jose

double motor of civic responsibility and experimental art. If it were not for
civic commitments, Nomeda and Gediminas would not have taken this art

Antonio Abreu. (Classical music also invites Israeli and Arab youth to play

assignment. And were it not for this work of art, Lithuanians would not

together in the "West-Eastern Divan Orchestra" founded by Daniel Baren-

have defended the political right to assembly.101 Meeting in public space

boim and Edward Said.96 ) Since 1975, Abreu's youth orchestras are social
networks of rigorously trained but otherwise disenfranchised children and

literally sustains the res publica, which was imploding under rampant postSoviet privatization.102

teens. By now international offshoots have developed in Latin America,

Restrictions on assembly were inherited from Soviet times. Kitchens,

the United States, Britain, and China.97 One spectacular sequel is Paraguay's recycling of a garbage dump into the space and material resources

where people normally cluster, continue today to accommodate only three

people, maximum.103 By contrast, the beloved "Lithuania" is roomy and

for the Landfill Harmonic Orchestra.98 Of the 350,000 current participants

welcoming. Built in 1965, while the Soviets developed a people's urbanism

in Venezuela (about four million over the years) 90 percent live under the

inspired by an exhibit in 1958 of U.S. modern architecture in Moscow, the

poverty line. They do well in school, don't drop out, and find employment,
sometimes as music instructors and internationally coveted professionals.

cinema's attractions include its sleek lines and broad access from a popular
plaza.104 The same centrally located plaza had long been the site of dem-

One graduate is Gustavo Dudamel, named director of the Los Angeles

onstrations and meetings, including the anti-Soviet People's Road to Inde-

Philharmonic in 2009 before he turned twenty-eight years old.

pendence. The building seated almost one thousand in the main hall and

POPULAR, SOCIALLY MOBILIZING

From ages two and three, children attend nucleos where they develop
friendships through music-making, not gangs. The joy of playing together
sustains them during long hours of training. For pragmatic reasons, Abreu
placed El Sistema under the Ministry of Family, Health, and Sports, not the
Ministry of Culture where support would have been precarious. The aim is
72

CHAPTER TWO

another eighty-eight in the intimate theater. This is substantial capacity for

a city of only half-a-million inhabitants in a country of barely more .t~an
three million. The enormous lobby hosted poetry readings, art exhibits,
concerts, even "decadent" jazz concerts. Relatively free from offi~ial vigi.
t o a totalitarian
SoVIet state.
lance, th e c1nema
was a safety va1ve b u1.1t m

PRESS HERE

73

Throughout the 1990s, it showed mostly independent films, becoming the

city's art house and home for a successful international film festival. By

G d. .
use. e 1mmas and
Nomeda proposed to interview patrons of the final Interna t.1ona1p]1m Fes-

2oos, when plans for demolition were announced, the Lietuva was about

tival and to produce a documentary called Cinema Sprtng m

re1erence
c
to
the Prague Spring of 1968.
The
cinema
staff
gave
more
tha
.
.
.
n permiSSion;

to celebrate its tenth annual festival.

It was technically a private limited liability company, with 93 percent of

The movement started modestly inside the movie ho

they invited the collective to occupy the ticket office that would become

the shares owned by the Vilnius Municipality and 7 percent acquired by

headquarters. The challenge became how to ((curate" the explosive differ-

the fourteen cinema employees. The public future of the building and its

ences among pro-testers who had huddled in the cinema to shelter particu-

accompanying plaza had been secured in 1994, when the company signed a

lar partisan positions. The solution was to promote a variety of activities

State Land Lease that was good until 2093. 105 Scandalously, ((Lietuva" was

that kept the Lab clear of any one ideology. It is a strategy that comes in-

put up for auction to private bidders in 2002. And tragicomically, the mu-

structively close to the model of autonomous collectives that developed in

nicipal government included the cinema among its treasures in a proposal

ACT UP.

in 2004 to designate Vilnius as Europe's Capital of Culture. Almost everyone felt frustrated. What had been common -libraries, stadiums, concert

vened a public meeting to change its mission from defending the cinema,
((For 'Lietuva/" to recuperating the country, ((For Lietuva without Quota-

halls, public swimming pools, and other recreational sites - became private

tion Marks." The two hundred attendees represented new groups: anar-

or disappeared altogether along with the collective memories that places

chists, members of the Green Party, true Social Democrats ("the losers"),

embody. During the twenty years of official independence since 1990, nothing public had been built. The only new structures were shopping malls and

a good number of heritage experts, passersby, and strangers. The citizens'

movement was founded at that meeting.

private housing. But no one protested. The very word {(protest" conjured an

Among the numerous happenings of this newly national movement was

unpopular Soviet ideology.

On April 9, 2005, the mix thickened when the Pro-Test Lab con-

America Will Help Us! (June 2, 2005). It was a photo op of a crowd wear-

A first move was to invent ((Vilma/' an e-mail list of artists and activists

ing President Bush masks and eating popcorn. Bush had visited Lithuania

invited by Gediminas and Nomeda to formulate questions for the munici-

in 2002 and famously declared that ((from now on any enemy of Lithuania

pal government. Questions were an innovation akin to art. During Soviet

is an enemy of the U.S." The backdrop for the photo was a huge poster of

times, questioning anything official was vilified as bourgeois backsliding.

the quote in the style of George Maciunas- the Lithuanian-born founder

Complaints could be registered, but the consequences were either insig-

of Fluxus, New York's playful art movement meant to embarrass bourgeois

nificant or unpleasant. By April 2005, ((Vilma" spurred a wildly heteroge-

culture.108 Had the event been a political demonstration it would have re-

neous coalition, though few artists joined because political art had long

quired permission and suffered delays or denials. But as an art project,

been associated with service to the state.106 But vegetarians, feminists,

America Will Help Us! and other contentious displays of dissent passed

alternative educators, students of architecture, new media activists, leftists,

under the legal radar though all the media outlets picked it up.
Another successful event was Fashion Collection for Work and Rebel-

nationalists, and neighbors came together ((For 'Lithuania'" to create the

Pro-Test Lab.

lion (July 12, 2005). A well-known designer and several glamorous models

The clever name contains protest in the double sense of inclusion and

turned the cinema's rooftop into a catwalk and made the show irresistible

control. The Lab's activities would be experiments in art-making. Events

to the media. It covered the front pages of the newspapers, including Busi-

i~ publi_c spaces throughout the city included private screenings of some-

ness News. This was the last straw for the already harassed

tlm.es pirated films, rock and folk concerts, milk bars, masquerades, all of

Wasn't it enough that a sweet deal with the city had just gone sour and

which produced almost daily interruptions of neoliberal business. There

cost him a fortune? Or that the cinema's plaza had hosted a Monopoly-

were more than sixty events in the first half of 2005, a barrage that worried
the new ow~ers o f "LIetuva " enough to resell the property to ((Paradise
Apartments, a front for Lithuanian and Russian investors.I07

like game called VIP Market where architecture students displayed scale

74

CHAPTER TWO

VIP

developer.

models of churches, parks, and an opera house, with offers to turn them

07 would
Into garages, shops, or apartments? (An Internet versiOn m 20
PRESSHERE

75

"P

~ ~ ~ ~
~ ~~ ~ ~
~
~

,~ ~
~ ~
!R

~ ~
~

~""

~
~
...,

%
~
~.;q~~
I

ffl'

FIGURE 2.2.

Pro-Test Lab archive. Detail from installation view FluxusEast,

Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2007. Courtesy Gcdiminas Urbonas and

FIGURE 2.1.

Vilnius,

2005.

Pro-Test lab: America Will Help Us! Action at the Lictuva Cinema,
Courtesy Gediminas Urbonas and Nomeda Urbonas.

invite players to "develop" the city as one of four characters - the corrupt
mayor, a gas tycoon, a local gangster, a vamp. The trick at the end of the
game is that no matter how high a player scores, the Pro-Test Lab destroys
the profits.) Now the mogul's own friends and allies were humiliating him
with enthusiasm for subversive fashion. (Anarchists tried to undercut the
Lab's victory with objections to "collaborating with spectacle.")
The Lab also experimented with a TV talk show to get politicians, architects, human rights activists, and city planners to talk about public space.
One show featured the architect of the cinema's replacement building. Another brought in lawyers for the developers. The show also reported on the
disastrous gentrification of Oslo as a warning to Vilnius. The cumulative
effect was to ground the concept of public space into a concrete demand.
Therefore, frustration escalated when the cinema closed in September 2005
to be immediately sold to Paradise Apartments. Citizens' voices had not
been heard, so Vilma invited everyone to bring out their dogs and make
more noise. Dogs Barking Will Not Disturb the Clouds is a Lithuanian folk
saying about purposeless complaining. On the square in front of the con76

Nomeda Urbonas.

CHAPTP.R TWO

demned building, the dogs created a media success, and also disagreement
with activists who objected to the post-protest message.
Vilma was the Pro-Test Lab's electronic afterlife. One powerful connection that it brokered was an invitation for Gediminas and Nomeda to speak
on the state-owned radio station. This got journalist Rasa Kalinauskaite
firedj she then joined a private TV show and developed her new passion for
heritage. Becoming the Lab's lead spokesperson, Rasa also founded Lithuania's Alternative Heritage Commission to hold government accountable to
the law.
By the end of 2005 Paradise Apartments hired media monitors to track
the artists' activities. And when another heritage expert spoke on national
radio about abuses committed by the developers- collapsed buildings}
1

d d "eVIdence" of
1 legal elimination of a playground- the mom tors proVI e
libel. Fr01n late 2005 to the present, the company has tried to have the artists' accounts arrested and in 2008 it sued the heritage expert for damages.
No lawyer would def~nd her, but an artist stepped in as happened in ACT
uP. Musician Tomas Bakucionis was only a law student then. He had got.
.
p rr1 st Lab petition to the
ten mterested
6
in the law while draftmg a 200 ro- e
PRESS HERf.

1governmen t demanding
responses
to
a
series
of
n1unicipal
abuses
.
na t1ona

.
bl.'IH
-e
and
zoning
A
year
and
a
half
went
by
and,
astoundregard mg pu tc s c
~
. .
.
. .

ingly, the goyernment found four of the seven pet1t10n points legitimate.
1his was a re.ll Yictory. One of the points was to explore the establishment
of a "Public Sp.Ke Comtnittee" in the Ministry of Culture, though municipallawyers lud argued that the term was bogus because property was private by definition.
A series of suits and countersuits forced Gedin1inas and Nomeda to investigate their civil rights. 1hey discovered the International Aarhus Convention, which explicitly guarantees the right of citizens to participate in
decisions about environmental use. 109 This right was a surprise to Lithuania,
though the country had signed the convention, translated fron1 a Inistranslated Russian version. For example, "environment" turned into "nature";
"transparency" became "publicity"; "sustainable" translated as "balanced."
The document had never been cited in Lithuanian courts and the artists'
case depended on approval of their fresh translation, which finally came in
January 2009. The developers retaliated with a civil suit to demand compensation for compounded losses, alleging that the Lab experimented with
public resources, including the very courts that were judging their pranks.
But the artists assured the authorities that they were following the law to
the letter, an innovation in Lithuania that evidently had a defamiliarizing
effect.

other grassroots projects to develop shared

space, such as the Sustainable South Bronx. Bogota, by the way, is among
Majora Carter's inspirations for revitalizing her polluted neighborhood in
Hunts Point, New York. 110 Her project addresses land use, energy, transportation, water, waste, education, and, most recently, design and manufacturing. It "creates opportunities for people to grow vegetables at home,
to get paid to do environmental cleanup, and to work through local government to stop New York from using the neighborhood as a dumping site for
25 percent of the city's waste." 111 The main innovation was to develop rooftop gardening to provide high yields of organic vegetables for urban dwellers and local restaurants. Ex-convicts, gang members, and the elderly have
together managed to reduce exposure to toxins, curb childhood asthma,
and energize the local economy. Newly skilled residents are able to find
THIS CASE CONJURES UP

78

ork elsewherej but they

. don't
. leave the neighborhood Peo p1e stay to become teachers and to mvest 1n the Sustainable South Bronx..tn

It bears a family resemblance to Aula Verde (Green Classroom), an

ecological park and science center for school children in Puerto Rico. Th e

amphitheater's flora, designed to facilitate lessons by practiced guides;

the elegant simplicity of the laboratory building that borders the butterfly farm; and the space for arts and crafts are admirable but not unique.
1he surprise is the staff, all parolees and probationers from an abusive jail
nearby. With help from Marco Abarca, a Costa Rican human rights lawyer
who won a class action suit for the prisoners, they transformed two acres
of mosquito-infested woods into a tropical teaching forest. A side effect
through Abarca's law students is applied research into a range of community concerns, including adolescent pregnancy, breast-feeding, school retention, and prevention of drug abuse. Press on any point and the issues
connect.

Making Sidetracks

A map of intersections will include lines of influence from one artist to

another; but there are more links to plot. Studying c. influence" in art often
centers on one practice at a time to trace lessons and provocations, as in
Shakespeare's influence on Milton1 or how Picasso influenced Gris and was
influenced by African masks. When we observe influence in art} this usually
means a creative appropriation by another artist, an oedipal dynamic that
Harold Bloom described as the "anxiety of influence." 113 But you are invited
to explore acupunctural art and influence beyond the line of master to disciple, to notice the ripples that art n1akes elsewhere. Side effects can turn a
chain of events into a chart of obstacles 1 allies, and countercurrents where
art provokes responses that no one would have anticipated. The effects can
add up to social change, possibly for the good when art connects with accountability.

PRESS HERE
CHAPTER TWO

79

Agent Spotting

Pedro Reyes had an ambitious idea for an art show, but he hesitated. The
idea was to fill Harvard University's Carpenter Center galleries during the
spring of 2006 with projections about the future. And the hesitation came
from thinking about the future, which conjured such bleak visions for the
Mexican artist scenes of violence, scarcity, disease, and death that he
felt stuck between wanting to be honest and hating to spread gloom. Then
something happened to revive his faith in art along with his hope in things
to come. Reyes met two spectacular cultural agents1 "connectionists/' to
use his neologism for masters of hybrid forms that link art with social development. The first was Antanas Mockus, the mayor who thinks like an
artist. The second was Augusto Boal1 the artist who acts in city government.
Discovering them was an invitation to think otherwise about prospects and
about one's own creative contribution to forging a future. It was also a bur-

creators, artists such as Alfredo Jaar, KrzysztofWodiczko, and Tin1 Rollins.

1hcy regularly negotiate "littoral" coproductions with other- perhaps recently recruited- artists to create collective works that generate the byproduct of 111utu.11 .1dn1iration. 1 So after worrying a bit about the alleged
bad aesthetic effects of good social intentions, Reyes got back on an active
track and recognized rnany of the artists he n1ost adn1ires as cultural agents.
The new fran1ing of art allowed hin1 to imagine a witty and productive
future worth projecting at the Carpenter Center. He called the successful

exhibition ad uswn, "to be used." There was an oversize T-shirt hung like a
banner that read: "Turn always to the left, or always to the right, and you go
in circles." A11 enorn1ous top invited visitors to give it a spin that would land

on a quote from this or that philosopher, rehearsing the game of chance

1

and interpretation that Mockus had pioneered. Latin Ainerica may be unstable politically and poor by economic n1easures, Reyes admitted, but it is
incredibly rich in creativity. That richness can pay off in public gains.

v'
, I

It's not that creative arts should be immediately useful or that they lack
intrinsic value. On the contrary, the very autonomy of art allows it to chal-

'

lenge existing arrangements and to exercise freedom. Art triggers fresh perceptions and unclogs procedure in ways that make it a social resource to
reckon with.3 Five years after meeting Mockus, Reyes reflected on his own
recent projects, noticing that they begin either as art and end up as social
intervention, or they flip the other way around. Take, for example, Palas por

pistolas (Guns into Shovels), created in 2oo8. It began with a commission

to create a sculpture for the Botanical Garden of Culiacan, Mexico. Reyes
took the invitation but turned it into a set of collaborations that would
transform weapons of death into tools for life. First, Agustin Cappel, who
commissioned the work, provided vouchers to his chain of appliance stores
in exchange for illegal guns. Through TV spots inspired by soap operas, the
public was moved to surrender 1,527 fire arms. Meanwhile, Reyes brokered
an agreement with the army-the legal depository for illegal guns-to
melt the metal and sell it to a shovel factory. The factory agreed to manufacture 1,527 shovels, destined to plant as many trees. Local youths planted
the first trees in the Botanical Garden, where a statue might nave stood.
The project has traveled to San Francisco, Chicago, and New Yorkj it will
be replicated in twenty Mexican cities.4

~e notoriety of Palas por pistolas put Pedro in the curious position of

serVIng as a dumping site for firearms confiscated by the army. Weapons
turn out to be more difficult to d es t roy th an to produce, so guns and naes
82

CHAPTER THREE

Mexican Army prepares guns cror me 1t down (t P) Troopcr shovel

factory (bottom). Both images courtesy Pedro Reyes.
FIGu

RES 3.1 - 3. 2..

uits if audacity takes pauses for aesthetic 1udgment J d. .

.
'
.
.
u lCtous pauses m
.
h f
the process of making deserve a theoretical aside' espect'ally smce
t e acuity of judgment guides civic projects including the construction of collective artworks such as democracy. 8
re S

Training Taste

Judgment matters for all human activities, and the best way to develop it
is through aesthetics. Immanuel Kant was sure of this when he insisted
that aesthetics was a cornerstone of the philosophical Enlightenment. Science and morality- the true and the good- respond to existing criteria of
reason and decency, to established values, desires, and rulesj but judging
beauty and the sublime have nothing at stake besides judgment itself. It
doesn't make you rich, or saintly, or famous. Aesthetics is the only field of
passionate engagement that unhinges rules and values surprise. It ignores
FIGURE

33 Palas par Pistolas (Guns into Shovels) Exhibit. Courtesy Pedro Reyes.

convention and allows an uncluttered moment for free judgment. No wonder aesthetics developed alongside democracy, which depends on a subjective ability to distance oneself from particular economic, political, or

continue to burden public resources even after they stop shooting. The chal-

religious interests. A political experiment in fairness needed a new branch

lenge of what to do with the dead weight of disabled arms inspired Reyes

of intersubjective philosophy.9

to imagine making something new without incurring the cost of melting

Judgment is an innate faculty that has to be exercised. Obtuse people

down the metal. The result is Imagine ( 2012). With advice from musician

can be erudite, but they cannot judge.10 And obedient subjects of estab-

Edi Kistler, Pedro produced a series of fifty eerily beautiful and hauntingly

lished rules and authority don't bother to exercise because they don't need

musical instruments constructed from identifiable hulks of almost seven

to judge. But free-thinking citizens do need to practice judgment in order

thousand weapons. "Melted, smelted, welded and beaten into submissionj

to consider specific questions. What is the best field for toning the gen-

Reyes and his crew transformed the weapons in just two weeks, realizing

eral faculty? Paradoxically, as I said, it is the apparently purposeless area of

everything from flutes to drums, bass guitar to xylophone in the process." 5

aesthetics. The reason is simple: thinking about particular instances of the

Pedro invests this alchemy with the power of spiritual transformation. ((I

beautiful and the sublime is the one intense human activity that doesn't

wanted to liberate these objects from their demons rather than perpetuat-

matter in any practical, intellectual, or moral way. Frequent workouts do

ing their association to death. When the instruments are played, it is as if

some sort of exorcism is performed on them." 6

no harm because unlike economic, political, academic, or ethical practices,

aesthetic judgment has no goal beyond the exercise itself. "That is beautiful

Acknowledging the agency of art and interpretation released Reyes from

which pleases in the mere act of judging it." 11 To take pleasure in a poem f~r

the familiar double bind of radical thinking about the politics of art-making:

its moral message, or appreciate a play for its politics, or a meal for its nutn-

either expecting too much revolutionary effect or holding out too little

tion, is not an aesthetic response because it begs returns from the poem,

delight and inspires

. h gratuttous
Play, an d meal. Real beauty disarms us Wit

hope for change. Agency enabled him to engage with the existing culturally
constructed world, instead of summarily discarding its value or despairing altogether? Grand gestures now seemed unnecessary_ and irresponsible- while the work of making art in complicated contexts promised real
84

CHAPTER THREE

a selfless feeling of love.

cr
. h b
the laws of nature, and
D tuerent
from scientific reason1 wh1c o eys
f
.

db
l"ty
and desire, judg1
rom practical reason, which is determtne Y mora
ART AND ACCOUNTABILITY

85

ment has no rules or abstract criteria. Difficult to define, (tit is a peculiar

12

talent which can be practiced only and cannot be taught." Stanley Cavell
captures the word with an inspiration from Wittgenstein. Judgment, he
says, is not logic; it is rather a grammar, so that usage in communication, not
rational argument, develops a sense of right or wrongP Familiarity with the
language system, appreciation for its particular uses, contexts, and contin-

tally on objective or at least established axes of truth d

.
n
zo
..
an mora11ty. Aesd
ics is the great leveler. Erudition and social standing .
et
1
t1
.
.
.
g1ve no a vantage
. this courtshtp. Granted, there IS nothmg at stake here e'th
II
10
.
, 1 er mora y or

.
ma terially. But aesthetics prepares the ground for interperso na1persuasiOn
in more contentious fields.
Hannah Arendt reads Kant's Third Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (

)
1790

gencies allow a seasoned speaker to determine acceptable uses. And when

familiarity includes figurative language- the jokes, puns, quibbles, and in-

as a mature response to a long-standing concern to save sociability from

consistencies that make literature a particular language game- judgment

can mean tolerating contradiction and refusing to take sides. Intellectuals

reason and his Second Critique on (moral) practical reason as setting the

narrow rationalism. Arendt frames Kant's First Critique on pure (scientific)

limits of what we can know and understand through general principles,
in order to appreciate what those principles can and cannot do. Principles

exercise judgment even when they mistake the activity for reasonable argument. And they can change their minds -learn a new grammar, Antonio

cannot judge. They follow determined paths. The Third Critique supple-

Gramsci assured us-though the process is slow for risk-averse intellec-

ments the objective track of reason with a necessary subjective pause for

tuals.
Aesthetic disinterest, I should make clear, is far from indifference. In-

judgment and a new line of questions. Withdrawing from reason to judge

the sensible and sentimental world of particulars saves human beings from

difference is a lack of feeling that isolates us from society and from interpersonal obligations. Disinterest, on the contrary, is a condition of free-

the excess of rule-driven behavior. Judgment is the "bridge between the

abstractions of the understanding and the concreteness of life." 1~ It puts

dom that accompanies intense feelings that we can share. A disinterested

((the officious pretension of understanding" in its place with a pause to con-

judgment of beauty excites the feeling of love that lingers on the beautiful

sider the contingencies and the effects of reasonable thinking (Third Cri-

form and that assumes others will feel the same. And though an experience of the sublime begins with confusion or fear, it continues through the

tique prologue, part 4). Judgment checks ((the scandal of reason," which

unpleasantness to achieve a rush of awe that commands our respect. Love

it, reason would reduce thinking to a technical exercise and dismiss feel-

and respect are generous responses that demand nothing in return. Indif-

ings altogether.18 Judgment is therefore a foundation of the Enlightenment,

ference is no response at all.

Judging is a second order pleasure, stimulated first by a visceral experi-

supporting the public exercise of reason that Kant identified as the mature

otherwise leads us astray as surely as tradition and authority do. Without

ence. Was the experience of an object or an event freely felt, with no inter-

practice of thinking for oneself. 19

Kant never wrote a political philosophy, as Arendt jokes about her Lec-

ests attached; or was it predetermined by existing desires or concepts? Did

tures on Kant's Political Philosophy. Maybe he was cautious, as the king's

the form please me rather than the content? Would other people react in
the same uncluttered and disinterested way? The questions are subjective

censors grew increasingly vigilant while France heated up for revolution.

but not self-centered. Unburdened of goals or obligations, they predict the

same answers from everyone. At least they hold out hope for a ((common

major treatise. But maybe too, Arendt speculates, it was unnecessary to be

sense" of intersubjective companionship. This promise of sociability drives

the Third Critique. 14 You cannot take for granted agreement about the beautiful or insist on your conclusion, because there are no rational or ethical
rules that everyone should obey.15 But (Cwe are suitors for agreement from
everyone else, because we are fortified with a ground common to all." 16 1his
lateral move of individuals who court other individuals to establish agreement is a profound innovation. Until then, philosophy had moved hori86

CHAPTER THREE

Perhaps his thinking about politics developed too late in life to write a
dangerously direct, when aesthetics could do the political work of civic development.
. for the En1tgh tenment b ecause it considers
Taste was a favorite toptc

fi
1

1
s
that
preparticularity rather than general laws. Taste de es astmg aV: .
d

th fnvohty taste
JU ge experience.2o Though tarnished by assoctatwns WI
' .
11 h olds out a hope that can again bnghten
.
h
f c interpretatiOn
stt
umams 1
.
h CIVIc
purpose. It is the purpose o f d eve1opmg
u nbiased Judgment..
Wit
B h'
f
1
f'udgment and decil0
e md taste, Kant discovered the general acu ty J
ART AND ACCOUNTABILITY

87

21

scholars, good news for humanists who can explore the contributions of

b
.
111
.
care a out 1t. If we
. . d. .
don't care, the faculty of. JUdgment will fail us. There's no pomt
m Istmpleasure, or right from w
gu ishing free. from contingent
.
.
rong grounds for
d .
eement, 1f we are 1nured to suffenng or afraid of love W'th
gr
a
.
I out e1tght
d surprise, what would stimulate the curiosity that begs q t.
f
n
a
ues tons o aesthe tic value? To repair the corrosive effects of not caring, ar t comes to t he
rescue as the partner of aesthetic judgment. This is Schiller's contribution

aesthetic judgment to public life. Humanists who defend aesthetics but

to Kant's pursu~t of distr~ctions fro~ selfish interests. Unstable and cycli-

shun social responsibility, and those who assert responsibility but dismiss
Aesthet-

cal nature, Schiller explained, doesn t survive our gaze. But art holds its
31
pose as a renewable surprise. Novelty is practically art's definition. When

ics is a significant political player precisely because it sidesteps the politics

nature fails to refresh perception and to quicken the spirit, art can ignite

of vested interests. It accomplishes free thinking, through judgments that

surprise and stimulate judgment. Russian formalists, starting with Viktor

override predetermined conclusions about values and concepts, personal

Shklovsky, join Schiller's company when they credit art with interrupting

gain, party lines, or moral argument.

Consider the variety of arguments for humanistic interpretation that

the feeling-fatigue that follows from mindless repetition. Without art, "life

cated the first major work of philosophy to the connection. In this spirit,
formalist criticism need not dead-end in art for art's sake. It can revive a

(1) cultivates aesthetic disinterest to (2) train a general faculty for free judgment that (3) generates a shared or common sense
Kantian tradition that

as grounding for political accords. The dynamic that connects examined

private pleasures with enhanced public agreement is still news for some

aesthetics as elitist or unfashionable, may want to reconsider.

22

faculty and students at Cornell University offered when they asked, Do

the humanities have to be useful?" in a volume published in 2006. The public demands to know, admits the prologue.23 Eighteen essays respond with

. tlle Hard Drive.") To judge something, you have to

is reckoned as nothing.... Habitualization devours works, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war.... And art exists that one may recover
the sensation oflife." 32 I emphasize the commanding subjunctive construction. Art has a purpose. Shklovsky dismissed the academy's sententious

reasons to recognize the field's usefulness: The humanities raise questions

of meaning and make sense of technical and social changej 24 they appreci-

defense of art for its great ideasj there are very few great ideas and many

ate human agency so precious to third world and minority subjects in the

disarming technique.

great works of art. Content is clearly not the source of artistic power. Art is

face of economic and philosophical determinism.25 Through figurative lan-

For Shklovsky, as for Kant and Schiller, beauty and the sublime have in-

guage they capture contradictions and therefore create ua common under-

direct ethical and therefore practical effects, not through ideas but through

standing out of uncommon sense." 26 They linger on works of art to slow

pleasure. Aesthetic experience rekindles love for a world gone gray from

down a frenetic modern pace that loses touch with human value.27 They

habit. I admit that formalist art education can seem annoyingly outdated

stimulate generosity through open debate and contestation.28 And they

to colleagues who have rejected the constraints of text-based interpreta-

multiply perspectives.29 All these contributions derive from training aes-

tion to venture into the multifarious practices that make up culture, the

thetic taste. It is taste that enables dispassionate distance and allows us to

range of cultures.33 Today, humanistic interpretation necessarily includes

linger, to tolerate irony, and to practice self-authorizing agency.

reflections on performance beyond the archives and museums of tangible

34

art, on intangible ritual and spectacle as they shape our sociallives. The
arts projects that I feature here are all of this non-textual nature. But attention to formal devices remains useful, however much the contents change.

Art to the Rescue

Though Kant found abundant stimuli for aesthetic judgment in nature, his
disciple Friedrich Schiller preferred the deliberate charms of man-made
beauty. In Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man

(1794), Schiller argued

for the universal cultivation of judgment in art-making as basic training to

achieve political freedom, because art is more reliable than naturej it captures and extends the experience of beauty.3o (See chapter 5, Play Drive
88

CHAPTER THREE

The Politics of Aesthetics

"

Alth ough Theodor Adorno dismissed arts

' autonomy' calling it a magtc
sh " h
h h
as effective enough
ow, e admitted in his dour way that t e s ow w
Th.IS
..
35
t0
bl re al cnt1que.
create an illusion of freedom and so to ena e
ART AND ACCOUNTABILITY

89

.
.
a:
mterventwn-enect
adds a 1eve1 of affinity between, .politics and aesthetinterest
m the world. The dif1
.
ics beyond Kant s han ds-o ff "d'sinterested
.
.
.
. as pure contemplatiOn and aesthetics that mference bchVeen aest11et ICS
.
c
eludes mtenerence
goes b ack to a disagreement between Kant and Schiller,
. prepares a ptt ched debate about Nazi politics. (See chapters,. "Play
an d 1t
111
t he Hard Dnve") Kant's disciple, Hannah Arendt, considered
Dnve
the link between politics and art to be contemplative judgment and so she
d 1.d nt worry, as Ber tolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin did, that
. art would. re.
36 For Arendt, aesthetics and politiCs
.t.
.

beautiful
Nazi
state
p lace pol1 tcs m a

.
.

shared a harmless affinity for dispassionate reflectiOn. AesthetiCS was practically a protection against the disruptive power of art. uTaste de-barbarizes
37
the world of the beautiful by not being overwhelmed by it." She was paraphrasing Kant: "Taste, like judgment in general, is the discipline (or training) of geniusi it clips its wings ... . I then, in the conflict of these two
properties in a product something must be sacrificed, it should be rather
on the side of genius." 38 But, she admitted, the Greeks achieved greatness
in both politics and art by muddying the difference and tolerating the contamination of judiciousness with creativity.39 Brecht and Benjamin recognized that explosive tension while the Nazi umagic show" overwhelmed
politics.
The danger was dramatic enough for Arendt to notice the possible vagaries of aesthetic judgment, but she blames artists for the breach of disinterestedness. (Brecht was the worst for his shameful opportunism in
poems to Stalin. ) 40 "Fabricators," she frets, are so fixed on ends that they
employ any means to make art, which is why the Greeks and especially the
Romans excluded artists from public life.41 In antiquity, artists were suspect because they retreated in private to deform materials. The works they
create, however, are public and, like politics, they communicate a common
sense of the world:u
Art implies taking risks and courting danger, but art-avoidance is not an
option. Making art is hardwired and constitutive for human beings. Fol-

lowing Friedrich Schiller and running alongside the pragmatism of John

Dewey, Jacques Ranciere writes that art is indistinguishable from moments of daily life and nevertheless marks moments of freedom unbound
by content or rules. (Ranciere reveres Schiller but doesn't mention Dewey
or Paulo Freire, though Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed [1969] was an
international sensation and bears a close family resemblance to Ranciere's
Ignorant Schoolmaster [1987] and also to his "The Emancipated Spectator"
90

[ 2004 ]43).

(See chapter 4, "Pre-Texts.'') "The aesthetic regime ... simultaneously establishes the autonomy of art and the identity of its forms with
the forms that life uses to shape itself."44 This consciousness of artifice in
the everyday distinguishes the aesthetic regime from the "ethical regime"
of art (which cares more about content than form) and the "poetic or representative regime of art" (which privileges rules of form). It is aesthetics,
he says, that allows us all to take a critical distance from even quotidian
activities.
Ranciere's shorthand for comparing authoritarianism to democracy
is the distinction between exclusive and inclusive experiences of art. The
distinction, as noted in chapter 1, "From the Top/' is often formal: singleminded masterpieces versus negotiated "littoral" coproductions.4s In one
approach reverence for genius sustains the worki in the other collective
admiration among citizen-artists drives it forward. A criterion of good government, "The Distribution of the Sensible" gives the explanatory subtitle
to Ranciere's The Politics of Aesthetics (2004).46 His point is that democracy
needs across-the-board participation in the artful, intentional, human activities that aesthetic judgment considers. Unless it spreads like muckto remember Francis Bacon's quip about money-art makes trouble by
concentrating innovation in a few powerful hands while the masses repeat
mindless operations.47 The advice means to correct a crippling elitism inherited from Plato's Republic, where a hierarchy of work keeps artisans too
busy to participate in politics, and keeps ungovernable artists entirely out.48

Show and Tell

Today humanistic interpretation is free to choose objects and approaches

for interpretation. Social scientists may feel that their choices are determined by urgent issues. And historians feel constrained because, as
Paul Veyne jokes, compared to novelists who also find, select, and p~tc~
together spotty information, historians should tell the truth whether It IS
interesting or not.49 But humanists have no fixed curriculum or research
. a few surviving great boo ks programs. Making choices is
agen da outside
. . mterpretatwn,
.
.
Par t o f h umamsttc
an d we are accoun table for them. Teachers ch oose objects and methods that they constder. worthy of student at
tent10n,
whatever the reigning taste may be. rrJ.O ta keresponsibility for the
h

ts
would
do
well
to
.
.
1
se ect10n and for the effects of interpretatiOn, umams
add re f1 ex1ve
. questions to research agendas and 1esson plans: What, for ex-

CHAPTER THREE
ART AND ACCOUNTABILITY

91

remaining options actually prepares maximum returns. The best way to

understand this counterintuitive advice, Jon Elster says, is to notice how

ct they generated. The purpose was protest but I h d

e11e
'
a a sense con'
fi rmed later on reading Jacques Ranciere and Thomas Pave,1 that t h e result. g courses and books produced more paralyzing pessimis th
..
tn
.
.
m an po1thcal
nge. Protest as the beg1nmng and end of politics was itself
ha
c
a symptom of
simism.ss Helpless to explore alternative practices intelle t
es
p
'
c ua1s seemed
stuck between outrage and resignation. Was this an unintended and perverse complicity with the problems?

artists negotiate between freedom and constraint.50 Despite all the restric-

I veered away and focused on smaller matters, invoking Mikhail Bakhtin

tions of time, money, connections, experience, and so forth, art-making

on the power.of style. to stimulate social change.56 Instead of documenting

begins with a sense of self-authorizing subjectivity that adds new limita-

and denouncing the 1ntolerance for foreigners and foreign languages that

tions to existing ones. There is freedom in choosing a long shot, a close-up,

characterized the cultural studies of immigration, I decided to acknowl-

a profile, a particular adjective or verb in one language or another, harmony

edge the intolerance and to draw countervailing attention to the advan-

or dissonance, a monologue or a chorusj artists know that judgment forces

tages of foreignness for both newcomers and natives.57 That is, I turned up

choice. The constraint of having to choose is a condition of creativity, not

the interpretive volume on bilingual writers and speakers who play games

its nemesis. Think of a good sonnet inside the prison-house of predeter-

with master codes. The objective was to share an appreciation for the lin-

mined numbers and order of lines, syllables, and rhymesj or consider the

guistic sophistication of even poor immigrants. So I taught a course and

deaf and mute condition of fine silent filmsj or a series of jazz riffs that

wrote a book called Bilingual Aesthetics.58 My preference for emphasizing

stay tethered to one melody. Creative subjects respond to limitation with

the compensations for the difficulty of living in two or more languages

self-limitation, to enhance the effect of freedom. Artists know that their

meant to acknowledge the aesthetic value of alienation, to take seriously

own competing values and desires as well as unstable environments make

the formalist defense of strangeness as art's signature effect.

ample, are the desired effects and objectives of teaching? Which criteria
help us to select materials and approaches? How does interpretation affect
the world?
All people make choices. Paradoxically, rational choice adds self-imposed
limitations to the "hard" constraints outside of one's control. Limiting your

t:r

choices subject to change. For related reasons, they have become poster

The project honors the pleasures and self-respect that code-switchers

children for a "creative economy" that promises to develop struggling inner

earn by dint of their virtuosity, despite embarrassing and even costly mis-

cities into civic centers.51 Artists are realistic about limitations but also am-

takes. Mistakes can also brighten speech with a sun-risa59 or give the plea-

bitious about the effects of their choices. (Behavioral economics adds a

sure of a found poem. Always, they mark communication with a cut or a tear

twist to this paradox of freedom through constraint by observing a sur-

that produces an aesthetic effect and that demonstrates the contingency of

prising level of reciprocity and confidence between strangers, despite their

meaning explored in language philosophy. The risk and thrill of speaking or

immediate self-interest.52 Adam Smith was a pioneer here. He wrote The

writing anything can sting, every time language fails us. And knowing how

Theory of Moral Sentiments [1759] to warn eager accumulators that narrow

language can fail makes success feel like a small miracle. In other words,

interests would undo themj human beings are social animals dependent on

bilingual aesthetics casts precarious minority subjects as self-authorizing

their fellows. Arendt added that inter-est itself is transactionalj it depends

and original agents, sturdy enough to know how ironically disadvantaged

on humanistic training to imagine other people's perspectives.S3 )

the monolingual condition can be.60 As a case of cultural agency, bilingual

I'll mention a personal choice for research and teaching that made accountability a self-constraint. Mine is a convenient case because I can trace

it, though there are many others about whose origins I can only speculate.54
Several years ago I might well have chosen among topics then popular in
Latin American cultural studies: violence, necrophilia, sexism, racism, consumerism, corruption, neoliberalism, human rights abuse, xenophobia. The
issues were and remain urgent, but I wondered what academic or social
92

CHAPTER THREE

aesthetics is an invitation to notice "felicitous" engagements alongside frustra t.mg penormances.

c
1 eges the surprise of.inAnd since the approac h pnVI

th e attent'on
of humamsts
ge nious
1
response to constraints, it can sustam
trained to value the uncommon udefamiliarizing" effects of art.
t age nts can
ASl'de from the endgame of denunciation, h umams
. play the

h . a t The goalts to recoggambIt o f Interpreting

creative moves and t e1r euec s.
nize and further develop "thick" resourceful subjectivity. Democracy depends
ART A No A

CCOUNTABILITY

93

on resourcefulness to wrest rights and opportunities from limited assets. This

is one reflection that engaged, or civic, humanities can generate: for artists
there may be a change of heart if they had worried (as Reyes had) that aesthetic value decreases when civic responsibility interferesi and for academics,
interpretation may get a bit more slack when it moves toward social commitments.6 Colleagues at over a dozen U.S. universities are now promoting a
more public reach for the humanities. And a nationwide network called '1\n.imating Democracy" has since 1999 promoted "civic engagement through arts
and culture.''62 The efforts include asking how to define "the public" and how
academic work can gain rather than lose intellectual ground when it pursues
public purpose.63 The research rekindles a millennia! tradition.

