Katja Praznik The trouble with autonomy or the (self)exploita<on of ar<s<c labor?
Where does the trouble with understanding art and ar2s2c labor as being autonomous lie in today’s neoliberal version of capitalist mode of produc2on? The first and obvious answer in my view lies in the excep2onal status of the ar2s2c labor. Though excep2onality of ar2s2c labor has been disputed by ar2sts as well as theorist and ac2vist, the collec2ve belief in ar2s2c autonomy (on which the excep2onality of ar2s2c labor rests), drives not only many theore2cal arguments but also cultural-‐policy measures. In both cases, theorist and cultural-‐policy makers, tend to separate ar2s2c labor from other types of labor. However, when we inves2gate the social rela2ons that govern ar2s2c produc2on in capitalist democracies, the dis2nc2on between ar2s2c and other types of labor produces not only a contradic2on, which locks the cultural producers (i.e. ar2sts and other arts related profession) in the circuit of unpaid labor, but also impairs an effec2ve poli2cal struggle to surpass unpaid labor.
Even though I am cri2cal of the claims for autonomy and I consider them in terms of spontaneous ideology (Althusser, 1990: 69–166),1 I need to emphasize that I don’t apprehend the claims for autonomy as a form of false consciousness on behalf or cultural producers. Rather, I understand ar2s2c autonomy as a specific characteris2c of social rela2ons that govern the produc2on of art hence ar2s2c labor in capitalist mode of produc2on. It is not as if cultural producers today enter the cultural system in order not to get paid and enjoy the autonomy because they are blinded by its wage-‐less, innova2ve and crea2ve mys2que. They enter the cultural system as a set of definite 1 Spontaneous ideology is an aTtude and posi2on that intellectuals in sciences as well as arts adopt
toward their own prac2ce; it is both the representa2on of and the rela2onship to their prac2ce without an accurate percep2on of the posi2on that they occupy in this society as intellectuals, or in other words, without being aware of the dominant ideological system of society. Althusser puts it beVer than I can: “Their [intellectuals’] prac2ce, which they carry out in a framework defined by laws that they do not control, thus spontaneously produces an ideology which they live without having any reason to break out of it. But maVers do not end here. Their own ideology, the spontaneous ideology of their prac2ce /.../ does not depend solely on their own prac2ce: it depends mainly and in the last instance on the dominant ideological system of the society in which they live.” (Althusser, 1990: 95)
socioeconomic rela2ons with its established rules: the most dominant one being the “disavowal of the 'economic’” (Bourdieu, 1993: 74–111), perceivable most formidably in the pervasive demand to submit to the logic of unpaid labor. In other words, the spontaneous ideology resul2ng in the claims for autonomy of art is an effect of the dominant (capitalist) mode of produc2on (in which commodity fe2shism obscures the condi2ons of produc2on) and has its real material prac2ce – that is the unpaid or low-‐ paid ar2s2c labor.
This excep2onality of ar2s2c labor disavowed from economy has contributed to its mys2fica2on as well as to the ideology of ar2s2c autonomy, but not necessarily in a construc2ve way. The root of the problem lies precisely in the ways ar2s2c (or cultural) labor tends to be understood as something different from other types of work within the capitalist mode of produc2on. That is to say, art is fundamentally seen as non-‐alienated. Or, as Adorno has remarked, “[t]he work of art endorses the sen2ment normally denied by ideology: work [as opposed to art] is degrading” (Adorno, 1981: 84); because ar2sts take pleasure in their ac2vity. Hence, ar2sts’ work is not considered labor because it is a sa2sfying pursuit. This train of thought situates ar2s2c labor outside of capitalist rela2ons, yet this logic is not quite tenable. First, because the emergence of the modern system of art is closely related to the rise of capitalist mode of produc2on, i.e. the ins2tu2on of art can be understood as an aspect of this mode of produc2on (MaTck, 2004: 3–8)2. Secondly, because ar2s2c work is essen2ally no different than any other kind of work in capitalist mode of produc2on. As Janet Wolff argues: “The mys2fica2on involved in seTng ar2s2c work apart as something different from, and usually superior to, all other forms of work can be combaVed by showing that all forms of work are (poten2ally) crea2ve in the same way, and that ar2s2c work, like other work, loses its quality as ‘free, crea2ve ac2vity’ under capitalism.” (Wolff, 1993: 13) The trouble with autonomy is therefore not a collec2ve delusion on the part of cultural producers; rather
2 MaTck claims: “Art developed along with the commercialized mode of produc2on that became
