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Beyond Diversity And that is why the postmodern taste is fundamentally an antiradical taste. Radical political aesthetics situates itself always at the “degree zero” (degré zéro) of literary and visual rhetoric, as Roland Barthes defined it 1 —and that means also at the degree zero of diversity and difference. And this is also why the artistic avant-garde—Bauhaus, and so on—seem to be so outmoded today: These artistic movements embody an aesthetic sensibility for the political, not for the commercial market. There can be no doubt about it: every utopian, radical taste is a taste for the ascetic, uniform, monotonous, gray, and boring. From Plato to the utopias of the Renaissance to the modern, avant-garde utopias—all radical political and aesthetic projects presented themselves always at the degree zero of diversity. And that means: One needs to have a certain aesthetic preference for the uniform—as opposed to the diverse—to be ready to accept and to endorse radical political and artistic projects. This kind of taste must be, obviously, very unpopular, very unappealing to the masses. And that is one of the sources of the paradox that is well known to the historians of modern utopias and radical politics. On the one hand, these politics are truly democratic because they are truly universal, truly open to all—they are by no means elitist or exclusive. But, on the other hand, they appeal, as I said, to an aesthetic taste that is relatively rare. That is why radical democratic politics presents itself often enough as exclusive, as elitist. One must be committed to radical aesthetics to accept radical politics—and this sense of commitment produces relatively closed communities united by an identical project, by an identical vision, by an identical historical goal. The way of radical art and politics does not take us from closed premodern communities to open societies and markets. Rather, it takes us from relatively open societies to closed communities based on common commitments. We know from the history of literature that all past utopias were situated on remote islands or inaccessible mountains. And we know how isolated, how closed the avant-garde movements were—even if their artistic programs were genuinely open. Thus we have here a paradox of a universalist but closed community or movement—a paradox which is truly modern. And that means, in the case of radical political and artistic programs, we have to travel a different historical road than the one described by standard cultural studies: It is not a road from a premodern community to an open society of universal 152 153
Beyond Diversity communication. Rather, it is a road from open and diverse markets toward utopian communities based on a common commitment to a certain radical project. These artificial, utopian communities are not based on the historical past; they are not interested in preserving its traces, in continuing a tradition. On the contrary, these universalist communities are based on historical rupture, on the rejection of diversity and difference in the name of a common cause. On the political and economic level, the October Revolution effectuated precisely such a complete break with the past, such an absolute destruction of every individual’s heritage. This break with every kind of heritage was introduced by the Soviet power on the practical level by abolishing private property and transferring every individual’s inheritance into the collective property. Finding a trace of one’s own heritage in this undifferentiated mass of collective property has become as impossible as tracing the individual incinerated objects in the collective mass of ashes. This complete break with the past constitutes the political as well as the artistic avant-garde. The notion of the avant-garde is often associated with the notion of progress. In fact, the term “avant-garde” suggests such an interpretation because of its military connotations—initially, it referred to the troops advancing at the head of an army. But to Russian revolutionary art, this notion began to be applied habitually since the 1960s. The Russian artists themselves never used the term avant-garde. Instead, they used names like Futurism, Suprematism, or Constructivism—meaning not moving progressively toward the future but being already situated in the future because the radical break with the past had already taken place, being at the end—or even beyond the end—of history, understood in Marxist terms as a history of class struggle, or as a history of different art forms, different art styles, different art movements. Malevich’s famous Black Square, in particular, was understood as the degree zero both of art and of life—and because of that, as the point of identity between life and art, between artist and artwork, between spectator and art object, and so on. The end of history is understood here not in the same way as Francis Fukuyama understands it. 2 The end of history is brought about not by the final victory of the market over every possible universal political project but, on the contrary, by the ultimate victory of a political project, which means an ultimate rejection of the past, a final rupture with the history of diversity.
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Art Power
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© 2008 Boris Groys All rights rese
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Introduction The first thing one le
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Introduction zero as its sum, could
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Introduction propaganda. The amount
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Introduction that all avant-garde a
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Introduction international biennial
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The Logic of Equal Aesthetic Rights
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Equal Aesthetic Rights of equal aes
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Equal Aesthetic Rights that these i
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Equal Aesthetic Rights have undergo
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Equal Aesthetic Rights afford him o
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On the New In recent decades, the d
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On the New museum’s walls. Our im
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On the New monotonous rituals of lo
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On the New Kierkegaard, no such thi
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On the New in reality we find only
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On the New into its own—is for th
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On the New other, for the different
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On the New that they may be exhibit
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On the New dissolved, deconstructed
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On the New that deconstructs all id
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On the Curatorship The work of the
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On the Curatorship convince the spe
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On the Curatorship should be aimed
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On the Curatorship are regarding no
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On the Curatorship objects included
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics: From
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics defin
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics be re
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics in tu
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics docum
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics aesth
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Art in the Age of Biopolitics is ov
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device co
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device de
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device In
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device Sp
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device th
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device do
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Iconoclasm as an Artistic Device tw
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From Image to Image File—and Back
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Art in the Age of Digitalization ap
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Art in the Age of Digitalization im
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Art in the Age of Digitalization Th
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Art in the Age of Digitalization ca
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Multiple Authorship Duchamp the aut
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Multiple Authorship of contemporary
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Multiple Authorship participated bu
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Multiple Authorship is constantly o
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Page 115 and 116: The Age of Touristic Reproduction m
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Page 119 and 120: Critical Reflections public. At tha
Page 121 and 122: Critical Reflections But this “ot
Page 123 and 124: Critical Reflections pluralism. And
Page 125 and 126: Critical Reflections The next artis
Page 128 and 129: Art at War The relationship between
Page 130 and 131: Art at War we are speaking here abo
Page 132 and 133: Art at War But it seems to me that
Page 134 and 135: Art at War investigation. Their fun
Page 136: Art at War war and terrorism that o
Page 139 and 140: Hitler’s Art Theory passion that
Page 141 and 142: Hitler’s Art Theory This is why H
Page 143 and 144: Hitler’s Art Theory hence the que
Page 145 and 146: Hitler’s Art Theory indeed only a
Page 147 and 148: Hitler’s Art Theory the level of
Page 149 and 150: Educating the Masses in the Soviet
Page 151 and 152: Educating the Masses Did the Centra
Page 153 and 154: Educating the Masses Alexander Dein
Page 155 and 156: Educating the Masses and, at the sa
Page 157 and 158: Beyond Diversity This is the origin
Page 159: Beyond Diversity Listening to postm
Page 163 and 164: Beyond Diversity pressures dictated
Page 165 and 166: Beyond Diversity in the Russian cap
Page 167 and 168: Beyond Diversity by all subsequent
Page 169 and 170: Beyond Diversity which is what cons
Page 172 and 173: Privatizations, or Artificial Parad
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Page 176 and 177: Privatizations has already seen in
Page 178 and 179: Privatizations political protest, b
Page 180 and 181: Europe and Its Others In recent yea
Page 182 and 183: Europe and Its Others however, are
Page 184 and 185: Europe and Its Others things have b
Page 186 and 187: Europe and Its Others which can nev
Page 188 and 189: Europe and Its Others Even the art
Page 190 and 191: Notes The Logic of Equal Aesthetic
Page 192 and 193: Notes to pages 70-133 Iconoclasm as
Page 194: Notes to pages 153-154 Beyond Diver
Page 197: Sources “Educating the Masses: So
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