The Long View

Culture is a Roman concept deriving from colere, to tame and to cultivate

nature, to care for the gods and also the objects that give the past a presence. Unlike Greece, which sought immortality through praiseworthy arts
and politics, Rome venerated the past. Its precious memory located current challenges in the context of glories and objects nourished in deep soil
and harvested from history. Agriculture was highly respected in Rome as a
productive service to nature.64 The work didn't violate the world but rather
enhanced it. (Greece, on the contrary, considered farming to be antagonistic to nature.) For Romans, every human activity was a kind of agriculture, including art and spiritual growth, so that a "cultivated mind" meant
the human development of natural capacities. The mind's highest expression was the vita activa, dedicated to the free contemplation and judgment
of existing events and objects, rather than to making new things. This is
Hannah Arendt's cautionary distillation of Rome's world view: an organic
continuity that inspired reverence for the past as a context for the present.65
Humanism, like culture, is of Roman origin and refers to an educational
curriculum that trains students to cultivate freedom from any force, even
the force of truth: "In what concerns my association with men and things,"
Cicero said, "I refuse to be coerced even by the truth, even by beauty." 66
To the ancient saying, "I love Socrates, I love Plato, but hold truth in higher
esteem," Cicero countered: "I would rather be in error with Plato." 67 The
choice is a question of judgment in which the difference between right and
wrong does not depend on reason, but on freedom from both physical and
moral necessity. Scientists and most philosophers will hardly agree with
94

CHAPTER THREE

cero about the wisdom of subordinating truth t t

C1
.
o aste, but the 1
tive "apolitical and Inhuman principle" that dema d t h
a terna
.
n s rut at whatever
. terpersonal cost was foreign to Roman republican lt
h
tn
.
.
cu ure w ere human
freedom (restncted as It was) trumped other values And f
.

reedom, like
verything else worth preserv1ng, required the cultivat
f .. .
e
.
.
ton o Ctvtc vtrtue.
Cicero for example, pnded himself on having been a pol't ll cr .
'
..
t tea y eaectJve
rator in the Roman tradthon that combined wisdom a d 1
O
.
.
n e oquence for
the public good.
Tius nurtunng of
.
.
. freedom through art and ph'lt osophy m
ublic semce became a foundatwn of the humanist curriculurn.6s
P
Nevertheless, the foundation has been repeatedly contested in debates
between defenders of politically purposeful education and champions of
contemplation. How did aesthetic freedom disconnect from political freedom, if their origins depended on one another? The long view will get
lamentably short shrift here, given the many centuries and complexities
that make up the history of the humanities.69 1he "accumulated confusion
of purposes" could give every defender and detractor a legitimate point?o
By offering a quick review of both vigorous and vacuous moments for civic
education, I want to underline the element of choice, of judgment, regarding the propriety of civics for the humanities today.
Even during Europe's early Middle Ages, while humanism was generally
discredited as a vestige of pagan cults and then almost forgotten in the monasteries, Saint Augustine forged a compelling connection between a classic
care for the self and a Christian dedication to spiritual salvation. Monastic
contemplation of God came dose to the character formation later called
humanistic education. By the late twelfth century, when humanism made a
comeback through classical texts used as exempla of doctrine, rather than
as studies in style, cathedral schools offered an alternative to contemplation. The schools trained youth for the priesthood by adapting Peter Abelard's rationalist method of preparing professionals in everything from law
to medicine. His popularity attracted students to Paris where the demand
for teachers grew. Teachers formed a commercial guild- the universitasthat made knowledge and sold it to students through a chain of solve~t
professionals. Modern universities inherit these cross-purposes: monastic
eharacter formation that contemplates a goo d outsl'de one self' and com.
.
h " nd econorruc
merctally self-interested skill building. And thoug CIViC a
71
values are not commensurable" they depend on one another.
.
.
d
Meanwhile, vernacular languages were stretc hmg an shaping up as hte
.
.. .
1key thanks to late
rary medta ready for Renaissance wntmg m a persona
'
ART A No A

CCOUNTABILITY

95

medieval extracurricular affairs that inspired love, lays, lyrics, and epic adventure.n Also, a renewed passion for civic secular philosophy moved, for
example, King Alfonso the Wise to establish his Toledo translation workshop where the classics came alive in colloquial "romance/' because Muslim and Jewish translators shunned Latin, the Church language.73
Fourteenth-century poet Francesco Petrarch would learn from Augustine that the only proper study for human beings was the study of one-

.mind with pointless accounts of disaster and m 1 . "If

h
t e
a tee.
you have
re to tell us than that one barbarian succeeded anoth b b .
no
mo
er ar anan on the
banks of the Oxus or the Iaxartes, what use are you to the public?"so
f
p
Mean. t
d
h
.
ile at some IS ance rom ans1an rationalism but cl
b
w ' .
.
.
,
. '
ose to t e classics,
.t
Glarnbattlsta V1co was recovermg Italy s trad 1tion ofhuma ms
oratory with
81
vic purpose. Voltaire and Vico could hardly be more d"tr
.
c1
.
. .
Iuerent m their
ositions on Intellectual actiVIty. They distill the general d b t
f
.
P
e a es o their
time by defending rival interpretations of the humanities. For Voltaire the

selfi in the saint's case for the sake of Christian piety, and in the poet's for
humanist autonomy from contingencies. This inner focus, along with the

arts and philosophy depended on a kind of scientific reason to achiev~ the

recovery of documents from antiquity, developed into the Renaissance rev-

unitary and cumulative knowledge that included both natural and moral

erence for the dignity of man and also supported teachers of increasingly

sciences. For Vico, scientific progress was undeniable but independent

avid disciples. The highest studies for Renaissance humanists were the cre-

of any cultural progression, which was irregular at best. His new intuitive

ative works of human ingenuity, not the Scholastic rationalism that still
dominated universities. Revisiting the classics-including the New Testa-

science of history did not pursue knowledge but rather understanding of

man's general nature through his particular and contingent works.s2 Never-

ment in original Greek, which would lead to Reformist interpretations -

theless, their polemic stopped at the purpose of interpretation. Both think-

showed a bent toward Aristotle's practical wisdom over Plato's idealism so

ers argued their opposing cases in defense of humanism's civic usefulness.

that persuasion once again overrode logical syllogism74 The Renaissance

This was also Wilhelm von Humboldt's argument when he established

cultivated taste to revive moral philosophy for its application in the real
world75 A century later, Niccolo Machiavelli embodied that practical bent

the humanities as the core curriculum for Europe's first truly modern university in 1810.83 By then, Kant's concept of human "subjectivity" seemed

along with the literary flair that Petrarch promoted as politically efficacious.

naturally identified with judicious citizenship.84 Kant had convinced en-

Machiavelli offered unsentimental lessons to leaders who needed to navigate moral and political maelstroms. To admire him as a "civic humanist"

lightened educators to include a gymnasium for aesthetic training to develop judgment for citizenship.85 The charge of Humboldt's innovative

is redundant for this Renaissance man, because one term already implies

University of Berlin was to prepare active young citizens for a continent

the other76

on the cusp of republican reform or revolution. Almost simultaneously,

If the civic dimension of humanistic interpretation wilted for a while in

Thomas Jefferson's persistent efforts to establish the first public univer-

Italy, where "unbridled subjectivity" had brought it to "deep and general

sity in the United States, the University of Virginia, survived prolonged

disgrace" in Jacob Burckhardt's nineteenth-century view/7 newer outposts

objections to costs and secularization.86 As in Berlin, the liberal arts were

developed at the turn of the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries with English

the core curriculum for Virginia, stressing personal and civic virtue and

Thomas More and Dutch Erasmus, followed by Spanish Baltasar Gra-

dedicated to forming elite and middle-class leaders. Jefferson was a living

cian. Then public purpose fully flowered again in the eighteenth century
when private interests sustained public projects78 Although the Enlight-

model of humanist harmony among art, science, and statesmanship, while

Humboldt's talents were specifically scholarly and administrative. But

enment inherited brilliant scientific advances by Rene Descartes and his

Humboldt was smart enough to surround himself with brilliant artists, in-

contemporary Francis Bacon, who felt irritated by unquantifiable human-

cluding Goethe and Schiller, and to persuade the Prussian authorities that

ism, Voltaire- the eighteenth century's best propagandist- reinterpreted

creativity and critique were two sides of the same high-yielding coinP

scientific rationality as the "good sense/' or taste, of classic wisdom. Taste

The very success of the modern university derailed humanistic interpret aflon mto

n of enlightshortcuts for cultivating social status. In an mversw

became the appropriate register for reason in the nonmathematical human

affairs of public and private life79 Voltaire thereby reconnected humanist
activities with civic culture, objecting to narrow scholarship that clutters
96

CHAPTER THREE

ened aest h ettcs,

.
. the 'arts came to serve
appreciating disintereste d ness m
.
bo
.
.
t d faux-aristocratic
urgeots mterests. Taste was cultivated to acqmre ar an
ART AN 0 ACCOUNTABILITY

97

refinement, not to arouse feelings of interpersonal freedotn. Aggressively

arriYiste students of the humanities \\Tould demonstrate their social worth
by confounding disinterest with indifference through aesthetic contemplation. Indifference extended to the inter-est of public agreen1ent.88 For
their ambitions, the new rich cultivated "good taste'' and earned the slur of
Philistines in nineteenth-century German universities. The term had first
applied to calculating pragmatists who had no use for art, and then it exposed the next generation of calculators who used art as a catapult to elevated social status. 89

Useful Uselessness

\Vas it this self-interested appropriation of aesthetics that gave usefulness a

bad name? Is it fair but sad to say that public education paradoxically dismissed the public good? Certainly the avant-garde of the early twentieth
century suspected as much, when artists from dynamic middle strata defected and threw utility out with the bathwater of collectible art. ''All art
is useless," Oscar \Vilde confirmed.90 If literary criticism had developed a
strong ethical mission-from Matthew Arnold's mid-nineteenth-century
definition of poetry as vital criticism to F. R. Leavis's and Lionel Trilling's lesson that great novels show great seriousness of purpose- artists
rankled and refused to relinquish society's last outpost of freedom. 91 Once
Dada took up the fight against usefulness during World War I, asserting
that nothing was worth saving because all art was child's play, Western art
began to doubt the special qualities that distinguished it from other human
ephemera. Beh"een one world war and the other, Italian Futurists drew
attention to violent events as the only phenomena worthy of the disruptive
name of arti and French Surrealists denied that art was distinct from life
by dreaming away the difference. But along these and other escape routes
from bourgeois good taste, artists had a clear sense that they were intervening in public life, if only to interrupt the craze for getting and spending.
Before many artists themselves succumbed to producing for rich collectors, art had promised to derail the power plays that brought midtwentieth-century Europe to catastrophe. And some political leaders were
willing to risk alliances with artists either to stop the trouble or to make
more. Together, they had already made some magic in Mexico, where Minister of Education Jose Vasconcelos enlisted artists and educators to create
national coherence after the revolutions had torn the country to pieces.1he
98

CHAPTER T H Rf: F.

, USSR opted to control the artistic effervesce

h
ne~
.
nee t at had fueled the
,olution but reconstructed MeXJco channeled t .
' ,
..
ar m ways that hel e
re\
.
Pd
. spire FDRs ambitious cultural programs to qu ll
10
.
e commumst unrest
Alone during the same 1ntenvar years, writing from an It 1. c .
.

.
.
.
.
a Ian rasCist pnson,
Antonto GramsCl was defending humamsm against th c d c
.
e Ia IOr technical
a profound revolution needs the imag t.
training ' because
.
. .
ma 1on and the interpretive skill to reframe eXIsttng structures.n
Meanwhile, however, Germany was constructing collab t.
h
ora IOns t at re.
kindled classic fears about artists. ''After Auschwitz", Ado rno comp amed
1
art had lost the glow that Arnold called sweetness and light.93 Was this th~
moment of disconnection between art and civic education? In the United
States of the 1940s and 'sos, New Criticism in literature was abandoning
ethics for the sanctuary of formalism. 94 NeYertheless, a countervailing
postwar movement that Geoffrey Harpham tracks rededicated humanistic education in the beleaguered United States as the humanities. Triumphant against fascism and defensive about communism, the humanities
cultivated a long tradition to foster free thought and critique.9.>
Or maybe it was in the heady 196os, as Sartre's Marxist humanism inspired revolutionary commitments, which gave social engagement a bad
name.96 During a "turbulent decade," ci\11 rights, student rebellions, draft
resistance, feminism, and anticolonialism, including Cuban campaigns
in Latin America, all became foci for humanist reformers.9- Later, many
teachers would become disenchanted with revolutionary purpose and also
notice that their students were cautious and conservative. But during the
sixties when all manner of social change seemed not only possible but immanent, left-wing humanists developed a confidence in progress that felt
like scientific predictability, while science itself ,\as becoming more ten ta. 98
h .
t tve.
The changes go together. After relati\ity and quantum mec ames
shook the public's belief that science would soon resohe its few remaining
questions, "certitude was gone" from the natural world, and culture became
a compensatory anchor against the anx.iety of cosmic instabilitY. By th~
end of the decade and throughout the following generation, ''scienti.sm
had cornered the New Critical formalism into discrediting e~:pectatwns
of change. Nevertheless a strong countercurrent did demand change, on
.
'
h led
particular fronts. Ethnic and gender campaigns were effects t at np.~ .
out f

.
li 015
t .Marxism. 111rom disappointments with color-blmd, mascu
metic
".
t. h h nanist canon cared
tnqu1ry Into racist or sexist elements o t e UI
d
less ab
r
. 1 d
tent and propose
' out torn1 than about previously margma 1ze con
99

ART :\;\' D .-\ CCOV:\T A Bl UTY

99

alternative readings to feature underrepresented subjects. But the simultaneous "theory revolution" would again shift attention from content to
form. 100
Structuralism and post-structuralism engaged linguistics to argue that
social progress had been impossible because human beings are not free but
determined by self-perpetuating linguistic systems. Each in his own way,
the "speculative structuralists" (Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, and
then La can too) pioneered an influential antihumanism that was "bursting
with elegant despair." 101 It bred a "form of morose but pleasurable political
resignation." 10 2 Subjectivity practically vanished, along with intentionality,
so that even Marxism hardened into a penchant for critique rather than for
evolution. 103 This profound skepticism about meaning was one response to
the fizzled effervescence of failed Marxist programs for universal liberation.
It ran parallel to the dismissal of beauty in art-making. Now it is neuroscience, too simply understood as deterministic, that seems to promise
scientific answers to questions about human taste and choice, dissuading
humanists from thinking beyond inherited patterns.104 This doesn't deny
the burst of identity politics since the I96os that rescued subjectivity and
agency for particular groups (women, LGBT, ethnic minorities, postcolonial nations). But the humanities as a field doesn't yet register the moral
and civic ground lost when we gave up a shared focus on the effects of style
and taste.
Humanistic inquiry has a habit of closing in on itself. Remember that
after Petrarch and other civic-minded pioneers, Renaissance humanism
"degenerated" into philology, antiquarianism, or self-centered subjectivity.105 And following the revived enthusiasm for the classics among Enlightened educators, Greek and Latin literature turned at times into dry
subjects that tried students' patience.106 Today the humanities seem finally
free of considerations beyond art for art's sake. The post-World War II generation of academics looked away from the Holocaust, keeping company
with artists who favored abstract form over the engagement of art with historical context.107 This cultural amnesia is complicit with privilege, Jacques
Ranciere says, because it makes academic capital of despairj it recoils from
the responsibility to effect change and instead confirms hopelessness as
an intellectual platform. Art interpretation became purposeless, except for
the obsolescent purpose of getting an academic job.108 This is a difficult
freedom to defend before budget committees. tiThe last professor/' Stanley
109
Fish, bids the whole purposeless enterprise an unsentimental good-bye.
100

CHAPTER THREE

J-le speaks for less testy colleagues who basically

h
agree t at humanism
uld part company from usefulness.uo Fish knows th h
h
s o
.
. .
.
.
at t e field began
'th a ciVIC missiOn but says things are different now Ill H
.
WJ

umamsm cannot
d should not "save us .... To the question 'ofwhat use
h h
..
an
.
are t e umanitles ?'
answer IS none whatsoever. And it is an
h
.
th e only honest
.
.
"112
.
answert atbnngs
honor to 1ts subJect.
What IS the result? We lose interp
f
..
ersona1 reedom,
the basis for agreement among dismterested sub1ects Another 1oss t hat follows from the first is general respect and support for the hu mamt1es. If art
and interpretation amount to the same personal liberty, why support both?
And if they produce only personal pleasure, why support either? Addressing humanism's usefulness recovers commitments to civic education and
distinguishes between two levels of feeling free: the artistic freedom that
the public perceives with disinterested pleasure; and the political freedom
that art can renew or refresh by developing our judgment.113 In France,
where "theory" with no particular object had been hegemonic since the
I96os and had dictated intellectual trends abroad, fatigue with antihumanism has brought younger philosophers to "a renewed sense of moral and
political responsibility." 114
At the same time in Europe and the Americas artists have been working
with apparently no other purpose but to create human connections. "Relational aesthetics" is the name that Nicolas Bourriaud coined for this interactive art. 115 Exemplary for Bourriaud is Rirkrit Tiravanija1 an Argentineborn artist of a Thai family who gained notoriety for installations that last
no longer than a conversation over dinner. Invited to present at a gallery or
museum, Rirkrit would clear out a storeroom, turn it into a camp kitchen,
and cook pad thai for the visitors to dine and socialize in a space dedicated
to art.116 Nothing was left once the dishes were cleared, except for the aftereffects of real-time relations.117 An objection to Bourriaud's self-promotion
is not that he's wrong but that he merely repackaged a standard concept as
old as Dada and the Situationists. Of course art's ambition is to set sociability in motion.
Do literary critics similarly assume that language arts make comm~nty~ I f
'
nority \ffit1 n act, the issue hardly comes up, unless the 1ocus
IS rru
ing and the frame is Deleuze and Guattari's reflections on Kafka and other
ethnlca
11Y marked authors.U8 Perhaps more poets, P1aywnghts' and narra.
to th
b
th visual artists.
rs an we have noticed share the relational am ItiOn WI
Som
. thrive on moments
etimes we teachers forget to mention that wnters
of t 1.
b
that poets often
e:x: ra 1terary contact, even when we remem er to say
ART A No A

CCOUNTABILITY

101

perform to broad publics before they publish, or that they participate in

political rallies.
Today, students arc again joining a public outside the classroom. Therecent rush of Occupy movements rippling out from Wall Street to dozens
of campuses and city centers shows that social solidarity is once more on
student agendas. The revival had already been felt in service-learning programs and outreach activities. In the best cases, engagement combines with
public scholarship to identify underrepresented creative partners who test,
stretch, and refine what we learn and teach.U 9 From high school on, students now seek opportunities to do public service. Sometimes the incentive
is self-interest- it is true- because college admissions officers and prospective employers may prefer candidates who seem selfless. But the preference is itself a sign of social change and a wager that the best candidates
will become engaged. Many young people- neither as rebellious as in the
1960s nor as complacent as in the 198os- acquire a taste for the service that
they perform. They find pleasure in producing pleasure for others, turning
initial self-interest into a self-sustaining virtuous circle between outreach
and inroads.

To See Unseen

A paradox of humanist interpretation is the practically positivist pose it

can still strike before a work of art, as if observation could avoid interference. Any good literary or cultural critic can decry this lack of reflexivity in
another discipline, say, anthropology. But humanistic criticism doesn't look
back as it moves from observation to commentary. Humanists do indeed
ask about the effects of teaching and scholarship on the poem or painting they study, a fundamental concern of reader-response criticism/20 but
hardly ever about the ripples interpretation sets o~ unless they engage in
cultural studies.
Then the answers have been characteristically critical of others and pessimistic. Artists, scholars, and policy makers who try to intervene in social dynamics seem to do more damage than good, because culture is not
expedient. 121 On this view, interventions fold back on problems to aggravate them. 122 Although some scholars show that creative practices such as
123
micro-broadcasting or traditional arts and crafts are agents of change,
the field has more often dismissed agency as a self-defeating illusion in
capitalist society. I confess to less systematic thinking and to admiration
102

CHAPTER THREE

, small initiatives and their aftereffects.'24 Refo .

lor
rmism may seem u d.1
fied to some scholars, but I remember Rigoberta M h,
n gOI
"
.
enc us taunt to a
.
cademics: I adm1re your research and scholarship Understandmg
problem5
is very important. But then what do you do? We poor e
. "12s
P oplc need to develop soIutwns.
Since the question of interpretation's social effect h dl
ar Ycomes up it's
worth asking, to take a lesson from Pierre Macherey H 1.d .fi .
.
e entl ed stlence
as the indicator of assumptwns so basic that they go WJ.th
.
,
.
. .
out saymg_126 Insiders don t nottce that something 1s missing but outs"d d Th.
'
1 crs o.
mk of
F .
literature students today. Do they ask you1 as mine do wh J
I
Y ames CI1Jmore Cooper's gallant .soldier preferred bland Alice over enc han t.mg Cora
in The Last of the Mohtcans, or what the big deal is if Samuel Rkhardon's
Pamela loses her virginity, or how come the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega reports Old Testament rituals in ancient Peru? The archaeologically reconstructed answers are the clearest indices of ideology, says Macherey. Can
we reconstruct the silenced assumptions in humanism today and ask, what
happened to civics?
One effect would be to defamiliarize our perspective on what we do as
humanists. The silence has amounted to assuming with Stanley Fish that
we do not, should not, and probably cannot do much. Instead we ask of an
artwork or a cultural process: What rhetorical devices make a poem worth
rereading? Or, how do novels make mischief with more properly called literarygenres? 'W here do brushstrokes call attention to the process of painting? Are there real differences between popular practices and professional
art? Or, when silent movies ceded to sound, which transnational charms
got lost in translation and which were found in new layers of language arts?
The range of existing research agendas, and their often fascinating results,
stays relatively .fixed on an object or practice in order to render observations that have more or less descriptive power, are more or less right or
wrong, true or false.
J. L. Austin called this use of language "constative," practically the only
use that philosophy had recognized. By naming performatives (e.g., a
promise, a vow, a curse, or a blessing), Austin moved language philosophy
beyond description toward recognizing interventions. He admitted that
the distinction between description and agency would blur, because constat"
.
h
d the theoretical
tve nammg has a performative effect, but e propose
difference to keep both functions in focus.I27 Words do work in the world,
wh ether we mtend
.
Th h 11 ge is to take that
it, approve of it, or not. e c a en
ART A ND A

CCOUNTABILITY

103

work into account. It can generate shifts in grammar} not only developments of vocabulary. Add hip-hop to musicology} spoken word poetry to
belles lettres1 graffiti to art history1 and scholarship can break out of a lexical ivory tower but stay inside an unexamined presumable indicative grammar. A generation ago1 anthropologists noticed the intersections between
cultural products and the effects of interpretation; the result was to locate
a blurry area where self-ethnographies develop along with collaborations
between social scientist and subject.128 Even earlier} natural science had
to consider how observations interfere with objectS.129 Interpreters of art
seem strangely stiff alongside these reflexive neighbors.
I am insisting a bit1 but the pressing issue of humanism's effects has
seemed doubly irrelevant: either the effects are negligible and should remain so1 or they are too patent and personal to argue. An outstanding
option is to observe that the effects are underexamined1 though democratic life depends on the dynamic between art-making and humanistic
interpretation. This is no exaggeration. A disposition toward creativity and
critique resists authoritarian single-mindedness; it acknowledges different points of view and multiple ways to arrange available material. Constitutional democracies are themselves collective works of art accountable
for their constructions.l3 And constitutions remain open to performative
interventions1 obliging citizens to cultivate their creativity and criticism. It
is time to ask what humanism does1 especially now that many others are
asking the question in order to justify budget cuts that threaten the foundations of free society.

Comm on Sense

Policy makers1 foundations1 social scientists1 and other fellow citizens

train a polite gaze on the humanities while they decrease support. Don't
humanists deserve support1 almost by birthright1 as guardians of artistic
and spiritual values? Yet education in arts and interpretation feels the pinch
of purse strings drawing closed. This book considers the predicament and
possible responses1 because simply lodging complaints against ungenerous
((corporate-style" university leadership is rather limited and unworthy of
humanists who can muster more creativity.131
We can refresh a long humanist tradition that puts arts and interpretation at the center of education by joining Pedro Reyes in agent spotting. He has become a guide and a guru. After the international success
104

CHAPTER THREE

las por pistolas1 and before its musical sequel 1 .

of .ra
. . .
. .
m magme} Reyes had
n

ted another Winmng 1dea. This hme he was not a st

.
crea
.
ar artist or even the
tect of collaboratwns but rather a curator and c .1.
h
arc 1
.
,
.
tact 1tator who exer. es good Judgment on other peoples bnght ideas. At/ d .
.
cts
.
.
as e mtervenctones
ected socially productive proJects throughout Mexico cty d
ll
co
1 an offered
in the pedagogy of .
.
the municipal government a program
.
.
mnovatton. The
Atlas is a br~c~ure of poster.-siz~ bi~old pages to be distributed through.
out the cap1tal s schools as Insp1ratwns for creative quott'dtan practices.

Each large foli~ re~resents a short description of an admirable project_

teaching yoga m pnsons1 for example1 or designing contemporary fashion
with the handiw~r~ of decently paid indig~nous artisans1 or saving money
and harmful em1sswns from gas tanks. Vtsually arresting1 each folio features drawings that trace the project's dynamic from one stage to another}
as well as a ((recipe" of abstracted principles that help to translate the practice into a range of unforeseen variations. The ideal reader-response is to
start cooking.
This curatorial role generates the exercise of judgment and a "common
sense" of art as everyday intervention in social challenges. Common sense1
as Kant re-signified the popular term for unexamined commonplaces1
means shared intersubjective appreciation. The Atlas shows that art is common sense as it guides us toward existing interventions and toward their
corollaries1 which amount to a call to action. Thanks to the Atlas the role
of cultural agent achieves a quality of the common and shared capacity
to make productive change1 whether or not one is exceptionally talented
in art-making. Just to mention one response to Pedro's display of common creativity I should refer to a change of heart about what counts for
distinguished contributions at CONACULTA1 Mexico's Ministry of Culture. The ministry's mission to promote international acknowledgement
of the country's cultural values expanded beyond counting on a circuit of
famous lecturers to include Atlas-type innovators. With Pedro's curatorial
inspiration} coN AC ULTA now grants an annual prize in collaborati~n ~th
Harvard's Cultural Agents Initiative for the best artistic intervent~o~ m. a
particularly difficult city. So far the winners have included 656 Comtcs m
. 0
134 My per. d d
Cm
2
33
a JuarezP Torolab in Tijuana/ and Osimmpe m axaca.
sonal response to this opportunityj obligation includes courses I teach} but
also a b old er move inspired by cultural agents. BY 20111 Pedro and I were
.
co-f
1 an arts-literacy program calle d p re-J.ex
rr ts for Mexico Ctty
. act1tatmg
mtddle school teachers.Bs
ART A No A

CCOUNTABILITY

105

FouR. Pre-Texts

The Arts Interpret

Literature is recycled material, a pretext for making more art. I learned this
distillation of lots of literary criticism in workshops with children. I also
learned that creative and critical thinking are practically the same faculty
since both take a distance from found material and turn it into stuff for interpretation. For a teacher of literature over a long lifetime, these are embarrassingly basic lessons to be learning so late, but I report them here for
anyone who wants to save time and stress.
My trainer was twenty-two-year-old Milagros Saldarriaga, cofounder
saint of Andean migrants in Lima, Peru. Sarita Cartonera was the first
1
cardboard publisher to replicate Eloisa Cartonera of Buenos Aires. As far

to make beautiful and affordable books if the books were not in demand.

. ersities. Before the crash,

. a small
unJV
. . he was also a publisher of poe t ry m
operation that faced extinction aft~r the price of materials skyrocketed.
olution was to recycle. At the1r storefront retreat from busmess
.
1e S
as
11
usual1 the two artists began to buy cardboard from practically destitute
paper pickers at almost ten times the price paid in recycling centers. Soon
the cartoneros themselves came to the workshop to design and decorate

Carton era
FIGURE 41

'

ckwtse from
( c)o

books
, f{utsemba
b
)
bottom }
- L3 Casa workshop
Cartao,
~rtmouth College,
,lt D..
f{utsem ba
Q!ntt Qartuntra, .
Cartao, and Animtta
Cartonera. Photograph by
Christine R. ChoJ.

...

--

.,, . .,

ditions promised similar success for the new Cartonera, until it found indifference to be an obstacle more stubborn than poverty. Unlike Buenos
Aires! Lima doesn't read. As for economic crisis, it was chronic for Peru!
not the shock it had been in Argentina. It would be foolish, Milagros told
mel to invest in publishing without cultivating buyers for the books. So Sarita began to employ its charming products as prompts for producing more
readers. What better way to use books!
Even during the economic crash of 2001, haunting photographs of
Buenos Aires show people who stare longingly into bookstores and while
away unprod ucttve
time
with books in hand. Just a year after the economy
fell
th apart and long betore It recovered, Eloisa Carton era was respon d'mg to
e
hunger
for
new
d'
.
f
1
d
book
b .
rea mg matenal with an alternative to the a1 e
usmess. Poet Wa h
.
d to
use d
s mgton Cucurto and painter Javier Banlaro starte
an reuse availabl
.
binatio f
e matena1s, pre-owned cardboard and new corn
ns o words. Cucurto . h
h 0 writes
sports colu
ts t e stagey name for Santiago Vega w
mns1 poems1 novels, business plans, and lately lectures for V.S.

cardboard books.
One of a kind covers announce the original material inside: new literature donated by Argentina's best living writers. Ricardo Piglia and Cesar
Aira were among the first, soon followed by Mexican Margot Glantz,
Chilean Diamela Eltitl and many others. By now1 Harvard University's
Widener Library has more than two hundred titles from Eloisa Cartonera, and the University of Wisconsin) Madison1 has more. Several of the
former paper pickers in Buenos Aires and in Lima later found work in standard publishing housesj others returned to finish high school. All of them
managed to survive the economic crisis with dignity. Today Eloisa is a cooperative of ten members who share the work and the income from book
sales and from a recent venture in sustainable agriculture. One member, a
chubby woman affectionately called ((la Osa," sells books on the street as if
they were empanadas. Captivated by her hawking, distinguished journal3
ist Tomas Eloy Martinez reported on her pitch to potential customers :
Do you want the latest in poetry? No1 you don't like poetry? Well1 I recommend this memoir. Or1 what about a reprint of an out-of-print classic?
Eloisa didn't set out to be the model for an entire continent and beyond!
but her example proved irresistible.4 Rippling throughout Latin America
and before reaching Africa or winning the Prince Claus Award for 20121
the Cartonera project reached Harvard University in March 2007 invited
by Cultural Agents for a week of talks and workshops.5 Javier from Eloisa
taught us how to make beautiful books from discarded materials, and Milagros from Sarita showed us how to use them in the classroom.

Turn the Page

This was a moment of truth for me and for other teachers of language and
literature crouched on the floor cutting cardboard! and hunched over tables
covered in scraps, tempera paints) scissors, string~ and all kinds of decorative junk. Until then, the Cultural Agents Initiative had been drawn outward! attending to impressive top-down and bottom-up art projects that
PRE-TEXTS

108

CliAPTP.R F

OUR

109

~-------------------------------------------------------------------~

. n had been neglecting. We convened

d
.
' an co
. . interpretatJO
humantstJC
r rences, courses, and seminars on thinkers h .n.
con,ene, come
w o In.
t1nue to
f change and on a broad range of artists who .d
spire cultural agents o .
. ' bl. life
1 entify
heir work as interventiOnS ill pu lC
.
'
t
r
the maJor inaugural event of Augusto Boals Theatre of h
Even beiore
te
hops
in
December
2003, Cultural Agents had feat
Oppresse d works
ured
teach desperately poor children to take new pe
h
hotographers w o
.
. ,
. .
rspec.
~
d
fame their lives. (Nancy McG1rr s Fotokids m Guate l
tJves an to re I
'
.
.
rna a
.
as
was
Martin
Cohen
s
Ph
15 1n C1udad Oculta on the frin
JS exemp1ary,
.
.
ges
of Buenos Aires.6) The series culminated 1n two conferences on ((Visible
Rights" (loo6, 2007 ) where practitioners and .theorists from Bogota to
Bangladesh reflected on teaching the art and business of photography from
the perspective of children's rights? We brought Antanas Mockus to teach
in 2004, between his second term as mayor and his second run for president of Colombia. A special event in 2005 showcased ((The Jewish Latin
Mix: Making Salsa" with a conference, master class, and concert that featured the mostly unsung collaborations among Latino and Jewish salseros,
a testimony to the socially binding effects of making music together. Larry
Harlow, Martin Cohen, Marty Sheller, and Leon Gast starred on that occasion. We hosted related seminars on the power of student dance troupes
(such as Bajucol in East Boston) to consolidate communities of youth and
to keep them enrolled in school. Muralists who direct crews of teenagers
to occupy public space and to promote a pride of ownership also figured
among our guest speakers. A project called ((Cultures on the Air" featured
indigenous language radio programmers as agents of autochthonous development in conferences of 2005 and 2009. Alfredo Jaar mentored a dozen
Harvard and MIT graduate students in 2011-2012.8 And a partnership "vith
FONCA (M . '

exicos eqUivalent
to the NEA) celebrates a Mexican CulturaJ
Agent
of
the
Year9
A

1
d

h
C
lorn0
.
stmt ar awar partnership begins in 2012 w1t
bia, where the National University in Bogota and Medellin offers a doctoral
concentration in Cultural Agents through the Faculty of Social Sciences.Jo
These act'lVIfIes represent other people's work and academics hkern e
were taking note fo th b fi
'
1h
n.h
r e ene t of colleagues students and artists. e
Wit out anticipat' b
'
'
d ate
mg It, ut charmed and shamed by two undergra u .
maestros at Harvard C ll
.
artict
at'
ege- I made a move toward more d1rect P
P Ion. 1n 20o6 Am B
.
IVfus
soorie a
ll
ar aksht and Proud Dzambukira had gone to
' sma town in I d.
'
. d d "vbere
girls are e
n Ia where Amar s mother was ra1se an
xpected to dro
f
. d raise ex
Pout o school by age nine. Detcrmmc to

110

CHApr "R p
r.

OUR

tions
and
to
increase
opportunities
for
more
fulfill
ng
fut
h
1
ta
pee
.
.
ures, t e two
young men established an NGO that hired local artists to offer after-school
workshops. If the girls wanted to make art they had to stay in school. The
almost immediate and sustained success of '~na Arts" in India justified
expanding the project to Proud's native Zimbabwe by the following year.u
Keeping children in school by brokering art lessons was the kind of cultural agency I could manage. This was a wake-up call to direct action. 1
understood that agency doesn)t require genius or depend on particular professions. It can be a part of modest but mindful lives, my own for example.
I am a teacher, after all, and the work of education is urgent almost everywhere, including my university-rich area where poor neighborhood public
schools face escalating dropout rates and increasing violence. So I developed a course called Youth Arts for Social Change with Boston's Leadership Institute for after-school instructorsP The course became a regular
offering at Harvard's Extension School, engaging local artists (in dance,
music, painting, theater, photography, etc.) to train teachers in creative
techniques for the classroom, any classroomP This was to be my culminating effort as a cultural agent, appropriating lessons I had learned from
resourceful undergraduates, from seminars, conferences, and artist workshops. We were bringing art back into schools as the motor and medium
for engaged learning.
But the Cartonera brought me further when it returned me to literature. Following Sarita's lead, teaching literature through the arts became
the adventure in literacy and citizenship that we call Pre-Texts. "Make up
your mind," some potential partners demand. "Is Pre-Texts a literacy program? Or is it arts education? Or maybe civic development?" The answer
14
is yes to all the options because each depends on the otherS. Let me explain: (I) Literacy needs the critical and creative agility that art develops;
and good reading welcomes interpretation from many readers to achieve
depth and breadth. (2) Art-making derives inspirations from critical readings of social issues; and it improves with contributions from informa~t~,
colleagues in different disciplines, and public responses. (3) Finally, cttl.
.
h
full
tively
with
coh
zens 1p thnves on the capacity to read thoug t y, crea
' . .
.
b
b s "commumcatlve
artists whom we learn to admire. (J iirgen Ha ermas ase
. ,
.
. "
cc
D the Hard Dnve. ) AdmiactIOn
on creativity. See chapters, Play nve ill
'
.
.
.
1 ble participatiOn from
t
ra ton, we saw, animates civic life by expectmg va ua
..
ne's own opmwns
.
h
ot ers. Toleration is lame by comparison; It counts on
.l
(
h
"From the Top.
11
h
1
w e waiting for others to stop talking. See c apter

")

PRE-TEXTS

111

c interpersonal admiration, as a single piece ofl

. a hothouse tOr
Itpre -Texts IS

h
.
f.1nterpretatwns
nc
er th an any one response
rields a vanety o
can
. .
erature )
d
oach to literacy, art, and CIVICS develops perso
be This integrate appr
..
. .
na1

ll . dispositiOn for democratic life.

faculties and a co ecttve
'
.
.
n
everyone
s
agenda
because
It
continues to b
b
Literacy shou ld e o
.
.
ea
c levels of poverty, VIolence, and dtsease, and becaus
. d"
reliable In tcator tor
. 15
e
.
. 1 mingly low in underserved areas worldwtde. Skeptics
proficiency IS a ar
.
. . .
.
. th cause for alarm, allegmg that communtcatwn Increasingly
w1ll questiOn e
. .
.
.
.ovisual stimuli, especially for poor and dtsenfranchised
dl
depen ds on au
.
. .
They'll even say that teaching classic literature reinforces
.
popu1atwns.
social asymmetries because disadvantaged people lack the background
that privileged classes can muster for reading difficult texts. Audiovisual
stimuli on the other hand don't discriminate between rich and poor and
seem more democratic. But public education in the United States is now
returning to "complex texts" and to the (literary critical) practice of "close
reading" through newly adopted Common Core Standards that value difficulty as grist for cognitive development.16 Formalist aesthetics would help
to make the transition by adding that difficulty is funj it offers the pleasure
of challenges that ignite the imagination.
Paulo Freire cautioned against the pedagogical populism that prefers
easier engagements, because full citizenship requires high-order literacy.
His advice in Teachers as Cultural Workers was to stress reading and writing
in order to kindle the critical thinking that promotes social inclusion. Freire
traces a spiral from reading to thinking about what one reads, and then to
writing a response to one's thought, which requires more thinking, in order
to read one's response and achieve yet a deeper level of thoughtP Teachers
democratize society by raising the baseline of literacy, not by shunning literary sophistication along with elite works of art. The classics are valuable
cultural
capital
and
th
1
kill
.
c
10
.
e anguage s s they require remain foundatiOnS r
analytical thinking' resourceful ness, and psychosocial development. wIth
out mastery of at lea t
k
li l
h
s one spo en and written language, youth have tt e
ope for self-realizati
p d .
.
l'ty
th d
on. ara OXlcally, skeptics reinforce the mequa 1
ey eery by dism
all
B
tssmg a responsibility to foster high-levelliteracy for
Ynow Pre-Texts has
.
1 d
cultu 1
partnered With boards of education, schoo s, an
ra centers in Bast C0 l
.
1 dor H K
on,
ombta, Puerto Rico Mexico Peru, El Sa va
' ong on z. b
'
'
ing and L
. g, (Im abwe, and Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teachearnmg see pre t
)
ed
schools th
- exts.org Though developed for underserv
er' e approach is a n t 1c
a ura 10r higher education too. Research unrv
112

CHAPTER F

OUR

. es now recognize that art-making can raise the bar ~or ac d

.t
.
h
.
1
SI
a emiC ac Ievement' and Pre-Texts makes good on that promise 1s It has stgm.ficant1y .m1

proved my teaching at Harvard, for example. A new undergraduate course

called Pre-Textos tackles tough texts by Jorge Luis Borges, Juan Rulfo,Julio
Cortazar, Alejo Ca~entier, ~nd Octavia Paz, though students still struggle
with Spanish. The ptlot class tn 2011 made maps, choreographed, composed
music, created storyboards, acted, and remarked on the mutual admiration that art-making generated in an intensely competitive campus. For
a final project the group decided to coproduce a film based on the short
story ((Death and the Compass" by Borges. 19 Each member contributed
a talent for acting, or directing, or music, costumes, photography, and so
forthj and all wrote accounts of their work as co-artist with Borges. For another example, my graduate course Foundational Fictions and Film offers
a creative alternative to the standard essay assignment: compose one chapter of your own nineteenth-century national novel and write a reflection
on the process. The new novels and authors' notes almost always surpass
the conventional essays, which hardly anyone elects. Creating a novel demands sensitivity to character construction, to registers of language, historical conflict, social dynamics, and intertextual references. Students will
risk this "insider" appreciation of literature if teachers allow it.
Pre-Texts is an intentionally naughty name to signal that even the classics can be material for manipulation. Books are not sacred objectsi they
are invitations to play. Conventional teaching has favored convergent and
predictable answers as the first and sometimes only goal of education. This
cautious approach privileges data retrieval or "lower-order thinking." But
a first-things-first philosophy gets stuck in facts and stifles students. Bored
early on, they don't get past vocabulary and grammar lessons to reach
understanding and interpretation. Teaching for testing has produced unhappy pressures for everyone. Administrators, teachers, students, and parents have generally surrendered to a perceived requirement to focus on
facts. They rarely arrive at interpretive levels that develop mental agility.
Divergent and critical "higher-order" thinking has seemed like a luxury
for struggling students. However, when they begin from the heights of an
artistic challenge, students access several levels of learning as functions of
a creative process. Entering at the lower order seldom leads very far, but
the order upside down works wonder full Y Attenf IO n to detail folturnmg
lo ws from htgher-order
.
.
t

thinking
needs
to
manipulations because crea tve
master the elements at hand.2 A challenge to rna ke someth'ngnewofa
text
I
PRE-TEXTS

113

to develop an interpretation, which requ

t
d
1 ctant stu en s
.
tres
drives even re u
c
leads to learmng the vocabulary and gr
d. and there1ore
arnunderstan mg,
d b h some or out of reach.
had seeme ot er
.
mar that
fi lly responded in good faith to my own propos 1
,,. h Pre-Texts 1 na
.
.
a
vvtt
fessional work as a soc1al contnbution, thew
ffer our best pro
ay
0
that we .
d h they donate writing to the Cartoneras. Politi
. wnters o w en
cs
creattve
f m one's field of expertise. For me, literary studie
isn't always a pause ro
. .
s
c c
. c development. Th1s d1alogue between scholarship
became useiU 1IOr CJVl
.
th'nking and doing, is not a double b1nd, though the selfand engagement, I
f
. fi
h ts the humanities like a hangover rom heady days of
cancelmg gure aun
.
.
21 With new dedication, I adJusted the Youth Arts course
deconstructiOn.
.
.
.

t
as the entry point for reading lessons 1n vanous academic
to take Jttera ure
. . .
fields. Whatever the art we facilitated or the diSCipline we targeted, a creative text launched interpretations, problem solving, research, and design.
From the Extension School course we created a portable workshop that
follows the model of Boat's Forum Theatre: an interactive approach that
adjusts to local circumstances. We train facilitators, the way Boal did, in
order to multiply agents and sites for implementation. Complex academic
and civic results follow from a simple Pre-Texts approach: (1) Take a text.
(2) Spin it using a range of available arts. (3) Reflect on what you did.
After writing, painting, dancing, acting, and so forth, participants sit in a
Freirean circle to reflect, like Boal's spect-actors. The question is always the
same: what did we do? (Asking what we learned is likely to get unfriendly
answers from teens. They sense that teachers want approval or praise and
refuse to comply. But if you ask what they did, students will want to justify
their work or else they may look foolish.) One reflection follows another,
in no set order, until everyone has spoken. After a few sessions the dynamic
of universal and brief participation feels natural and necessary. The first
fe~ interventions, however brilliant, will not exhaust possibilities. While we
watt for more, exercising critical thinking and patience with peers, intellectual and civic skills develop. New facilitators learn to expect original comments from one another and then from students. Participants a1so no t'1ce
the democratizing euect
cr
f
l
.
o co lecttve reflection it levels the unevenness
between forceful p 1 d h
'
.
eop e an s y ones who are worth waiting for.
Whtle
readings
de
d

.
.
d

.
epen unng the senes of visual, hterary, an per
ormance mterpretat'
f h
d 0
tons
t
e
same
selected
text
participants
also
e
ve1op breadth by oin 0 ff
'
.I
t
h
g g
on a tangent" each week. Choosing a tangentla
ext t at they can con
f f: nect to the shared reading in any way- even 1 ar
(t

114

CHAPTER FOUR

d - puts students in command and makes them read d 1 Th

he
fete
,.
.
WI e y.
ey
books, magazines, and the Internet, usmg their own crt'te . t
Se
peru
. .
.
na o se1ect
bnng
m.
The
combtned
dynam
c
of
xh
ing
they
are
proud
to
th
1
some
me austible interpretation of one text and the practically limitless reach of tangents
produces deep and broad readers.