capitalism, and it is only by understanding art as an aspect of this mode of produc2on that the supposed antagonism between them (central to aesthe2cs) – and so the ideal of art’s autonomy – can be understood.” (MaTck, 2004: 3–8)
it lies in the fact that the en2re (not only art) produc2on of society in capitalism is organized as wage labor.3
The claims for autonomy are thus unproduc2ve poli2cal strategy to resolve the unpaid ar2s2c labor. On the one hand, these claims separate the cultural producers from other wage-‐laborers in the sphere of excep2onality thus contribu2ng to ineffec2ve merit-‐ oriented strategies in the filed of cultural policy that in turn support the disavowed economy of art produc2on. On the other hand, the logic of autonomy pertains more to art as a form of ideological produc2on rather than to the art’s economy because economy of art is deeply heteronomous. Hence, as much as claims for autonomy may have emancipatory appeal, they are shortsighted – autonomy is not possible without radical and extensive changes of the current socioeconomic (i.e. capitalist) rela2ons. This however does not mean that unpaid ar2s2c labor should be accepted as a given fact and that there are no effec2ve strategies to combat this situa2on. The issues of unpaid labor and its rela2on to capitalist mode of produc2on have been dealt with most prominent and in a produc2ve fashion within the Marxist feminist tradi2on; their approach can serve us as a construc2ve lesson for rethinking the poli2cs
3 I would like to thank Primož Krašovec, Slovene scholar and fellow sociologist, who in a generous gesture
of cri2cal camaraderie pointed out this aspect.
of unpaid labor also within the sphere of arts.4 In her 1975 text Wages against Housework feminist scholar and ac2vist Silvia Federici explained how a demand for wages for housework should be understood as a poli2cal strategy because this perspec2ve not only uncovers the hidden economy of domes2c labor but also demys2fies housework as a natural aVribute of women. (Federici, 1975) “The unwaged condi2on of housework, “ Federici asserts, “has been the most powerful weapon in reinforcing the common assump2on that housework is not work, thus preven2ng women from struggling against it” (Federici, 1975: 2). Furthermore, the transforma2on of housework into an inherent need and aspira2on of female personality has made this work invisible to the point that many people think housework shouldn’t be paid; it is as if this labor were an act of love, hence it doesn’t require a wage. Yet a demand for wages for housework in Federici’s view means a refusal of housework as an expression of female nature; or, in other words, means that women can embark on a struggle against the social role the capitalist mode of produc2on has invented for women. There are several important elements of this argument that I find very useful for rethinking and understanding of ar2s2c labor and consequently a defini2on of ar2sts as workers.
Like housework, which Federici calls the labor of love, art prac2ce and work related to art is ooen talked about as work different from other kinds of work. In cultural-‐policy
4 For instance Silvia Federici emphasizes that one of the great achievements and contribu2ons of Marxist
feminist theory and struggle in the last couple of decades has been the “redefini2on of work and the recogni2on of women’s unpaid reproduc2ve labor as a key source of capitalist accumula2on” (Federici, 2010: 24). In this redefini2on of work, feminist scholars, Federici among them, have redefined housework as work which doesn’t reproduce just life but also labor-‐power – i.e. our capacity to work -‐-‐ and hence as crea2ng value that lays the very ground of exploita2on – because labor-‐power is the most produc2ve commodity for accumula2on of capital. (Federici, 2010: 24) Federici’s and others’ interven2ons took place during the 1970s when feminists were analyzing the roots of female oppression and demonstrated how housework is in fact unpaid reproduc2ve labor. Housework is, in Federici’s words, “work for capital” because “although it is unpaid work it contributes to the accumula2on of capital” (Federici, 2010: 24). This groundbreaking insight is relevant also for other struggles because it demonstrates how the capitalist mode of produc2on relies on enormous quan22es of unpaid reproduc2ve labor, thus reproduc2ve labor has become a new domain of poli2cal struggles. One of the effects of this feminist analysis lies in the understanding that unpaid domes2c labor inside and outside of the home is crucial for the reproduc2on of a specific kind of workforce. Thus important elements of everyday life could now be thought of in rela2on to capitalist exploita2on. But the second effect of this Marxist feminist analysis, also interes2ng for the poli2cs of unpaid ar2s2c labor, is that it resulted in the demand for the wages for housework.
