.
It is no mystery (to me) that the (dominant media) is both a “repressive state apparatus,” and an “ideological state apparatus.” (1) It represses, and regulates who and what is considered “authored.” (2) It creates an economic standard, and in a Marxist sense replicates its “means of production” (a hierarchy of power relations, structured through the division of labour and work). It is a “meme” for “capitalist” thought patterns. But there is a choice: you choose to replicate its forms, or you choose to subvert them. You subvert them in textual representations, objects, and philosophies. You opt for a Marxist, and indeed a purely ethical stance (such as Spinoza). These are the options which Louis Althusser once saw for us, and I return to. You create texts which show the audience that they are constructed, which cannot be read any other way, which never allow us to forget, which never allow us to get too relaxed.
You make texts in which the “means of production” are visible as “producing meaning,” the representation visible as a sense of repression, the sign visible as a sign. Make art which makes art. But then you will have an audience of ten, and ten alone. What use is this? How then to change the world? By one last inversion: dedicate your work to making others into artists. (3) The only way to change the world is to make one in ten people an artist (at least). Walter Benjamin perceived this choice, as did Ralph Waldo Emmerson, among many others. The time has come: the war against ideology is being fought. Create art not to impress upon a person your artistry, but also theirs. Do not oppress, repress, or impress: press press press. Encourage and enable others to become the “press,” to publish their own books, and their own albums, and their own thoughts, and their own paintings and poems and dances and and and. Don’t oppose ideology with ideology. Don’t oppose. Don’t o’ (pose) own your pose. Fight without casualty and causality. Create your own: you thoughtful war-machine. (4)
.
Phylis Johnson & Dick Whyte, 2000
.
Notes
(1)Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an investigation),” in Slavoj Zizek (ed.), Mapping Ideology (Verso, 1994).
(2)Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?,” in John Caughie (ed.), Theories of Authorship (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981).
(3)Walter Benjamin’s “The Author as Producer,” in Peter Demetz (ed.), Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (Schocken Books, 1986).
(4)Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus (Continuum, 1987).
.