Recycled Words

Literature as recycled material: it had never occurred to me before. The

Cartonera book covers made of recycled cardboard became objective correlatives for the recycled material inside. This was my simple summary of
Milagros's practice, cutting through sophisticated literary criticism the way
that Javier cut through cardboard. A daunting vocabulary of intertextuality, traces, iteration, permutation, point of view, focalization, influence,
and reader-response, becomes user-friendly when readers abstract literary
functions from their practice of making things with literary prompts. The
functions add up to a general principle about literature being made up of
reusable pieces, cuts and pastes and pastiches.
During the Harvard Cartonera week, Milagros demonstrated the literary recycling process through a character portrait exercise that I detail
below. Here I'll just mention that she arranged us in pairs sitting back to
back, while one person described a character from a story (Edgar Allan
Poe's ((Man in the Crowd") and the other sketched the description. After
the first drawing, partners switched roles. When we taped the portraits
onto the ((gallery" wall, a visible diversity of interpretation for each character demonstrated that everyone had combined the text with extraneous
material from personal memories, preferences, and cultural baggage. We
could not clearly distinguish between reading-which had seemed passive
for some participants- and the active addition of sketched details. Where
was the precise division between receiving and making, understanding and
imagining, reading and writing?
.
This was so effective and painless a lesson in deconstruction and 10
reader-response theory that I giggled out loud. It was posirtve1Yfun 1 and
I have repeated the activity many times with similarly profound and ple.asurable results. When graduate students or colleagues play at this portrattmaking, the fun heightens with reflections on the theoretical princ~p~es
mvo Ived. One of my brightest graduate students ce1eb rated Milagros s m1" Theoaugural workshop with relief: ((I don't hate narratology anymore
PRE-TEXTS

115

FIGURE 42

Cartoncra

books by Sarita
Cartoncra (foreground)
and Kutsemba Cartao
(background). Photograph

........

by Christine R. Choi.

FIGURE

--.......

43 Cartonera books by La Casa workshop at Dartmouth

College, Kutsemba Cartao, Sarita Cartonera, Q!nti Qartunira, and

Animita Cartonera. Photograph by Christine R. Choi.

retical terms don't come up when we work with primary school children
but in all cases, the lessons are as clear as they are welcome: Each particip.ant is coauthor and authority of the work produced. Interpretation exer~Ises both critical and creative faculties. And the divergent but plausible
Interpretations stimulate admiration for everybody.
It is obvious' isn't 1t'> Th at boo ks and plays and poems are made up of
words, motifs' plots' charact ers, grammatical
structures and elements that
already exist in other contexts and that authors borrow' and recombine to
produce arresting new
ks
N
. .
b.
.
wor ovelty 1s 1n the poaching and the recom natiOn, not in the t 1 h.
d
" h
rna ena w tch, logically must already have been use
1
t e new creation ho e b
'
d
th
. ..
P s to e understood. Wittgenstein wisely dtsmtsse
e posstbthty of private 1
b
tw
anguages because they cannot communicate eeen one person and a h 22
1 d.
not er. All language is borrowed or taken over,
me u mg the Ian a
.
.
kn
c .
gu ge of hterary masters. Every reader of Don Qutxote
ows, ror mstance that C
.
e
'
ervantes played with chivalric and ptcaresqu
116

CH

APTER FOUR

sources to write his masterpiece. But the game of literary lifting goes even
furtheri he shamelessly ((admits" to picking up the whole manuscript, written by an Arab author, at a flea market. And Shakespeare is notoriously not
the author of his plots, but the genius rewriter of appropriated stories. To
introduce students to writing through the liberties that great writers take is
to demystify the classics. It is to invite young people to try their own hand
at altering texts with every new reading. Through artistic play, participants
know that the classics of high culture and higher education are within their
audacious reach.
The recycled nature of literature is hardly hidden, though we haven't
said it so simply. The simplicity can tickle students and teachers of literature while it levels higher-order understanding. Thanks to the jokes generated by Sarita Cartonera's pedagogy-about the fundamental accessibili?
.
.
tft
other peoples
1
0 f 11terary
criticism and also about great hterature mg
.
h 1t
Anyone can get
1
wnting-playful sophistication can have a laug ate tsm.
.
t0 h
h 1c be more effect1ve
m t e fun of writer as robber. Teachers cant ere ore
and inclusive when they invite students to take pleasure from a text.

PRE-TEXTS

117

btle like Sarita. The founder of Eloisa C

Cucurto tsn t su
arto.
Washington
.
c ce freshness, flaunting the pleasures of ir
th m-your-Ia
rever.
nera wntes WI
d vii as he likes to be called in honor of h d
I iarism. Cucu, or e
'
.
IS ark
ent p ag
c
tArgentinas raCism. At home but out ofpl .
.
't let you 1orge
.
ace In
skin, doesn, .
t clition Cucu's iconoclasm IS something like gr a: .
the country s hterary ra
'
auttl
te
name
on
publicly
sacred
property.
He
smudges
offi
that tags an eIabora
.
. 1
1
. fAr tina in a mock-histonca nove, 1810: The May R
. I histones o gen
evacia
,__ L. d Jt2J (where the dusky-colored slave-dealing found
lution as Blactw tve
.
Ing
s
greedy
licentwus,
and
out
of
the
closet)
and
splatte
,
t
father San Mar m 1
'
rs
.
'th
ruthless
fun.
1810 works over El matadero by Esteba
fi
sacred ctwn WI
.
n
,
Echeverna, Hombres de ma{z by Miguel Angel Astunas, and Justine by the
Marquis de Sade. One addendum to the novel rewrites Borges's '~eph" as
"Phale" (phallic joke intended, always). Another takes on Julio Cortazar's
"Casa tomada" (Haunted House) as "Dama tocada" (Defiled Damsel).
There's no anxiety of influence here, because Cucu figures that the country is too color-coded to let him pass for the new Borges or Cortazar. So he
just catches his country and everyone else at the same game he enjoys: literary theft. (Appropriation is the word postmodern art has used since the
time of ACT UP.) "Cucu/' -his alter-ego exclaims as 1810 begins- "this
is a historical discovery: all Argentine literature is stolen stuff. It's crazy!
Shameless!" And by the end of this reckless shuttle from orgy to battlefield
on a double-crossing loom of black and white, hetero and homo but always
over-sexual, it turns out that the recycled stuff that Cucu had stolen "and
all the other Argentine classics were written by descendants of those black
soldiers. That is to say, it's black literature, written by bourgie and bleached
out black-begotten Argentines."24
cucu's Capers

. ,

Rewriting is his hobby, Cucurto says, doing more homage than harm
to the greats. In fact, he tells his sports column readers that they too had
better read the classics if they want to play ball: "OK, everybody, get rid of
those
PlayStations
d
d
0

ld
.
an rea netti, or at least Fontanarrosa, read Osva 0
Sonano, at the very . .
,
mtmmum. You can't play good soccer if you haven t
read Martin Fierro
p lkn
' or au er.... It sounds crazy I know, but let rne
te11 you that with m
1
Ar
.
ore cu ttvated, sensitive ball players, readers of poetry,
gentme soccer wo Id b 1
h
kid
u e a ot better off. And don't let any of those bng t
s get on the field 1'f th h
'
.
for starters."2s Hi . ey av~n tread The Adventures of Huckleberry Fttm
s hterary advtce to ball fans, and his hobby of repurpos118

c HAPT.ER

FOUR

ing literary classi~s for personal fun, made Cucurto the ideal facilitator for
rr xts in Apnl 2010 when Cultural Agents came to Roberto J b ,
pre-J.e
aco y s
recen tly established CIA (Centro de Investigaciones Artisticas) 1n Buenos
6

.A,ires?
,
Already and independently, Elo1sa Cartonera had set out to educate the
.
hborhood
sometimes
in
collaboration
with
the
sculptor
Raul
Leme
netg
'
soff who created the Weapon of Mass Instruction. It is a recycled military
tank that had participated in terrorizing civilians during the Dirty War
(I976 _I 9s3 ). Today the retired ~ut st~ imposing vehicle is a mobile purveyor of books, flanked on all sides With stacks of fiction, poetry, history,
rnaps, and magazines. It collects books from dumps and rich neighborhoods and then offers them for free throughout the rest of the city. (A similar inspiration in rural Colombia created "Biblioburro/' a traveling library
fueled by two donkeys who accompany itinerant teacher Luis Soriano. )27
Ever alive to the arts of turning trouble, like the trauma of armored tanks
on city streets, into usable trash, Cucurto and friends mitigate the divide
between high and low culture. Cucu takes elite taste by the throat (not to
mention other body parts). Before he heard about Sarita's rewriting lessons, Cucurto was there at the forefront of appreciation-by-appropriation.
His pleasure in playing with literature, pilfering and redeploying words,
plots, and characters, the way all good writers do, is a profound lesson for
literary criticism and for education.

Make Readers

Sarita Cartonera calls its literacy project LUMP A (Libras, un modelo para
8
armar, or Books, a Model Kit, playing on a popular title by Julio Cortazar) .2
.
d
h. h b00ks beLUMP A is a loop between publishing and pe agogy m w IC
come found material for making endless variations. The program covers
standard classroom concepts- author, plot, characters, themes- so that
. while they go further. Instead
.
teachers meet required curncular
ob.Ject1ves
summarizing a plot students a1so d.1Shngu1s
h Plot from story by arof JUSt
. and rearranging moments
'
. an d they recognize that
rangmg
of th e narrative,
1'
the
nature
of
ficd
a narrator may be lying (what a clever way to un er me
. )

characters of a story.
hon as they reassign the role of narrator to vanous
.
participants rewr1te
. 1
In teacher-training workshops and then m
c assrooms,
d
d. Lr
t times and places, an
.
.
1
c ass1cs through alternative points of VIeW, meren

PRE-TEXTS

119

es literally becoming authors as they mast

.
e of literary genr '
. ..
er the
m a rang
h . sofa pre-text. The actiVIties require both a I
b lary and tee mque
Ower_
voca u
h t
d elements and higher-order interpretation
rder focus on t e Ioun
.
0
h
h August 20 o7, Cultural Agents developed Sa . ,
From June t roug
nta s
. th multi-arts approach of Pre-Texts by incorporating th
pedagogy mto e
. d d
e
.
f ""! th Arts" where we had pa1nte , anced, sung, sculpt d
expenence o ou
.
e
ritten acted, and generally played With academic lea
W
d
k
filme d coo e ,
'
rn. Arts,
' after all, do more than "express" ideas or emotionsj they explore
mg.
1

materials and construct meanings. Northrop Frye famously quipped that it

was unclear if art imitates nature, but very clear that it imitates other works
of art.29 In our variations on Lima's lessons, literature explodes with renewed energy every time a different artistic medium interprets a selected
text. Ablaze with art-making, even at-risk students hardly reckon the difficulties they deal with or the intense effort they expend. But the sophistication they achieve is evident to everyone.
That first summer, we launched three pilot programs in the Boston
area (with the Brazilian American Association in Framingham, the Boys
and Girls Club in Chelsea1 and Zumix, an out-of school music center in
East Boston) thanks to support for a student trainer from David Edward's
course on creative entrepreneurship (Idea Translation, Engineering Sciences 1471 Harvard College). The lessons we taught and learned have become a portable program that counts on local artists and teachers to sustain
it. Cultural Agents brings nothing more than an iconoclastic approach to
develop skills in critique and creativity. A bit more detail about one activity
may illustrate how Pre-Texts builds citizenship through lessons in literacy.
Take the portraits by partners mentione
d earlier.
. You are welcome to try 1t
and all the exercises listed below.
When
participants
sk
t
h
h

.
e c t e same character and see that each image lS
different from all the t h
Thi .
res 1 t ey sense that divergence is not a sign of error.
s IS a revelation for t h
h
eac ers w o had assumed that only convergent
answers are correct o
.
.
. .
will .d .
' ne per question. Dunng the reflection, partlctpants
I entify each per
1' d .
t
sona IZe Interpretation and skill level as factors that
m ervene After th
.
to " . . . .
e portratts are freshly hung in the ((gallery" and the "curar Initiates the expositi b . . .
.
collaboratio h
on YInVIting a pair of artists to talk about their
n, t ey are usually 1
the
description d h
re uctant to note differences between
an t e sketch ul h
.
were describ .
s t IS the figure you had imagined wh1le you
.
mg It to your part ">" p
d. nIsh divergenc . f .
ner ust responses often deny or uni
e m a nendly effort to signal collaboration. Even after the
1

120

CH

APTER FOUR

. .t tor probes an alleged convergence to reveal missed comm . .

facl11 a
,
.
.
u
umcat10n
("I rneant really fat! ) and li~ertles taken ( Purple is my color.") participants prefer agreement. Invanably though, both artists will admit that their
interpretations carry references to personal experiences or preferences, or
erhaps an embarrassed confession about not drawing very well. With
:ood humor, the facilitator, or "joker" in Boal's vocabulary, can re-signifya
sirnple stick figure as a work of ((conceptual art."

Only after the curatorial interviews recur with several more portraits
does the group begin to anticipate divergences between the partners and
to enjoy each person's particularity. With the recognition that variations
are both plausible and pleasant, participants realize that ucorrect" answers
multiply by the number of interpreters. The conclusion amounts to an appreciation for the uncommon genius of each contributor. Variety- even
miscommunication and disagreement- enriches the experience of the
text, and readers learn to admire peculiarities.

Hip-Hop Signifies Close Reading

Some of Pre-Texts's best facilitators are unlikely teachers by conventional

criteria. They are members of an Afro-Colombian hip-hop collective called
the Ayara Family. When Cultural Agents trained local artists and librarians to be co-facilitators for a 2008 workshop of almost one hundred educators in Bogota's main library, the Ayaras emerged as star instructors. No
one matched the hip-hoppers as we manipulated metaphors and identified clever turns in Colombia's classic, and difficult, national novel La voragine.30 The Ayaras knew that young people can turn the challenges of
literary masters into dares to outdo the masterpieces. Riffing on found material, or sampling, is the stock-in-trade of rap (rhythm and poet~). Also
.
.
.
.
f
h
to
sources
and
trrever11
d
ca e appropnatwn, the combinatiOn o omage
. the spirit of graffiti, urban ch oreograp hy, musical mash-ups' and
ence 1s
.
.
t' d1splacement show
h
t eatncal improvisation. These adventures m art1s lC
..
.
d
mmend them as facilithe Interpretive
intelligence of hip-hoppers an reco
tators of critical thinking for other young people.
.
.
.
h h t 1 the Ayaras know
Expenenced In violence preventiOn throug t e ar s
th
. .
.
fl.1ct because art hen.
.
at artistic ingenuity is a powerful antidote to con '
rd symbolic VIolence.
ors nonconformist energies and channels them towa
. hild
0 h

.
is naturalm c ren
t el'Wlse, hostility festers aggresstvely. AggressiOn
art'
a d.
'
th environment, st mg
n Intense for teens. It is an energy that tests e
PRE-TEXTS

121

Id test their parents, to see if they are sturdy a d

n do
h ray Ch} ren
h
wit t e'"
s the test they merit a child's love. Thi . 'ln n t
.
r If parents pas
'
s IS vv in .
dtsappea . r psychic development, advancing through
nJ.
tt's formulatiOn tor
.
.
,,
p1ay fro
co
_fl'

. rn
31 (More on Winrucott In chapters, Play Dr
hostility to cwectwn.
Ive In the
. ") 1h Ayaras are a model crew for Pre-Texts. They h
Hard Dnve.
e
.
.
.
ave b
h' h-order literary mstructwn to h1p-hop arts and hav d Y
now added tg
, bl. (
e one
.h h
port of the Banco de la Repu Ica Colombia's equ
so wit t e sup
.
..
IVa1ent
eserve
Bank).
The
collective
facilitates
literacy
wo
ksh
1
R
to the Federa
r ops
. areas as 1solated and underserved as Narifio and Amazonas as '"ell
.
m
v
as 1n
.
32
the capital's largest pnson.
The popularity of rap in Colo~bia ~nd throughout Latin America (as
well as Africa) should be no surpnse, Since Black Atlantic cultures of.unprovisation connect the Americas back to Africa. The international appeal
of rap is Jess a phenomenon of U.S. cultural imperialism than an African
reconquest. Far-flung performance traditions of dueling and outdoin in
duet- irreverent repartee, signifying in the United States, payadas in Ar!n.
tina, debates musicales in the Caribbean, contrapunteo in Colombia, and repentes in Brazi133 - all attest to legacies of the Mrican spirit that flashes
through a range of musical and verbal genres. Melville]. Herskovits might
have guessed at this north-south vector by 1941 when he showed the connections between U.S. black cultures and continuing practices in Africa.
Then Robert Farris Thompson tracked the ties of Mrican-inspired genres
from the United States to South America.34
In this transatlantic and inter-Amencan

.
.
context, IS It uncanny or predictable that contemporary h1p hop sh ould connect With
. a folk tradition of performance and writing B 1' N h
.
m raz1 s ort east? Lzteratura de cordel or literature
on the clothesline is lit 11 h
.
'
.
'
era Yt e practice of hanging poems rhymed news
artie1es, musical challen
dill
.
'
th h .
ges, an ustrative woodcuts on a rope, sometimes
WI c1ot espms, in order t 0 . [!
.
ch
m orm, entertain, and entice the public to purase a copy of the work W 1
.
.
ate th
.
e earned th1s from ArtsLiteracy and appropne practice for Pre-Te t 35 A
.. .
tion betwe th .
x s.
Brazilian JOurnalist marvels at the connecen IS 1me of writi
d A .
ng an
ncan American arts:
.
I have always b
een Impressed h h
exists betw
Wit t estrange relationship that
een northeaster
.
rap. They are
n ImproVIsational poetry and American
.
separated by c I I .
Improbably si .
u tura kilometers, temporal distances,
ngmg the same
almost twins. In r
. verses. Nevertheless, they are peers,
ap, and m impr . d
fl
h
OVIse repente, the verse IS a as '
I

Cl

"

rl'lost
a
haiku;
it
follows
a
fixed,
catchy
rhythm
that
st
.

ays m your
alJ~
.
the
lyr1cs
are
clever,
on
target,
and
the
listener's
t
.
.
ad
men a1ag111ty
he ,
sn't
quite
follow
all
of
the
words
in
the
song
Whe
"
,
e

n repente
do
poems go on paper, the paper goes onto the clothesline, which in
the past might have been called the major newspaper of the Northeast. People from the Sertao knew what was happening thanks to the
popular "news-line." They say that when Getulio died, it wasn't until
the cordelistas hung up the news that people found out.36
'Ule multi-arts approach to interpretation shared by Pre-Texts is as hardwired in the cordelista tradition as it is in the culture of hip-hop. Northeast
Brazilian poets are often also the guitar-strumming performers of improvised verse that they can later polish and publish "online." The same artists
can double or triple as woodcut masters who call attention to their poetry
with clever visual images, sometimes simply to spread news of important
events. But other times, they take full freedom as spinners of fiction. For
example, J. Borges (whose name evokes another writer who played masterfully with variations on a theme) is both an accomplished woodcut artist
and a poet turned theorist. He teases an interviewer with a frank formulation of fiction: "I lie. Let's face it; lies are a quality of all creativity." 37 Literatura de cordel is the third moment of our Pre-Texts workshop.

Open Shop

The first moment rehearses the bustle of Cartonera publishers, as participants enter and engage their eyes, hands, and brain in the tangible art of
making a book. Sounds of high energy come from people cutting cardboard, choosing materials, and constructing covers to be decorated with
markers, glitter, buttons, bottle caps, string, and so forth. Then, when designs are sufficiently advanced and attention focuses on manual details, the
second moment begins. A voice starts to read out loud the selected text,
and the bustle quiets down. Everyone can hear the reading, even if the
piece is difficult. The audible silence is a sign that people are listening; another sign is the frequent request to hear the piece again. This scene simulates another popular practice from Latin America: the reader in tobacco
factories. Still alive in Cuba, but barely, our intentional throwback to ~n
earl
.
b. t 0 f collective desire
Ier penod revives challenging literature as an o Jec
and as a foundation for social interaction.38
PRE-TEXTS

123

. t bacco factories were celebrated throughout h

Readers m 0
t e Spa .
. g the nineteenth and at least the first half of th
n1sh
Caribbean dunn
.
e hventi
ractice rippled Into workshops of other cigar
eth
century. 1he P
.
.
<c
centers
Florida and New York City. The cigar factory" wa
such
as Tampa,
'
11
Th . .
s practic ll
niversity for tobacco ro ers. e1r silent and skilled
aY
a popu1ar u
. .
Work roll
.mg to bacco into expensive cigars produced great value and theretore
c

.
gave
workers significant power to press deman ds In negotiations With facto

.
.
g
details,
motivations,
background,
and
so
forth
d
f
J11lsstn
.
.
an rames an extion
of
some
Interpretive
tangent.
After
hearing
eve
,
.
.
.
ryone s quest 10n,
p1ora
.
thenex:t move 1s to choose one and to wnte a possible explanat.Ion or Imagiof the text.
Then
the intertexts are hung on a cordel
na t1ve development
.
.
.
.
c 1nstant publication In this third moment of activity Each aut hor can
lor
then read the contributions
. of others
. and marvel at the range of responses.
people will often take pa1ns to wnte beautifully, or at least legibly, to wel-

owners who could not easily replace the skilled workers. One standard a ryd
nOnnegotiable demand was that cigar makers be allowed to hi. reaprofun
sional reader and to select the reading. materials. All the worke rs, 1Iterate
. sand mostly illiterate,
would engage With both classic. and cutting-e dge lit.
erature from fictiOn .to newspapers
.
. and novels, sometimes includi ng Incendiary political treatises as they listened and later discussed the readin
' CoI'on's memmr
of a actory 1n
C ayey, Puerto Rico:
gs.
Here is Jesus

come passersby.

There were about one hundred and fifty cigarmakers, each one sitting in front of tables that looked like old-fashioned rolltop desks,
covered with all kinds of tobacco leaves. The cigarmakers with their
heads bent over their work listened intently. In the vast hall of the
factory, I looked for the source of the voice to which they were listening. There was a man sitting on a chair on a plattorm. . . . H e was
called "El ~ector"- the Reader. His job was to read to the cigarmakers while they were rolling cigars. The workers paid fifteen to
twenty-five cents per week each to the reader. In the morning, the
reader
used to read the da11Ypaper and some working class week.
lies or monthlies that were published or received from abroad. In
the afternoon he wou1d read f rom a novel by Zola Balzac Hugo
or from a book by Kropotki n, Malatesta or Karl Marx
'
'
'
Famous

sDpee~es like Castelar's or Spanish classical novels lik~ Cervantes'

on \.{.utxote were a1so read aloud by "El Lector." 39

Before Pre-'IIexts fa CI'It

I ators b h .

pants to thi k f
.
egm t eir reading, they prompt parttcl.
of a story thnt oh a question as they I'Is ten, the way children ask questions
a t ey hear. In c

d t
about detail
h
onvent10nal classrooms, teachers ask stu ens
or
t
emes
of
a
t
t

d
.
s
This can bo
ex to see 1f the class listened and understoo
.
re or offend stude
If the teacher th. ks
nts who may wonder- as I used to wonderm they are t d
d the
story. But here th
s upl or if she needs help to understan
they get. Auth . e. student parf ICipants

are invited to demand more than

ontles and inter
bout
,
rogators, each participant speculates a
24

CHAPTER FOUR

Civic Self-Efficacy

Pre-Texts works in schools, after-school programs, summer programs, and

out of school with young people at all levels, from kindergarten to graduate
studies. The most significant benefit of Pre-Texts is surely to stimulate literacy and higher-order (interpretive) thinking. But the corollary effects of
free-thinking, imaginative alterations and admiration for the work of others
are significant contributions toward civic development. Consider the history of social and political effects from reading literature, philosophy, history, and the news among cigar rollers. Well-informed and deliberative,
whether or not they could read themselves, tobacco workers were largely
responsible for Jose Marti's otherwise unlikely success in organizing a
cross-class alliance for the Cuban War of Independence.4Cigar rollers are
also the first movers of organized labor in the United States, in good part
because Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants brought lectores with them
to U.S. tobacco factories.41 We sometimes forget that Samuel Gompers, a
founder of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and its president from
1886 until his death in 1924 ,42 was first the leader of the Cigar Makers Inter43
national Union and worked closely with Caribbean colleagues.
Today's "readers" and facilitators for Pre-Texts invite young people to
interpret and to deliberate as the lectores did in tobacco workshops. Add'
ing the creative arts identifies appropriation as a social resource. Civic participation depends on creativity, an (aesthetic) knack for reframing experience, and on a corollary freedom to adjust laws and practices in light of
ever-new challenges. Without art, citizenship would shrink to compliance,
:s if society were a closed text. Reading lessons would stop at the factual
wh t "
(( h 1f" 1J0 ward that
. a Is, rather than continue to the speculative w at
Imag
" 0 f bared clas. Inatlve exploration grounded in the ((common sense
s
SICS' pre-,.,
.1exts proposes:
PRE-TEXTS

125

nership of classic texts by interpreting cr .

'[! encourage ow
,
. d
.
eattvely
1
l't ature to ones own live expenence. Paul d ~A
To
connect
1
er
.
e
tvtan
2
tion boldly by sa)'lng that all (creative) Writ' .
ut the connec
tng ts
p
h"1 I H
autobiograp ca
. .
.
that all texts are open to creative tnterventio .
, To expenence
.
n,
J
d'
cessarily intervenes through dynam1c negotiations
rea tng ne
rather than impositions.
..
4 To demonstrate that reading and wntlng are two moments of a
ng process' reading cannot be passive but affords op pordeve Iop1
tunities for coauthorship.
To appreciate language itself as an artistic medium, a trigger for

'thout incurring the costs and administrative complexity f h..

tors wt
.
o mng
team of arttsts.
other
an 'fhe compelling reason to work with a distribution of arts is to make
ood on the principle of "multiple intelligences," coined by Howard Gardgner, to develop each participant through a range of talents 46 Once a young
s acknowledged as someone who can paint or rap dance 0
t
'
'
, r ac ,
person l
and so On, he/she gains the recognition and self-esteem that enco urages
taking risks in other arts. Healthy risk-taking in art is a step toward interpretive reading and writing, critical thinking, persuasion, and deliberation.

other arts.

Implementation

Pre-Texts is an approach, not a detailed recipe. Years ago, Freire warned

us against prepackaged pedagogies that urge innovation and deliver ex45
haustive instructions. In his spirit, we train instructors to liberate their
own creativity through variations on activities that we demonstrate, and
through new activities they propose. Youth-leaders and collaborating artistinstructors need to "own" their particular version of the program in order
to model independence and good humor about mistakes. Learning from
participants, we keep adjusting activities and experimenting with new ones.
Ideally, training workshops last for a week. The formula of spinning a
difficult text through an artistic practice and then reflecting on what we
did is simple enough to learn in one session. The next four provide practice in ap propna
t.ton as each participant

takes a turn to facilitate an arts
activity based on th
.
.
e same pre-text. We tratn teachers and local art1sts
together so that the 1
f
.
Y earn rom one another and overcome posstble assumptions about a Ia k f
. .
,
c o creattvtty on one side and a lack of seriousness
on another. During th 1
.
.
U
~
e tmp ementat10n With children and youth, usua Y
or ten to twelve week p 'T'
. .
d
s, re- .texts generally meets twice a week, fac!lttate
b
y a classroom teache
.
h
t h
r or a counselor and in collaboration with arttsts w 0
ro ate t rough the class
.
.
to h
rooms to bnng both technical expertise and vanety
eac group. If resourc
1
I l1 1
talents t0
es are trntted, teachers then1selves can poo t e r
vary the arts em 1 d
fi d1e
principle f . .
P oye m class. This arrangement satts es
o arttsttc variety d
n
an exposes the students to several adult me
126

liAPTER FOUR

A lo Chalco

Chalco is one of the poorest neighborhoods of Mexico City, far enough

away from the center along the traffic-dogged highway to Puebla to feel
isolated as well as arid most of the year, and inundated the rest of the time.
There, migrants from several indigenous and mestizo communities settle
alongside one another in precarious arrangements and constructions.
Though the government of the Federal District has begun to construct an
administrative infrastructure in Chalco, the unpaved streets are still lined
with makeshift dwellings put together from any available materials, including cardboard. The art of recycling is no news here. But before the Cartonera came to town, no one had yet made books from found material.47
In July 2008, Worldfund hosted Cultural Agents to train a team of educators in Chalco's admirably dedicated Catholic school, Mano Amiga. Mostly
local artists worked with us there, as elsewhere, to ensure sustainability of
collaborations with the regular teaching staff. We later brought Pre-Texts
to other sites in Mexico, including the Museo Amparo in Puebla, the University of Guadalajara, and two public middle schools in the outskirts of
Mexico City, as well as to the secretary of education in Puerto Rico, the
Chana and Samuel Levis Foundation, and Caribbean University in Bayam6n, Puerto Rico.48 We trained trainers in Bogota and Medellin, in San Salvador, and Hong Kong. Even before we ventured out, Cultural Agents implemented Pre-Texts in six struggling grade schools in the Boston-Als~on
area, through Harvard's Achievement Success Initiative in collaboratiOn
with Boston's city government. And the Barr Foundation's citywide project
in "Culture for Change" engaged Cultural Agents to develop Pre-Texts f~r
youth at risk in a dozen sites throughout Boston. A spectacular success 10

PRE-TEXTS

127

. . ortant developments after Harvard Coli

rorntses tmp
ege stu.
Zimbabwe P
d brought the approach to Bulawayo 1h
ah Mo11ame
ere 8
dent Naseem
t meant that high school teachers could n t ' 5
employmen
.
o rnotipercent un
. h omises of good JObs, so they routinely resort d
dents Wlt pr
e to
vate stu
.
t A season of Pre-Texts showed that pleasur
1 umshmen .
e could
corpora P .
d it softened even hardened teachers who exp
. te Jearnmg, an
ressed
motJva
t' t'c and intellectual talents of their students Stud
sur rise at the ar IS 1
.
.
ents
P
d. 1gly delighted, and relieved, by the change in teach
were correspon II
ers.
desired effects of Pre-Texts, though they outstripped ev
h
These were t e
.
..
en
'
taoious
optimism.
But
there
were
surpns1ng
side
ee
t
h
Naseema s con ow cs
too: English lessons began to admit bilingual games with Ndebele, which
had been a punishable offensej and the minister of education plans to rep49
licate the program throughout the region. Pre-Texts in Zimbabwe may
someday outshine other sites. But so far, Chalco is the most stunning example of appropriation and sustainability.
Maybe it is the intense dedication of the director of Mano Amiga,
Lilia Garelli, and of her devoted faculty that determined the exceptional
achievement. Maybe it is also the refreshing contrast of a creative-even
iconoclastic- approach to teaching in an otherwise traditional Catholic
school where convergent responses had been the standard value. In fact,
on the first day of the training workshop we asked the ten teachers and ten
artists to say what came to mind after listening to ((The Two Kings and the
Two Labyrinths" by Jorge Luis Borges. All but one gave the moral of the
story, satisfied that their coherence was a sign of understanding. The only
outlier, a young Oaxacan painter who took time to warm up to the group,
mused, "I wonder, what is the color of the sand?" By the end of the week
everyone was taking brilliant risks and multiplying the possibilities of the
one-page story. Later, throughout the ten-week implementation and up to
the present they have been inspiring innovation in their students. (See the
~eekly photographic reports from Chalco on the culturalagents.org webSite.) The latest developments are a partnership with the nearby public high
school to integrate Pre-Texts into youth-mentor training, and another with
Mano Amig '
h .
b
as Sister sc ool m Puebla to offer teacher training. May e too
the success in Ch 1
.
oor
n.
a co owes to the everyday practices of recyclmg m a P ..
etghborhood giv th
legJtl' mg IS scarcity-induced resourcefulness a new
macy as art and interpretation.
In her delicate 1
. .

Garelli
' a most girlish but unflinching voice, D1rector
would typical! dd
urces
Y a ress a challenge that required more reso
128 c
HAPTER FOUR

had. Good results would follow from deciding t0 d h

h
than s e
u
,
o w atever
ded a lo Chalco, Chalco style. Room-darkening wi d
hd
was nee
.
n ow s a es
out-of-the-questiOn luxury, but dark crepe paper worked .
n
were a
.
JUst as
well and looked elegan~ aga~nst th~ .clean brick of the new school building. salaries for five artists,. 1n add1t1on to the five teachers to be pa1'd .m

these extra-hour collaboratiO~s, stretched the school's purse to the tearing

. t so two mothers of children at school were invited to donate the1r.
pom,
skills to complete the design of multiple arts that rotate through the classrooms from third to seventh grades. However one describes the combination of personal) economic, and pedagogical factors, they came magically,
or providentially, together in '~iga Cartonera." On their own initiative,
articipating children also brought Pre-Texts activities home to siblings
neighborhood friends, a multiplying effect we saw in Puebla's Amparo
Museum too. In the words of one sixth-grader, ((My imagination woke up
more. Sometimes now, others look at me as if I have something funny in
me. I have something inside that doesn't let me be, an active imagination.
It was always there, but it woke up more. My thoughts are bigger now. The
important thing is what someone carries inside them." 50 At Mano Amiga,
teachers and artists appropriated the iconoclastic spirit of the program and
they continue to co create it.
At this writing it is difficult to predict where Pre-Texts will be when you
read about it. But do check the culturalagents.org website for updates and
for frequent invitations to join a workshop. Why not prepare some clean
cardboard and keep it handy? Here's a preliminary list of activities if you
want to start one.

~nd

Sample Activities

These are exercises designed to relax inhibitions, defamiliar. hab'1ts, and create a core spirit of trust and cooperatwn
among particilZe
pants. Many suggestions are described in Augusto Boal's Games for Actors
and Non-Actors.51

WARM-UPS.

the program' parEven before any literature appears m

t'lClpants

. recyc1ed materials prebegin to make book covers by choosmg

c t h em, or brought in from home and th e st ree t They design. ways
Pare d wr
.
to i ntervene in printed/used cardboard as a preamble for intervenmg 10
B001<-MAKING.

printed texts.
PRE-TEXTS

129

ltator invites participants to think of a

.
ALouD. A laCll
.
questton
READING
h"l they listen to it as they continue to make ind .d
. he text w I e
.
.
lVt Ual
to ask ott
d. h ,e corroborated the relatwnsh1p between h .
Recent stu les a\
. ..
.
etghtbooks.
.
. and manual actiVIties, overturn1ng a conve f
levels ot attentiOn
. . tt t. 52
n tonal
d
ene
d dling student ts Ina en 1ve.
assumption that a oo
c

Each participant poses a question. Instead f

l.ESTIO ~ THE
.
0
QL .
d
n the defensive by asking them to repeat given infor
uttmg stu ents o
. .
map
.
. .ty targets the text and casts part1c1pants as interrogat
tion th1s acttvl
ors.
:
t. of the text also reveals that literature is a product of
Asking a ques wn
.
an
. . 5 to include some details
authors, dects1on
. and. exclude or suggest othe rs.
,

TEXT.

The piece becomes vulnerable to mampulatwn as soon as participants

notice that the story could have been told in different ways.
After formulating questions of the text, and sharing them
orally, participants respond to a question, theirs or another's, by writing
an interpolated paragraph that develops what had been a fuzzy or enticing
I:\'TERTEXT.

opportunity in the text.

Participants hang their intertexts
on a clothesline with clothespins (or tape) for instant "publication." The
effects of displaying one's own work and also reading the work of peers include pride in a good piece of writing, greater development of interpretive
possibilities, and also admiration for others.
LITERATURE ON THE CLOTHESLINE.

Participants sit back-to-back while one describes a character from the text and the other draws the description. Gallery conversations follow and participants observe that oral and sketched
renderings necessarily interpret the text with personal and culturally specific elements.
PORTRAITS, BACK-TO- BACK.

Spoken-word artists are unfailingly good

guides to explorations of literary figures and indirect communication that
.
.
.
produces estrangeme t f
. .

n ' a avonte s1gnature of art in forma 11st cntictsrn.

RAP, RHYTHM, AND POETRY.

MOVIE MUSIC SCO

,...
. .
RE. 1 0

evelop Interpretation along with mustc appre

ClatiOn, invite parti
d

f the
Cipants to evelop a music score for a film versiOn
text. The facilitator 1 fi
.
d ks
..
Pays ve or SIX one-minute music fragments an as
parttctpants to mark
.
that
th
.
correspondmg numbers on particular passages
e mustcal fragment
ld
.
lite 1
cou accompany. Then they explain the chotces1
ran y and musically.
130

CH

APTER FOUR

Photography is an increasingly available a t ~

h
poiNT
.
.. .
.
. .
r orm, t anks
lar phones. InVIte part1c1pants mdtvldually or in group t k .
11
to ce u
,
.
s o ta e pteom a particular characters p01nt of view or to compo

tures r
'
se re erences
eme. Then project the photos onto a screen for viewin
d
th
to a
.
.
g an comThe actiVIty makes lessons 1n perspective and compost
.
ry
t
men a
.
. .
1 ton qUite
ough they seem d1fficult tn literary and social criticism
th
clear

oF VIEW.

Image Theater is a practice developed by

Augusto Boal to create human sculptures that capture a conflict and freeze
it long enough to arouse reflections. But in Pre-Texts it can also be an invitation to embody literary figures in small groups of participants. Have each
group locate a figure in the text (call them surprising descriptionsi the
terms metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, simile, etc. can be offered later
to refine readings) and create a collective human sculpture. While each
sculpture is staged, participants from the other groups attempt to "read"
the figure by locating it in the text. This game of literary charades turns
a possibly abstract lesson in rhetoric into entertainment that can be sustained long enough for everyone to master the power of literary devices.
Meanwhile, participants read and reread the text to identify the figure.
LITER.ARY FIGURES ALIVE .

Although it is less text-specific than other activities, we

often smuggle Boal's Forum Theatre into the program as an opportunity to
teach an effective exercise in conflict resolution. Participants identify an apparently intractable problem in the text, and thereby recognize it as familiar, perhaps intimately so. Then groups prepare skits to represent a chosen
problem. After each skit is performed, the facilitator invites the spect-actors
to intervene, one after another, in ways that can derail the tragedy.

FORUM THEATRE.

Pre-Texts can searnlessly develop

into a bilingual arts program by adding activities that depend on a language
other than the target language. Since the program multiplies approaches to
interpretation, it will not seem foreign to ask participants to retell the story
from the point of view and the language of a non-English (or Spanish, etc.)
speaker. Students will display their virtuosity by performing in another t~. members t o co ntribute to thetr
get 1anguagej and they can count on family
GRANDMOTHER TELLS THE STORY.

learning, strengthening bonds of respect and admiration at horne.

Participants browse widely in libraries, bookstor~s,
homes, cu1tural centers, and so forth to fin d a 1.tterary sample that can
. m
.
some way be related to the core text of the workshop. If the connectwn ts
OFF ON A TANGENT.

PRE-TEXTS

131

. . nts will engage in the amusing mental agility f.

f -fetched, parttctpa
.
. .
o JUstiar
. 1h ly specific mstructwn IS that the tangent hav
.
the
hnk.
e
on
.
.
e
at
least
fy mg
.
d This actiVIty IS the only one repeated each
one challengmg wor .
d .d I
week, to
encourage participants to rea WI e y.
WE D 0 ? After
WHAT DID

every activity, we ask this question. Ea h

. .
C par..
. bl'ged
to offer a comment and good CIVIC effects foll 0 , ... 1h
1
. . .
t1c1pant IS o
e
rule itself levels rights and shares responsibility. Students come to expect
interesting responses from everyone, including shy members, so that facilitators need not single out students for taking over or for holding back. The
group learns to self-regulate. Intellectually, "What did we do?" stimulates
higher order thinking by deriving theoretical observations from concrete
practices. Almost inevitably, comments can be given technical names in literary theory, language philosophy, and group dynamics.
YV.