documents ar2s2c labor is ooen described as “atypical work” (ERICArts, 2006). This ooen serves as convenient excuse for unorganized and incoherent cultural-‐policy regula2on of ar2s2c labor that very does not protect the interests of ar2sts and cultural producers as workers in capitalism. Hence, ar2sts are mostly freelance workers and their social security and other welfare provisions are precarious or even nonexistent. But if in capitalist society people work in order to make their living, wage in that respect means that one is recognized as worker, which enables further struggle concerning the condi2ons of labor etc. According to Federici, “to have a wage means to be part of a social contract,” despite the fact that one may not necessary like the work one does, because waged work is the key instance of capitalist economy under which the majority of world popula2on is allowed to live (Federici, 1975: 2). In other words, in capitalist society where products (which can also be services) assume the form of commodity, work is understood as a commodity-‐producing labor.
Like housework, ar2s2c prac2ce also appears as a qualita2vely different kind of labor. It may no longer be gender specific as housework s2ll is, but since the historical emergence of the ins2tu2on of art, ar2s2c labor or, beVer, ar2sts as such have been aVributed special characteris2cs just as the ar2s2c work is “priceless” (but also expensive beyond economic reason, etc.). The en2re ins2tu2on of art has been build on the assump2on that being an ar2st means one possesses specific ar2s2c talents or genius or crea2vity. Ar2s2c talent or, beVer yet, crea2vity is supposed to be an internal aspira2on and innate characteris2c of an individual. As Canadian scholar Sarah BrouilleVe emphasizes, influen2al US psychologist in the 1960s and 1970s tended to present art-‐making as “the fundamentally insular expression of one’s personally directed passionate devo2on to ‘the task itself’” (BrouilleVe, 2014: 56). Yet, as Daniel Allington’s cri2cal analysis of crea2vity demonstrates, “there is no such thing as crea2vity” because crea2vity is a func2on of social interac2ons rather than an objec2ve property (Allington, 2011: 77). Or, in Allington’s words, crea2vity “is not something that can be present in or absent from par2cular people, acts, texts, uVerances, etc. It can only be ascribed, which is to say that it is always a func2on of social interac2ons that – ooen retrospec2vely, and always provisionally – produce par2cular people, acts, texts, uVerances, etc. as crea2ve
or non-‐crea2ve.” (Allington, 2001: 77) Crea2vity is thus a Western concept closely related to the concept of ar2s2c genius and has played an important role in establishing the ins2tu2on of art as well as the image of ar2st as a genius or extremely crea2ve person in the West since at least the 18th century. It has furthermore also contributed to the “disavowal of the ‘economy’” (Bourdieu, 1993: 74–111).
Along this line of thinking come several other assump2ons about ar2s2c labor that have proliferated since the ins2tu2on of art has emerged in the West during the 18th century, which have also largely led to the claims about the autonomy of art. The fundamental one being that of German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who in the Cri2que of the Power of Judgment (1790) established a dis2nc2on between art and work by posi2ng that if art wants to be free, it should not be subject to payment. In Kant’s words, “beau2ful art must be free in a double sense: it must not be a maVer of remunera2on, a labor whose magnitude can be judged, enforced, or paid for in accordance with a determinate standard; but also, while the mind is certainly occupied, it must feel itself to be sa2sfied and s2mulated (independently of remunera2on) without looking beyond to another end.” (Kant, 2000: 198–197)5
Labor and autonomy in the sphere of arts thus produce a formidable paradox. Or, as Adorno chose to phrase it, “[a] contradic2on of autonomous art is the concealment of the labor that went into it.” (Adorno, 1981: 83) The concealment of labor or disavowal of socioeconomic context, as I interpret it, has in the realm of arts produc2on and cultural policy produced a situa2on similar to that in the realm of the women’s unpaid reproduc2ve labor in that ar2s2c labor relies on a defini2on of labor as possessing an excep2onal aVribute – crea2vity defined as an innate need for self-‐expression. Ar2sts can thus be unwaged and happy. The absence of payment in this respect makes ar2s2c labor invisible under capital where the wage nexus is what would recognize the ar2st as a worker. Why should we then understand ar2sts and cultural producers as workers that 5 Cf. S2pe Ćurković who takes Kant’s logic about the autonomy of the aesthe2cs one step further by
arguing that autonomy of art is an empha2c though disguised reac2on to the domina2on of the logic of capital in society. (Ćurković, 2011: 42–46).
