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Critical Reflections
But this “other” that desires unconditionally to convey itself, that wants
to be communicative, is, of course, not other enough. What made the classical
avant-garde interesting and radical was precisely that it consciously shunned
conventional social communication: it excommunicated itself. The “incomprehensibility”
of the avant-garde was not just the effect of a communication
breakdown. Language, including visual language, can be used not only as a
means of communication but also as a means of strategic discommunication
or even self-excommunication, that is, a voluntary departure from the community
of the communicating. And this strategy of self-excommunication is
absolutely legitimate. One can also wish to erect a linguistic barrier between
oneself and the other in order to gain a critical distance from society. And
the autonomy of art is nothing other than this movement of self-excommunication.
It is a question of attaining power over differences, a question of
strategy—instead of overcoming or communicating old differences, new ones
are produced.
The departure from social communication repeatedly practiced by
modern art has often been described, ironically, as escapism. But every escapism
is always followed by a return: Thus the Rousseauian hero first leaves
Paris and wanders through forest and meadow only to return to Paris, set up
a guillotine in the center of the city, and subject his former superiors and
colleagues to a radical critique, that is, cut off their heads. Every revolution
worth its salt attempts to replace society as it is with a new, artificial society.
The artistic impulse always plays a decisive role here. That so many attempts
to produce a new humanity have so far met with disappointment explains
many critics’ trepidation to put too much hope in the avant-garde. Instead,
they want to drive the avant-garde back to the stable ground of facts, fence
it in, and tether it to the real, to existent differences.
Still, the question remains: What are these real existing differences
Most are artificial through and through. Technology and fashion generate the
important differences of our day. And where they are consciously, strategically
produced—whether in high art, design, cinema, pop music, or new media—
the tradition of the avant-garde lives on (the recent enthusiasm for the Internet,
reminiscent of the time of the classical avant-garde, is a case in point).
Social art critics don’t go in for such technical or fashionable differences, even
though they have the success of such artificial differences to thank for the fact
that their brand of discourse is in style (or at least was until fairly recently).