Play with Me

Young people love to learn but hate to be taught.53 They learn best through
guided play. I am convinced along with Winnicott that this is true for adults
too because play doesn't stop for human beings. Learning through creative play is not new to education. Over a century ago, Maria Montessori
pioneered an arts-based, project-centered pedagogy that managed to educate poor and intellectually limited ( today's special education) children in
Italy so well that, without teaching for testing, they scored above average
g~~des in national standardized exams. Like later reformers, including Brazilian Paulo Freire, French Jacques Ranciere, and a North American rogue
teacher like Albert Cullum,54 Mont esson.,s gui.d.Ing pnncip
. . 1e was respect 10r
r
the self-educating capacity of students. "The task of the teacher becomes
that of preparing
of motives
. of cultural activity, and then reframmg
. .
.
a senes
from obtrustve intererence."55 Sequels to her approach or parallel proJects,

such
as
the
Waldorf
S
h
1
s6
hild
00
h d
c
s and the Reggio Emilia project in early c oo
educations?
co
fi
h
.
b
n rm t e eVIdence of superior results through artsased education En
.
.
th d'
gagmg chtldren 1n creativity demonstrably enhances
en tsposition to 1
1
vating
earn a range of intellectual and social skills by cu ticoncentration and d 1.
te
practi v
lSCip me through pleasurable, even passwna '
ces. Iet Montessor'1 d 'tAT ld
d 1 ses
rather th
b.
an vva orf schools now serve privilege c as
an pu he classroo
C
,
h t the
real missio f
.
ms. ymcs aren t surprised; they figure t a
n pubhc sch 001s IS
to tram
. obedience, not to educate till
'tia-

132

CH

APTER FOUR

poor districts, overcrowded classrooms, and defl t d

.
uve.
.
.
,
.
a e expectations all
re against poor children s creative explorations
conspl

rr compound the problem, beleaguered teachers und

.1. o
.
er pressure to proassing grades on standardized tests suppose that
. .
.
.
.
engagmg m artisduce P
. play is a d1stract10n
tiC
. from academtc work. As in Montesson.,s I taly and
re's Brazil, the United States and many other states need t dd
. . .
. .
o a ress the
Fre1
verty of imagination In underpnvileged schools that resentfull
b .
po
.
. .
y su m1t
to standardized testing and remain nsk-averse. South Korea and Finland
have dramatically improved their ratings through arts-integration.s9 PreTexts recovers some lessons in creative learning, not only from modern
educators but also from Renaissance masters such as Leonardo Bruni who
taught that great writers are our best teachers. ((Read only those books written by the best and most esteemed authors of the Latin language, and avoid
works which are written poorly and without distinction, as if we were fleeing from a kind of ruin and destruction of our natural talents."60 Secular
classics offered tool kits of useful vocabulary, clever grammatical turns, and
a knack for literary figures. Today's classics include modern and contemporary works. Along with passages from Aeschylus and Virgil, Pre-Texts has
used pages by Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garda Marquez, Toni Morrison,
Ray Bradbury, Maxine Hong Kingston, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Rabindranath Tagore, Octavio Paz, James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Mayra SantosFebres, and Julio Cortazar, among other masters.
As co creators and connoisseurs in training, students exercise their critical faculties. They poach elements from the classics for their own writing,
learning to admire the found text as rich material for variations. They treat
texts as raw material for improvising plots, for constructing characters,
or changing the register of language. The challenge to change a text leads
young readers to engage their analytic capacities in explorations of the
original text so that they can propose a personal twist. Critical readers learn
to mine the classics for lexical, grammatical, and structural elements. Texts
become palpable for young iconoclasts who poach with creative purpose,
demystifying literature into usable stuff that can be appropriated. There is
no need to select "relevant" reading materials and thereby to limit literary
exposure, because youths can authorize themselves to make any text relevant through their own irreverent versions. Young creators develop mastery
of a text by re fu s1ng
. Its
. u1timate auth onty.
.
Teachers are show-ers not tellers. Real maestros don't explaini they
point out materials and techniques and then let students explore. To ex.

58

pRE-TEXTS

133

ther's interpretive capacities. I learned f

.
reernpt ano
rom Ill
plain IS to P . d d hter that preemptive explanation, "steal
Y
ori-trame aug
.
.
Ing one's
Montess
d d d error in thts child-centered pedagogy. R
. " is the rea e
Otnance
learnmg,
h pirit of teaching in the verbs ensenar and rno t "
ages
capture
t
e
s
s
rar,
to
an
,
I gu
., "to show
d
oint towar or

P
. nd Freire-hke antiauthontanan understand
This Montesson a
., ,
tng of
. . h theme of Jacques RanCiere s The Ignorant Schoolm t
educatiOn IS t e
.
as er, a
ench Revolutionary teacher of phtlosophy who urg
F
f
biography o a r
ent1y
France after the monarchy was restored. Jean Joseph]
1
neede d to eave
.
.
acofriend's invitation to teach m Belgtum, though he knew
d
t
tot accep e a
.
. .
no
Dutch. The desperate exile preferred to nsk looking Incompetent rather
than risk his life. Luckily, a bilingual edition of a popular novel came out
that yeari and to his delight, Jacotot found that his students could teach
61
themselves French by pouring over that book. Students can teach themselves when teachers give them tools and set high expectations.
Teacher training in Pre-Texts takes this lesson to heart as participants
first create particular interpretations and then pause to formulate general
observations. Explanations, interpretations that converge and diverge, and
admiration for the range of creativity all come from the players in eureka
moments that reflect on art-making. They add up to a dynamic civic education that takes the form of aesthetic education and brings us back to
Schiller.

FrvE.

Play Drive in the Hard Drive

Schiller's Poetics of Politics

While the French Revolution was spinning out of control, Friedrich Schiller
wrote Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794).1 He began the night
he heard that Louis XVI had been executed? Soon, the very Jacobins who
killed the king (after inviting Schiller to be an honorary citizen) would
themselves go to the guillotine. The Letters don't rail against violence. An
aggressive tone would have violated Schiller's conciliatory message that
art, not arms, achieves political freedom. It is a promise that has inspired
generations of philosophers and activists to explore what art-for-everyone
can do for democracy. Pragmatist John Dewey and post-Marxist Jacques
Ranciere cite Schiller as their mentor for recognizing art as a motor of political development. Liberal philosopher Jiirgen Habermas cites him too,
for stimulating the imaginative construction of new agreements through
"communicative action." A mention of Dr. Winnicott's prescription to play,
and of Freire's link between pedagogy and politics, develops this spotty
genealogy a bit more but won't amount to an academic contribution. My
.
more practical,
.
. ,s.3 It IS

urgent conversaPurpos e 1s
as was Sch1ller
to pnme

. . I' ary enduring, almost eerily contempora .

'th his interdJSClp tn, '
ry Invj.
tions WI
and play.
tation to loosen up b . back Schiller's worries about the French R
's troubles nng
.
.
"
evo.
Today
d
t eadstrong behmd reason mto the barbaris ,
hich ha run ,
rn of
Iution, w
S ters of that abstract and unfeeling reason brought h
.I 1purges. pee
t e
po JtJca
n Afghanistan and Iraq. In the name of reason
. d States to war J
.
eco.
Umte
.
immigration policy stagnates, and public educ t
omic dispanty grows,
.
a Jon
n
t' ry-t Schools earnestly bent on practical results add
s ueezes out crea JVJ .
.
.
.
a
q
p session hopmg to raise scores on standardiZed te t
math class or a pre
'
.
s s.
' . II 1c ducators and tragically for children, the sacrifice of dive
Iromca Y or e
rergent correctness has kept scores down, because the test
nv
t
gent pay
1 o co
s
than data retrieval. They also gauge the critical faculty of
Ore
measure m
.
t tl'on which develops by exercising the imagination, or playing s
mterpre a
. .

Schools are failing our children through Indifference or excessive caution

about creativity.
We should worry again about the connection between play-starved education and eroded mechanisms for political debate, if worry can lead beyond deadlocks. Too often, academic essays pursue analysis and critique
but stop short of speculation about remedies, as if intellectual work excluded an element of creativity. In fact, essays that remain risk-averse miss
the potential of the genre to "assay/' or try out, ideas. I confess my preference for the free play of new possibilities. Freedom to speculate is the condition for "the new humanism/' in a recent rehearsal of Schiller's concern
about imperious (French Enlightenment) reason that ignores (English
Enlightenment) sentiment.6 Schiller's contribution to the tension was to
identify and to coin a third kind of energy that new humanists can play
with: the Spieltrieb or play drive, our innovative faculty for turning conflict
into works of art.

Let's Loosen Up

Our humanity depe ndson It.

PI ay 1st
h e hardwired instinct for free dom and
for art Schille
d
.
.
'
r was sure an neurosCience confirms? It is the dnve that can
harness man's two 0 th
d
t
.
.
er an mutually murderous instincts, the passwna e
Smntneb and th
I

I
e ratiOn a Formtrieb, into the energy for producing aesthetiC
p ea.sure. Between the rock of reason and the hard place of mindless sensua1Ity, man is practicall
1
t to
.
Ya CIVI war in himself: savage by enslavemen
passionate nature and b b
(1 rter
ar arous by the pitiless exercise of reason e
'
136

CHAPTER FIVE

rnans survive, Schiller observed, when they get th d .

~o).snu
.
ose nvestoplay
Seriousness may address what ts true or moral (a d .
.
together.
n mtransJgent)
amoral and disinterested) opens paths toward l'b
ty (l
'
(
1
1
but pay
er
etter IS)
ilosophers watched the revolutionary convulsion. F

h
Other P
..
s m ranee and
d .
nxiously to poht1cal events, where they assumed the "
a
d
turne
,
great estmy
of rnan is to be played out (letter 2, 223); they evaluated competing dea State that could. construct and preserve civilization But Sch"ll
s1.gns I'or
'
1 er
mistrusted the cold scrutmy, and he bracketed the big political questions.
Instead, he went to the heart of the matter and to the heart of man when
he named the political crisis as an abandonment of the imaginative arts
and therefore of freedom: ((Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all
powers do homage and .all subjects are sub.servient. In this great balance of
utility, the spiritual semce of art has no we1ght, and, deprived of all encouragement; it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The very spirit
of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one promise after
another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed, in proportion as the limits
of science are enlarged" (letter 2, 223). More than two centuries later, the
recurring impatience would compel Martha Nussbaum to remind readers
why democracy needs the humanities.9
Schiller anticipated objections. Perhaps the young reader to whom
he addresses these letters would prefer ((a loftier theme than that of art,"
which probably seemed ((unseasonable in desperate times" (letter 2, 222).
Yet Schiller's brief for the arts is quite practical, he explains, because play
can lead indirectly to political liberty while more direct means, including
didactic art/' keep missing the mark. "For nothing agrees less with the idea
of the beautiful than to give a determinate tendency to the mind" (letter
22). Making something new-something for which there is no prior concept- is the liberating activity that raises man above his dual and dangerous nature. 10 Only playfulness creates multiple perspectives that bypass
the mono-vision of sensuousness or of reason.a The opposite of play is not
work or seriousness, not even depression, anthropologist Gregory Bateson
would explain for socio-ecological reasons; it is the one-dimensionality or
tJ

literal-mindedness that leads a species to extinctionP

.
True artists don't deny or avoid conflict; they struggle with it, energiZed
by contending forces. New works of art bear a mark of the freedom th~t
engendered them. And that mark, made visible or audible to the pubhc
through a work of art multiplies the experience of freedom into a shared,
or c
'
1

B ntrast with play

ommon, sense that supports enlightened po 1t1cs. Yco
PLAY DRIVE IN THE HARD DRIVE

137

.b ty the impulsive and deductive political phtl

l
I
t
war
J
et I
osoph
d
as a P1t1
~ d the freedom it too desperately pursued. Mere
Y
F 1CC foncJtC
reason
of rat .
d
eal dangers of resistance and reprisal, which .
dercsttmate t11C r
.
lS why
un

d
ferred the liberal and pragmatiC American R
Hamhlh Aren t pre
.
.
evolu.
te
or
postmodermty
when
hberal
routes
seem
cl

J3 But now tn 1a
ogged
tJOJl.
. 1free dom."} sch 1'11 er would not h
' take toward po1ttlca
what path can \\ e
.
ave
the question, because his answer has staying powe
been stumpe d bY
. .
r.
.
dcrstood as artistic creatiVIty that offers the only sure .f.
It IS p1ay un
. .
" .
1 1 In.
d t to liberty. Schiller mststed that this matter of art is less c
dtrect1con Ul
roreign to the needs than to the tastes of our ag~; nay, that} to arrive at a solution even in the political1 the road of aestheticS must be pursued1 because
it is through beauty that we arrive at freedom" (letter 21 224). Almost anyone at the time could see that pursuing reasonable shortcuts to liberty1 indifferent to human passions and material needs1 does violence to the very
humanity that reason would set free. Schiller's remedy for revolution is an
aesthetic education. To be moved by an aesthetically pleasing effect is to
acknowledge freedom in wrestling material into new forms, repairing the
damage that flesh and spirit do to one another. At precarious peace in the
world1 an artist or an admirer- both count as active citizens for SchillerI
though real fans play at being artists- achieves freedom and invites others
to share and to cultivate the experience. Cultivating this freedom into a
general condition of possibilities in collective political life is Schiller's ambition. And since wrestling with matter and circumstance takes discipline
and training! he sends Letters to encourage and advise us.

Face to Face

Strategically} Schiller addresses himself to one reader his patron, Prince

Friedrich Christtan of Schi esWtg-Holstein-Augustenberg

' in Denmark BY
publishing
the lettersl schiller mvttes
each of us to read as if we were the
.
pnnce himself (D1d sch111er 1earn the tactic from Machiavelli? 14) The pomt

was to. reform one 10

d'tvtd ua1at a time. Even though he concedes that "the
establishment and t
c
s ructure of true political freedom" is the most penect
work of art (letter 21 2 2 ) h
I
1
h
3 t at work needs to prepare appropriate matena
m t e shape of sturd
d . .
..
tr c
Yan JUdicious Citizens. Unlike other arts that can
ansiOrm raw mat . I b
and pol't d
ena eyond recognition into new objects, pedagog}'
1 tcs emand a
1
h 1.n
tegrity of h
. gent er touch; they depend on preserving t e uman bemgs as both the material and the ultimate users 0 f the
138

c HAPTER

FIVE

t "111 e political and educating artist has to treat h. .

.
pro duc .
.
lS matenal with
different kind of respect from that shown by the a t. t f fi
a very
,
. .
r IS o ne art to
.
k He must spare mans pecuhanty and personality t
htS wor .
. .
J no to produce
.
a dece Ptive effect on the senses, but obJectively and out of const.d eratlon
for his inner being" (letter 4, 229). The aesthetic education offers a "sub.ecttv
. e" transformation
.
. of each
. person's
. private war of confltc t.mg dnves
1. a knack for making beautiful pubhc peace offerings
tnto

"To deny the importance of subjectivity in the process of transformin

the world and history is naive and simplistic," Paulo Freire would confir!
in response to uscientific" MarxistSj "It is to admit the impossible: a world
. Fre d nc
. Jameson's endorsement
without men." 1s Th e response repeat s m
of aesthetics over the social sciences. Abstract concepts can be taught directly1 Jameson admits1 but "it is increasingly hard for people to put this
together with their own experience as individual psychological subjects in
daily life. The social sciences when they try ... become an ideology. Aesthetics addresses individual experience/' and effects a change of heart.I6
This attention to subjectivity and skepticism about rule-generating human
sciences characterize Gramsci's project too, as the real revolution will be
the achievement of gradual cultural change. Equally skeptical about the
pretensions of politics, Jacques Ranciere defends the subject-centered1
one-on-one approach to social changeP No enlightened masterpiece of
legislation can move people to identify with the state1 unless each participant is already educated in the spirit of freedom that the state presumably
represents. "Perhaps there is a vicious circle in our previous reasoning/'
Schiller teases (letter 9 ). The discouraging circle is familiar to Freire too:
"If the implementation of a liberating education requires political power
and the oppressed have none, how then is it possible to carry out the pedagogy of the oppressed prior to the revolution ?" 18 Ranciere puts it this way:
"People were dominated because they were ignorant and they were ignorant because they were dominated." 19
To break out of the frustrating circle, Schiller coaches! take a step back1
away from the conflicting sides. The opening activity or "instrument" that
affords some distance for contemplation (tis the art of the beautiful" ~let:,
te r 9) There 1s
really no alternative because wtthout

nectwn
the "d tscon
.
from habit that art provokes man stays torn1 stuck in material appetttes
and ar res te d b y stnctures
.

0
of Jmorahty.l
Coach'mg takes t1me1 Schiller admits
.,
thodox cultural
(
1 so we s1
1ould be prepared to spend it. Gramsc1 s unor
reform1
.11 d 101
c . h nan development
21
sm needed time too. ) No quick fix WI o
ut
. ARD DRIVE
PLAY DRIVE IN THE H

139

ur (/subjective" time-bound bodies to d .

f
g ahea d o o
es1gn a
110

1
because rus
St te is sure to suppress a good part of our hu
.n
. . , " timeless a
.
.
mantty
"obJectne
b t part is our capacity to expenment, to select d
.
.
an re.
22 ) .1he es
(lettei 4, 9
. Is to imagine unprecedented combinatio .
sting matena '
ns, that
arrange exi.

is, to play.

S mbolic Destruction
Y
AT
d Winnicott would come to the same conclusion throu h
Donald \:voo s
. .
.
g

. h hildren. On the thnlhng border between subJective f

k
his wor wtt c
. .
anreality play is the fundamental act1v1ty of human dev 1
. t've
1
b
d
tasy an o Jec
'
.

.
ed
of
sustained
psych1c
health.
Agreement
With
Sch1ller
may
b
opment an
. ,
.
e
. aenta1. Perhaps Winnicott read Schiller s bnefs, though we have no
comc1
e\~dence.n vVe do know that Winnicott developed an aesthetics through
psychotherapy, one child at a time, early Onj and he elaborated his notes
on play over a lifetime.23 Schiller wrote uman is truly human when he plays,
and he plays when he is truly human/' (letter 15) as if summarizing Winnicott's work. 24 The therapist included his own practice among the playful
and creative (that is, human) activities he studied: ((Psychotherapy takes
place in the overlap of two areas of playing, that of the patient and that of
the therapist. Psychotherapy has to do with two people playing together." 2S
This means free and non purposive communication, which the analyst must
not force into reasonable sequences.26
The instinct to play surfaces immediately, says Winnicott, with a newborn's search for its mother's breast.27 The breast materializes because the
mother also plays1 bending to the baby's will in order to welcome it as creator of its world. The early games multiply throughout life as uplay is the
continuous evidence of creativity, which means aliveness." 28 People play at
affecting the world) not only in a response to hostility or to repair a loss, as
Melanie Klein had thought.29 Play is an innate drive- in Schiller's senseto achieve tacit control over existing, often conflicting, materials and demands. Riskine ss spikes both art and analysis
. With
. dangers of unpre d.tctability, dangers that cannot be abolished if work is to proceed. So the work
demands a stead
h
. .
.

mess t at can anticipate and survive aggressive surpnses

meant to unhinge the 1
Jo u

'but
P aymate. The drive is potentially (destructive
h
w ether it is dest t'
h
b.
rue IVe or not depends on what the object is likej does t e
.
. .
But
o Ject survive, that is1 d
d
.
oes It retain 1ts character or does it react?
estructlon of an ob
h
'
d
Ject t at survives, that has not reacted or disappeare '
140

to use."31 Using people, as Barbara Johnson uncle 1. d ft

Jeads on
.
r llle a er read32
ur
cott amounts to loVIng them.
1
ng vv mn
'
1
u ~r do people and things survive destruction and beco
ful
nOvv
me use and
. ble to each other? They do so when the tussle takes place. th .
.
des1ra
.
m e Imagi. and opens up a border space, neither entirely subJecfv
b
1
. .
e- ecause
0 auon
ression fixes on something 1n the real world- nor entirely b. .
g
the ag
o Jecttve,
e the world is framed subjectively. The dangerous and the c
S
becau
.
rewre exhilarating contact zone between Inner and outer worlds is Winnicott's transitional space dedicated to free play. There the ((push and pull, to and fro
reaches towards the complex, the subtle-minded, integration of divergent
and heterogeneous raw materials" to produce transitional objects,JJ those
intimate and ingeniously re-signified playthings that belong to both the internal world of fantasy and to the external world that resists and survives
aggressive fantasies. ((There is no anger in the destruction of the object to
which I am referring, though there could be said to be a joy at the object's
. 1."34
sumva
Healthy, symbolic destruction enables the integration of the subject
with the objective environment and emotional maturity, while pathological and truly destructive acting-out keeps the immature subject split off
from the world. Much of Winnicott's work describes a structural link between healthy living and art-making: ((Through artistic expression we can
hope to keep in touch with our primitive selves whence the most intense
feelings and even fearfully acute sensations derive, and we are poor indeed
if we are only sane." 35

Take the Risk

The unpredictable, disarming quality of art remains the signpost for

Schiller's education, as it was for Kant's aesthetics. But Schiller broadens
aesthetics beyond Kant's disengaged judgment to include active exploration of artistic processes. His first letter respectfully promises to ((rest
chiefly upon Kantian principles." Yet he soon leaves the master to ~eco.me
a maestro, artist as well as teacher. Whether or not his use of Kant IS philosophically sound, Schiller refused to exercise judgment alone while pas.
It fmes
needed
1
stons
ran high and inflamed whole populations. D'ffi
1 cu
outlets for the energy that would otherwise ignite or festerj they need~d
ever-new experiments to form pleasing works from co nflicting matter. If
h'th

thishasnotde1 erto truth has so little manifested her victonous power,

CHAPTER FiVE

PLAY DRIVE IN THE

HARD DRIVE

141

t nding which could not have unveiled it but

d 01, the unders a
'
. .
.
'
on the
pen de
. d losed to it, and on 1nst1nct which did not
.
.
h
rematne
c
act
'With
heart "'htc
" (letter 8, 242.)
'
d cr
tt
t 1vays sure about arts goo euects. He tormented h
Schiller was no a \
)
.
Hn.~
.
lay The Robbers (178I , which the public loved~ .
1
self about hts ear y p '
.
.
or tts
lets his father die, who murders his mistress, and go
bandit hero"'ho
,
.
es on
. S hiller hoped that the outlaws populanty came from his solil _
robbmg. c
b ul 1" .
o
. b t the inJustices of far greater ut ega cnmes of exploitati
qUJes a ou
on.
led with Plato's notorious mistrust of artists, and also '~th
gg
t
1he poet s ru
.
. ,
,
l
, ber obJections m 1758 to Voltaire s and dA.lembert's rec
Rousseau s so
ommendation that Geneva sponsor a state theater.36 By 1784, Schiller took
the risk of defending art along Voltaire's lines- to promote civic culturewhen he supported a public theater for Germany. The law needs art1 he
agreed, as a vehicle for both education and subjective embrace of collective
norms.r But this already conventional argument didn't entirely cancel his
concern over art's accountability. It wasn't until he read Kant's Third Critique that Schiller would decide the ethical question in favor of art.
Contra Rousseau1 who dismissed art as entertainment1 Schiller could
now argue that aesthetic pleasure is different from amusement: it is the
enjoyment of freedom beyond concerns of truth or goodness. This sensation of aesthetic freedom is the precondition for politicalliberty1 Kant
suggested in the Third Critique. Thinking and feeling intensely without regard for personal or collective interests1 without commitments to existing
values and ideas} is the condition of Enlightenment philosophy.38 The challenge was how to prepare a broad population to think freely. The innate
faculties of pure (scientific) and practical (moral) reason are not free; they
depend on a priori principles of objectivity and ethics. Only aesthetics escape s determmtsm
because it doesn't depend on reason but on rule-free
~udgment. (See chapter 3} '1\.rt and Accountability.") K~nt believed that
Judg_ment levels differences among citizens because anyone can judge; and
he cttes Cicero on "how 1Itt1e difference
.
there is between the learne d and

the ignorant
in
ud

h'l
h
.
.
.
"39
1
.
gmg, w l e t ere 1s the greatest difference tn making.
Schtller disagreed Th ough his Letters take Kant's advice to tram
. JU
. dgment
b .through aesthet'tcs} they also exhort everyone to imagine and to rna ke
eauttful things Art ki
.

f
-ma ng ratses the intensity of Kant's discusston
menta l faculties (reas
d
.
.
.
) a
.
on, un erstand1ng Imagination and Judgment to
regtster of raw instinct Th r
.
J
J
less
With
s. e rormtneb (formal drive) lines up more or
pure abstract
d )
reason. On the other side1 the Sinntrieb (sensual nve

142

CH

APTER FIVE

burn reason away} if it were not for the third Sp. lt . b h

"v-ou ld
. ({
.
Le ne t at plays
. h rnbustible confhct. Just as hberty finds itself betw
h
\VIt co
.
een t e two exof legal oppression and anarchy1 so also we shall fi d th b
.
trernes
n
e eauttful
two extremes1 between the expression of dignity wh h b
.
en
betwe
.
.
tc ears Wltthe dominatiOn exerc1sed by the mind1 and the volupt
to
ness
. .
.
uous expres. ..rhich
reveals the dominatiOn exercised by instinct 1t 10
c ll
h
SlOn
vv
OWS t at
.
rd
state
in
which
reason
and
the
senses
.
1 duty and inclinat
thl
tOn1 are m
the
harrnony- will be that in which the beauty of play is produced."40

sublime Modernity

Classic culture could count on continuity between nature and art. But in
Schiller's frenzied world} man needs to work continuously to make connections. Moderns cocreate new societies; and new works of art help to
negotiate temporary truces between conflicting drives. They are sublimely
unstable and honor the dynamic of world-making more than they revere
any product. Much as he admires the ageless equilibrium of ancient Greek
art1 Schiller notes that its very perfection forfeits the freedom to stray from
an ideal1 so he prefers the tortuous and obsolescent historicity of contemporary arts (letter I6). Experiments trump the timeless enchantment of
classic art along with Kant's flat baseline of training taste as civic education.
Schiller the poet relished the effort1 the detours1 and the self-doubt that
art-making demands. He even accepted outright failures1 however envious
he might have felt about the natural talent that apparently flowed from
"naive" poets.41 Innate ability paradoxically undercuts their merit} he says}
"because it is not the work of their choice.... We are free, and they are necessary; we change1 they remain the same .... We therefore perceive in them
eternally that which is missing from us1 but after which we are required to
strive} and which1 although we never attain it1 we nevertheless may hope
to approach in an infinite progress. We perceive in ourselves an advantage,
which is wanting in them." 42 The advantage is freedom} and its sign is error,
the capacity to deviate from nature.
.
f ty and thereTh e very success of the ancients is a constramt on crea lVl
.
fore an obstacle to freedom (letter t6).43 Schiller develops this com~ar~
so 0
..
(
)
c to for modermty s
n m n Natve and Sentimental Poetry 1801 1 a manues
d'ffi
l
b h'ldl'k
and rise above}
1
1 1
44
cu t freedom. In any age, noble souls can e c
e
.
or t
1
. 1
(S hiller's favonte exs ay c ear of1 contradiction in this stmp e way. c
h
am 1 .
. h d transparent c arp e IS Pope Adrian VI [1522-I523] whose upng tan
HARD DRIVE
PLAY DRIVE IN THE

143

tion in the Roman Catholic hierarchy and

ter expose d corrup
..
made
ac
..
ffairs.4S) When, however, nob1hty of character is a h a
ess of pohttca1a
.
c leved
m
rr
d r"sk when sleepless souls reconcile reality with .d
through euort an 1 '
.
.
an l eal
es effective and truly pra1seworthy. Likewise With '
greatness becom
.
art
. . d bt failure and fleeting accomplishments are grand h
osctllattOn, ou '
'
er t an
.
erfection.46 Kant had bet on nature; he understood that c
Go d~g1ven p
.
.
tOrrn
.
d sthetic pleasure and attnbuted beautiful form to natu B
sttmu1ate ae
re. ut
Schiller's last words in On the Sublime (1801) put nature in its primitive
place: "Because the whole magic of the sublime and the beautiful subsists
only in semblance, art thus possesses all the advantages of nature Without
"47
kl
sharing her shac es.

Difficult Freedom

Schiller's preference for insecurity is a taste for freedom. Beauty, he points

out, is constrained by nature and leads to easy pleasure without exciting
the human will. But the sublime is no cheap thrill, and Schiller shares this
preference with Kant. Sublime pleasure begins with fear or confusion. Then
reason comes to the rescue by acknowledging human limitations. "We
therefore experience through the feeling of the sublime that the state of our
mind does not necessarily conform to the state of the senses, that the laws
of nature are not necessarily also those of ours, and that we have in us an
independent principle, which is independent of all sensuous emotions." 48
Having survived the horror and the perplexity, we feel free, relieved, and
proud to have processed pain into the pleasure of freedom. This shock of a
wo~ld independent of us makes the sublime Schiller's entry point into an
ethical politics of care for others.49
Probably Schiller 's most Important

improvement on Kant was to stretch

the duration of aesthef 1c expenence
.
beyond the moment of judgment
toward the time~co nsummg
1ab or of creativity. The stretch had enormous
consequences
for ph'l1 osophYfrom Hegel on. Making art- which inclu des
.d.
JU gmg,
exploring1 spe cu1af mg, and testing
. possibilities - replaced a sena
1

notion. of history Now h'tstory became a movement of forces in colhs10n,

..
reso 1vmg themselves i t
c
.
to b h
n new 1orms which then provoked fresh tensions
.. e arnessed. into yet newer arrangements. The very distinction between
natve and sentimental
.
.
sibility d h
poetry Identified epochal changes in form and sen
' an t erefore in th 1 .
ld The
realm f
e re at10nship between man and the wor
o appearances th at Sch1'11 er had safeguarded against both naiVe
.. an d

detractors is where human faculties thrive. Drive b d.

cyntca1
. .
n Y tsagreement
. elf the imag1nat10n can speculate beyond conflict.
ttS Iwould have b een comp 1'1e1t
. Wit
. h d isaster- as far as S h'll
.
c 1 er was con~
It
d
-merely
to
look
on
as
the
Revolution
whipped
pra
t' 11
cerne
. .
c tca y everyone
. destructive activity. When Walter Benjamin remarked th t th h.
tnto
.
.
.
a e 1story
of civilizatiOn was also the.history of barbansm he was glossing Schiller.so
.lberto Freyre would quip that Europe had a "siphilizing" mtsswn
. m
. the
1
(G
A.rnericas.sl) Schiller sometimes sounds shrill and he knows it: "Have I
gone too far in this portraiture of our times? I do not anticipate this stric~
ture, but rather another- that I have proved too much by it. You will tell
me that the picture I have presented resembles the humanity of our day,
but it also bodies forth all nations engaged in the same degree of culture,
because all, without exception, have fallen off from nature by the abuse of
reason, before they can return to it through reason" (letter 6, 232, my em~
phasis). Returning to reason will need to take passion into account: "Reason is obliged to make this demand, because her nature impels her to completeness and to the removal of all bounds; while every exclusive activity
of one or the other impulse leaves human nature incomplete and places a
limit in it" (letter 15, 264).
This was a call to action that recruited all citizens as artists and potential
artists. Schiller's Aesthetic Education demystified the work, while Kant had
described artists as rare geniuses. The almost immediate effect of Schiller's
pedagogy was far-reaching through Wilhelm von Humboldt. Schiller's stu~
dent and close friend would establish Europe's first modern and public uni~
versity in Berlin in 1810, dedicating it to civic education through arts and
sciences.52 In Jena, Humboldt had heard Schiller's lectures on history that
developed the line of his Letters and took to heart the maestro's exhortation
to make new forms: ((Soon it will not be sufficient for things to please him;
he will wish to please" (letter 27, 309). The public university responded by
creating an innovative space for personal excellence and collective accom~
plishment.There the drama of development would be narrated in the "first
person plural/' as Boallater identified the agency of individual characters to
community theater. ((Independently of the use to which it is destin~d, t~e
b'
.

h' h a01nes 1t
0 Ject ought also to reflect the enlightened mtelhgence w lC tm o
'
the hand which shaped it with affection, the mind free and serene which
chose it and exposed it to view" (letter 27, 309). When an artistic expen~
rne t

nd eventually to
n succeeds, it charms even philistines to recogmze, a
emulate, the man-made miracle of new forms:
HARD DRIVE

144

CHAPTER FIV.E

PLAY DRIVE IN THE

145

. f r principles will keep them off from you, but in

1h raVIty o you
.
.
eg
. .11 dure them. Their taste IS purer than their he
they w1ll stt en
art,
1
Pay. .
their taste you must lay hold of this suspicious fugiand tt ts by
.

11
. n ou combat their maxims, 1n vain WI you contive. In va111 W1 Y

. t' 5 . but you can try your molding hand on their

demn their ac tOn '
. .
.
D . away caprice, fnvolity, and coarseness, from their plealetsure. nve
.
will
banish
them
imperceptibly
from
their
acts
and
sures, and you
'
at length from their feelings. Eve~her~ that you meet t~em, surround them with great, noble, and Ingenious forms; multiply around
them the symbols of perfection, till appearance triumphs over
reality, and art over nature. (letter 9, 247)
This is no romantic brief for feeling contra reason, no advice to aim for
the heart instead of the head. Schiller is holding out for enlightened dispassionate taste as a common sense of value. ((Their taste is purer than
their heart." Cultivate that taste (judgment) with real beauty, he adds in a
Kantian spirit, and common sense will overtake pettiness. Since cultivation
won't take root under Kant's constraints on world-making, Schiller incites
us to play. We can enchant even unwilling subjects with more art than they
can resist; that way, reluctant spirits can find freedom instead of blocking
the way for others. Reason is quite helpless here because arguments excite
counterarguments in the desperate spirals that Foucault would trace.

Play's the Thing

Schiller didn't despair; nor would John Dewey, Herbert Marcuse,53 Paulo
F . An
reire, tomo GramscV 4 Augusto BoaV5 Antanas Mockus, or Jacques
R~ciere. These and other exemplary agents of change investigate the
S~Irals of power and passion to locate cracks or weak points where alternatives can open a wedge. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968), Freire called
these fissures limit Sltuat.Ions" that provoke interventions to derai1current
procedure 56 Th

ese pomts of entry become what Mockus calls ambtguous

or unfinished
t'
. moments of a narrative, available for a new twist.57 ConvenlOna1endmgs go aro d . .
d h t
. ..
un m Circles, Freire warned when he propose s or
ClrCUitmg the d 1 .
d
Ia ecttc of mastery and bondage that Hegel had describe :
as masters become d
rid
through
k)
ependent on their slaves (who change the wo
wor newly e
ters.
The lo
.
mpowered slaves lord it over their former mas
op stratghtens o t b
1
. gleu Yrep acing the top-down and bottom-up sm
(I

146

CH

. d dness with two-way dialogue. By a simple change of

..
IJllll e
.
preposttton,
. eJ ected a vanguard leadership style that works for th
fretre r
.
P
e oppressed,
s in the lead, for collaboratiOns that work with the
d
t
and s aY
.
.
ss .
.
oppresse to
systematic,
recurrent
unfairness.
Liberty
hves
in
th
h
Pt
interru
ere earsa1s
f these lateral labor relations.
Freire's appreciation for innovation doesn't exactly depend on art; he
hardly mentions it. But the instructions for disarming hierarchies through
cultural interventions bring him into direct conversations with artists
(Augusto Baal called Freire his ((last father") and indirectly with Schiller.s9
1he risky collaborative experiments that Freire advocated merit the name
of art, even if they are not ((purposeless." Like an artist, he is practically indifferent to the substance of lessons but alive to the hierarchical or transactional form of teacher-student relations.
John Dewey wasn't coy about his debt to Schiller. His pragmatic encomium to art is paraphrased from the Aesthetic Education: ((The existence
of art is the concrete proof ... that man uses the materials and energies
of nature with intent to expand his own life, and that he does so in accord
with the structure of his organism- brain, sense-organs, and muscular system. Art is the living and concrete proof that man is capable of restoring
consciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the union of sense, need,
impulse and action characteristic of the live creature." 60 A fan of Schiller
and impatient with Kant's exemption of beauty from any practical purpose,
Dewey considered art to be everything done with care, intensity, and satisfaction61: ((The tense grace of the ball-player infects the onlooking crowd
... the delight of the housewife in tending her plants .... What Coleridge
said of the reader of poetry is true in its way of all who are happily absorbed
in their activities of mind and body." 62 (((Doing/' in Winnicott's similarly
broad and basic formulation of human activity, means living creatively;
that is, living.63 ) Dewey's democratizing adjustment of registers be~.een
the ordinary and the extraordinary specifically rejects categorical dtstmc.
b etween intellectuals and artists, bnngmg
. Ph'l1 osopher Dewey even
ttons
.
((
dtr
b
tween
the
esthetic
1
c oser to artist/philosopher Schiller: The werence e
.
phasis
falls
m
the
.
h
d
h
an t e Intellectual is thus one of the places w ere em .
.
1
'
reature
with
his
.
f
h
constant rhythm that marks the interactwns o t e IVe c
.
t th'nk
and a sci1
surroundings .... The odd notion that an artist does no
f
. .
t a difference o
enttfic mquirer does nothing else is the result of conver mg
, vU e
tern
. ki d "64 Dewey didn t pn eg
po and emphasis into a difference m n
S hill
o
close to c er.
ne orm over anotherJ but celebrated them all, staymg

HARD DRIVE

APTER FiVE
PLAY DRIVE IN THE

147

. ced for itself" is Jacques Ranciere's shorth

"F m is expenen
.
"
and fo
or
d'
nd uunsurpassable manifesto for the ((
h r
Schiller's foun mg a
.
.
((
aest etic
,
65 Schiller's aesthetiC revolution produced a new .d
regime of art.
h
li .
1 ea of
. " Ranciere says, as t e rea zatlon of a comm
olitical revolutJOn,
on and
P
'ty This became the core of German Romanticism ((s
creative humam
.
urnrna. h . h draft of a program wntten together by Hegel Hold 1.
rized 10 t e roug
.
.
'
er 10
. .. But the political movement failed and ta1nted the ae th . }
and Sc he11 mg.
.
.
s ettc
model: "Modernity thus became something hke a fatal destiny based on
a fundamental forgetting." 66 Ranciere decries the lost aesthetic road to
revolution, not to scold but to jog our cultural memory into rediscovering Schiller and company. It is too soon to declare defeat, he reminds colleagues, while the aesthetic regime still promises to multiply and redistribute instances of art in egalitarian relation to life. Academic defeatists are
irresponsibly inactive, he adds) when they complain about collective losses
while they live relatively well above the rubble.
The accusation of bad faith recalls Schiller's objection to the willful and
humorless dismissal of playfulness by ((extreme stupidity and extreme intelligence" (letter 26). The one has no imagination, and the other wants nothing but the truth. They stay boxed in by reality and consequently surrender the freedom that appearance (Schein) can offer. Freedom assumes risks
as it plays with possibilitieSj it anticipates failures as cues for abandoning
some experiments and designing new ones. Free play also admits to living
the shadow-life of counterfactual ((appearances." Mayor Mockus defends
counterfactual thinking as if Schiller were coaching him. Philosophically,
Mockus understood his administration in rational procedural terms that
can generate shared norms and build consensus. This line of thinking is so
indebted to Jii rgen Habermas that some students affectionately calle d the
mayor Professor Habe rmockus. But In
. practice
. Mockus achieve
. d consen _
sus and civility b ki
.
'
.
Yspt ng communicative action with the kind of unconventiOnal creativity we call play or art.

'ble points of agreement and to try them out Und d

.
possJ
h
.
er- etermmed and
.1 ble for explorations, Sc ein had already drawn John D
.
aval a
ewey to Schiller
lated ethical reasons. Dewey described ethical delibe t'
((
for re
,
.
.
ra 10n as dra. rehearsals that take place In the Imaginary space whe
.
matlC
.
re artists con. a
s1d er options before making the cut or stroke or rhyme that determmes
forrn. "The instinct of play likes appearance, and directly it is awakened it
is followed by the formal imitative instinct" (letter 26). That mental theater
of possibilities is where Dewey's deliberation can play out a range of scenarios without defaulting to habit and preconceptions. ((We are apt to describe this process as if it were a coldly intellectual one. As a matter of fact,
it is a process of tentative actionj we (try on' one or other of the ends, imagining ourselves actually doing them, going, indeed, in this make-believe
action just as far as we can without actually doing them."67
As a clinic for curing political inflexibility, Habermas defends the room
for imaginative rehearsals against the dispiriting matter-of-factness that
Schiller called extreme stupidity and extreme intelligence. For Habermas,
Surrealism was an example of willful stupidity, and deconstruction a case
of perverse intelligence. In the 1920s and '3os, Surrealism had imagined
that art could dissolve the tensions between desire and reason by plumbing
the irrational depths of the unconscious where life melds indistinguishably
with art.68 By the 1970s, deconstructive philosophy revived this campaign
against reasonable distinctions: if meaning is constructed from words and
words are artificial abstractions that overshoot or underestimate their
69
marks, then words betray us and undermine communication. Presumptively real information unravels under rigorous scrutiny to lead practically
nowhere. Both Surrealists and deconstructionists exposed the fragile differences between data and desire, hoping finally to unhinge the gate between art and life, rhetoric and meaning.
But Habermas hopes to repair the hinge and to protect a space for art as
the laboratory for better living. So he takes an ((Excursus on Schiller's Lett
d
counterfactual
ers on the Aesthetic Education of Man" to safeguar room or
.
h. l D. urse of Modermty
appearances" just after starting The Phdosop tea zsco
.
.
d constructmg col(19 87 ) Habermas claims this space as h1s
playgroun or
1
.
t kofreconective agreements: ((If art is to be able to fulfill its htstonc as .
l
ly impmge on
Cl tng a modernity at variance with itself, it must not mere.. d
h re
1s s a
ind 'd
f
1'
that
indiVI
ua
1
lVI uals, but rather transform the forms 0
e
. . . force of
Ben s h
'ld'
olidanty-giVIng
ce, c iller stresses the community-bUI mg, s
C(

Deliberative Differences

"Appearance" is the
c
es
from s h'll .
counterLactual contribution that Habermas receiV
c 1 er m order to f 11
.
that
universal
ac ttate discursive action. Action assumes
va 1ues do not t
h t they
can be
ye eXIst among conflicting parties, but t a
constructed throu h
. agine
g communication. The challenge is to trn

HARD DRIVE
PLAY DRIVE IN THE

149

oint
of
his
analysis
is
that
.
..
particular
f;
Th
bl"c1 character. e P
orces

art; its pu
.
d d developed only at the cost of the fragment .
could be differentiate an
atton
,, -o

of the totality. '

[ fa societyJ must therefore be found in a pe
" talit of character o
op1e
To. Yable an d worthy of exchanging the State of
need
for
the
Stat
f
. .
eo
that
Schiller, letter 4).1he side step from reahty mto art isn't exactly
freedo (
t f om the sober theorist of communicative action. B
what readers expec r
. '
.
u1
mas at his word. It was Schiller s art-making amend
b
H
k
we should ta e a er
.
.
,
Th.
d
Critique
that
taught
Habermas
to
p1ck
h1s
way
out
of
ment to Kant s lr
.
.
. , d dl 0 ck between Impersonal reason and embod1ed desire
modernity s ea
.
.
.
.