are en2tled to remunera2on, i.e. payment of their labor? And how could a demand for wages for ar2sts work as a produc2ve poli2cal strategy?
Understanding ar2sts and cultural producers as workers is first and foremost a necessary poli2cal tac2c within capitalist mode of produc2on in which cultural systems globally are spheres of value produc2on. Though they func2on, as Bourdieu demonstrated, an “economic universe, whose very func2oning is defined by a ‘refusal’ of the ‘commercial’, which is in fact a collec2ve disavowal of commercial interests and profits” (Bourdieu, 1993: 75). Every 2me an ar2st exhibits her work in a gallery or museum, performs in a theatre/dance produc2on, writes a text to be published in a book or used as a script in a staged produc2on, creates music for a film or a concert, creates installa2ons for public spaces etc. – she enters in a specific economic rela2on, either with a for profit company or a non-‐profit ins2tu2on. Regardless of the status of these ins2tu2ons, i.e. profit/non-‐ profit, ar2sts and cultural workers provide services, on which the (private or public, profit or non-‐profit) ins2tu2on capitalizes, either symbolically or economically. Thus ar2sts/cultural workers are in a rela2on where their labor is crea2ng value and can therefore be understood as commodity producing labor. This in turn establishes the ground for ar2st to demand remunera2on. Though ar2s2c labor can be regarded as a private intellectually autonomous pursuit, once it enters the exchange with cultural ins2tu2ons its heteronomy on the economic level becomes undeniable. Therefore a demand for wages for ar2sts and cultural producers, like wages for housework, is for now, in current neoliberal version of capitalism, a viable poli2cal strategy, which makes the ar2s2c labor visible and thus payable. Furthermore, this strategy makes it possible for the cultural producers to build poli2cal alliances with other workers because the language of excep2onality can be avoided by recognizing the fact that ar2s2c labor, once it enters the exchange within the cultural system, func2ons as value producing labor.
Sources Adorno, Theodor, 1981, In Search of Wagner, London: NLB.
Allington, Danielle, 2011, “The produc2on of ‘crea2vity’”, Crea2vity in language & literature: the state of the art, Joan Swann, Rob Pope, and Ronald Carter (Eds.), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 277–289. Althusser, Louis, 1990, “Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scien2sts”, in: Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scien2sts & Other Essays, Gregory EllioV (ed.), New York: Verso pp. 69–166. Bourdieu, Pierre, 1993, “The Produc2on of Belief: Contribu2on to an Economy of Symbolic Goods”, The field of cultural produc2on: Essays on art and literature. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 74–111. BrouilleVe, Sarah, 2014, Literature and the Crea2ve Economy, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ćurković, S2pe, 2011, “Heteronomy of Labor/Autonomy of the Aesthe2c,” Frakcija, no. 60–61, winter 2011/12 pp. 34–46. ERICarts, 2006, The Status of the Ar2st in Europe (study), Brussels: European Parliament. Federici, Silvia, 1975, Wages Against Housework, Bristol: Falling Wall Press. Federici, Silvia, 2010, “Precarious Labor: A Feminist Viewpoint”, Variant, no. 37, Spring/Summer, pp. 23 – 25. Kant, Immanuel, 2000, Cri2que of the Power of Judgment, Cambridge University Press. MaTck, Paul, 2004, Art in Its Time, New York: Routledge. Wolff, Janet, 1993, The Social Produc2on of Art, New York Univesity Press.