. If gave art credit for developing

IntersubJectlve
common sense
Kant himse
.
,
names.. Artistic
. ting feelings and Ideas that don t yet have
by communica
.
. can give voice to ineffable (and therefore pnvate, poss1bly congenius
. bl e."71 'This
tentious) states of mind to rnake t hem ((genera11y communiCa
Kantian connection between art and common sense, amended by Schiller
to indude a universal faculty for creating connections, underwrites Habermas's long sessions of communicative action.
The amendment also puts Hannah Arendt in Schiller's debt. Despite
distrusting him for being an artist, a ((fabricator/' she evidently learned how
to read Kant's political philosophy from reading Schiller's Letters.72 It was
Schmer who first interpreted Kant's aesthetics as the ((surprising" key to his
73
politics. Arendt's Lectures on Kant seem daring to her student and editor who supposes that she overinterpreted Kant in order to argue her own
4
political position? But the blame or praise is too strong, because it was
Schiller's bold use of Kant that had clinched the role of aesthetic judgment
as a moment in the process of creating political accords. Judgment bridges
politics, morality, and the law to the natural and social sciences, as we saw
75
in chapter 3- Arid that bridge leads back to aesthetic education, which for
Schiller cultivates the optimism of creative decision-making.
For Habermas, Schiller's unpretentious shuttle from judging, to making,
t~ ~ausing again for judgment made good on Kant's enlightened project of
dismterested communication:

IS:!'

Kant's Critique 0iff d

1
1
u gment a so provided an entry for specu at1ve
Idealism that
Id

.
cou not rest content with the Kantian differentiations between und t d'
.
.
ers an mg and sense, freedom and necessity,
mmd and nature b

d' t"1ons
h
' ecause It perceived in precisely these Istmc
t e expression of d' h
. .
d' .
tc otomtes Inherent in modern life-con ttwns.
150

But the mediating ~ower of re~ective judgment served Schelling

nd Hegel as the bndge to an tntellectual intuition that was to as:ure itself of absolute identity. Schiller was more modest. He held
on to the restricted significance of aesthetic judgment in order to
make use of it for a philosophy of history. He thereby tacitly mixed
the Kantian with the traditional concept of judgment, which in the
Aristotelian tradition (down to Hannah Arendt) never completely
lost its connection with the political concept of common sense. So
he could conceive of art as primarily a form of communication and
assign to it the task of bringing about ((harmony in society": '~1
other forms of communication divide society, because they relate
exclusively either to the private sensibility or to the private skillfulness of its individual members, that is, to what distinguishes between one man and anotherj only the communication of the Beautiful unites society, because it relates to what is common to them all"
(letter 2.7) ?6
Imagination gets across the otherwise impassable differences that concern Habermas: ((The unbridgeable gap Kant saw between the intelligible
(realm of duty and free will) and the empirical (realm of phenomena, inclinations, subjective motives, etc.) becomes, in discourse ethics, a mere
tension manifesting itself in everyday communication as the factual force of
counterfactual presuppositions." 77 Without counterfactual appearance and
short of the free play that appearance allows-that is, without SchillerHabermas could hardly incite us to play at bridge-building.
I offer this fundamental connection between aesthetic education and
discourse ethics as a tribute to Mayor Mockus and to other public figures
. . 1 adVIce78 Defending the everw ho strive to adopt Habermas ,s po11t1ca
contrast to the heady
. and self-correcting exploratiOns
.
changmg
of art, m
.
. . of Idealist philosophy, Habermas under1mes the debt that dtaambttton
. history owes to Schiller for conceiVIng
. . of progress as an. uneven
1ecttcal
movement between fits and starts through moments of aesthettcwil~clcomkd
ture
Hegel
ta
e
1
f
r
P ishment. With Schiller's advance as a point o epar '
.
versals to advocate IOr
on Kant's inflexible categorical ethtcs of abstract um
t
'
1
1

11
w
up
with
an
argumen
0
0
a more deliberative process and Habermas Wl
h th t he
~
1 1 and the stretchr'ftathat
or communicative action. Thanks to the fl exi'blty
1
..
st the short s 1
earns from Schiller Hegel can level a cnttque agam
dy of
1(
.
'
d h can offer the reme
ant giVes to the procedure of judgment, an e

CHAPTER PIV.E

RD DRIVE
PLAY DRIVE IN THE HA

151

t nto a working session of intersubjective d l'b

din the momen
.
.
e 1 era.
expan g
replaces
the
Kantlan
categoncal
imperat"
b
. ''Discourse et11tCS
,7
'
.
lVe y a
tton.
mentation.
9 Habermas s read1ng of Hegel
cedure of mora1argu
.
"
rounds
pro
.
K
,
t had opened when he d1slodged Imperious r
1
out the orcle t11at at
.
. .
eason
d lf~suffi.ciency 1n the first two Cnttques.
from its delude se

Anxiety of Agency

. . .

.
ntered
resistance,
to
Judge
from
h1s
1rntat1on
with
Willful
tu
Scht 11er encou
s pidity and smug intelligenc.e. Hi~ exasperated tone a~ticipate~ posthumous
trouble too. Paul de Man ts a s1gn of the trouble. I 11 mention his objections because de Man can stand in for a whole generation of skeptics who
continue to haunt the humanities. Though Gayatri Spivak, for example,
takes a bold turn toward intervention and toward Schiller in her recent
An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (2012), she stays tied to
de Man and to deconstruction through a habit of translating tension into
the tormented stasis of double binds.1his knot of conflicting demands described particular tight spots for Gregory Bateson, who coined the term.so
But double bind is generalized in deconstruction to mean a simultaneous
possibility and impossibility to say or to do almost anything. It practically
amounts to an interdiction against action. Spivak claims to be stuck between dedication to scholarship and the call to engagement.81 In fact, she
pursues both admirably in a syncopated rhythm that artists understand.
Schiller described that irregular progress of getting beyond binds. That was
his project: to overcome the impasse between reason and passion, time and
eternity, obligation and desire, indirectly. Through play, he argued, humans
can reconcile conflicting demands into new forms that change the players
and change the world in the process.
de Man's animus against Schiller wasn't envy or resentmentj he apparent~y felt no overpowering admiration that might have soured into
an aruuety of 1nfl uence. The contrast with Johan Huizinga's parr1c1
da1Ja
b
underlines the d1ffi
H . .
k ht
erence. mzmga rehearsed the Letters in a boo t a
clearly owes Schiller a great but unacknowledged debt Homo Ludens:
A Study of th Pl
.
'
d
.
e
ay
Element
m
Culture
(
1938). He dismissed Schiller, ma e
htm 1ook silly

k
Th
' tn a smgle mention delayed past the middle of the boo
e master who ta h
.ze
I
h
ug t everyone from Hegel to Habermas to recognt
P ay as t e motor of h
oppsychol .
uman arts, culture, and society is reduced to a P
ogtst of doodli . ''A h
. . f las~
ng. t eory designed to explain the ongtn P
152

C HAPTP.R. FIVE

t 1n terms of an innate 'play-instinct' (Spieltrieb) w

tJC ar
as propounded Ion
.
.
g
Schiller. .... As an explanatiOn of the origin of d
b
ago y
.
.
ecorattve motifs in
alone of plastic creation as a whole a psychic fu .
t
1
art, e
.
'
nctton of this kind
strike us as somewhat Inadequate. It is impossible t
t
rnus
o assume that
of
the
hand
could
ever
produce
s
h
h.
imless
meanderings
a
the
uc at mg as
,s2 Huizinga's gesture hopes to establish authorship and th .
l
sty e.
. .
au onty regarding playj it is a mean-sptnted confirmation of Schiller's contribution.
But de Man's hostility is sharper than envy, contemptuous of Schiller's
project. His objection rankles ~t. the political ambition of the Letters.
de Man surely sensed that ambition through Schiller's admirers, Walter
Benjamin among them. Benjamin took up Schiller's account of worldmaking, but reframed the relay between humanity and nature as a dystopian decline rather than an erratic path to freedom. Benjamin named the
narrative form of this historical zigzag between art and environment "dialectical allegory." de Man dismissed the term and the implied time it took
as a na'ive contradiction, so he stopped the movement and straightened out
Benjamin's bidirectional form into a standard two-tiered allegorical structure.83 Targeting Benjamin's defense of change through time, de Man was
also aiming at Schiller's social dynamism, especially his optimism about
art.84 A disturbing passage about statesmen using people the way a sculptor uses stone is meant to evoke Schiller. But the quote belongs to Joseph
Goebbels.85 The Letters had, on the contrary, admonished political artists
not to treat human beings that way. Why authorize Goebbels to speak for
Schiller? Perhaps it was to say that the Nazis could construe his invitation
to aesthetic politics as a license to kill, because Schiller was the original
guilty party for leading the way from art to disastrous agency. de Man's irritation with Schiller's brief for art is probably as historical as it is philosophical, since symbolic destruction- called art- had failed to avert the real
thing in World War II. After wartime collaborations that de Man refused
"St
led
against
.
h
1
to confess, aesthetic pleasure became a scanda to tm. ee
. . . IS
an allegory of denial and
the P1easures of art and thought, his cnttctsm
.
.. or dangerous'
depnvation."
86 While all political objectives seeme d natve
deconstruct10n
. dismissed Schiller for the same soe1a
11Yengaged reasons
. ") t hat promp ted Habermas
("hlS stress on practicality, on the pragmattc
to reVive him.87
. h ency of art-was
Another way to denigrate Schiller- along wtth t e ag
.
f
t 0 11 h'
d
his not10n o P1ay
ca 1m a monger of lies and false effects, to re uce
c
ot
t0 f . .
1 11 the truth, Iacts, n
88
nvohty and entertainment. Serious peop e te
.

H \RD DRi\'E
PLAY DRIVE IN THE '

153

. (as critics of Mockus would reproach) B t .

f tual fantastes
.
.
. u Withcounter ac .
h work of philosophy shnnks to thinking onl b
ginatwn, t e
Y a out
out 1ma
.
h. ch makes change literally unthinkable as w
h t already exists, w I
. . .
e saw in
wa
.
sing retreat into positiVIsm, as narrow as the phl
ha ter 1 It IS a surpn
1 osoc P
t' mocked for fixing only on true or false statement 89
h that J. L. Aus m
.
.
s. To
PY
st Schiller and imagination In general, de Man
clinch his case agam
. .
resorts
.
. t orollary: the preference for art with Its mass appeal
to a mlsogyms c
over
. h'l
hy amounts to a feminine preference for form over a ma
ehte p 1osop
scuct c0 r content.9o Hostile or grumpy, de Man dismisses wome
.
. .
.
n,
1me respe I '
c
. and Schiller in the same stroke, even If It requires defending the
11sm,
1orma
"meanings" that deconstruction would otherwise malign and dismantle.
Schiller was careful to distinguish between appearance and deception:
one opens a vista for rehearsing scenarios to act in the worldi the other
squints at it. The distinction should relax ethical concerns about play. But
some skeptics won't respect useful boundaries, Habermas complains. The
excessive caution that accompanies a dehumanizing zeal for reality banishes "all the fine arts of which appearance is the essence/' tragically sacrificing freedom by ostracizing beauty as "only an appearance" (letter 2 6,
302). Today, a grim seriousness that has passed for high theory refuses the
broad-based seductions of art and eliminates the arts from public education, while the business of art booms. Privileged producers play to curators and collectors who value artworks as measures of acquisitive power.
Meanwhile, the fundamental play drive, the faculty that Schiller was sure
amounted to our talent for being human, gets too little room for everyday
exercise. Weak and underfunded, how will it save us from savage passion
and from barbarous reason?91

Ready?

Schiller's
Letters can gtr
d Citizen-artists

.
to defend art and to woo skepttcs.
Hts. book
is
not
so
h

h
h
muc a trammg manual as a companion throug t e
.
oscillations failu
d
d
.
.'
res, an temporary successes of art-making in mo ern
times. Schtller is b0 th f k
h
ran and eloquent about the challenge to c arm
b h
ot technocrats a d

rt
th
h
n pessimists. He wants us to win them over to a
roug a profound! h
1
..
Y uman susceptibility to beaut" even when reason
at s to JOin us. The L
.
'"JJ
tio f
etters, seductive and persistent have set off genera
ns o corresponde
.h
..
'
r
1
ers art'
nee Wit pohttcal philosophers, pedagogical re orm
, tsts, teachers, and citizens.
154

oderns who must continually construct conn t.

As rn
. .
ec tons to each other
the physical world, the Instinct for play drive
and to
.
s us toward cultural
of modest and sometimes momentous social ch
S
agencY
.
.
ange. o Schiller's
. 't tion to co-create IS an opportunity and an obligat
E
tJlVl a
..
ton. ven when
.
ng occurs to us at cntical moments, when conflict d
h
not J
.
.
an scarctty denew forms or a particular skill that we can't muster t th .
d
rnan
. .
a e hme, fruscan
prime
a
future
contnbut10n.
Failure
can
feel
ult'ke
.
h
.
on
t
tra 1
an 1tc m the
" to quote an indigenous facilitator of Forum Theatre h
.
0
.
10 er new1y
brat ,
learned Spanish. I hope that this book about great and also small works will
suggest a palette or a ~ool kit t~ keep handy for inspiring new cases. Apprenticeship to the artists ment10ned here - those who work from the top
of political power to animate collective creativity, and those who start small
and scale up- will share some lessons they learned from trial and error.
Mayor Mockus discovered that wit is essential to art. It is an element
of the collective pleasure that cities can generate through collaborative art
in order to sustain projects of social change. He also inquired, and then
demonstrated statistically, that admiration for co-artists is the foundational feeling for citizenship.92 Asking after the effects of one's work, pausing from play to measure and to judge before making a next move, Mockus
is a maestro worth emulating. His inclusive approach to art multiplies the
makers, as does Augusto Boal's recruitment of actors and nonactors into
open-ended Forum Theatre. Boal explored tragic determinism as a copout, or a cop-in-the-head, an unnecessary bad ending because theater offers
space to rehearse a variety of options. Leadership, Boal concluded, is the
art of facilitating imaginative interventions by the greatest possible number of spect-actorsj it is no vanguardist knack for giving directions. Effective facilitators, Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas of the Pro-Test Lab
experimented with art to drive an ethical agenda without depending on
positive outcomes. The pleasure of art-making can be the energy that animates a politically impossible project, for pushing impossibility pas~ one
and another checkpoint on a receding horizon, until the project a.chteves
real political success. And ACT UP discovered that collective actiOn can

. ff proJec
ts that translate
mtttgate
personal riski it may also provoke spm-o
d'ISSId ence into renewable energy for the movement. W'th
1 Pre-Texts, the
arts 0 f recycling triggered commonplace creattve
agency, first through the
e 1
bl' hi
roJect and then
ast Ymultiplied model of Eloisa Cartonera's pu IS ng P
'
h. h
through a pedagogical sequel that appropnates
.
l't
1 era ry classics and tg
theory for the irreverent fun of advanced literacy.

CHAPTER FIVE

HE HARD DRIVE
PLAY DRIVE IN T

155

Notes

Welcome Back
1. See Thomas Docherty, Aesthetic Democracy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). Also Martha Nussbaum, Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the
Humanities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010)j Geoffrey Harpham on
"How America Invented the Humanities/' http://www.youtube.comj watch?v=
QslAS6FiBuc.
1. Antanas Mockus, "Cultura Ciudadana, programa contra la violencia en Santa Fe
de Bogota, Colombia 1995-1997." Estudio Tecnico, Washington, DC, July 2001, no.
SOC-120 Division de Desarrollo Social, Publicaciones Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, (accessed July 12, 2010), http:// es.scribd.com/ doc/ 63048/ Colombia
-Cultura-Ciudadana-Experiencia-Bogota.
3. See the reference to Martha Nussbaum in a response by Alexander Nehamas,
"An Essay on Beauty and Judgment/' Three Penny Review 8o (winter 2ooo): 4-7.
. philosophy
.
. .
leasure as distraction.. See
4 Class1cal
also d1sm1sses
p1easure and dtsp
PROLOGUE.

FIGURE 5.1.

KrzysztofWodiczko, The Abolition of War. Courtesy of the artist.

All of these experiments- along with philosophical defenses of artistic

trial and error including those by Dewey, Gramsci, Freire, Ranciere, and
Habermas -lead back to Schiller, to his optimism and to his tolerance for
tension and for failure. Schiller's best readers know that freedom doesn't
always reach an intended mark. Error is a risk that art takesj it is a sign
of unscripted activity. Schiller never promised a direct route to freedom.
In fact, he warned against it if the pursuit hoped to avoid self-canceling
intransigence. Only the pleasures of indirection and experimentation can
sustain the repeatedly unrealized but approximating efforts. After reading
Sc~l!er's Letters and some of its sequels in art, philosophy, pedagogy, and
pohttcs-trials and errors that promise a future for syncopating between
failure and new forms -can you res1st
an invitation to press ''p 1ay "">

Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, edited with an interpretive

essay by Ronald Beiner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982): 2 7
. . 1ns n1 ut"ton al Change and Ecos. See chapter 1 and also Douglas North, Instztut10ns,
.
.ty press' 1990)' also his "A.
nomtc. Performance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Umvers1
Transaction Cost Theory of Politics/' Journal of Theoretical Politics 2, no. 4 (1990).
355- 367.
.
. Sa1vador Dali both identified
6 Communist Andre Breton and fascist sympathizer
"
S
F kl"10 Rosemont, IntraS
as urrealists, along with anarchists and reformists. ee ran
.
d ced b
duct"ton," Andre Breton, What is Surrealism? Selecte d lAT.
T edited and mtro u
y
vvrt mgs
Franklin Rosemont (New York: Pathfinder, 1978) P 28

156

CHAPTER FIVE

Surrealists 01'1 Art (Englewood Cliffs} NJ: Prentice Hall 19 )

d.,
d
Lippar
'
e
. . if h A Ob.
, 7o i
7 LucY
. }' .. 71te Dernaterial1zat1on o t e rt 1ect from 19 66 t
, Li ard, Stx ear~.
o 1972
and LuC} PP. t. of California Press, 1997 ).
.
[ 1934] 2005 ) .
(Berkclc)" Umver~t
A )t . Ex-perience (New York: PengreeJ
' John Dewey, r a~
.
.
s.
.
. h We Scholars: Changtng the Culture of the Unzversity. C
e Davtd Damrosc ,
amS
9 e
. p
.
~tA Harvard Universtty ress, 1995
bndgc, h . G msci's
11anarc h.tC1J " Pnson
N otebooks vol
"Discorso
ag
1920
Sec
An
tonto
ra
1
1,
10
h B tfgieg
(New York: Columbia University Press, 199 2) 1 pp 12
1
edited by Josep u
'

'
4H-75

Taught with Francesco Erspamer.

.
. .
. See Mary Schmidt Campbell and Randy MartmJ eds.J Art1stzc Citizenship: A
12
Public Voice for the Arts (New York: Routledge} 2oo6), p. 12. The book takes stock of
II.

Department of Art and Public Policy.

Doris Sommer, "Rigoberta's Secrets," in Proceed with Caution When Engaged by

N r u 's

13

Minority lVritirzg itt the Americas (Cambridge} MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
. Economist Pier Luigi Sacco reports the denial in "Culture 3.0: A New Perspec14
ti\'C for the EU 2014-2020 Structural Funds Programming," for the European Expert
Network on Culture (EENC), April2011. http:jjwww.culturalpolicies.netjwebjfiles
I 24 1/en !Sacco_culture-3-o_CCis-Local-and-Regional-Development_ final. pdf.
15. Stuart A. Kauffman, b1vestigations (Oxford: Oxford University Press1 2ooo), pp.
..

X-XJI.

16. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New revised twentieth-anniversary edi-

tion. New York: Continuum11993.

17. Among the founding texts are Ernest L. Boyer's Carnegie Foundation-funded
Scholarship Reconsidered ( 1990 ), the American Council of Learned Societies' task
force report on Scholarship and the Public Humanities (1990 ) 1 and Stuart Hall's essay1
"The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities" (October1 volume 53, 1990, PP 11-23). Michael Berube1 "MLA Presidential Address1January 2013."
Accessed June 14, 2013, http://www.mla.org/pres_address_20l3.
18. See Julie Ellison and Timothy K Eatman "Scholarship in Public: Knowledge
1
~reation and Tenure Policy in the Engaged University-A Resource on Promotion and Tenure in the Arts H umamt1es1and D es1gn
1"Imagzmng
Amenca:
A rlts tsan d
Scholars m Public Life

dsj 2011
'J', 2oo 8, http:/1111magmmgamerica.orgjwp-contentjuploa
/osjTTI_FINAL pdf and Gregory J ay1"The Engaged Humanities: Pnnc1ples

and
Practices .for Pub!"1c Sch01ars h.tp and Teaching," Journal of Community Engagement an d
ScltOlarshtp 2 , no. 1 ( 2011 ): 51 _63 .
19 Immanuel Kant Th c
d .
' e nttque of Judgment [1790] part 191 translated with Intro
and Notes by J .H Bernard ( 2nd ed. revised) (London: Macmillan, 1914 )
0uctton
r L.b
n me 1 rary of Libert 201
.
y, 3 Accessed June 14, 20131http://oll.libertyfund.org
. d h
/ m ex.p p?optton-com t .
_s attcxt&staticfi.le=show.php%3Ftitlc=t217&layout::::htmJ
20. Dewey' Art as Expenence,
.
p. 325 .

158

No TES

FOR PROLOGUE

Garda Canclini makes a related observation: that art hast

d
Nestor
. .
respasse the
:2.1.
of galleries and museums. It ISm commerce1 fashion ed t.
d" ated area
uca tOn1and
1
de tC S Nestor Garda Canclini La sociedad sin relato (Buenos Aires K t Ed
. forth. ee
.
..
. a z tso :2.010) . Francine Mas1ello had defended the poltttcs of aesthetic creatlVI.ty.10 Th e
tores,
ton- Latin American Culture and Neoliberal Cnsis (Durham NC D k
,.trt of Trans I I
,
.
u e
V . ersity Press~ 2001).
nt\
.......t-Making and the Arts in Research Universities: Strategic Task Fo
"
:~.:~.. See ru
.
.
rces,
Interim Report1M ArtsEngme Nat1onal Network http://arts-u org
March 2012
.
.
, .
.
ent/ uploads/ 2012/03/ ArtsEngme-National-Strategic-Task-Forces-Interim
t
~,~-con
. .
.Report-Marcb-2.0l2.pdf; and Arts Practzce m Research Universities, http://arts-u.org
researchjresearchj. Also Basmat Parsad and Maura Spiegelman 'ruts
jcat~rY/
'
Education in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools 1999-2ooo and 2009 _101"
Washington1DC: NCES, IES1 U.S. Department of Education, April 2012 .
:2. . See Lane Wallacc1 "Multicultural Critical Theory At B-School?" New York Times
3
Business Section, January 9, 20101 http: jjwww.nytimes.comjl010jo1/10jbusiness
nomba.html. A.Jso Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein1'1\rts at the Center," plenary
talk at UNESCO 2nd World Conference on Arts Education1Seoul, South Korea, May
_28, 2010, http: jjwww.unesco.org/ culture/enjartseducationj pdfj fullpresentation
25
rootbernstein. A.Jso Scott JaschikJ "Besieged Humanities} World,vide," Inside Higher
Ed, March 71 2013, http://www.insidehighered.comj news 20131 031 o- educators
-consider-struggles-humanities-worldwide#ixzz2NGRuv1D9.
24. A fledgling program in '~ts and Leadership" at Harvard's Kennedy School of
Government is coordinated by Michele Stanners. It hosted a pilot course on Cultural
Agents with Dean Williams in fall 2011.
25. Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESC0 1Global Govemar1ce in the 21st Century: The UNESCO Angle1 Kokkalis Center1 Harvard University1 November 3, 2010,
http: //WW~rv.you tu be.com/watch ?v=go8yUywEQ]3Q&fea tu re=channel_video_title.
26. Jacques Ranciere, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans.
Gabriel Rockhill (London: Continuum12004)1 p. 24.
27 Douglas Rushkoff, How the World Became a Corporation artd How to Take It Back
(New York: Random House, 2009). "Melt-Up" is his title for chapter 9, P 227.
28. Augusto Boa!, LegislatiVe T1uatre: Using Performance to Make Politics (London:
Routledge, 1998), p. xiii.

From the Top

1. Doris Sommer} Foundational Fictions: The National Romances of Latin America.
(Berkeley umvers1ty
. o f California Press11991 ) .
2 Antana M k
.
s oc us} "Por amoral arte: Lineamtcntos
para 1a campafia presidencial
para cl g0b.terno de Colombia 2006-2010." Power Point presentatiOn
sen t to me on
CliAPTER ONE.

july 28, 2oos.

NOTES FOR CHAPTER

01\:E

159

,
f1 La Ola Verde: La ilusi6n de 1ma gencraci6 11 (A 1
~
he documcnt.lr}' I Ill
" alias
J. Sect
i l 1Mugarita Martinez Escall6n, produced by Juanita Leo S
n. ee
,, ) (2011 ) dircctcl ,)'
ha>
I
l(cesscd June 14, 2013.
II
, antanasway.co!ll , '
http:// ww" ' k , "When 1Am Trapped, I Do What an Artist Would Do ..
Antanas Moe us,
.
, con
4
.
\\'.usz.l, in Forget Fear: -;th Blc,male for Contemporary Art d
. ation w1th Joann.l
.
,e .
'cr~
.. k lJ0 1nna Warsza (Berlin: KW Inst1tute for Contemporary Art
Artur ZmiJCW!- 1 an< '
. .
,
ng Walter Konig, 2012), pp. 164-170. H1s mstallation "Blood
dll
Verlag Ocr Bucl1an l
.
.
.
. .
. .
,

drug-related deaths m Mex1co by mv1tmg V1Sttors to pledge

1
Tics," .ums to rcuuce
.
reJ
.
ption and to donate blood m empathy, http:// www.bcrlinbicnnalc d
duceu consurn

. e
. kt I% El%8o%9Eblood-ties%E2%8o%9D-von-antanas-mockus-2303
/blog,I prOJC c
.
.
.
2.
. Jaunc
. L,~.: rncr, ,'\' cup 1mtura urbana (Rio de Jane1ro: Ed1tora
Record,
2003 )
,
.
,
.
5
. Sec Henry Murrain, "Cultura ciudadana como pohttca pubhca: Entre indica6
dores )' artc, in Cultura Ciudadana en Bogota: Nuevas perspectivas, ed. Efrain Sanchez
and C.uolina Castro (Bogota: Camara de Comercio de Bogota, Sccretaria de Cultura, Rccrcaci6n y Deporte, Fundacion Terpel, Corpovisionarios, 2009).
;. Ja\'icr Saenz Obregon, Desco,ifiarlza, civilidad y estetica: las practicas forrnativas
eJtatalcs porjiura de Ia escuela en Bogota, 1994-2003 (Bogota: Instituto para la Investigacion Educativa y Desarrollo Pegagogico, 2007 ), p. 131.
s. The first time was on March 9, 2001. See, for example: Salud Hernandez-MoraI
"Bogota organiza una noche 'solo para mujeres' para combatir la violencia," El
Afundo, March 11, 2001.
9 Friedrich Schiller, "On Grace and Dignity" (1793), in Aesthetical and Philosophical Essays (Middlesex, UK: Echo Books, 2oo6), pp. 127-154.
10. Schiller, "On Grace and Dignity," p. 146.
11. Frederick Beiser, Introduction to Schiller as Philosopher: A Re-examination
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2oos).

12. Mockus, 'J\rnfibios culturales" and "La innovaci6n y la extrana frontera que separa escuela y sociedad," Aleph 136 (2oo6): 2-5; 'runpliaci6n de los modos de hacer
polftica," Aleph 135 (loos): pp. 2-26.
13 Victor Shklovsky, ''Art as Technique" (1917 ), in Russian Formalist Criticism, Four

Essays, editor, Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1965), pp. 3_24 .
14. Antanas Mockus, "Cult ura ctu
dadana, programa contra la vtolenc1a

en Santa Fe
de Bogota, Colombia, 1995 _1997."
15. Mark Schapiro, "An Eccent nc
M
. a Flair for the Dramatic Is Bnngmg
. .
ayor Wlth
Hope to a Notoriously Trou bled Captta,
. l, Atlantic, September 2001.
16. See Susan f'\uinn
Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast ofThousands
~
, punous
Made Higlt Art out 0ifD
.
esperate Trmes (New York: Walker, 2008).
17. Letter from VIctor Laignelet, October 30, 2009.
t8. Conversation with F

b
rancots Lyotard, Antanas Mockus and Amparo Vega, Fe
ruary 3, 2009.
,

160

NO

kus Representar y disponer: Un estudio de Ia nocr6n de represent .6

C
"tl1S
M
o
,
act rJ
t
. deI ser como drsporlibit19 t\11 . I xmnen de su pape I en l a compret-1s1'6 n prevra
io /Jactc1 c c
.
.
'
. U . crsidad Nacwnal de Colomb1a, 1988), p. 72.
11 ,.;c:rrtctt
o ot.l: nJv
.
d,,d (B g . Boal, The Rainbow of Desrre: Tlu Boa I Method of T11eatre and nurapy
t\t1gusto
!O
. Routledge, 1995), P 13
(London.
Corona's series of publications, "Bogota, (C6mo vamos?" was an imFundacJ 6 n
!I
hdog and measure of Mockus's success.
t:tnt ,,ate
,.
, . "
por
. "Cultura ciudadana como pohttca pubhca, pp. 7 -13.
22 Murram,
,.
, . "
. cultura ciudadana como pohttca pubhca, p. 12.
Murra1n,
23

d ton of Homicides, fuente base dedatos Polida Nacional, Centro de lnRe uc 1

2
: .
s Criminol6gicas, 2005 (accessed June 14, 2013 http://pdba.georgetown
vesngacJOne
.
.
..
edujSecurity/ citizensecurity/ ~olomb1a( evaluacwnes( poht1casBogota.pdf) p. 244 .
2.S David Forgacs and Antomo Gramsc1. The Gramscr Reader: Selected Writings,
New York: New York University Press, 2000 ), p. 393
(
t9J6 .1935
e the documentary Bogota cambia (Bogota Changed) 2010 by Andreas
26. Se
Dalsgaard (Danish Film Institute), with footage of arts interventions, http://www
.youtube.comjwatch ?v=32a~CZbWslU.
. "
ckusI "America Latma, consensos y paz soe1al, speech at the 34th Congreso
2'7, Mo
Internacional de Conindustrias, June 30, 2004. See http: jjw3old.conindustria.org
CONGRESo2004/Caracas%2oConindustria%2oAntanas%2oMockus%2ojunio
%202004<l'o2oversiu%C3%B3n%2ofina.pdf.
28. Murrain, "Cultura ciudadana como politica publica."
2 9. Bill Hinchberger, "Curitiba: Jaime Lerner's Urban Acupuncture," Brazilmax.
com, February 18, 2oo6, http:/Jwww.brazilmax.comjnews.cfmjtborigemjpl_south
jidj10. Also Lerner's TED talk, http:jjwww.ted.comjtalksjjaime_lerner_sings_of
_the_city.html.
30. See Diana Taylor, Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in
Argentina's "Dirty War" (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997)i and Arvind
Singhal and Karen Greiner, "Performance Activism and Civic Engagement through
Symbolic and Playful Actions," Journal of Development Communication (December
2oo8): 1-15.
31. Hannah Arendt, Reflections on Literature and Culture, ed. and with an introduction by Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007 ),
p. xxiv.
32 The year 1994 saw many unconventional candidates in Colombia. Sec "La

hor~ de los antipoliticos," http: Jjwww.semana.com/ nacion/articuloJla-hora-de-los

-anttpoliticosI 24098-3
33- Sec Maria Ospina, "Violencia y representaci6n en la narrativa colombiana,
198S-20Q , Pl1D .
s,
d1ss., Harvard University, 2009.
34. Mur ram,
"C ultura ciudadana como politica publica: Entre m
d'teadores Yar t e,"
pp. 17-2o.

TES FOR CHAPTER ONE

NOTES FOR CHAPTER ONE

161

I 1\ oth ttics J\ New Sentimental Educattoll (Durh am,

.

Hilittgua
. Don~ Sonuner,
)
35
. . sit ' Press, 2004 .
NC: Duke Unlvcr. > . [). uocracy and the Foreigner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton lJ .
36. See Bonnie Honag, a
111 1001
vcrsity Prcss,
).
.. \ l'lci 6 n de los modos de hacer politica," Colloquc c .
l: R1 ,
'17 Antana5 Mockus, J mp t._
> . December 1- 3, 2004, P 1:>.
.
.
l
Jans,
. . .. \ ,fibios culturales y dtvorciO entre ey, moral y cultura "
JS. Antana-.; Mol kus, J I
.
8
'
. . /(t
().uwary-Apnl1994): 37-471 P 3
Amfltst( po teo I
R ., I
I ,
, Flfiacaso de Ia naci6n: egton, c ase y raza en e Can be co/om.
1um:ra,
w.Aifon,of'.
'
, .
)
(
) (Bogot.i: B.mco de la Repubhca, 1998
11
1
8
bwno 1717. 1 . '
, . 1)Jl' II o, Clt,cl 1in Malcolm Deas,
Del podet y a gtamat~ea y otros ensayos
40 AndrL's
.
l)'litemtura colombtanas (Santafe de Bogota: Tercer Mundo Edi.. . po1'1rcc
sollrt' lmt01ul,

torcs, 1993), P 46.

.p. De as, De/ podery Ia gramatica p. 31.
, 1 ..
" Ospitn
de memoria" chapter 1.
42.nan
. . , "Pdcticas
'
http: /I www.corpovisionarios.org/ index. php/ es/.
"stcr "Dialogical Aesthetics: A Critical Framework For Littoral ArtI "
1 t K' \.,
44 GJr,(,
Variant 9 (20os): pp. 1-8.
45.Jacqucs R.1ncicrc, "The Emancipated Spectator/' Artforum, March 2712oo 71
pp. 271- 2So.
4 6. HansJiirgcn Sybcrbcrg, Hitler-- ein Film aus Deutschland (1977), www.imdb
.comj titlc/ ttoo76147/. Sec also John Dreijmanis} "A Portrait of the Artist as a Politician: 'The Case of Adolf Hitler," Social Science joumal421 no. 2 (2oos): us 127.
47 Benjamin Disraeli's character Hugo Bohn in Lothair (1870) 1 chapter 35 (London: Oxford University Press, 1975).
4 3-

48. Jacques Rancicrc, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans. with an introduction by Gabriel Rockhill1afterword by Slavoj Zizck
(London:Continuum12004).
49 Sir Francis Bacon1"Of Seditions" ( 1625), http://www.authorama.com/ essays
of-francis- bacon -16.h tm I.
so. See George Yudice, Introduction to Nestor Garcia Canclini1 Imagined Globalization (Durham, NC: Duke University Press1 2012).
51. Claire Bishop, "The Social Turn," Artforum1February 2006.
52. Boal, Rainbow of Desire, p. xxiii.
53 Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New revised twentieth-anniversary ed.
New York: Continuum, 19 93 . p. 39 .
. 54 .. Antanas Mockus, "America Latina1consensos y paz social: Q}te sugicre Ia expe-

ncnc1a de Bogota," (Power Point) Conindustrias 2004, Caracas June 30, 2004, slide
1
no. 7, (Sec note #27).

ss. Frank Pearl ct al

"'t 1

'
CJCr e cammo, Gma conceptual y metodol6g1ca omponente de conv1vcncia y
1
i"
reconc1 1ac16n: Estrategia de reintegraci6n basada en comun
clades, Banca de Proy t AI C
.
ec os, ta onseryeria Presidcncial1May 2010.
162

rn as" Colombia, 20041 Ministcrio de Cultura1 Ministerio de

"Adios a las
p
docsjicb.topic3852LfilcsjAdiosALasTrampas
56 . http://tSltes.
Ca c 1on,

t~a. h~rvard.edujfs/

Edu ,
pdf.

I1 Salazar, "What Every Jewish Parent Should Know about the Waldorf
,. pebora
fng Spring 19991 p. 35. See also Bruce Uhrmacher, "Uncom5.
"jewish Paren ' '
Philosophy,}'ng A H.1s t o rical Look at Rudolf Steiner} Anthroposophy and Waldorf
on Schoo 1 . l Inquiry 25, no. 4(winter 199s). p. 381.
J1l
. " CtJrncu um
"
.
.
.
cducatton,
h
ovitch "This Is Play, New Ltterary Htstory 40, no. 1 (Winter
"
h Nac man
'
s8 Step en
loo9): ILhJ)er On tr~e
,_ A sthetic Education of Man, in a Series of Letters. Rare Mastere
1
'
hy an d Science. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press1 1954).
. 59 Scof Philosop
p1eces
Letter 9
M k s "When I Am Trapped/' 168; and Maria Cristina Caballero1
Antanas oc u ,
.
"
6o.d rnic Turns C'ty
1 1nto a Social Expenment, Harvard Gazette, March n, 2004.
"Aca eBesar Luuueta,
"Eight Indicted for Fraud in Albanian Elections: Prosecutors
6
.. on Tues day Indicted Eight Poll "Commissioners
for Rigging the Elections
.
. Lezha
10

Balkan
. the Commune o f oa1c on May 8, 2ou,
.
. . Instght, March 15. 1 2012, http://
.
m
. ht .comfenfarticle/ e1ght-md1cted-for-fraud-dunng-albama-s-local\\'\M.balkanms1g
elections.
. ,
. .
d
d' Ra '
62. DaVId L Phillips1 "Less Drama from Albama s Soc1ahst Lea er: E 1 mas
Strategy of Confrontation and Gridlock Ill-Serves His Party and His Country/' Balkall Insight1 June 281 2ou, http:jjwww.balkaninsight.comjenfarticlejless-drama
.from-albania-s-socialist-leader.
63. Edi Rama, "Take Back Your City with Paint," http://www.ted.com/talksjedi
_rama_take_back_your_city_with_paint.html, May, 2012, Thessaloniki, Greece
(Accessed June 291 2013).
64. Jane K.ramer1"Painting the Town," New Yorker} June 27, 2005, p. so.
6s. Nick Swift, "Edi Rama1 Mayor of Tirana/' http:// www.worldmayor.com
/ worldmayor_2004 / rama_winnero4.html.
66. Dick Hebdige, "The Machine Is Unheimlich: KrzysztofWodiczko's Home-

less Vehicle Project." Walker Art Magazine August 30, 2012 (Accessed June 14, 2013)
http: //www.walkerart.org/ magazine j 20 12/krzysztof-wodiczkos-homeless-vehicle
project.
67. Vivienne Walt, "A Mayoral Makeover," Time 1October 2 12005, http://www.time
.comftimej magazine/ article/ 0,9171,1112793,oo.html.
68 Kramer, "Painting the Town."
69
Antmen, Ahu, et al, curators, Tirana Biennale 1: Escape, with an introduction by
Edi Rama and Gezim Qcndro (Milan, Giancarlo Politi Editore, 2001).
70
' Kramer, "Painting the Town."
7

Makgetia, "A New Face for a Tired City: Edi Rama and Tirana} Albania,
0-loto" I

fp
t
Un . ' nnovattons for Successful Societies (Princeton, NJ: Trustees o nnce on
1Verstty lo 10)
ful
. .
1 pp. 1-10, http://www.princeton.edujsuccess
soc1et1es.
'
200

1. Tumi

NOTES FOR CHAPTER ONE

NOTES FOR CHAPTER ONE

163

h
"Government and the Arts: Voices from the New
. and 1vJC 1os
Rosen7.wcig '
.,.,r

71 . Pierre Restany/

lcrtwaso;er: T11e Painter-King with the Five Sktns (Kol

tmc

n:

Taschenl 2.001)1 P 48.

.
.
~art critic noticed what Rama s leadership owes to his art educat
.
.
.
ton.
73. At Icas t one
')d'ng
with motifs that hint at a number of designers. Some
1
fb
"A montage o U1
!'1,

seem
d- hapcd Hundertwasser apartment bUildmgs m VIenna tho h
d
h
to rcsem bl e t eo s
.. .
.
ug
. m1g
. ht be a t nck of the colour scheme. Signed PHI rev1ew of Anri Sala's Vid eo
thts
"Dammi i colori" about Rama1at the Tate Gallery/ London.in 2003. http:J/W\vw
1

.artvehiclc.com/events/ 172.
. Isabella Mara, "Color Is a Key to Transforming a City/' Sustainable Idcas1
74
November 28, 2011, http://,vww.sustainableideas.it/20u/u/ 28/ color-is-a-key-to
-transforming-a city1and http:// photography.nationalgeographic.comjphotography
/photo-of-the-dayfmanarola-italy-coastj. For more photos of Guayaquil1 Cerro
Santa Ana, see https:/fwww.google.com/search?q=guayaquil+cerro+santa+ana&hl
=en&rlz= 1c1RN PN_en US421 &prmd=imvns&source=lnms&tbm=isch &ei=hdDYT
-r7GeqJ6AHo 1u2yAw&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=oCEgQ
_AUoAQ&biw=1024&bih=488.
75 . "During the years 2007-20o8, there have been twenty-two public hearings1
which have been characterized by an active participation of the citizens of Tirana
and which have also been reflected in the priorities and projects financed during the
year 2008 that have come to life day after day." Tirana News Archive1 November 281
20081http://www.tirana.gov.alj?cid=216212420 (site disabled).
76. "Edi Rama replies to questions from an international audience/' http://www
.worldmayor.com/worldmayor_l004/interview_rama.html.
77. Walt, "Mayoral Makeover."
J

78. Roy Rosenzweig and Barbara Melosh1 "Government and the Arts: Voices from
the New Deal Era," Journal of American History 77, no. 2 (September 1990): 598.
79 Rosenzweig and Melosh, "Government and the Arts," p. 596.
So. Conversation with Antanas Mockus, September 51 2009.
81. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (original German
1905), trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner11930 ).
82. Virginia Mecklenburg, Public as Patron: A History of the Treasury Department
Mural Program (College Park: University of Maryland11979).
83. George J. Mavigliano, "The Federal Art Project: Holger Cahill's Program of
Action," Art Education 37, no. 3 (May 1984): 26-30. Also Don Adams and Arlene
Goldbard, "New Deal Cultural Programs: Experiments in Cultural Democracy/ 19861
1995"
84)ose Vasconcelos/

Discursos: 1920-1950 (Mexico City: Ediciones Botasl 1950)1

P 91quoted in http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdfjvasconce.pdf.
85. Claude
Fell1 jose Va sconce1os.. Los anos
- dez agutla,
, Educact6n,

cultura e 1beroamencamsmo en el Mexic0 postrevo1ucwnarw.

1920-1925, Serie de historia mo derna Y

contemporanea1vol. 21. (Mexico D.P.: Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico,
1989)1 pp. 153- 156.

S~ra." P S9 6

d David Lark.in1 Art Worked: The New Deal, Art and Democ-

vea
Kennedyan
S"' Roger .. Rizzo Iii 2.009).
.
.
.
.
. . \ ~ew York.
J y Bvwaters: A Life tn Art (Austtn: Umvers1ty of Texas

,,,L)

g.,." francJO

c Carrara~

err

press, 1994), P s:z.. New Deal Arts Project1" http:/Jwww.wpamurals.com/ history

"His tor}' of the
89
html.
d. B tannica "wPA Federal Art Project" http: //www.britannica
.
I e Ja n
I
go. Encyc op d/ . ; 649339/WPA-Federal-Art-Project. See also Carraro1Jerry
Bchecke toptc
com /E
~ywaters1 P. 87 1 . Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-19381
Born 111 Savery.
91
aunts of slavery and soo photographs/ http: //mcmory.loc.gov
first-person ace
noo
I I
, memfs nhtml/snhome. 1tm .
.
.
.
.
.
Jam
pres Up Crowd" Univers1ty oif Califorma at San Dtego Dally News
"Fuentes I
'
9 ~
http: 1/ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/thisweek/2008/04/28. _carlos_fuentes.asp.
8
Apnl 18, 200 ,
II
,
.
.
, Rios Avila1 La raza co mica: Del su1eto en Pue1to Rrco (San Juan, PR: Edt93 Ru ben
ones Callej6nl 2001).
ct S Catherine Marsh Kennerly1 Negocraciones culturales: Los intelectuales y el
94 ee
ro ecto pedagogico del estado muiiocista (SanJuan, PR: Edtciones Callej6n, 2009).
p ~ . Edwin Rosskam "Program o f Peop1e 's Educat10n
. an d Intormatl0n
t:

" C
. .'
omJston
1
1
95
de Parques y Recreos, San J uan1 Division de Cinema y Grcifica1Archive General de
Puerto Rico, 19461pp. s-6. Quoted in Kennerly/ Negociaciones culturales, p. 30. Rene
1

Marques1Lorenzo Homar, and Rafael Tufiiio are among the DIVEDCO artists.
g6. Will Bradley and Charles Esche, eds.1Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader
{London: Tate Pub. in association with Afterall New York, 2007 ). See review

by Brian Holmes and Marco Deseriis, http://www.mctamute.org/e njcontent

/ discussing_art_and_social_change.
97- Barbara McCloskey1Artists of World War II (Westport, CT: Greenwood/ 2005)1
p. ISJ.
98. Donald Adams and Arlene Goldbard. Creative Commu11ity: The Art of Cultural

Development. Lulu.com1 2oos.

99 1936, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/ 649339/ WPA-Federal-Art

Project. Debate about Dewey in Alison Kadlec1Dewey's Critical Pragmatism (Lanham' MD : Lexmgton

Books, 2007).
100
'

Holger Cahill/ "American Resources for the Arts ( 1939) ,"Art for tltc A1illions:

Essays from the

' b
.
1
E
93 s Y Artists and Administrators of the WPJ\ Federal Art Project, ed.
manuel Mervi B
.
'
.
S .
n cnson and Francts V. 0 Connor (Boston: New York Graphtc
Octety, 1973), p. 41.
10

Carrara' Jcrry Bywaters, p. 81.

1
Ol. Carrara J
to
. , crry Bywaters, p. 83.
3. Mavtglia 1"F
no cdcral Art Project."
1.

NOTES FOR CHAPTER ONE

NOTES FOR CHAPTHR ONE

165

 . . V. O'Connor' 71JC New Deal Art Projects: An Anthology 0'Jr Men1ozrs

.
francts
t 1 DC Sn1 ithsonian Institution, 1972), p. 457
'

.
(wasIung 01
105. Adams and Goldbard, Creatzve Co~munzty.
.
'Jler Lehman Institute of H1story, http://www.htstorynow orgjo
J06. The GJl (
<
.

3-2009
.. .. ht 'nl Sec also Bntanmca, http:JJwww.bntanmca.com/EBcheckedjtOptc
.
tston.uu.
/h
; 649339;wrA-Fcdcral-Art-Proj~~t.
,
.
wl) g nd Melosh' Government and the Arts, 6os.
1o7. Roscnz "1 1
108. Rosario Encinas, 'Jose Vasconcelos (1882-1959)." http://www.ibc.unesco.org
Jpublications/ThinkersPdfjvasconce.pdf Accessed June 20, 2013. Originally published by UNESCO (Paris) in PROSPECTS XXIV, nos. 3-4.
109. Donna Sussman, "The Influence of Mexican Muralists on WPA Art/' Yale
National Initiative to Strengthen Teaching in Public Schools, May 2, 2oo 9, http://
teachers. yale.edu/ curriculum/search/viewer. php ?id=ini tiative_os. 02. 09_u.
110 . The House Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities (HUAC, also
known in the thirties as the "Dies Committee," after its chair Martin Dies). In Adams
and Goldbard., Creative Cotnmunity: The Art of Cultural Development.
11 1. Hallie Flanagan, Arena (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1940), p. 28, cited
in Adams and Goldbard, Creative Community.
112. Quinn, Furious Improvisations, pp. 172-183.
113. Quinn, Furious Improvisations, p. 90.
114. Quinn, Furious Improvisations, pp. 155-156.
115. Rosenzweig and Melosh, "Government and the Arts." p. 596.
116. Augusto Boa I, Theatre of the Oppressed. (originally published in Spanish as
Teatro del oprimido, 1974), trans. Charles A and Maria-Odilia Leal McBride (New
York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995).
117. Fidel Castro, Palabras a los intelectuales (Havana: Ministerio de Cultura, 1961).
118. Carraro, Jerry Bywaters p. 83.
104 .

119. FDR, Second Inaugural Address, January 4, 1935, quoted in Basil Rauch, The

History of the New Deal (New York: Creative Age Press, 1944), p. 146.
120. Carraro, Jerry Bywaters p. 81.
121. Rosenzweig and Melosh, "Government and the Arts." p. 578. In 1938 TRAP
became part of the Federal Arts Project.
122. Rosenzwig and Melosh, "Government and the Arts." pp. 604- 6os.
123 Don Adams and Arlene Goldbard, "Problem of Censorship" http://www
.wwcd.orgjpolicyjUSjnewdeal.html#CENSOR (accessed June 14, 2013).
124 Rosenzweig and Melosh, "Government and the Arts: Voices from the New
Deal Era." p. 598.
1

~5- Jane DeHart Mathews, The Federal Theatre, 1935-1 939: Plays, Relief, and Politics

(Prmceton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967 ), pp. 313 - 314, cited in Rosenzweig
and Melosh, "Government and the Arts," p. 598.
126.
Th

U01. Richard D McJ(j nzJe,

e New Deal for Artists (Princeton, NJ: Pnnceton
versJty Press, 1973), p. 188.

166

. Artsince 1900 (NewYork: Pracger, 1975): and

.Amencan
(
k MW
6 rbara Rose,
S
. American Painting of the 1930S New Yor '
" see a ,.,., .American cene.
'" h. vi 6a1.gell, J. rl e
~jatt e 4 ).
"1he Living Newspaper as a Dramatic Form/' Modern
BookS' 197
M Dermott,
. .
pouglas c
. Quinn, Furious Improvzsatwn, p. 62..
10
18
1. (
. 1h tre: Using Performance to Make Politics (London:
65 ) vol. 8 no. L.
pra'''a 19
Boal, Legrslatrve ea
Augusto
!1.9'
8) p 3
"
t!edge, 199 ' db d "New Deal Cultural Programs.
Roll
d Gol ar ,
,
;\darns an
b d "New Deal Cultural Programs.
0
13
d Gold ar ,
"h
;;
;\darns an
the Humanities. "How NEH Got Its Start, ttp:;;
1
13. . I Endowment or
Nat1ona
1J2.
/ bout/history.
,rW.oeh.gov a
c the Arts. "National Foundation on the Arts and
\~
. I Endowment tOr
133 NatiOn a
f
, http:jjwww.nea.govj about/Legislation/Legislation
LI
ani ties Act o 19 6s,
the num

.pdf.

"Prohibition against Federal Supervision"

20 u.s. c. 953 c.
..
f
134
d t' non the Arts and the Humamtles Acto 1965, 2.0 u.s. c.
National Foun a IO
.
.
13:~ 'http:jjwww.nea.govjaboutjLegislationjLeglslatlOn.pdf.
.
.
5
95
d S .
The Scandal oifPleasure: Art in an Age of Fundamentalrsm ( Ch1136. Wen y temer,
. University of Chicago Press, 1995)
cago.
. con t em lation defines "obscene" as " ( 1 ) th e average person, app lymg
137. NEA IegiS
ora community standards, would find that such project, production, workshop, or
:rog:m, when taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest." See "Definitions"
10

u.s.c. 952.

13s. Rosenzweig and Melosh. "Government and the Arts," p. 6oo. "Most broad synthetic cultural histories of the 1930s have little to say about the role of government
programs for the arts ... strikingly little to locate government-sponsored art ... on
New Deal photography perhaps the single exception ... to assess it as art and cultural
history."
139. "NEA Reassigns Communications Director following Uproar over Obama Initiative," FOX News, September u, 2009.
1

4 http://www.irs.govj uacjThe-Arnerican-Recovery-and. Rcmvestment-Act

of-loo9
Into
t.
AI so ":Arts Groups Happy to Have a Friend in
.
1' rma 10n enter.

Wh1te Hou se," posted by Phil Crosby on Wednesday, December 9, 2009, see http://
foundationcent er.org/ pn dj news / story.jhtml?id=2.768oo014 .
1

. Colummst,
. Educat10nNews.org,
.
..An lnter. 41. Michael F Sh aug hnessy, Semor
Vtew with Andrew Kl
art' /

avan: N.E.A. and the Arts?" -http://www.cducationnews.org

/ tc1cs -an-mtervi
. 11
.dpuf S
cw-wlt -andrcw-k.lavan-nca-and-the-arts.html#sthash.JRtepMYk
' eptember 29 l 00 Th
l
useofL . .
'
9 e ana ogy to Obama's proposed usc of art is to Hitler's
enJ Rclfcnstahl.
14l "n .

. l\emvesting in A E l
.
Humanitie (
)
rts c ucat10n," President's Committee on the Arts and the
s lOti 'http //w
h
.
-4web_o.pdf.

ww.pca .gov/Sites/ default/files/ PCA H RcinYcsting

NOTES FOR CHAPTER ONE

NOTHS POR CHAPTPR ONE

167

. p L igi Sacco reports the denial, "Culture 3.0: A New Pe

143 Economist 1er u
rspec.
Structural Funds Programming/' for the European Ev
020
2
tive for the EU 20J4Apert
Network on Culture (EENC), April2oll.
.
of the
Existence of God,,
. hard Rorty, cultural Politics and the Questwn
.
Ric
.
.
144
chapter 1 in Philosophy as Cultural Politics (Cambndge: Cambndge University Press,
2007 ), PP 3- 26.
,
,
. ,
. .
145 See, t.or example, Asi viven 1ovenes salvaVIdas de la conflJcttva com una 13 de
Medellin," El Tiempo, April26, 2011, http:jjwww.eltiempo.com/ colombia/ medellin
jjovenes-ensenan-hip-hop-en-m_9227720-4.
146. Hallie Flanagan, Speech before American Federation of Arts1Washington,
DC, May 12, 1937, cited in Qyinn, Furious Improvisation p. 168.
147. Nachmanovitch, "This Is Play," New Literary History 401 no. 1 (2oo 9): 1_24 .
pp. u-12 . See also Stuart Brown1"Play as an Organizing Principle: Clinical Observations," in Animal Play: Evolutionary, Comparative and Ecological Perspectives, ed. Marc
BekoffandJohnA. Byers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press11998), p. 2s6.
148. Megan \%ilden, Creative Pittsfield, January 121 20091http://www.pittsfield-ma
.org/Detail.asp ?sid =377
149. http://v.rw\v.ted.comjtalksjjaime_lerner_sings_of_the_city.htrnl.
150. Thomas Wolf and Gigi Antoni1Collaboration and Community: A Manual for
Sustainability (New York: National Guild for Community Arts Education, 2012).
151. Sue Halpern, "Mayor of Rust," New York Times Magazine 1 February 13, 2011,
pp. 30-35, http:jjwww.nytimes.comj2oujo2j13jmagazinej13Fetterman-t.html.
152. A recent case of a creative mayoral candidate is Gery Chico1hoping the revive
the Loop area of Chicago through artj http://articles.chicagotribune.comj20ll-02-17
/entertainment/chi-mayor-candidate-gery-chico-arts-20ll0217_1_theater-district
-arts-and-culture-mayoral-candidates.
153. http://www.youtube.comjwatch ?v=6kSQu Cod -JY.
1
54 Douglas Rushkoff recommends local grassroots projects. See Life Inc.: How
the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back (New York: Random House,
2009).

CHAPTER TWO. Press Here

Norman Mailer and J N Th

11
2009) Also Banksy Wall ond p aarl ( e Faith of Graffiti (New York: HarperCo msl
1
an tece New York: Random House1 2005).
2. Jane Golden's prog
c Ph'I
.
d
" .
rams ror 1 adelph1a make it internationally recogmze as
h
t e C1ty of M
I "s

h
s. ee Lauren Silverman, "On Philly's Walls1Murals Painted Wit
Brot herly Loveura
"All Th
/te
)
mgs Considered, NPR, August 231 20JO, http:jjwww.npr.org
mplat.esjstory/ story.php ?storyld=1292816s8.
3- Melissa Dribben "1 M'l]'
.
.
..
k to
1
c c1 '
S
IOn Phtladelphtans Can't Be Wrong: Panstans Loo
opy ty s Mural Progra ., Ph 11
.
m,
adelphta Inqirer, May 81 20091p. B2.
J.

.
.-anonymous French street artist. See his TED talk1"One year of
"JR" 1s a serru
4
ld inside out/' 2011, http://www.ted.comjtalks/jr_s_ted_prize_wish
. the wor
turnmg
the world_inside_out.html.
rt to_turn- _use-a -: Ell. The All New Australian Graffiti (Melbourne: Sun Books, 1985)1
Renrue lSI
.
S
wild edia.org/wiki/Graffitt.
http:/Jen. 11 p s bbc.co.uk/2/sharedjspl/hi/picture_gallery/o7/asia_pac_graffiti
6. http:;; new .
.
. beiJ'ing/ htmlj1.stm.
rttsts_m_
.
_a
c
ample Lucy Lippard1Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Soetal Change
1 See I Or ex
)
N York: E. P. Dutton, 1984).
( ew D "Ranciere for Dummies/' review of The Politics of Aesthetics1 Artnet,
8. Ben aVIs)
.
.
tnet.comjmagazineus/books/ daVIs/ daV1s8-17-o6.asp.
.
http:;;11www.ar
9. Augus t o Boal1 Aesthetics oif the Oppressed) trans. Adnan Jackson (London: Rout}edge12006)
.
. . ,
Lambert-Beath.r
10. Carne
.... ,) "Twelve Miles: Boundanes of the New Art/ActlVISm1
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20081 vol. 331 no. 2. 309-3~7 "
11. See Liza Weisberg, "The Yes Men Fix the World One Prank at a Tnnel Huffington Post, July 27, 2oo9, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/liza-weisberg/the-yes-men-

fi.x- the-world_b_244727 .html.

12. Luis Camnitzer, "Tucuman Arde: Politics in Art," chapter 7 in Conceptualism in
Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation (Austin: University of Texas Press~ 2007 ),

p. 64.
13. Clemente Padin, "Latin American Art in Our Time" and "Tucuman Arde: Paradigm of Revolutionary Cultural Action," chapters 1 and 4 in Art and People, trans.
Harry Polkinhorn. http://www.concentric.net/ -Lndb/padin/lcpcintr.htm (web publication: 1997) and http://www.concentric.net/ -lndb/padin/lcptuc.htm.
14. Jacoby also directs community arts projects such as Proyecto Matanzas and
recently opened a multipurpose arts center1the CIA1 in Buenos Aires. See http://
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Jacoby.
15 Douglas Rushkoff1Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to
Take It Back (New York: Random House, 2009 )~ pp. 234- 239
I6. Rushkoff, "The Melt-Up," title of chapter 9, in Life Inc., P 227
17 Rushkoff, Life Inc. p. 234.
. .
1
18 Mady Schutzman and Jan Cohen-Cruz Playing Boal: Theatre, Therapy, Acttvmn
1
(New York: Routledge, 1994) 1p. 22.
..
19 Augusto Boall Hamlet and the Baker's Son: My Life in Theatre and Poltttes1 trans.
Adrian Jackson and Candida Blaker (London: Routledge, 2001)1PP 194- 200 .
20 J L M
oreno, The Essential Moreno: Writings on psych0 dram a' Group Method and
Spontane 1tY1 e d. Jonathan Fox (New York: Spnnger,

1987 )
2

and Cohen-Cruz1Playing Boal. P 110

.
An
"
"
t
f1on at Harvard Umver.
a orreal Yuyachkani over Thirty Years~ presen a
Stty, Aprill2, 20o9.
1. Schutzman
22.
C

archivefiles/2002/09/el
11www.com munityarts.net/ readingroom/
.
http:,,
,
23
teatro_campe.phP Al so, Yolanda Broyles-GonzalezJ El Teatro Campesino: The at er
-in the Cl"ucano JVJ
,.~ovement (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994).
_
Augusto
Boal,
Theatre
of
the
Oppressed
(originally
published
in
Spanish
as
Teatro
24
. "d o} 1974 ), trans Charles A and Maria-Odilia Leal McBride (New York-
deI opnmz
Theatre Communications Group, 1995), P 156.
25. Boal, Theatre of the Oppressed, P 132.
26 . Boal, 11zeatre of the Oppressed, chapter 4
27. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Martinus
NijhoffPhilosophy Texts, vol. 1. The Hague, the Netherlands: M. NijhoffPublishers,
1979
28. Augusto Boa!, The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy.
London: Routledge, 1995, p. 7
29. Boal1 The Rainbow of Desire, pp. 26-27.
30. Boa), The Rainbow of Desire1 p. 59j Legislative Theatre: Using Performance to Make
Politics. London: Routledge, 1998., p. 56.
31. Boa], Legislative Theatre, p. 57
32. John Dewey1 Human Nature and Conduct, quoted in Steven Fesmire, John
Dewey and Moral Imagination: Pragmatism in Ethics (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press)1 p. 69.
33 Boa!, The Rainbow of Desire, p. 27.
34 Boa!/ The Rainbow of Desire, p. 45.
35 Boa!, Theatre of the Oppressed, chapter 1.
36. In Theatre of the Oppressed, Boal summarizes Arnold Hauser's argument in The
Social History of Art (London, 1951). See also George Thompson, Aeschylus and Athens
(London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1941).
37 ~athan Schneider, "Paint the Other Cheek1" Nation 1 April2, 2012, http://www
.thenatJOn.comj article/ t668lo/paint-other-cheek.
38. Adrian Jackson , In trod uc t.IOn t o Th e Ram
. bow of Desire, p. xxiii.
.
(
.
. , . )
39- Nestor Garcia Can din1 Gl b li .6 .

o a zacz n tmagmada Narrativas H1stoncas

(Buenos Aires: Paid6s, 1999 ) p. us.
40. Boa), Legislative Theatre, pp. _ _
3 4
41. Boa!/ Legislative Theatre, p. 6_
42. Camnitzer, Conceptualism in Latin American Art, p 89.
43- Alfredo Jaar "Co
.
Ad . "ld
'
nversaciOnes en Chile, 2005." In Jaar SCL 2oo6, edited by
nana va es, 67-88 (Barcelo N v k
B

na, ew ~or : Actar Ediciones, 2006).

1
44- oa ' Hamlet and the Baker's Son, p. 32 .
4
45- Matthew K. Nock G .1h
tivesfirom th Wh
' Ul erme Borges, and Yutaka On, Suicide: Global Perspece o World Mental H lth S
(
.
ty
Press, 2012 ).
ea
urveys Cambridge: Cambridge UmversJ
46. BoalJ Rainbow, p. lS.

170

NOTES FOR. CHAPTE

, .
Otherwise Than Being, or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso
anuel LeVInas,
47 .Ernrn
h . K.luwer Academic Publishers, [1974] 1991), pp. s-6.
. (Dordrec t.
Ling1s
al Rainbow, P 43
Bo
48
J
49 Boal, Rainbow, P 26.
, Boal, Rainbow, PP 70-72
.
.
.
0
.:>
Sh
in Pai defiam{/ia e outros ensaws (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra,
R0 berto c warz
51
b ted Boal as an alternative to Tropicalismo, which allegedly
1
8 ) had also ce e ra
l9
d ther than developed Brazil.
rornanttclze ra
Legislative
Theatre,
PP
6-8.
1
.
oa,
52 B
Legislative Theatre, P u.
l
3oa,
B
5
al Legislative Theatre, P 15.
Bo
54
I
22
oal
Legislative
Theatre,
PP
2l55 B I
56. Boal, Aesthetics of the Oppressed, P 6.
57. Boal, Hamlet and the Baker's Son, P 325.

..

"
,
58. Boal, Aesthetics of the Oppressed, p. 6.
. http:/fwww.youtube.comjwatch ?v=KKoZ7n-w97Y&feature=related. 'A Este59
tica do Oprimido nas Escolas."
6o. ''May the trash be with you," is the slogan of the collective Basurama. See their
website, http://www.basurama.orgjbo8_may_the_trash_be_with_you_trondheim
.htm.
61. Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New revised twentieth-anniversary ed.
New York: Continuum, 1993, p. 28.
62. Freire, Pedagogy, pp. 39-40.
63. http://ptoweb.orgj.
64. Boa!, Legislative Theatre, pp. 21-22.
6s. Betsy Bard facilitated these very successful programs at Cambridge Rindge and
Latin High School from 2004 to 2008 with a combination of techniques from Boal
and from Anna Deavere Smith.
66. See Norifumi Kamo, Mary Carlson, and Felton Earls "Young Citizens as
Health Agents: Use of Drama in Promoting Community Efficacy for

HIV /AIDS,"

American Journal of Public Health 98, no. 2 (February 2008): 201-204.

67 EEoc New York regional director Spencer H. Lewis Jr. and Joseph Alvarado,
state and local program manager hosted a Cultural Agents workshop for the Boston
E
'
.
10
Eoc office on March 21, 2oo6, and at a national TAPS meeting of EEOC directors
Stamford, Connecticut, in September 2oo6. The workshops for MIT's Addir Interfaith
Program took place during the Fall Retreats of 2007, 2008, and 2009
8

Carmen Oquendo-Villar and Lisa Pic-Harrison, "Acting Up in Colombia:

P

ohcc Aceountab.11tty
. and Anti-Transgcndcr Violence," e-mzsJerrca
.f.
3, n0 2 (November
lOo6).
69. See a r

d
H.
h
an
Victory:
The
Tr
ecent contribution with popular appeal: Lm a Irs m '
IUttzphant G R
)
ay evolution (New York: HarpcrCollins, 2012

. Lope de Vega, Fuente Ovejuna, Biblioteca chisica, val. 54. Barcelona: Critica,
70
1993 (first published in Madrid in 1619).
71 . Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard, Act Up Oral History Project, http://WWw
.actuporalhistory.org/aboutjbios.html3s, p. 34 http://www.actuporalrustory.org
/interviews/\'ideo/kramcr.html.
72. Sebastian Smcc, "Blunt Instruments: Collectives' AIDS Art Made an Impact
with Just a Few Strong Images," Boston Globe, October 30, 2009, http://WWW.boston
.comjae/theatcr_artsjarticles/2009/10/3o/aids_art_made_a_big_impact_with
_just_.l_fcw_strong_imagesj.
7J. Kramer had cofounded Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) in January 19g2 but
resigned by 1983.
74 . Larry Kramer, 1he Normal Heart. The Royal Court Writers Series. London:
Methuen in association with the Royal Court Theatre, 1986.
75 'ACT uP Capsule History," http://www.actupny.org/documents/ cron-B7.htmi.
76. Claire Grace, "The AIDS Crisis Is Not Over: Activism and Collective Art p
ractice in ACT UP New York." Exhibition Essay for ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and
the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993, published by Harvard Art Museum 2oo 9 p 3 s E
'
' ee rnesto
Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (2nd ed. London: Verso, 2001).
From Harvard's VES website: http://www.ves.fas.harvard.edujACTUP.html.
78. On their open-source website, Schulman and Hubbard 1
t

f
nclude
.
.
.
ranscnpts o
the mterv1ews
accompamed by short video clips See http11llwww.ac tuporaIh1story
.
.
.org/In temews/index.h tml.
77

79 Dou.glas Crimp~ ~IDS ~emographics (San Francisco: Bay Press, 1990).

8o. Mana MaggentJ, mtemew with Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubb d
Oral H'st p .
ar , ACTUP
.
I ory. rOJect, February 16, lOOS; MIX: The New York Lesbian and Gay Expenmental Film Festival, December 11 2oos http II
Ih'
11 www.actupora tstory org
.
.
'
'
/ mterviewsjimagesjmaggenti.pd
.
8L "AcT uP Capsule History."
82. I a~ grate~! to Michele Stanners for her reading.
83. DaVId Barr, Enemies at the Gate St
.

'
and Makeshift Batt! St . .
onrung Montreal s Palais de Congres,
e atiOns m Fortress S F
. "
Articles From The Ti t
.
an ranctsco, December 2002, Index of
rea ment ActiOn Grou (
) h
/contentjarti720 .html.
P TAG ' ttp://www.thebody.com
84. Barr,

"Enemies at the Gate."

85 Act Up Oral Histo Pr
.
86. htt . II
ry OJect, Interview no. 35 p. 14.
Pll www.actuporalhistoryo ; d
.
rg In eXI.html
87 01tVIero
'IIos cam worked with T'b

1
cocreate Colors to provid
.
or Kalman on AIDS posters; they would
b
e soczal context ~ h h
or Kalman, Peter Hall M h
.
or t e P otographic campaigns. See Ti.
' Ic ael Bierut Ti'b
K
1
ton: Prmceton Architect
p
'
or alman: Perverse Optimist (Princeh
ura1 ress I 998) d
ttp://www.aiga.org/med 1. 'b'
an Steven Heller's uBiography" for AlGA,
a ISt-h orkalmanj.
1]2

NOTES FOR CH

APTER

C isis Is Not Over," P 6.

"1be ,AIDS r
,
Crisis Is Not Over, P 7
88 Grace,
Grace, "1he .AIDS
G'rlfrt'end
1" in Fear oifa Queer Planet: Queer Politics
1
89

"Right 0 n,
'
ouglas Cru.np .
ur
er (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
D
go.
d M1chae1 vvarn
Social 'Theory, e .
atrd
,

.
304
p
.
ct interview no. 35, p. 22. Kramer doesn t deny It.
)
P
1993 ,
al History roJe '
Or
C ltu al Agents, Harvard University hosted the confer9 ~. Act Up
0 tober t, 2005 u r
. .
l
. Mix Making Salsa" to feature master ptamst Larry Har ow,
92.. On c
"The Jewish-Latm
.
. Th .
. d' 0 maravilloso" Leon Gast, who filmed Our Latm mg
ence,
u
1
d iringly as e JU 1
'
.
.
known a m
)
d won an Oscar for When We Were Kings (1996); Martm
Salsa
(1976
'an
.

h
)
(1973 '
h
d founder/president of Latm PercussiOn, t e company
hotograp er an
. .
Cohen, P
h
. r source of Afro-Latino percussiOn mstruments, and Marty
developed t e maJO
.
that
nger and Grammy winning producer of Jazz, Latm Jazz, and
Sheller, composer, arra
'
.
1 ded Robert Farris Thompson whose books on tha Afncan cuiSalsa. Scho1ars me u
.
th Americas include Tango: The Art Hzstory of Love (New York: Pan.
tural hentage m e
http
llwww.fas.harvard.edu/
-cultagenfacadernicsjacademics
)
05
theon Books, 20
!!
conferences.html.
Ada Ferrer "The Silence of Patriots: Racial Discourse and Cuban National93J
ism, 1868- 1898" in Jose Marti "Our America": From National to Hemispheric Cultural
Studies, editors Jeffrey Belnap and, Raul Fernandez, pp. 228-252. (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1998) p. 243.
94 Paul Chan, "Fearless Symmetry/' Artjorum. New York: Mar 2007. Vol. 45, Iss. 7i

pg. 260.
95. http:llwww.prague-life.com/praguejplastic-people.
96. See http://www.west-eastern-divan.orglthe-orchestra/the-orchestra/.
97 Ed Vulliamy, "Strings Attached: What the Venezuelans Are Doing for British
Kids," Observer, October 2, 2010.
98. http: llwww.youtube.com/ user /LandfillHarmonic.
99. http: II en.wiki pedia.org/wiki /El_S is tern a.
100 Jose Cuesta, "From Economicist to Culturalist Development Theories: How
Strong Is the Relation between Cultural Aspects and Economic Development?/'
European Jo urnal oifDeve1opment Research 16, no. 4 (2004): 868-891.
10
b 1. An article from City I QJournal, the Lithuanian version of Intelligent Life, Octoer2oo9 ackn 1 d
t
'
ow e ges that the public versus private debate originated in the conroversy arou d th L'
S .
n
e tetuva Cinema, beginning in 2005. See Andrius Uzkalnis (2009)
ava tr Privatu. v .
.
.
.
Pr
tsat Nepnes1ska Bendruomenei ir Viesumai. Miesto IQ Tarp Vieso rr
lvataus R
..
1
ugseJls-Spalis 17, pp. 6-9.
Ol. lndepend
later fi
ence was declared on March 11, 1990, though recognition can1e a year
, rst from Ic 1 d
.org/wikilAc
e an , then the United States and others. See http://en.wikipedia
h t_of_the_Re-Establishment_of_the_State_of_Lithuania.
103 1
. n t e famo "Ki
Virtues of
.
us
tchen Debate" on July 24, 1959, Richard Nixon argued the
capitalism sh .
.
.
~
' OWing Amencan kitchen appliances for the convemence ot

designboom.comjwcblogjcat/8/view/24291

,
1

cinema theater."
106. Urbonas and Urbonas1"pro-test lab dossier: / 2005."
107. It is impossible to know who they are because the identity of corporate shareholders is protected from public scrutiny.
108. In 19631Maciunas composed the first Fluxus Manifesto "to purge the world of
bourgeois sickness."
109. "United Nations Economic Convention on Access to Information1 Public
Participation in Decision Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters."

. sj1 http:/;
WWW t -made-from-weapons- by-pc d ro-reyes. h tm I;
unpol1t1c

JartI g
ical~mstrumen s
mj news-snippet/ sounds-redemption; http:// \\".VW
Ien rchestra~of~rnus
;an-o
esi nindaba.co
1''"'.;vv.d g
d ;magine-by-pedro~reycs.
httP!!
rnftren s I
trendhuntcr.co.
tl1 Pedro Reyes, June 81 2005.
... conversatiOn WI
The State as a Work of Art: TI1e Cultural Origins of the Consti. . 1homas SlauterJ
)
s. En'
.
.ty of Chicago Press~ 2009 .
S c dU .
.
. go UnJvcrsl
1
h
tiotl (C ca
th t. Democracy (Stanford, CA: , tan1or
mverstty
111
D herty Aes e tc
'fhornas oc
J
9
press, 2oo6).
n Kan(s Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of
I Arendt1 Lectures o
. J-{anna 1
10
.
Press} 1989)1 P 4
d h
d

Ch1cago
Th Critique of Judgement [1790] translate w1t lntro uct10n
I manuel Kant, e
)
11 m
B
d ( 2 nd ed. revised) (London: Macmillan, 1914 part 7 See
and Notes by J.H. crnar
also Arendt, Lectures} P 67.
. Arendt1Lectures} P 4
.
,.
.
12
11 "Aesthetic Problems of Modern Ph1losophy, chapter 21m Judg13- Stan Iey C ave J

d p0 [ 1t1cs 11-umes from Kmtt and Arendt, cd1tors Ronald Bemer

Aarhus} Dcnmark1on 25]une 1998. http://www.unece.org/envjpp/treatytext.html.

110. http://vvww.ssbx.org/index.php?link=2. Her TED talk: http://www.ted.com
/index.phpjtalks/majora_carter_s_tale_of_urban_renewal.html.
111. Rushko~ Life Inc. p. 234.

Nedelsky (Lanham MD: Rowman and Littlefield} 2001), p. 42.

an dJennuer
'
14. Arendt1Lectures} p. 8.
. This lack of agreement is not a failure of Kant\; aesthetics but instead an oppor15
tunity to court agreement. Typically, Alexander !\charnas wntes that "beauty beck-

ves Nikita Khruschev countered that keeping "housewives" happy w k

1
I1ouse,.,
.... .
,
.
.
.
.
as eeping them from careers. See transcnpt: h~://teachmgamcncanhistory.orgjlibrary
/indcx.asp?document= 176i and BBC reVIew: http://news.bbc.co.ukjonthisday/hi

j dates/stories/july/24jnewsid_27790oo/2779551.stm.
104. Nomeda Urbonas and Gediminas UrbonasJ "pro-test lab dossier: / 2005 ,
http:jjwww.nugu.lt/nugu_pdfjurbonas_2oos_protestlab.pdf.
105. The St.1te Land Lease Agreement1operative until 2093 (Lease number
Noo 1194 _1745 ). Article 8.1 determines the primary purpose of the land use: "the
land lot can only be used for economic activities} associated with the mission of the

112. Rushko~ Life Inc.} p. 234. See also Detroit's Heidelberg Project: http://
www.readymade.comjblogsjreadymadejhands-up-for-detroit/?utm_source=
feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed% 3A+readymade+% 28
ReadyMade%29.
113. Harold Bloom} The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (London: Oxford
University Press11973 ).

ArtandAccountability
J. Grant Kester1 "D 1 l A
h .

ra ogJCa est etlcs: A Critical Framework for Littoral Art/'

Varzant 9 (2oos): t-8.
2
S d..Ha~ard University Art Forum} David Rockefeller Center for Latin American
tu 1es. Pedro Reyes Ad
b
,
~

usum: to e used} accessed September 81 2013. http://

www.art orumdrdas.com/pedro-reyes/.
3 See Kevin F. McCarthy et 1 Gift
.r
1 50
Benet;t .r th A (
a 'J
J the Muse: Reframing the Debate about the
:1' s oJ e rts Santa Monica1 CA R d C
F
.
:
an
orporation, 2oo4 ).
4 eatured m Ken Johnson1 "Wh L. c
,
,
.
Septe b
en ae Becomes Art, New York 7 imes Magaztne,
m er 291 20111 http:f/www

-form- t.nytimes.comj2ou / 09jJO/arts/ design/living~as

a essex-street-market-review ht 1?
s. http;;
m ._r=o. Accessed June 15, 2013.
tt www.we 11cart.co uh
.
.
6J
E.
. Ol21l09Imagme-pedro-reyes.
. ose sparzaJ Domus 962 (Oct0 b
)
er 2012 . See also http://www.domusweb.it
CHAPTER THREE.

174

ment [magma t10~1~ an

J

ons" engagement1but on individual terms. Sec h1s "An Essay on Beauty and Judgment," Three Penny Revrew So (winter 2000): 4-7.
16. Kant, Tlu Cntique of JLtdgement [1790] part 19.
17. Ronald Beincr and Jennifer Nedelsky1eds. 1Judgment, Imaginatimz, and Politics:

Themes from Kant and Arendt (Lanham1MD: Rowman and Littlefield} 2001)1 p. viii.
18. Arendt1Lectures1 p. 32.
19. Immanuel Kant, "What Is the Enlightenment?, .. l(cmt: PoliticallVriti11gs, ed.

HansSiegbert Reis (Cambridge: Cambridge Univcr~1ty Press, 1970), PP 54 - 60.

lO.

Arendt} Lectures 1 p. 10.

Arendt} Lcctures 1 p. 4 .
11 Paul Jay and Gerald Graff, ''Fear of Being Useful," lu~rdc Hrghcr Ed, January~.
10111 http:j/ww\'v.insidehighered.com /views 2012/ ot/ os ess.ly-new-approach
ll.

dcfend-vaiL1e

G zj l\1N W\.
'
-hllffil\11ltlCS#1XZZlj
l). G. Peter Lepage} Carolyn (Biddy) Martin, .md t\1ohscn l\lostafaYi, cds. Do tltc
Huma11ities
,r,

.
H ave, to 1)JC UseJul?
with a preface
by l\lost.1t.wi
ltluca, N1: C orne ll U mvcrs1ty, l006).
14.. Laura Brow 11 c t a l1 "Twenty- F1rst
. Ccntur}'
,
. , at t l1c C ore o t. tl1c, Ll nt.
H urn.uHttl'S
vcrs1ty" 111
J
Lepage, l'vlartin, and Mostaf.wi, Do tile lllli11CIIIIflt'.\ Hell'(' tc> lk u~t:fid:.
pp. 13-181 quotc on p. .
14
1$. Biodun jcy~
"H
. .
.
.
. ,,. .
, )l.t
1
and M
o,
umamttcs -- wtth or wtthout Hum.u11sm~ 111 Ll.'p.l~l, h .1rtm,
ostafavi 1 D<> tl lc, 1Irmumrtres
- , llcwc to He Useful:,
~ ' pp. 61-65, p. 64.

NOTES POR CHAPTER THREE

NOTI:~ FOR CHAI>TI'R THREE

175

.
"1he Emancipated Spectator/' Artjorum, March 27, 2007,
es Ranciere,

26 . R,lyna Kal,1s, "Poetry and the Common Sense," in Lepage, Martin, and Mosta-

favi, /)o the Humanities !lave to Be Useful?, pp. 67-73, quote on p. 71.
27. Caroline (Biddy) Martin, "On the Question of Value/' in Lepage, Martin, and
Mostafavi, Do the Humamties Have to Be Useful?, pp. 91-96. See also David Roochnik
1
"The Useful Uselessness of the Humanities," Expositions 2, no. 1 ( 2008): 19 _261who
has Aristotle speak to the importance of filling leisure time with arts, to divert citizens
from violence and war.
28. Dominick LaCapra, "What Is Essential to the Humanities?," in Lepage, Martin
and Mostafavi, Do the I lumanities Have to Be Useful, pp. 75 8s.
29. Brett de Bary, "Against Transparency/' in Lepage, Martin1 and Mostafavi1 in
Lepage, Martin, and Mostafavi, Do the Humanities Have to Be Usefu/1pp. 35- 4 o. See
also, Pauline Yu, "lhc Course of the Particulars: Humanities in the University of the
Twenty-First Century," (1997): s, http:l/archives.acls.orgloplop4oyu.htm.
30. Martha Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press11997 ).

Friedrich Schiller, "On the Sublime (1801)," in Essays} ed. Walter Hinderer (New
York: German Library, New York University Press, 1993)1pp. 22-44.
31.

32. Victor Shk.Jovsky, '1\rt as Technique" (1917 )1in Russian Formalist Criticism, Four
Essays, trans. with an introduction by Lee T. Lemon and Marion]. Reis (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1965), p. 12.
33 Sec Douglas Kellner's useful review of work at the intersection of "Cultural
Studies and Ethics," http: 1/pages.gseis. ucla.edulfacultylkellner1essays1cultural
studiescthics.pdf.

3~.. See Diana Taylor, TheArchive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory 1 ~ the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press12003). Also her Disappeanng Acts: S~ecta.cles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's Dirty War (Durham,
NC: Duke Umverslty Press, 1997) i and Theatre of Crisis: Drama and Politics in Latin
America. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991 ).
li 35 ~eo~or Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (1970 )~ trans. R. Hullot-Kentor (Minneapos: University of Minnesota Press} 1997 )~ p. 8.
36. Susannah Young-ah Gottli b
d .
.
e ' mtro uctJon to Hannah Arendt, Reflections on
Literature and Culture (Stanford CA St c d U .
.
1

anror
mvers1ty Press 2007) 1 p xiii

37 Arendt "Th C
'
. .
,
e nsis m Culture: Its Social and Its Political Si nificance," in
Bemer and Nedelsky judgment Ima . .
g
}
'
gznatton, and Politics} pp. 3-26} quote on P 23.
38. Kant, The Critique ofJudgment} paragraph so.
39 Arendt} "Crisis in Culture/' pp. 16} 17.
40 Arendt, "What Is Permitted to]
.. ,
and H R .
ove : Reflections on the Poet Bertolt Brecht
1
IS e atton to Pohttcs} in Men in Dark y,
court, Brace and W ld
)
zmes} PP 207-249 (New York: Harer } 1968 i and Arendt R ifl t'
L
41. Hannah Ar d "C
' e ec wns on iterature, PP 223-256.
h
en t, ulture and Polit' "y;
ture and Cult
tcs, oung-a Gottlieb, Reflections on Literaure1 p. 185.
42. Arendt, "Culture and Polif "
lCS, pp. 190- 1911 197176

43- Jacqu
,.71-2-8

. . ifAesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible. Translated by

. , c The Po 1ttzcs o

pP

' London: Contmuum,

44 RancJer ill.
2004, PP 23 - 24 .
briel Rockh
h . "
Ga
.. . logical Aest ettcs.
r/ ster 0 Ja
"
45 1'-e '
. , "1he Emancipated Spectator.
)so Ranc1ere,
46. See a
.
"Of Seditions" (1625), http://www.authorama.comjessays
. FranciS Bacon,
S
47 If
. bacon-16.html.
of-franciS,
. ,~,. "Emancipated Spectator.
.

( .
.
1
4B. Ranclde, VVi ting History: Essay on Epzstemology
Middletown, CT. Wes eyan
49 Paul Veyne, n
University Press, 1984)' P 11.
.
.
.
.

Ulysses Unbound: Studies m Ratwnalzty, Precommttment and Con-

50. Jon El stcr,

.
.
. (C bridge: Cambridge Umvers1ty Press, 2000), chapter 3
stracnts am
.
,
.
. Richard Florida1The Rise of the Creattve Class an.d How Its Transformmg Work,
51
mmunity and Everyday Life. New York: Basic Books12004.

. co
Lezsure,
52

. Antanas Mockus directed me to Joseph Patrick Henrich et al., eds, Founda-

tions of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen
Small-Scale Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press} 2004).
53 . Hannah Arendt1The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
(1958)1998), p. 182.
54 See David Damrosch1We Scholars: Changing the Culture of the University (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

ss. Ranciere, "The Emancipated Spectator."

56. Mikhail Bakhtin, "Discourse and the Novel/' in The Dialogical Imagination:

Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1981).
57 Bonnie Honig, Democracy and the Foreigner (Princeton1 NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).
58. Doris Sommer, Bilingual Aesthetzcs: A New Scntinuntal Education (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2oo4 ).
59. VIctor Hernandez Cruz, "You Gotta Have Your Tips on Fire," Mainland: Poems
(New York: Random House} 1973), pp. 3-4
60
. Samuel P. Huntington, Who Are We? TI1e Challenges to America's Natiotzal Ide,tt,ty (New"(! k S.
or : 1mon and Schuster, 2005).
1s
the title of a new secondary field at the Harvard Grad uate
S h61. Civic hu mamtles
c ool of Arts and Science.
62 '1\.nimating D
.
.
I.
emocracy1n http://ammatmgdemocracy.org
63. Questio
d
ns ratse at the Duke Public Humanities Conference1April 2011.
64
(A.t ' See Richard 1homas, Reading Virgil and His Texts: Studies in lntertextuality
ln Arbor M h'1
tc gan University Press, 1999).
65. Arendt1 "C . . .
nsts m Culture," p. 14.
66 Arendt "C .
' ns1s m Culture," p. 14 .

NOTES FOR CHAPTER THREE

NOTES FOR CHAPTER THREE

1n

. . an d Culture"
67. Arendt, "Po1JtiCS
' p. 201. See also Robert E.
, Proctor, Defining the
..
R ,d
ring a Tradition Can Improve Our Schools, 2nd ed. (Bloo rnHumamt~t:s: HOJv c tscove
ington: Indiana University Press, 1998 )., ~ 156.
68. Sec Proctor, Defining the Humamttes.
.
.
69. Proctor com men ts on the surprising lack of full h1stones of humanism' De+:n.
:J' mg
the Humamttes, p. 87.
orow
"Taking
the
Humanities
Off
Life-Support/'
American
CJ
Od
I
o.
S
tan
cy
1
'
7
Council of Learned Societies, Occasional Paper no. 40, 1997, part 4, http://archives

.acls.org/op j op4och.htm.
7 ~. Charles Homer Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (New York: Meridian Books, [1927] 1955) and Robert Louis Benson and Giles Constable, eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1982).
72 . For a recent overview of sacred and secular lyric, see John E. Stevens, Words
and Mustc in the Middle Ages: Song, Narrative, Dance, and Drama, 10S0-1JSO (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
73- Stephen Gersh and Bert Roest, eds., Medieval and Renaissance Humanism:
Rhctonc, Representation and Reform (Leiden: Brill, 2003), p. x.
74. Robert Black emphasizes the debates in Humanism and Education in Medieval
and Renmssance Italy: Tradition and Innovation in Latin Schools from the Twelfth to the
Fifteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) pp. 141 17. See also
"Massachusetts Arts Curriculum Framework/' Massachusetts Department of Education, November 1999, http://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworksjarts/Jo99Pdf xiii; and
R W. Southern, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), p. 19.
75. Proctor, Defining the Humanities p. 164 and throughout.
76. Frederick G. Whelan, Hume and Machiavelli: Political Realism and Liberal
Thought (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 2004), p. 4 The most prominent of the
civic humanists were Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) and Leon Battista Alberti (14041472), who is more famous in the modern age for his treatise on architecture.
n. Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, trans., S. G. C.
Middlemore (New York: Penguin Books, 1990 ), P 17.
8
7 P~ul Anthony Rahe, ed., Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy (Cambridge:
Cambndge University Press, 2oo6).
7
. 9 Isaiah Berlin et al., The Proper Study of Mankind (New York: Farrar, Straus and
G1roux, 2ooo), pp. 334 _335 .
Bo My
h B 1
.
emp asJs, m er metal., Proper Study (2ooo ), p. 336. (Voltaire, Letter to
Maunce Pilavoinc, April 23, 176o.)
8
1. http:// plato.stanford.eduj entriesjvicol Berlin "The Divorce between the
. ,.
'
'
k d
Natural Sciences and th H
e umamt1es, m Berlin et al., The Proper Study of Man tn '
6
pp. -358, pp. 350-353.

178

NOTES FOR CHAPTER THREE

. h BerItn ru
gz. Isa1a

es the separa t'Jon and reaffirms a credo of rational pursuit of

h. d. tt'nction giving it, for example, to the Halle in 1694,

que
n contest t IS lS
'
.
.
ty of Gottingen in 1737. See Charles E. McClelland,
83 . Some Wl autious Umversl
.
.
to the more c
.
. . G rmany 1700 _ 1914 (Cambridge: Cambndge Umveror
. and Umversrty zn e
'
Stions.

State, Soctety

~-

33
80
sity Press, 9 ),
. 1h Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath
Robert B. Plppm, e
.
84
C b dge Universtty Press, 2005).
dge am n
dU

b
(Cam n dings 1h e Umversr
.
ty in Ruins (Cambridge, MA: Harvar
mverstty
1

1R
Bs. Bil ea
pe t er Gilgen, "Structures' but in Ruins Only: On Kant's
)
so
.
60
1 6
Press, 99 'P n and th e U mvers1
.
ty"
, CR. The New Centennial Review 9, no. 2 (fall
Al'

Historyo fReaSo

2009):165-194, P 175
/h. t
/NRjtwhpjwwwlpsjlessons/92uva/92factsLhtm.
.
.
86 http:jjwww.nps.gov JS ory
.
W'll
Mr. Jel+erson's University (Washington, DC: Natwnal GeographiC
1
Also Garry
s, :JJ'
.
. .
d M Clelland State Society and Unrversrty m Germany, p. 112.
)
Society, 2002 ; an
c
'
'
.
ifl.
. h th M d
.
1
F
11
The German University: A Herorc Ideal m Con tct wtt e o 87 Dame a on,
S
1
ern ~orld (Boulder: Colorado Associated University Press, I980 ), PP 14-15. ee a so
McClelland, State, Society and University in Germany, PP 109-110.
88. Arendt, Lectures, p. 182.
89. Arendt: "Crisis in Culture/' pp. 6-8.
. .
90. Oscar Wilde, preface to Dorian Gray, cited in Cleanth Brooks and Wilham
Kurtz Wimsatt, Literary Criticism: A Short History (New York, Routledge Kegan Paul
1970) J p. 486.
..
91. Brooks and Wimsatt, Literary Criticsim, p. 447 Also Terry Eagleton, Ltterary

Theory: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), P 27.

92. Antonio Gramsci, The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916- 1935, ed.
David Forgacs, with a new introduction by Eric Hobsbawm (New York: New York
University Press, 2ooo), p. 377
(Oxford
93. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy. Oxford World ,s Cl asstcs
Oxford University Press, 2oo6). For Adorno's often-cited phrase, see the anthology
Of hIS
l R eader' ed R Tiedemann,
. work, Can One Live after Auschw1tz?
A pJ11tosop J11ca
trans. R. Livingstone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003).
94. Elaine Showalter Teaching Literature (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 200 3), P 23
' on "How America Invented the Humamttes.
"A videotaped
95. Geoffrey Harpham

lecture, http://www.youtube.comjwatch?v=Qs1AS6FiBuc.The purpose survives the

period.
96. Thomas Pavel's The Spell of Language: Poststructuralism and SpeculatiotJ (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 3
.
97 Diana Sorensen, A Turbulent Decade Remembered: Scenes from the Latin Amencan Sixties (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 200 7 ).
98
Jean-Fran<;ois Lyotard, Tlze Postmodcrtt Comiition: A Report 011 K.nowltdgl'.

Theory and History of Literature, vol. 10 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota

Press, 1984).
99 . Alfred North Whitehead, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, As Recorded by
Lucien Price, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954 ), p. 7
100. Showalter, Teachzng Literature, p. 23.
101. Pavel, Spell of Language, p. s.
102. Kristtn Ross, "Kristin Ross on Jacques Ranciere" Artforum, Vol. 45, Issue ,
7
March 2007. p. 2S4 http://findarticles.coml pIarticlesI mi_ mo268I is_ 7_ 451ai
_n24354910j.
103. Biodun Jeyifo, "Humanities with or without Humanism?/' pp. 61-66.
104. Paul Bloom, How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We
Like (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010).
ws. Proctor, Defining the Humanities p. 88.

Essays on a Liberal
Educati~~~ (London-Macmillan, 1968 ), pp. 302-303j cited in Proctor, Defining the
Humamtzes p. 99 See also Nietzsche, New DealjWPA History." Accessed November 4, 2012. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals. translated by
Walter Arnold Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 19 67 vol. 3, p. 2.
107. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry Essays on European an d American Artfrom 1955 to 1975 (Cambridge' MA MIT p ress, 2ooo ) .
108. Pavel, Spell of Language, p. xii.
106.]. W. Hales, "The Teaching of English/' in F. W. Farrar,

109. Stanley Fish, "The Last Professor/' New York Times January 18 200 h
fi h bl
J
J
9, ttp"fl
s . ogs.nytimes.coml2oo9lollt8lthe-last-professorj.
.
N uo. S~~w~at Toorawa, admits a standard visceral rejection in "In Praise of
uance, m epage, Martin, and Mostafavi, Do the Humanities Have to Be Useful?
pp. 107-110.
:1' ' }
111.

Contra Anthony T. Kronman Ed

sities Have Given

2007) .

th M . ' uca tons End: Why Our Colleges and Univerup on e eamng oifLife
(New H aven, C T: Yale University Press
'J'
I

112. http://fish.blogs.nytimes.coml 20o8I 01/o6lwill- the-h

.t'
j #more-81.
umam 1es-save-us
113. See Stanford University's civic invitation to th
..
experience.stanford ed I h ~
e humamtJes, https://human
u w at.q=whyj.
114. Pavel, Spell of Language, pp. 2, 5.
f

u6. Jerry Saltz "ASh t H

e tcs Pans: Les Presses du reel, 20o2).
'
or IS tory of Rirkrit T
..
Meals as Installation Art, A t .
.
IravaniJa- Thai Artist Who Cooks
' r tn Amenca g4 n 2 (F b
117. See Claire Bishop '1\nt
.
' o.
e ruary 1996), p. 82.
'
agomsm and Relat'IOna 1Aesthet1cs,
. , October 110 (fall
2004 ) : 51- 79 .
u8. Gilles Deleuze and F I' G

e lX uattan, Kafka Ti.

d
.
.
.
p
owar a Mtnor Ltterature (Mmnennesota ress 1986)
119. See James Quay and Ja
't r '.
.
mes venmga' mtrod uc t'1on to Making Connections: The

.
.
apohs: University of Mi

180

' blic :Hurnanittes.

the pu
" k New York. 1990.
. . ~, pp. 75- 85
}'Jo. 11 NeW lor '
""What Is Essentia1 to t h e H umamt1es.
S LaCapra,
120 ee
d' The Expediency of Culture: Uses of Culture in the Global Era
George Yu tce,
.
121 '
NC: Duke University Press, 2003).
I

(Durham,
An Watching Dallas (New York: Metheun, 1985); and John Fiske,
g,
.
122 ' See len St
dies and Television," in Channels of Dtscourse, ed. Robert Clyde
"British Cultura1 u
ew York: Routledge, 1992) PP 254- 289.
Allen (N M tin Barbero De los me dios a las me dracwnes:

Comumcacwn,
cu lt ura y
'
123 Jesus ar '

th d Bogota: Convenio Andres Bello, 1998. Also, Nestor Garda CanI

hegemon w 5 e
.
.
.
.
.
.
.. H b 'd Cultures: Strategies for Entenng and Leavmg Modermty (Mmneapohs:

chm, Y

rt

University of Minnesota Press, 2005).

icholas Kristof, "n.I. Y. Foreign Aid Revolution/' New York Times MagaN
e
124 Se
. October 20 2010 on the wave of small contributions today, mostly by women.
ztne,
'
'
http:jjwww.nytimes.com/ 2010/ wj 24/ magazine/ 24volunteerism-t.html?pagewanted
=4&_r=L
125. Rigoberta Menchu's address in LASA, Washington DC, September 4, 2001.
126.

Pierre Macherey, Pour une theorie de Ia production lLtteraire (Paris: Maspero,

1966).
127.]. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1975. The William James Lectures, 1955.
128. James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twenthieth-century Ethnography, Lit-

erature, and Art (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988) i see also various edited
volumes by Michael Fischer, George Marcus, and James Clifford. Also Anthropology
and the Colonial Encounter, edited by Talal Asad (London: Ithaca Press, 1973).

rr

us. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesth

and Community, ACLS National Task Force on Scholarship and

s Culture. . American Council o f Lcarne d SocietJes,
0 ccaswna
J Paper
Hnnanttte'

129. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is basically that observation itself affects the
outcome. For discussion of Heisenberg's paper published in 1927, see William Charles
Price, Seymour S. Chissick, and Werner Heisenberg, cds., Tlze Uncertainty Princzple and

the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics: A Fifty Years ' Survey (New York: \Viley, 19~.., ).
130. Slauter, State as a Work of Art.
13 1. Stanley Chodorow observes a "culture of complaint" and recommends a series
of creative adJ. ust ments m
. "Tc..l_:
C:LK.ing the Humanities Off Life-Support.,
1 2
3

6s6 Comtcs, "S o b re 656 Comics." Accessed September 8, 2013. http: i W'N\V
.6s6comicso rg / PI sob re-656-con1ics_7919.html.
133.

Torolab "T
. .
,.
to b
' ransdisc1phnary Projects. Accessed September 8, 2013. http://
ro 1a .orgj.
34. http~/WWw
-d
1
.tuugo.com.mxjCompaniesjosimmpe-org-soc-indigena-mixtecJ
e1-mpo-d /oBj d c penolcsjo2oooo4075885. See http://ciudadania.-cxpress.com 2011 o8
sc esol-im 1
1
.
.
..
cupe .
pu sa-e -rescate-de-lenguas- indtgcnas-y-fomcnta-la-cducaclOn . Rcract6n de Ia l
.
- .
dad d
engua Ml.Xteca del municipio de Santa ~laria Pcfwlcs, con Ia hn,lhe contribuir 1~
l .
a orta ectmiento cultural de Ia poblaci6n mixtec.1 debs loc,1li1

NOTES FOR CHAPTER THREE

N OTB.S FOR C H~\ PT ER THREE

181

dades de Santa Catarina Estetla y Canada de Hielo del municipio de Santa Maria
Penoles y mantener viva Ia lengua mixteca como lengua materna." AJso culturalagents.org.
135 . "Texto de partida" is the program name in Mexico City. See http:J/www
.textodepartida.org/ .

Pre-Texts
1. Ksenija Bilbija and Paloma Celis Carbajal. Akademia Cartonera: A Primer of
Latin American Cartonera Publishers=Un abc de las editoriales carton eras en America
Latina (Madison: Parallel Press, University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, loo9).
2. Kutsemba Cartao in Mozambique is a recent ripple, after Luis Madureira from
the University of Wisconsin, Madison, went to teach there and found a need for
books. See http://kutsernba.wordpress.com/, the official website for the publisher in
Mozambique.
3 Tomas Eloy Martinez, "Las editoriales cartoneras: Creadores ante la crisis," La
Nac10n (Buenos Aires: Sabado 28 de febrero de 2009) http://www.lanacion.com.ar
/ 1103987Creadores-ante-la-crisis.
4 Bilbija and CeLis Carbajal, Akademia Cartonera.
s. http://www.princeclausfund.org/en/programmesj awards. "More than 6o independent Cartonera pubJjshers are currently operating in countries across Latin
America and one has started in Mozambique."
6. "For over 20 years Fotokids, originally called Out of the Dump, has worked as a
non-profit organization breaking the cycle of poverty through training in visual arts
and technology." Fotokids1 http://www.fotokids.orgj. Martin Cohen founded but is
no longer active in Fundacion Ph 15, http://www.phis.org.arj.
7 Shahidul AJam's project Drik in Bangladesh: http://www.drik.net. And Colombia's Fundaci6n Disparando Camaras para Ia Paz: http:// disparandocamarasparalapaz
.blogspot.comj.
CHAPTER FOUR.
1

8. Cosponsored with Artists in Context http://www.artistsincontext.org/.

9 The prize for lOlO was awarded to 656 Comics in Cmdad Juarezj the prize in
lOJ 1 went to Torolab in Tijuana.
10. Paolo Vignolo directs the Cultural Agents track of the Centro de Estudios SociaJes. Sec http:// www.unal.edu.co j cesjindex.phpJnosotros/ areas.
II. Aina Art<>, "Aina Arts-Projects." http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/ainaartsjprojects
/index.htm.
ll. Gil Noam of the Harvard Medical School and Daishon Mills of Bos-ton Public
Schools both direct the Leadership Institute, associated with PEAR (Program in Education, Afterschool, and Resiliency).
13. www.cxtcnsion.harvard.edu/loo8- 09/coursesjsyllabi/ ... jc;tare13o.pdf.
14 Kevin Lynch explore<> the effects of aesthetics on civic life in The Image of the
City (Cambridge) MA: M I T Press, 1960).

182

NOTES H>J( CHAPTER IOUH.

et any formal education at all; the m ajority

.
h ' ldren d o no t g
.
,
12.5 rnilhon c 1
d
d not get sufficient schoohng b ecause the>
, "To daY
e chil ren o
l)
crirls. Even mor
.
kill Children throughout the world are
f them are o
basic hteracy s s.
.
.
o
t before they learn
. ht t education. In developing countnes, one m
d op ou
fu d mental ng o
. d
r. d nied their n a .
1 e illiterate. The human costs of thiS e ucabelng e
rnilhon peop e, ar
,
lts-sorne 9oo
d
t' . Tackling the Global Crisis, Ox.fam lnternadu
four a
ble" E uca wn.
.
1
xf
merica.orgj files/ OA-Education_ Tackling
. risis are incalcu a .
uon c
.
http: //WWWO ama
. a1 Apnl 2001,
uon '
df
..
GlobaJ_Crisis.p .
1 d social sciences seems to relegate the humanities;
h . on natura an
.
t6. The ernp asts
.
d . terpretation returns to humanistic operatwns.
h to readmg an m
but the approac
-r.
h
standards.org j.
http:/f W\'."w.core
C ltural Workers: Letters to Those VVho Dare leac
1... Paulo Freire, Teachers as
u
CO Westview Press, 1998), P 2
.
,
(Boulder.
.
. R earch Universities: StrategiC Task Forces, In" Makin and the Arts m es
~8. Art:En ine Nattonal Network, March lOll, http: //arts-u.org
.
terun Report, Art
g
/ / Art E ne-National-Strategic-TaskForceslntenm
content/ uploads/ lOll 03
s ngt
,
dU .
I wp
df d "Arts Practice in Research Universities, Harvar
ruRe ort-March-lOJl.p 'an
/
~
. ~
kF
the Arts l008 http: jjwww.provost.harvard.edu reports
verslty Tas orce on
'
'
IArtsTaskForce-Report_Il-1o-o8. pdf.
..
1 b . l "vouTube http: 11www.youtube.comj watch?v=lAH3}1
'
11
19. La muerte a ruJU a, I'

EFJ pk&feature=you tu. be.

20. See Ltz Gruenfeld, "Evaluation of Amparo Cartonera," internal document,
''M
Amparo Program students were
Museo Amparo1 Puebla, Mexico. l008. p. 18. I useo
.
1
d'ng
comprehensl0n
.
d
1 and stupositively impacted in terms of attentiOn to etat , rea 1
. as seen b y teac h ers an d art"sts
Students place more
1
dent interpretation of stones,

the 'hypertexts, t h ey pay more attention to detatls

attention in details now. As w1th
in the story to be able to reverse the order of events and say what else might happen
instead. Another teacher added that program students learned more words, resulting
in a richer vocabulary."
lJ. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization
(Cambridge} MA: Harvard University Press, lOtl). Alongside the familiar Spivak of
old is a contemporary Spivak who offers a pressing sense of an ongoing dilemma that
has only grown increasingly urgent and which she cannot quite resolve even as she
articulates it: the double bind that marks the difference between the \''riting of books
to be published for the academy and the teaching of a global citizenry who take their
learning beyond the classroom. The abstraction of philosophy is always, for Spivak, as
pragmatic an activity as protesting the intellectual property rights of the indigenous,
but it is only in thinking about the idea of teaching itself that one reconciles that
which has its "place in an essay prepared for the impatience of publisher's deadline n
and that whtc h ta k es " its place outside my classroom h ere."
(Nll. Ludwig Wittgcnstcin, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscom be

ewYork: Macmillan, [1953] 1968), sections 244-l7 1.

NO'I'HS FOR CHAPTER l"OUR

183

.
C rto 1 sw: La revoluci6n de mayo vivida par los negros (Bue
nos
23- Washmgton ucu ,
Aires: Emcee Editories, 2009).
PP 111189. My translations.
10
18
t
,
.
.
.
24 . Cucur o,
. t Cucurto "Libros si, playstatiOn no! Se vtenc la Fen a preferida
'
.
.,
,
25 . Was hmg on
de los lcctorcs, una oportunidad para futbohstas JOVenes} ESPN Deportes, April 221
, http: I/ espndeportcs-assets.espn.go.coml news Istory?id=797885&s=fut&type
2009
=column.
26 . Centro de Investigaciones Artisticas~ http:llwww.ciacentro.org/nodel814.
. Luis Soriano is the teacher-creator. See Simon Romero, "Acclaimed Colombian
27
Institution Has 4,8oo Books and 10 Legs/' New York Times, October 191 2008, http:jj
www.nytimcs.com/ 2008/10 j 20lworldl americas/ 2oburro.html.
28. "Libros, un modelo para armar" (LUMP A). Accessed September 8, 20131 http:jj
proyectolumpa.blogspot.com/.
29 . Northrop Frye1 Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays (Princeton1 NJ: Princeton
University Press~ 1957 ), p. 158.
30. Jose Eustacia Rivera, La voragine (Bogota: Cromos} 1924) i and Jose Eustasio
Rivera, The Vortex, trans. Earle K. James (New York: G. P. Putnam1 1935).
31. D. VI/. "Ninnicott, "The Use of an Object in the Context of Moses and Monothezsm" (1969), in Psychoanalytic Explorations, ed. C. Winnicott1 R. Shepherd, and
M. Davis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University PreSS1 1989), p. 245.
32. "The workshop proved how important it is to encourage young people to read
literature} because it will give them the bases for writing their own texts through
which they express themselves." http:/lwww.ayara.org/newsjjunjeng.
33 See Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American
Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press1 1988).
34 Melville J. Herskovits1 The Myth of the Negro Past, (New York: Harper Brothers,
1941); Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art
and Phzlosophy (New York: Random House1 1983) and Tango: The Art History of Love
(New York: Pantheon Books1 2005 ).
35 Formerly in Providence} Rhode Island1 A.rtsLiteracy has regrouped as HABLA in
Merida Mexico
. I.
,
.
See http1111 www. habla.orgI enI about-uslmerida-meXIco
36. Getuho Vargas dietat or from 1934 th rough 1954 when he committe d smc1
de.
1

37. http://www.youtube.comlwatch?v=4xuzgsiHzzQ&feature=related.
38. Michael Voss' "Read mg
While Rolling
. Cubas, Famous Cigars , BBC, Decem1
bb
.
.
d
ber 10, 2009 http II
.
'
11 news. c.co.uk/2/hiiamencasl84o6641.Stm. "Instead of canne
music, many cigar factories m
. C ub a stl"11 rely on the ancient tradition of empIoymg
. a
reader to help worker
h
s pass away t e day. Gricel Valdes-Lombillo1 a matronly former
school teacher, has been th. f
'
.
lS actory s official reader for the past 20 years. In the
mormng she goes through th
.
th d h
e state-run newspaper Granma cover to cover. Later m
e ay s e returns to the l tt
b"ll
1.
h
P a orm to read a book. It's a job Grice! Valdes-Lorn 1 0
c aims s c has never tired of 'I t 1
. f kn0wid
d
ee useful as a person 1 giving everyone a b1t o
e ge an culture. The worker h
d
s ere see me as a counsellor1 a cultural adviser} an

someone who knows about law, psychology and 1

ovc. Once the ne\
.
is over workers have a say in what they would l"k
vspaper readmg
.
.
.
I c to 1ISten to. There's a . 0f
terial rangmg from classics to modern novels, like the 0 . . .
mix maa Vmct Code as well h
'
as t e
occasional sel f-h e1p b ooks and magazines On th d 1 . .
.
c ay VISited the factory G .. I
reading Alexandre Dumas' classic, the Couttt of Mont C .
.
Jnle was
"
'J
e rrsto) a long-time favourite
here.
39 . Jesus Colon} A Puerto Rican in New York and Oth er.Sk etc1tes ( New York: Mainstream Publishers, 1961). P. 1.
E. Poyo, With All, andfior the Good 0 f All n1e E
.r 1) 1
40. . See. Gerald
.
. .
'J

Jmergcnce O; OJ>tl ar
Natwnalzsm m the Cuban Communttres of the United States, 1848- 1898. (Durham NC:
Duke University Press, 1989).
1

41. See Eric Arnesen, Encyclopedia of US. Labor and Working-Class IJistory (New
York: Routledge, 2007 )~ pp. 333-334.
42. Gompers had a one-year hiatus of leadership from 1894 to 189s.
43 Arnesen1 Encyclopedia of US. Labor and Working-Class Hrstory p. 333- U.S. syndicalism develops1 Arnesen says} at the "intersection between anarchist mternationalism and Cuban nationalism."
44 Paul de Man1 "Autobiography as Defacement," MLN 941 no. s Comparative Literature (December 1979 ). Reprinted in Paul de Man, Rhetoric of Romanticism (i\ew
York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 67 82.
45 Freire1 Teachers as Cultural Workers, p. 8.
46. Howard Gardner1 Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New
1

York: Basic Books1 2011).

47 Pre-Texts retains its original name of Cartonera here.
48. The workshops for Mexico City's Secretariat of Education began in March 2011
and for Boston in July 2011. See http:jjwww.textodepartida.orgf.
"Th Art 0fLiteracyAPosth
d
49 See Naseemah Mohamed's undergra uate t es1s,
e

. . z b b " ~ s c' al Studies and the DepartColonial Pedagogical InterventiOn m 1m a we, or o 1

2012
ment of African and African American Studies, Harvard College,

so. Gruenfeld1 "Evaluation of Amparo Cartonera."

)
t
(London Routledge, 1992
A
N
51. Augusto Boal Games for Actors an d on- c ors

52. Jackie Andra~e~ "What Does Doodling Do?," Applied Cogrtitive Psycholog~
.
1
) doi 10 1002 acp.156l,
( 2009) 1 published online (www.interscience.wi ey.com '
.
d. "Cottference Irtterpretrng: Current
Charles Tijus, "Interpreting for Understan mg,
'J'
.
T 1 (Amster. D . I G"le
1 1and Chnstopher ay or
Trends in Research1 ed. Yves Gamb1er, ame
dam: John Benjamins, 1994), P 46.
.
dM h' es g no. 1 (Febru.
0
" Mtnds an ac zn '
53. Alison Gopnik1 "ExplanatiOn as rgasm,

ary 1998): 101-118.

. d
dentlensjtouchof
54. See A Touch of Greatness, http:jjwww.pbs.org/m epen
greatnessI teacher.html.
. .t note-search.ebscohost
.
;M
.
MontessonitCI e_
55. http: II en.wikipedia.orglwtki ana_
.com- 4 .
UR

NOTES FOR CHAPTER FO

NOTES lOR. CHAPTER. FOUR

185

s6. o~vdop~d b'" Rudolf Steiner in 1919, http: //www.whywaldorfworks.org/ 02

\ ,. Educ.ltlon/ indc:\. ..1sp.
.4. Rt:~IO
Approach to Earl)
'\-. LOUISt.:. , nr>l))'d c 1d\\ell Britwi11o
.!> ~ Lt:amill~
... to Li{c:

...
UuldJwvd Educatio 11 (\lew York: Teachers College Press, 2003) i and Cathy Weisman
Top.1l .md Ldb G.1ndm 1, Bt:allty'ul Str~ff! Lt:tmwzg with Fou11d J\1atcrials (Worcester,
i\1A: D.n 1s Publications, 1999).
sS. Se~ R.1st! B. Rernstem, Class, Codes mzd Co11trol (London: Routledge and Kegan
P.wl, 19?t).
S9- On Kore.1: http: cducJtion.stateuniversity.com/ pages/ 140oj South-Korea
-educ.1t10n.1l system. oYeniew.html; and Finland: http: // www.culturalpolicies.net
/""cb finland.php?.1id--831. See Lane vVallace, "Multicultural Critical Theory. At
B-School?," Nt:Jl' York Times Business Section, January 9, 2010, http://www.nytimes
.com 2010/ 01 / IO, busincssj wmba.html. Also Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein,
"Arts at the Center," plenary talk at UNESCO 2nd vVorld Conference on Arts Education, Seoul. South Korea, May 25-28, 2010, http://w\vw.unesco.org/ newj fileadmin
j multtmcd1a hq cit, cit pdf Arts_Edu_SeoulConf_KeynotePrestation_en.pdf.
6o. Quoted 1n Robert E. Proctor, De.firung the Humamtzes: How Redzscovering a
Tradztzotz Can lmprol'c Our Schools, with a Curriculum for Today's Students, 2nd ed.
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 6.
61. Jacques Ranciere, Tlte Ignorant Schooln1aster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Ernancipation, trans. with an introduction by Kristin Ross (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, (1987]1991).
I

CHAPTER FIVE. Play Drive in the Hard Drive

Friedrich von Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, in Literary and
Philosophzcal Essays: French, German and Italian, vol. 32, Harvard Classics (New York:
PF Collier and Son, 1910): pp. 221-313. http://www.archive.org/streamjliteraryand
philooounknuoftjliteraryandphilooounknuoft_djvu.txt.
2. January 16, 1793. I thank James Chandler for this note.
3 See a narrower, spatial interpretation of Schiller's freedom in Wolfgang Dusing,
Friedrich Schiller: Ober die asthetische Erziehung des Mensch en in einer Reihe von Briefen,
Text, JV1.atenalicn, Kommentar (Munich: C. Hanser, 1981). Also see Benjamin Bennett,
Aesthetics as Secular lvfillenialism:lts Trail from Baumgarten and Kant to Walt Disney
and Hitler (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2013).
1.

4- President Obama's State of the Union address in January 2011 stressed the importance of technical and scientific education with no mention of arts and humanities. See http://www.whitehouse.govjstate-of-the-union-20ll. But his new initiative
"Turnaround Arts" promises to redress the exclusion. See http://turnaroundarts
.pcah.govj.

s. Sir Ken Robinson, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" (2oo6). See http:jjwww.ted
.comjtalks/viewjid/66.

}-{uman1sl11,
. )ks "The New
. . / o8brooks.html.
6. Q,t,,id Bloc ;' 2ou/ o3/ o8j oplnlon
1p11ysical brain, the more you real.
corn
the actua

. n)tune~- C rOU stU dy the bratn,
,,.,, \\but some peop lC fi I1d it easier to access
~ .. nlc nlor )
tive hardware,
..
d G -ette March 3, 2ou,
,. l ody has the crea
Creattve Brain, Harvm
a_ ' .
.
izt! t!,ct')")
. II "Harnessing Your
I j harnessmg-your-creattve-bram.
t" J\.1\'in Po\'-e , d duj gazettef story/ 2011 03
I
I1 r.ar .e
// 11!\''S. a
(P . e
http: ' lso letter -t, 229-30.r.t 1if1l)' Democracv Needs the Huma1llttes nne s. Sec a Nussbaum, Not For ProJ' . ')
,
I
~t.Hna
. p ess 2010
(D
9
1) . 1ccton University r '
~ Js Tile Creativity QuestiOn urNJ Ill
C 1R Hausman, co . ,
ton, Nbcrt Rothenberg and ar
)
I thank Natalya Sukhonos for this rcter)0.
ukc University Press, 1976 ' P 3

hatn NC: D
' '

ence.

NOTES FOR CHAPTER FIV.E

. Th nk.in " in Rothenberg and

"The Process of janus1an 1
g,

bert Rothen erg,

.
.
(, 0 9) 11.
. t' ,;ty OJ.testton, P 313.
C
Hausman, ,ea II
.
''Th" I Play., New Literary Htstory 1, no. 40 _o
.
N hmanoVItch,
IS s
,
)
Jl. Stephen ac
l t. (New York Penguin Books, 2006 .
.
l
h
Ar dt On Revo u ton
h
q. Hanna
en '
.
. . 1 1 , T1 e R volt of the Netherlands, w 1ere e
Machiavelh m t 1e p a) 1 t:
'J

q. Schtller mentwns
h'
. Charles V had no need to read
.
\V'lli
the Silent that 1s patron
remarks of his hero 1 am
h'
S e Fred Bauman "Two Friend. n b
e he embodied those teac mgs. e
)
.
.;l
Karlos and Letters on
K.arlos," in Love and
Res lpS. c 11 er s
. d Ed
do A Yehisquez, (Lanham,
tllinking Politics and Affection in lvfodem Twzes, e .
uar
.
.
PJ t k C Beiser' Scl11ller as II o.soMD: Lexington Books, 2003), p. 424. See a lso Fre d enc
pher: A Re-exn111ination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)' PP !25, 151.
15. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, new revised twentieth-anniversary ed.
11.

See Al

~ac~J;v~ ~c~:n

Dot~

Friet~dslllp:

(New York: Continuum, 1993), p. 35

16. Fredric Jameson, "Cognitive Mapping," in lvlarxism nnd the Inte1pretatron of
1
Culture, ed. Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Ne 1son (u r b ana- Cl1an1pagn
UniYersitv

,
of Illinois Press, 1988), p. 358.
17. Jacques Ranciere, "The Politics of Aesthetics, Roundtable," on Eyal \ Vei7mans
Blog, www.roundtable.keinorg/node 463. Rancicre comments on a "one-se.1ter ..
contemplative theater project that earned the scorn of critics who imagine that political art needs to address particular issues. Rancierc deYclops his idea about the personal effects of theater in "The Emancipated Spectator."
18. Freire, Pedagogy, p. 39
.

19

Ranciere, interview with Sudeep Dasgupta. "Art Is Going Elsewhere: And Poli-

~cs Has to Catch lt/' Krisis 1 (2oo8): 70-76i http: //v.rww.krisis.eu/ content/2oo8- 1
loo8-t-o9-dasgupta.pdf.
10

.
Vtev.,r

Disconnectlon IS
R anc1ere
' 's pre ferre d term f.or t11e aest h cttc
e ft.ect .....S ~c mt~r
in l'r(11srs
...
.

Beiser s ~1111
' c eras Philosopher, p. 132.
ll.. For c:x
1
1001 )
p. 16. amp e, Lesley Caldwell, Art, Creativity, Living (London:
1

1.

186

" New York Times, March 7, 2011. http://

K~un~lL' Books .

hiller as

23. "As I look back over the papers that mark the development of my own thought
and understanding I can see that my present interest in play in the relationship of
trust that may develop ... was always a feature of my consultative technique." D. W.
Winnicott, "Playing: Its Theoretical Status in the Clinical Situation/' International
journal of Psycho-Analysts, 49 (1968): 48.
24. Cad Jung kept the mantra in focus for Winnicott's readers: "The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no
creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination
is incalculable." Jung, C. G., & Baynes, H. G. Psychological Types, or, The Psychology of
Individuation. London: Kegan Paul Trench Trubner, (1921). (Collected Works Vol. 6)
volume 6. P. 93 Quoted, for example, in Ellen Y. Siegelman, Metaphor and Meaning in
Psychotherapy (New York: Guilford Press, 1990), p. 172.
25. D. W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock Publications, 1971 ),
p. 38. Cited in Siegelman, Metaphor and Meaning in Psychotherapy, p. 172.
26. D. W. Winnicott, "Playing: Creative Activity and the Search for Self" Playing
and Reality (1971): 54-55.
27. Freud invokes the authority of Schiller to describe the opposition of the ego
and the id. See Paul-Laurent Assoun, Freud and Nietzsche (London: Continuum
Collection, 2002j originally in French, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1980 ),
p. 84. In 1908 Freud wrote: "Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a
creative writer, in that he creates a world of his own, or, rather, rearranges the things
of his world in a new way which pleases him?" Sigmund Freud, "Creative Writers and
Daydreaming" (1908), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of
Sigmund Freud, vol. 9, ed.J. Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1955), p. 14.
28. Jan Abram and Knud Hjulmand, The Language of Winnicott: A Dictionary of
Winnicott's Use of Words (London: Karnac Books, 1996), p. 121.
29. Winnicott, Playing and Reality, p. 70.
30. Mihai Spariosu, Dionysus Reborn: Play and the Aesthetic Dimension in Modern
Philosophical and Scientific Discourse (Ithaca, NY: Corne11 University Press, 1989), p. 185.
31. D. W. Winnicott, "The Use of an Object in the Context of Moses and Monotheism/' in Psycho-Analytic Explorations, ed. Clare Winnicott, Ray Shepherd, and
Madeleine Davis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 245.
32. Barbara Johnson, "Using People: Kant with Winnicott," in The Turn to Ethics, ed.
Marjorie B. Garber, Beatrice Hanssen, and Rebecca L. Walkowitz (New York: Routledge, 2ooo), pp. 47-64.
33. Caldwell, Art, Creativity, Living1 p. 16.
34 Winnicott, "Usc of an Object," p. 93.
35 D. W. Winnicott, "Primitive Emotional Development/' International Journal of

Psychoanalisis (1945) 26:137-143.

36. Jean-Jacques Rousseau/ Politics and the Arts: Letter toM. dl\lembert on the Theatre, with an introduction by Allan Bloom (Glencoe, IL: Free Press1 1960).
188

NOTHS POR CHAPTER PIVE

[osopher,
195
Ph

t', [(a ttl: Political l.Vritings, ed.

the Enlightcnmen . , .
. Beiser, Sc
J(ant, "What Is
.
. niversity Press, 1970).
.
sec Irornan ucl( earn bridge: earnb n d gc U n Kant's J>oli tica I Pit ilosoplty, edt ted
r

l~.
~~sSiegbert Re~ in Hannah Arendt, Lectur~hocago: University of Chicago Press,

!(ant, quote
by Ronald Bemer.
1
39
retive Essay
\\'ith an interp
. . " . Aestltetical and Pltilosophicnl Essays
J98z, P 64 . h Schiller, "Grace and Dlgmty, m
46 Ernst Cassirer would spell
F ednc
6) pp 127- 154, 1 "
ks t
40 n
K: Echo Books, 200 ' . .
. or l\Ssaulting the senses. Than
o
(Middlesex, U
corm depends on stunulatmg
morality and desire by
1
ting a '
1 } p bet"\veen
out that wres.
eworks the Kant ian re atJOn::, 11
.
(RepriisentationjDarstel11 CassJrer r
h
11 , epresentatlOn
Sch1 er,
d " which e ca s r

.1
(Wl
'te Plains
1
.
"forma nve,
.
dF
. A 'Tiuory OJ Art
u
.
,
insistmg on a
L
er Feelmg an orm.
.'
See also how Susanne ang
C .. er's line of thinking. Michael Polan)'l s
Iung)
)
d Ernst asslr
1 1~ 1 11t
man, 1977 contmue
.
C .. 's The Philosophy oft te :.tt rg NY: Lon g
. " l' heavily on asslrer ~
" k'Jlful k.nowmg re 1es
project of s '
. ton University Press, 1951).
emnent (Princeton: Pnnce
S bl' " trans Vvilliam F. Wertz,] r. See http://
iedrich Schiller, "On the u lme,
.
41. Fr
1 trans on sublime.html.
't t org/trans I
- 1
www.schillennstl u e.
.
lr
"
(1795) http: /Jwww.schll er
.
"0 Naive and Sentlmenta oetry,
42. Schiller,
n
.
., .
tal- html (accessed June 16,
institute.org/ transl /schiller _essays/ nal ve_sc n tl men
.
.
b aile ng that
's "Schiller Institute" misreads ths preference y
gt
he
L
d
43 Lyn on arouc
h "ll
. promoted classical culture for contemporary l'C
S httpIfllwwvv.SC 1 er
Schiller
1 e ... ee

2013) partS See also part 25.

institute.org/biographys/ meet_larouche .h tml.

,
44 Emmanuel Lcvinas, Difficult Freedom: Essays mz ]ruiaism, trans. Sean Hand
(Baltimore: johns Hopkins U nivers1ty Press, 1990)
,.
8
45. Schiller, "On Na'ive and Sentimental Poetry, part 1
46. Arendt would 1m port Schiller's distinction between na"ive and sentimental

greatness to America, where she contrasted the beautiful innocence of Melville's Billy
Budd with tormented Captain Vcre, whose duty to the collective good compels him
to condemn angelic Btlly. Arendt, On Revolution, pp. 78-79.

47. http://studioclco.comjlibrarie schiller/ essay.html.

48. Schiller, "On the Sublime," part

11.

49 See Maria del Rosario Acosta L6pe1., "'M.tking Other People's Feelings Our
Ow '. F
f

n rom Aesthetics to the Political in Schi\lcr's Letters," where she quotes rom
Schiller's essay
. "Conccrnmg
. the Sublime'' (
): http://www. fi11oso fi aytrage d'1a.com
/ curs~.sjschillcrcali fornia. pdf.

1790

of so. lhcrc is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document
barbarism" W lt I
,, . 111

tio
a cr ~cnjamin, "1hcscs on the Philosophy of llistory1 m umma
ns, ed. i lannah Ar d
"
1-.1
)
6

en t, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken HooKS, 1969 , p. 2-5

G
SL ilberto I~
I
)
d
rcyrc, 1 1e Masters ami tire Slcwcs (Casa-Grande mrd Scuzala :A ... tu )'
1r1 tl
Jc 0 cvclo
Alfred A Ptncnt of Brazilian Civiliz:atim1. Translated by Samuel Putnan1 (New York:
. Knopf, 1946.).
r

.
II Th German University: A Heroic Ideal in Conflict with the Moder
.
.
)
n
52 . Dame! Fa on, e
1pp. 13-15 .
.
Colorado
Associated
Umvers1ty
Press)
1980
lVorld (Bou ld er, Co
.
.
.
Eros and Civilization: A Phtlosophzcal Inquzry Into Freud
Se
M
53 See Herbert arcu }
"
p ess 1955 ). Richard Van Heertuml Marcusel Bloch and Freire:
1
.
.
(Boston: Beacon r '
. .
.
p dagogy of Hope"
Policy Futures m Educatwn 4 1no. 1 ( 2oo6):
1
Remvgoratmg a e
c t
45_51. I n 100
no te 1, the author addresses Marcuse's direct debt to Schiller as he deveiops the idea of an aesthetic education..
.
. "
.
. Paulo Freire wrote that during his time m exile: I read Gramsc1 and I dis54
covered that 1had been greatly influenced by Gramsci long before I had read him."
Freire quoted in Peter Mayo, Gramsci, Freire, and Adult Education: Possibilities for

Transformative Action (London: Zed Books/ 1999 )~ P 7

55 . Augusto Boal followed Schiller's disciple Brecht. Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed
dedicates chapter 3 to "Hegel and Brecht" in order to outdo them by turning the public into spect-actors. Brecht is equally reluctant to acknowledge what he learned from
Schiller. See John Fuegi, Bertolt Brecht: Chaos, According to Plan (Cambridge: Cambridge University PreSS11987 ).
56. Freire, Pedagogy, p. 89.
57 Antanas Mockus, interview with author1February 27, 2008.
58. Freire, Pedagogy} p. 40.
59 See Paulo Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom. Harvard Educational Review
Monograph Series, vol. 1 (Cambridge1MA: Harvard Educational Review1 President
and Friends of Harvard College12000).
6o.John Dewey/Art as Experience (New York: Perigree1 [1934] 2005), p. 25.
61. Dewey, Art as Experience} p. 281. Dewey gives a friendly acknowledgment to
Schiller on pp. 252-25 4.
62. Dewey, Art as Experience, p. 5 .
63 Winnicott: "Living Creatively/' pp. 39-40: Cited in Abram and Hjulmand, Lan-

guage of Winnicott, p. 121.

64. Dewey, Art as Experience1 p. 15.
6s. Jacques Ranciere The p0 1t
.fA h .
1
.
'
tcs oJ est ettcs: The Distribution of the Sensible1 trans.
)
Gabnel Rockhill (London: Continuum
'
J 2004 ) pp. 241 27.
66. RancJere, The Politics of
Aesthettcs, p. 27.
'J
67. John Dewey TheE 1 'W( ks 0J
An B d
'
ar Y or J John Dewey, Volume 4, 1882-1898. Edited by Jo
n oy ston (Chicago1South
Illi .
.
.
F
.
ern no1s Umverstty Press, 2008) p. 251; in Steven
esmtrel john Dewey and M I I
. .
I d.
U .
.
ora magznatwn: Pragmatism in Ethics (Bloomington:
n tana nlversJty Press}2003) }p. 74.
68. Habermas, The Philoso hical D.
. .
c
P
tscourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. StudieS 1ll
ontemporary German SocialTh h (
69. Habcrmas Ph .
h.
. oug t. Cambridge) MA: MIT Press11987 )~ P 49
1
'
l osop teal Dtscourse} p. 53.
70. Habermasl Philosophical D.
tscourse1 p. 4 6.
71. Kant, The Critique of Jud ment
1paragraph 46; Arendt1 Lectures p. 63.
72. Gottlieb com
h g
1
ments t at through t h
..
((
fi
ou er wntmgs on literature :Arendt re nes

and revises one of the foundational document f d

. ,
s o mo ern German c lt
Friedrich Schiller s Letters1 which argues for the t bl h
u ure, namely,
. .
es a IS ment of an 'Ae h .
'
as the prereqmsite for a non-violent transition from h 1
st ettc State
t e ru e of brute force to the
reign of moral freedom .... For Arendt the 'pros' d '
,
. ,
.
'
an contras of culture can be derived from these [Schiller s] baste political-cultural th
"1 d .
u
.
eses. ntro uctton, xxiv. In
footnote 191p. 306: Schiller was clearly on Arendt's m10 d h h
,
. .
, .
w en s e wrote Culture
and PolitlcS1 smce she quotes from his poems 'Ode to Friends.'"
73. Arendt1Lectures} p. 64.

74 . Ronald Beinerl "Rereading Hannah Arendt's Kant Lectures", m Ronald Bemcr

and Jennifer Nedelskyl eds. Judgment) Imagination1 and Politics: Themes from Kant an~
Arendt (Lanham/ MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001) 1p. 93 .

75 Beiner and Nedelskyl Judgment, Imagination1 and Politics p. vii.

76. Habermas, Philosophical Discourse, pp. 48-49. After lecture 2, "Hegel's Concept
of Modernity/' is an Excursus on Schiller's 'Letters on the Aesthetic Education of
M an.'"
77. Jiirgen Habermasl "Morality and Ethical Life: Does Hegel's Critique of Kant
Apply to Discourse Ethics?" Northwest University Law Review 831no. 1-2 (1988-1989):
38.
78. Perhaps Dewey would deepen Habermas's approach by counting on experience
as a ground for deliberation. See Alison Kadlec, Dewey's Critical Pragmatism (Lanham1 MD: Lexington Books, 2007 ). She argues that Habermasian critical theory dismisses the life-world as saturated with ideology.
79 Habermas1 "Morality and Ethical Life."
8o. Gregory Bateson et al. 1"Towards a Theory of Schizophrenia," Behavioral Sci-

ence 1 (1956): 251-264.

81. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization
(Cambridge1MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).
82. Johan Huizinga1 Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Bosto~:

d with the book, too IttBeacon Press1I9SS)1p. 168. Gregory Bateson was urumpresse
..
PI
d Work" letter to Ph1lhp
eralist and Eurocentric. See "Gregory Bateson on ay an
'
)
.
l
S
d
J Play Newsletters~ no. 4 ( 1979 :
0
Stevens1Association for the Anthropo logtca tu Y J
2-4.
.
. . Th N . nal Romances of Latin Amen ca.
83. Doris Sommer) Foundational Ftctwns e atw
. f C lie a
.
k 1 . University o a IOrm
Latm American Literature and Culture, vol. 8. Ber e ey.
Press/ 19911 p. 44
.
l (Minneapolis: Uni84. See Paul de Man "Kant and Schiller," in Aesthetlc Ideo ogy
versity of Minnesota Press, 1996), PP 129- 162, esp. P 152 '
)

8s. de Man) "Kant and Schiller," P 154

.
Jf damentalism (Chi.1 l
. Artman Age o; un
86. Wendy Steiner, The Scandal o1 P easure.
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), P 206
87. de Man, "Kant and Schiller/' P 14
88. de Man1 "Kant and Schiller/' P 15

n How to Do Things with Words. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Pre

89. J. L. AUS t I 1
SS1
. The William James Lectures, 1955
1975
. de Man, "Kant and Schiller/' P 154
90
. Marantz Henig, "Taking Play Seriously/' New York Times Mauazine
91. Rob m
o
, Feb_
ruary ,
8. See Eric Slauter, The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the
17 200
Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
. Doris Sommer, ''Aesthetics is a Joke/' in Bilingual Aesthetics: A New Sentimental
92
Education (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 29-71.

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State of_Lithuania.
d.
/ I.:
II
wiki 1a org WIKJ
2012
- - - . "El Sistema." Accessed November 5,
http: // en.
pe
/El_Sistema.
. lien wiki edia.org
---."George Maciunas." Accessed November 512012 ' http.//
p
/wiki/George_Maciunas.
d.
jwild
---."Graffiti." Accessed November 4J 2012 http:jjen.wikipe Ia.org
/Graffiti.
h . 11en.wikipedia.org
. Montesson.. , Accesse d November 612012. ttPJ/
- - - . "Mana
/wiki/Maria_Montessori.
. 11es.wikipedia.org
- - - . "Ro b erto J acoby."Accesse d N ovember 412012. httP//
/wiki/Roberto_Jacoby.
. al Geographic, 2002.
. 1
h. t 1DC Natton
Wills Garry. Mr. Jefferson's University. Was tng on

. l]oUInal of Psycho.
Wmnicott,
D. W. "Primitive emotional deve1opmen t 1" In ternatl011a

analysis (1945) 26: 137- 143.

---.Playing and Reality. New York: Basic Books1197 ~ .
International Jour"
.
1
Clinical
S1tuatton.
- - - . Playing: Its Theoretical Status 1l1 t 1e
11

nal of Psychoanalysis1 Vol. 49 (1968): 59 1-599

dM wtlleism" (1969),
"
t f Moses an
ot
d
- - - . The Use of an Object in the Contex 0
.
R Shepherd, an
.m psychoanalytic Explorations, edtte
. d bYClate Winmcottl ay
.
. 1ty Press, 1989
M adeleme
Davis. Cambridge: Harvard Umvers

61 _6 9i and the
. n ACT u '
ctto
coJiectiVC a
ff ct J6-l7, 24, 49-50, 55 '
ture e e '
acupunc
d democracy, 85, 91, 104, I 12,
s
an
.
S
6o-61, t '
dmiration as basiC to,
. mutual a
1em o f
4-,
12.3,
prob
.
11
86-87, 111, 144I
6, 31, 4-3-44,
9 28 Pro~Test Lab,
bl" ambivalence, 1 ' '
pu IC . 1 effects of, 17, 30-31, St, 6o,
73-78i npp e . ~economic problems, 9,
. to solve socto
61,
8 versus tolerance or vanJ:Z. 48,53113 I

17, d'.
31 91 147 See also interventlonsi
guar 1sm, ' '
social change
. I
f on morale and socla re~
color, influence o

dance: dance-hall democracy, 69-71; salsa,

form, 34-35
ense civic, 88, 90, 104-S, 137, 142,
S
common
.
. .
. t rsubJective apprectatwn, 35-36,
149i as ill e
105, 12s, 146, tS0-51
communism, 29, 34, 40, 41, 44, 99
creativity: and bilingualism, 27, 93i bottom~
up, 36,. as a conduit to human freedom,

Dewey, John: on art-based education, 4, 39,

art (con ti11ucd)

cap.1city of to inspire patriotism, 37, 38, 40,
98; collectible, 6 3, 98, 154; concept of the
deliberate uselessness of, 8-9, 98, 100-101;
Dewey's definition of, 14 -; effects of on
thinking, 111, 113-14i .1s fuel for pragmatic
social prOJeCts, 7, 48; graffiti, 30, 49-51, 57,
71-72, 104, 121; importance of risk-taking
in, 8, 117, 143-44, 154- s6; as a preventative

beauty: created versus naturat 88-89, 13 8,

143-45; dismtcrested appreciation of
9 35,
86; ethical signific.mce of, 8 9, 84 , 89 ; and
human Judgment, 85 86, 88, 13 8, 144, 146
Biddle, George, 39, 40
I

Boal, Augusto: on arts education, 6o; and

concept of the spect-actor, 25, s6-s8, 131,
155; as a cultural agent, 52-53, 61, 11o, 114,
145; experiments with interactive theater

against violence, 2, 17, 46-47, 121; pro-

53-SSi Legislative Theatre, 51, 58-59; on the

vocative power of, 4119, 36, 47, 89, 141-41;

ripple effects of on society, 3, 7, 11, 38,

need for mutual admiration, 56-57; Newspaper 1l1eatre, 44; political career of, S3,
57, 59; work in theater, 2, 211 31,58

67-68, 79i as a tool of resistance to oppres-

Sion, 29-30, 57, 104

artistic freedom, 10, 19-20, 36, 43-45, 98. See
also aesthetic freedom
artists: and artistic genius, 39, 91, 143, 150; case
of ACT

UP,

61-68; case ofEdi Rama (Ti-

rana), 33-37; case of Pedro Reyes (Mexico),

81-84; case of the Pro-Test Lab (Lithuania),
73-78; citizen-, 9, 31, 341so, ss, 101; citizens
as, 31, 56, 109, 145; civic role of, 40, 45-46,
51-52, 59, 94, 155; collaboration among,
30-31, 91; collaboration of with institutions,

Bogota, Colombia: art-inspired intervention

in, 16-25, 28, 36, 121; as a model for other
cities, 24, 36, 78; municipal tax campaign
in, 21-22, 23; socio-economic problems of,
15-16; solution to traffic problems in, 2, 16_t
17J, 18, 26-27, 31
books. See Cartoneras; classics; Pre-Texts
Boston, Massachusetts, so, uo-121 120, 127
Brazil, 53-54, s8-6o, 70, 122-23
Buenos Aires, Argentina, so, 107-8, 109, uo,
ll9

8, 40, 43, 51, 98- 99i critical thought processes of, 3, 9-11, so, 88, 94, 127; maligned
as fabricators, 90, 150; muralists, 39, 41,
so; pantomime, 2, 16, 19, 24-15, 27, 31-32;
rebellious tendencies of, 3I-32, 40-43, 57,
71-72, 91; risk-taking character of, 4-5, 8, 92,
137-38, 148-49; as teachers, 110-u, 120-23,
126-27; under the New Deal, 38-44
art-making: as a collective undertaking, 36,
48, so, 74; importance of to cognitive development,

11,

so, 88, 92, 113, 120; impor-

tance of in teaching judgment, 8s, 104, 105,

111; importance of triaC error, and failure
to, 120, 143; as an inherent human drive,
90, 141; intellectual connection of to freedom, 138- 39; as a means of promoting
. .
.
CIVIC consciOusness, 4, 30-31, 37, so-51, 134,
155; as a product of reason and passion, 12,

19, 136-37, 145; and psychological stability, 8, 46 -47, 90, 141, 142- 43, 150; role of
individuality in, 47-48; as a tool to prevent
violence, 47-48, 111, 121
Ayara Family, 121-22

Cartonera, Eloisa (Buenos Aires), so, 108-9,

u8-19, 155
Cartoneras, so, 107-8, 114- 17, 123, 127, 183n2o.
See also literacy; Pre-Texts; reading;
writing

138; connection of critique to, 65, 66,

86 _87, 97, 104, 13 6; and criticism, 10, 12, 88,
98, 102i dependence of on higher-order
mental process, 6, H3-14i literary, 112-21,
133; musical, 69, 72-73; suppressed by authoritarian governments, 32, 53, 57i as a
tool to foster education, 132-33; as a tool
for preventing violence, 47-48, 111, 121
critical thinking: link of to creativity, 6, 113I4i use of literary classics to induce, 112 20,

Cahill, Holger, 39-40

114, l84n38
criticism. See aesthetic experience; creativity

change. See cultural agency; interventions;

Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (1790), 86-87,

Cartonera, Sarita (Lima), 108, 116j, 119

social change
cigar factories as an educational force, 124-25,
184n38
citizenship. See civic education; collective
action
civic education: aesthetic judgment as a basis
for, 2-3, 6, 34-35, 87-88; as the basis for
collective action, 9, J01 u, 19, w - 12, 132;

142, 1501 152

Cuba, 42, 70-71, 99, 123, 125, 184n38
Cucurto, Washington (Santiago Vega), 108,
u8-19
cultural agency: bilingual aesthetics as, 93i
hybrid nature of, 7, 8, 81; role of interpretation in, 11, 93
cultural agents: agent~spotting to find, 51,

and the humanities, 8-9, 93-97, JOO-lOJ,

8t-82, 104-Si artists as, 4, 7, 82, uo-u, 114i

114, 125; role of art in, 48, 73, 134, 138-39,

Cultural Agents Initiative, 1, 12, so, 105,

69-70, 71, no, 173n92; as a tool to support

intellectual development, no, 120, 12;
deconstruction theory, 149, 152, 153, 154
de Man, Paul, 152-54
democracy: art as a tool to support, 4, 29-30,
57, 104i compared to authoritarian government, 29, 31-32, 91; dependence of on
high-order literacy, IH-Ili dependence of
on judgment, 9, 28, 85, 93-94, 120-2Ii as a
necessary product of collective action, 31,
56, 59, 69-711 111-12., 115-26; role of rules
in, 19, 28, 59 See also freedom
44 , 50, 14 9; Art as Experience (1934), 10;
pragmatism of, 10, 37, s6, 147
education: aesthetic1 9,

11,

35, 134, 138-39, 150i

American public, 111-13, 136, IS4i anti

authoritarian, 6o, 116, n8, 134i art in, 45
46, 4 7, JO+i arts-based, 6, 10, 4""', 6o, IJ2,
2 1 uo-JI, 120' IJJi
;
at~risk
students,
47,
"
143
. . 3, 8-9I 101I 145"I experiment in Ztm
CIVIC,
. t.
8 94 99 IOOj
babwe, 118; humams tc, s,..' , ' 8
humanities-based universttles, 95, 97-9 '
. 1stimuli in tl2i
limitations of au d IOVISUa
.'
. h 1 2 134 . musiC, 72,
Montesson sc oo s, 13 ' I
.
. mpact of testing on, J13, 133,
.
.
130; nega t 1ve 1
.
ingredient of learntng, 132,
passiOn as an
6 Pre-Texts ex
play as a tool for, I32-33, 13 '
. ple
.
. Ch leo Mexico, !28-29, np
penment ill a '
. student
. science, 79, 145,
2
f
effect o , 1 9,
124~1.5,
114
h" 60 91-921 }
teacher relations lp, '
,. travel
ter s8 6o, 14~1
h
133-341 I47i t ea } I .
s Waldorf
ing libraries, H9i
Schools, 31, 132

Ull

iverqtas, 9 '

f creativity
.
ociauon o
Enlightenment: ass
2. concepts
. 30 J361 14 I
f
Nith civic actwn, '
d. cussions o
96-971 JOOj 15
'
.
of humanism,
6
t nd taste, 8s, 87, 9
6 "3~76,
_
,
judgmen a
e 6 7 2'1, 5 '
cial chang '
experiments: so
4 57

4 53-s '
.
theater,
4
'
St''
14 8,
~21
120
6 60 1051 Jl41
facilitatOfS, 21 ss-s
I
J

142, 145
classics: musical as a medium for social bonding, 72-73; repurposing of literary to pro-

09-10, 12.0-2.1; interpreters as, 11, 104-Si

librarians as, 119, 121; need of the ability

mote literacy, 107, 112-20, 133, ISS See also

to tolerate risk, s-6; teachers as, 12, 37, so,

63, lll-13, 12.6; varying roles of, 2 3, 28, Sl,

literacy; Pre ~Texts; reading; writing

&l-82., ll7, 146

also jokers

. ct 4J-44
tre pro)e '
'
Federal 1hea
+~-+li
. .p -43
-~
an I-{a11le,
" 61 t14 1).
FIanag '
,6, 5"' ,
Theatre, 54 Forum

freedom: aesthetic, 8, 86, 88, 135, 138, 142;

artistic, 10, 19-20, 36, 38, 43-45, 98; art
as a stimulus to, 37-38, 40, 82, 89, 154;
humanist approach to, 94-95, 101, 136-38,
190-91072i the individual as the basis for,
5, 138-39; intellectual connection of to art,

9, 138-39, 142; interpersonal, 9, 35, 146-47,

150; interrelationship of with risk-taking, 8,
92, 136, 143-46, 148, 156; Nai"vc and Sentimental Poetry (1801), 143-44; theater as a
stimulus to, 41-42, 53, 54, 55i vacillating relationship between aesthetics and political1
95-98. See also democracy
Freire, Paulo: on human interrelationships~ 31,
64, 66, 136, 139; on the implementation of
social change, 146-47i theory of pedagogy,
8, 6o, 112, 126, 134
French Revolution, 9, 135, 136
Gramsci, Antonio, 4, 23, 86, 99, 139, 156
Gw1s into Shovels (Palas por pistolas), 82, 83f,
84f

Habermas,Jurgen, 21, 51, 111, 135, 148-52

Hegel1 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 8, ss, 146
humanism: as a basis for establishing common sense, 92, 104- 5i capacity of to expose
contexts, 1oo, 103-4; civic, 8-9, u; as a
counterpoint to technology, 99i damaged
by cultural amnesia, J00-101, 148; and the
human instinct for play, 136-43; Marxist,
65, 99-100; modern revival of, 101; pedagogy of, 94-95; versus the despair of Structuralism1 JOO-IOI; Western European tradition of, 94-97, 100
humanities: civic value of the, 6, 68, 93-97,
101, 113-14; deconstructionists' misunderstanding of the1 152; educational role of
the, 3, 8, 88197, 99-100; Engaged Humanities programs1 61 8; loss of educational
funding for thc1 11 9 -1o1 44-451 104; misconstrued by arriviste studentS1 97-981
JOO-JOI; pragmatics' misunderstanding of
thel s-6; in vanguard against totalitarian
thinking, 99
illiteracy and social problems, 1081 112, 18283m5
imagination: as the basis for interventions

and change, 45, 49, s6, 661 99i cathartic

character of the, 144- 4Si as a complement to judgment, 6- 7; countcrfactual
approach and the, 19, 141, 154; damaged by
educational testing, 133, 136; developed by
art-making, so, 141, 142; facilitated by difficulty, 112, 133, 145, 151
improvisation: cultural traditions of, 70,
12J-23i literary, 123, 133; as a tool for solving problems, 21 30, 31, 53. s6
interpretation: in the arts, 3, 123, 130; as an
exercise of the intellectual faculties, 51
107, 111-21, 115-16, 133-34, 183n2o; and the
human instinct for play, 12, 136; humanistic, 8-10,87-88,89,91-92, 103-4; literary,
111-ISi Pre-Texts exercises to develop skills
in, 129-31; as a product of individual thinking, 91, 93, 116, 120-21, 124-25, 130; ripple
effect of, 102-4; role of in civic education1
3. 5, 7-8, 10, 96-97
interventions: artistic to initiate social reforms, 12, 62-64 1821 105; constructive) 4,
161 981 104, 147, 155; dangers of, 102; improvisational by spect-actorsl s61 s81 61;
in poor and underserved areas1 uo1 112;
using art-making1 47-481 1111 121; using
interactive theater154-58; using music) 471
72-73. See also collective action; poverty;
social change; violence
jokers, 56, 58, 6o1 121. See also facilitators
judgment: aesthetic13, 87, 881 144; as a bridge
between the abstract and the material, 87;
as a cornerstone of democracy, 91 861881 911
941 101; development of through aesthetics, 71 12, 851 97i disinterested) 31 61 91 901
141-42, 146; dynamics underlying18s-89;
as an intellectual bridge, 150-51i interrelationship of with choice192; as a leveling
force among humans1 142. See also taste as
a precursor of judgment
Kant1Immanuel: concept of human subjectivity, 97i on the development of judgment through taste, 8s, 87, 142; on the
disinterested appreciation of beauty~ 91 901
1431 147; Schiller's theoreti cal divergences
from) 891 90, 141-421 1441 1451 JSOi theory

of common sense, 35, 104, 146, tso; theory

~d interest in life, 90, 150;

d. intcrcstl:
(
)
f
o IS

, .r Ac,thrtic judgmclll 1790 ,

nrird Crztrqttt

OJ

which artists to support, 39 _40; to con-

87-SS, 1421 ISO

n
, 62, 64, 67, 6~

l(r.1111er, Lan;,
d
tion Pre-Texts; thinking
lc arning. Sec c uca
,
.
.r M
,
I Aesthetic Educatron OJ Cltl
I rttas otl t u:
f
'
)
88 1.p; messages o , 137-42,
(1794 I 91 Jl, I
_ __ 4 . purpose of,
q.$ 1 I)0 ) I

s, 9, 135

_ ; Pre-Texts exercises to facilitate,

112 20
t29-3li recycling of classics to promote,
Jll-lJ, 133 183 020 . and rigorous thinking,
I

trol potentially volatile artists, 40- 42;

Federal Art PrOJCCt

(FAP) (1935-1939),

3S-39i Federal Theatre Project, 41-44 ;

Latin American connections of, 37-38,

39i to promote cultural pride and patriotism, 38, 40 45 Public Works of Art Project

libraries, 37 46, 119, 131

Lima, Peru, so, 107-8, 109: 12~
, .
. 1CC of as an m<.hcator of soctoliteracy: ab set
,
.
cconomlc problems, ' llli I. u M P J\ proJect,

Nazi constraints on freedom, 29, 3,

New Deal arts programs: arguments over

<..

111 _12 ; use of literary criticism to develop,

115 , 117, 119, 130 , 13 1. Sec also Cartonera:-;
classics; Pre-Texts: reading; writing
Lithuania, 73-78, 155, 173fl10l

(PWAP) ( 19)3-1934), 38; scale of13S,41,

43i Treasury Reltef Art Project (TRAP)
(1935-1938), 43i \Vorks Progress AdminIstration

(wPA), 38,39f, 41, 44i Writers'

Project) 41, 43
newspapers: clothesline,
ture

111

Jll1113;

as litera

ctgar factories, 114, 1S4n38; Living

Newspaper, 44i as tools of change for cui

tural agents, 18,59.-s
New York City, 34, 44, 61-68

Lyotard1Jean-Fran<;OIS, 20-21

pantomime art as a tool to facilitate social

change. 2, 16, 19, 24-25, 27, 31-3 1

Mexico: artist-revolutionaries of, 41; col-

passiOn as a producttve foil agamst reason, 19,

laboration of government with artists,

37-381 43, 98-99, 105; Hteracy programs
in, 112, 127-28; Pal as por pistolas (Gulls into

Shovels) project182-83; tradition of mural

painting, 37139
Middle Ages, 29, 95-96
Mockus, Antanas: as mayor of Bogot.\,

1,

15, 18-15, 29, 31; and NatJOJul Uni\cr-.. Jt)

of Colombia, 25- 26; political act I\ Jsm of
in Colombia, 28-29, 31, 56; usc ot ,u-ts
inspired social interventions, 16 1 21, 26 -27,
33-34, 148, ISS
Molesworth, Helen, 63, 64, 66 169
Montessori, Maria I 11 I 1..~J 11 1~4
..'l
murals as a socio-cultural force, JO, 37-41, 4-'
49-so, uo
music: and collective dancing, 69 70; hiphop, 104, 121-22;

Imc~ginc proJeCt in..,tru-

mcnts, 84; as an impetus to the Prague

s .

pnng, 71-72; orchestras, 71, 72

music-n~"kl.
. . cf1"L'Cl o ( tI1c
"' n g : <.i cmocratr;.mg
classics

, 72-73, 1 10; as .1 he,1lthy .1\tcrn.ltiW

t

. l
o Vto
cnce, 47, 72

National
. the Arts ( N 1 .\ ) ,
' EJn d owmcnt tor
44-46

q6, 145. 152, 154

pedagogy: art-centered, so-st, 138-39i
Dewey ,s t heory o f, 1o, 37' J<o-SJ ' ss s6,

+"',

I49i as an element of CJVlC culture, J9i as

Jn Pre-Texts programs, tiJ-lSi
d
I
cmp oye

f
feedback, w8; Freire's theory of, 6o, 66; o
11"'

119-

humamsm, 94i of 111110\atJOn, JOS: ., .

, 2 SdHllcr s theol)
d
lO: prOJCCt-cen tcre . t' '
ot.

s. 9 136-)9, J.p

. -t6

4\, 14'

1( 968) S 6o, 9,
Pedagogy of tile Oppre_,sec J
' '
IW, 146
Pc ru ).,'- 54 ' wS, 112

.
J onstructJOn,
I
9 .. UI~C.:
.
philo<>ophy: Classlca ' 94 )
, . So-S;,
. Enlightenment, ~,.
149 J'il, ISJ, 1)41
..
' 8 J4l. langu.,gc, 9' JO,,
96-9-, 13..,_3 '
'
1 pohtJc,tl.
6 99 142, I)
tSJ Sli moral, s6, 9 ' '
I

65 66, n8, tSO

.
.._ (Pr.l~uc ),
tl1 ' UnJYCI st.:
,
f
0
I
Plastic Peop c
c
"1-"72

, .

~ .ts .trtJstl~ ~rc-

.tl ,1<.t1VIt)' n ' ., l1.t~lt

...
.
.
)r 1s .\11 arnor
Pl "' \.
J'..
'
'\ "
~ q.;, 4\'
1:->.

,\tJ\'lt},i8,J\..,
lJ\)lfl'\t\1
J
..,
4s 140,
hutn,\11 nccu tor, 4. '
,.., l'i.l.J '" '
.'
)$, 2ll _,, '
. .
)\'cr... ot, - 9 . 1\7-'~'~ , ....
.q
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,\J\\

play (continued)
tion, 139-40, 140-41, 149, 188n24i power of
to balance re.1son and passion, 12, 136-37,
142-43, 1881127; power of to fight antipathy, 25-26; Schiller on, 136-38, 140; as a
tool for learning, 132-33, 136; Winnicott
on, 121-22, 135, 140- 41, 187-88m.3
pleasure: as a basis for socio-political consensus, 18, 35, 40, 88-89, 102, 155; emotionally
mediating power of, 19, 136, 142; human
fear of, 3-41 18, 1441 153; power of to motivate learning, 117- 181 1281 156i role of in
forming judgment, 861 u2
politics: art and1 59 -60184, 881 137-38; art as
politics argumcnt151; concept of the aesthetic regimc1 10 u; connection of to aesthetics~

34-35, 36, 89 91
poverty: arts interventions against, 7, 46-47,
110- 11; interactive theater as an intervention against, S3i literacy-promotion interventions against, so, 127-28. See also interventions; social change; violence
pragmatism: in arts-based interventions171 33,
s6; embraced by Dewey, 41 10, 90, 136, 147;
as related to pleasure1 18, 19
Pre-Texts: as a citizenship-building tool112021; demands of on participants' thought
processes1 119 201 122, 124-2.61 129; sample
activities of, 129 -32; teacher-training
through, so, 114, 12.1-22, 126 2.8, 134; as a
tool to promote literacy, 6, 105, 111-13, 123,
133, 155; underlying philosophy o~ 113-14,
126. See also Cartoneras; classics; literacy;
reading; writing
Pro-Test Lab (Lithuania), 73-78, 155, 17311101
public space: gentrification of as a civic problem, 76; graffiti in, JO, 49 51, 57, 71-72, 104,
t21i muralists and, 30, 32, 41, 49, so; and
pride of ownership, o; privatization of
as a civic problem, 73 74, 75, 77i as sociopolitical objects, 26, 36, 67, 73-74, 78; as
venues for agents of change, 64 65, 66-68.
Sec al.~o architectural works as sociopolitical objects
Puerto Rico, 38, so, 79, 112, 12.4, 127
Rama, Edi, 33-37, 48, 164n73
Rancicrc, Jacques: on the aesthetic regime in

. f rt 89 141 _ 4 2; theoretical
on the power o a , '
es of from Kant, 891 90, 141 -42,
divergenc
1441 145, JSO
t nomous character of, 32, 99i as
science: au o
. .
d
t to the human1t1cs an arts,
a cornp1emen
.
7' in education, 79,
6 7 J00 1 104/ 145I 14 J
' 'E 1. htenment concept of scientific
145i n tg
.
_ 9 7' role of judgment m,
6
8
8
9
reason1 s, 7,
'
3i scientific method, 21

politics, 10 11, 90-91, 148i on cultural amnesia, 100, 148; on education, 132., 134 ; Ignorallt Schoolmaster (1987 ), 90, 134; on social
change, 139, 187n17; The Politics of Aesthetics
(2004), 91, 148, 187n17
reading: of classic literature, 117, 118-19, 133i
as a cultural tradition, 108i and interpretation, 114 s, 124 27, 130 31; publicly
among political activists, 63, 64, 73i as a
rigorous mental process, 7, 111-12, 131-32.,
183nlOi spiral relationship of with writing,
112., 115, 126; in tobacco factories, 123-24,
125, 184n38i as a tool for understanding, 381
99 100. See also Cartoneras; classicsi literacy; Pre-Textsi writing
reason: dangers inherent in, 6, 9, t8; as an
insufficient road to freedom, 91 136, 138,
145, 154i Kant on, 87, 152; productive tension of against passion, 3-4, 19, 144-45,
152; scientific rationality interpreted as,
96-97; versus irrational sensuality, 12, 137,
142-43, 149, 150; versus judgment, 85-86,
87, 94, 142, 146
Renaissance, 95 96, 100, 133
Reyes, Pedro, 52, 81 84, 94, 104-5
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 35, 58-6o
ripple effects: of art, 3, 11, 38, 64, 791 102; of
innovation and social change, 7, 31, 67, 72,
99, 12.4
risk taking and personal development, 8, 127,
133, 143- 44, 148, 156
rooftop gardens, 48, 52, 78
Roosevelt, Prcs1dcnt Franklin Delano, 10, 12,
37, 38, 42, 45
Schiller, ~ricdrich: on art as an independent
entity, 32.; on art and reason, 9, 18, 136,
144 45, JS4i on the barrenness of utility,
137, 148; on beauty, 88, 143 44i on the connection of art to freedom, 35, 135, 142.-44,
146, 148, tSOi critics o~ 152. S4i on cultural
agency, s, 1$3, 154 s6; on the human drive
to play, 136 38, 140, 152, J54i on the importance of trial, error, and failure, 143-44, 151,
156i influence of, 10, 19, 90, 135, 140, l4S-53i
Letters 0~1 tile Acsthd1c Educalio11 of Man
(1794), s, 9, 11, 88,137 45, so S4i opposition of to molding human beings, 30, 153i

Shklovsky1Viktor, 19, 89
social change: art as a provocation o~ 51 52i

Atlas de intervencionesl IOSi bottom-up

model ofl 2,

12,

36, 48, 521 t09i Cartoneras

as agents o 107- 91 us- J7i case of ACT UP,

6 1-68; case of Edi Rama (Tirana)~ 33 37i
case of Pedro Reyes (Mexico), 81-84; case
of the Plastic People (Prague)~ 71 72i and
civil rights, 62, 65, 68, 78, 99i and cultural
revolution, 24, 99, 138, 139, 148; experiments in, 6-7, 27, s6, 73 76, 148; grassroots
projects for, 12, 37, s8, 78; importance of
individual perspective to, 54-55, 138, t39i
interconnections of socio-economic prob
lems179i limitations of political protest in
effecting, 93i limitations of vanguardism in
effecting, 53-541 147, 15Si pleasure as a necessary ingredient of, 4, 181 25, 35 1 1SSi and
political revolution1 2.31 601 70-71, 72, 14Si
role of counterfactual thinking, 24, 1481 151;
silence and apathy as threats to, 63, 102. 3i
skeptics' responses to, 17, 29, 112, 139, 1Sl,
154; top-down model of, 2, 48, 5416o, 109,
146; urban revival, 16-17, 34, 46, 48, 6o, 78.
See also collective action; interventions;
poverty; violence
social sciences, 7, 47, 91, 104, 139, 150
spect-actors' role, 25,55 s8, 64, 114, 131, 155
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 152, 1831121
students: attracting at risk to school, 47, 110,
120j as cramped in conventional ac,tdcmic
environments, 5 6; need of to learn to
think critically, 6i revival of civic con
sciousness among, 102; self-educating
capacities of, 132., 133, 1.3 4 ; soci<ll activism
of, 99, 102, 110
subjcctiv'ty

I : CIVIC-minded,
85, 93 94, 96 97,
too, 139, 142; as a cornplcment to obJl'Ct1VC

realities, 86-87, 138 39, 140, 141; and intersubjective behavior, 86, 105, 140, 141, 150,
151-52i private, 18, 45, 92, too
Surrealism, 51, 98, 149
Sustainable South Bronx project, 78-79
taste as a precursor of judgment, 12, Bs 88,
90, 96, 146. See also judgment
teachers: as cultural agents, 12, 37, so, 63,
u 1- 13, 126i importan ce of risk-taking for,

8; interpretive role o 28,91-92, 11 7, 119,

t321133-34; in medieval Western Europe,
95-96; pitfalls for1 601 113, 120, 124-2.5, !28,
133-34; students as, so, 134i training o~ 1191
128, 134
theater: Boal's use of, 2, 21, 53 6o, 145, 155;

Cradle Will Rock, 71u, 41 - 42; as an educational tool, 31, s8, 6o; Federal Theatre
Project, 41-44; forum-style, 54, s6; mteractive as a tool for situational interven
tion, 53-55, 6o- 61; Legislative Theatre,
51, s8-S9i "Living Newspaper," 44i mental, 53 , 149; as psychological therapy,
531 S?-S8i Theatre of the Oppressed, 56,
58, 601 uo; as a tool for effecting soetal
change, 59-61, 45, JSSi as a tool for social
protest, 41-44, 53, s8; vanguard-style,
53-54, 58
thinking: art as a complement to, 3, 9-11, so,
88, 99, 127i civic, interpersonal powers of,
132 142' countcrfactual, 9, 24,
24
88I 1141 1 1 I
I

148, 1$1, 1S3-S4i creative and adap~tvc, 6,

. development of htghcr24, 107, 113, 1$4,
t"
2 ISvno; rcc,
order, 107, u2-14, 119-ll, 14 ,
nd 1udgmcnt
.
.
interpretation
a
6I 8s, 88I 125I
l't
as complements to, s, o, ss, 87, tlli
means offactlitatlllg, tJt-12,
a
erature as
<
(
1
.,...exts exercises to ,tel
e
P
124 25, 130; r ! ' ' '
tate, 12.9-32
,
.
J6 +~ t64117
Tirana, Albanta, 33 35, '
trial and error. Sec risk-taking
(
95 141, J4l,
~parativc value o , 94
trul h :con. '
1 1 2
t48i and mora l t'ty, 87' 9. , ,~

. rtop "llJnlcns

g
Sec
too
8 6o 78
urb,1n farmtn . ,
. I 6 17 HI 46, 4 I
urban rcvtva, I
, .
.,J, ~~~
d (_, CtI'till .II ,,s
. I
Urbonas, Nomed;~ ,tn '
I

1''i
).

221
220

l N l>HX

Vasconcclos 1 Jos{~

37- 3X, I)H

Vilnius, I .ithu.llli.l, n-77

violcnl e: prevent ion of through art,
lo-,tH,s,~
I ions;

Willlli(Oit, J)on.dd Wood'\1 11.1 - n

21 17 - 1X,

povcrt y; soda I dwnge

Voltaire, IJf' 1J71 142

wchsitcs and thdronic addrcsse<;: c:ultagtna~)

ult uralagenls.org 1 12.8;

dsomn H; r((:Vfas. h .1 rv .tnl.ed 11 1 IJi pre Iext:;
.oq.~ 1

112

q2 1 1 \~ 1

IJI0- 4 II IJ\ 7

ss, 111, 121. Sn ahu intcrvcn

fa~-:.harvard.l'du 1 11;

writing: appropriat ion 1

:1t ivc1 51

11o;

11X 1~, 1221 13 \i

en:

the cxpcrit:ncc of1 ~2, ~),

1\<>i as .1n intcrpn:.;on:1l stillllllus, 31 1

11 7 1

101

.1.1

112;

spir.d rdationshq> of with n:ading1

112,

115, 1:z.6. Sl'l: al\o ( l.tssics; lit cr.tt y; l'n -

'l'exts; nading