Freedom and Difference
We may have reached a transitional point with regard to cultural debates
about the politics of identity and questions of difference. If this is
so, it is because many of the battles about individual rights and personal
freedom have already been won, and, consequently, because some of the most
pressing issues facing marginalised or oppressed sections of our communities
have to do with the ways in which new opportunities can best be enjoyed
and utilised. But despite - or perhaps because - of these advances, intolerance
still remains, albeit in a new guise. It is less upfront. Similarly, conservative
criticism of the more radical forms of artistic practice now tends to be
couched in sinuous and modulated tones.
Thus in a recent article in the American journal, 'The New Criterion',
Roger Kimball argues that much contemporary work is mere rhetorical gesturing
that borrows the prestige of art to enhance it authoritativeness and to
'purchase immunity from certain forms of criticism'. He castigates Cindy
Sherman, among others, for feminist sloganeering that is incomprehensible
without reference to its political context, which, in any case, amounts
to little more than predictable left-wing platitudes; other contemporary
art, such as Robert Mapplethorpe's photography, is notable simply for its
desire and ability to offend. But offensiveness, he says , is simply offensiveness,
not an index of artistic quality. Kimball goes on to argue that the relationship
between freedom of expression and the limits of socially acceptable behaviour
needs to be investigated, and that, in the words of the philosopher John
Searle, 'From the proposition that one has a right to do something it does
not follow that it is a right or even a morally permissible thing to do'.
The most telling observation he makes, though, ends the article. 'In testing
the limits of free expression', Kimball writes, the art world has demonstrated
its emancipation from all manner of social and aesthetic norms. In the
process, it has trivialised not only art but also the freedom in whose
name it was created'.
Kimball does not actually suggest that artistic freedom should be curtailed,
although the desirability of its withdrawal may, perhaps, be implicit in
his argument; he emphasises, rather, the negative effects of the supposed
'trivialisation' of that freedom. In his view, only art of 'quality' can
justify the ambition, as described by the French critic Albert Thibaudet,
to 'occupy that extreme point, to attain for an hour that crest of a wave
in a tossing sea'. in contrast, the gay writer, Edmund White, has observed
that: 'Art is an expression of human fear, contingency and accommodation'.
'Good' art, therefore, is inextricably linked to the notion of freedom
- without which it is necessarily inadequate.
Revealingly, what White most enjoys in Mapplethorpe's photographs is
precisely their obscenity: their refusal to submit themselves to domestication,
to the social framework of the good and useful. In White's opinion, expressed
in an essay on the artist, Mapplethorpe's value is inextricably linked
to the extremism of his sexual tastes; he turned people into objects not
in order to make them them commodities but to transform them into 'holy
relics of Dionysian excess'. And in another sly act of subversion, White
proposes that true love is not a matter of sustained social responsibility
but of passion, appetite, impossible yearning'. 'Art and passion', he writes,
are 'supremely irresponsible modes of behaviour'; indeed, without Mapplethorpe's
sense of irresponsibility and impurity, his unabashed fetishism and racism
would have become fascism.
Clearly, then, while Roger Kimball might equate the 'trivialisation
of freedom' with irresponsibility, Edmund White would take up exactly the
opposite position. To White, the difference between bad political art and
subversive 'personal' art is the presence, in the latter, of 'shade, contrast,
scandalous changes of direction, and sudden haemorrhages of meaning'. The
point of 'gay art', if there is such a thing, is to reveal and abandon
the ritual naturalisation of bourgeois social conventions. In this way,
political and personal agendas can be reconciled. It might be added that,
without the vigour of personal experience or depth of internalisation,
political art can, and usually does, degenerate into dull gesturing - just
as personal expressiveness, without some kind of basis in objective reality,
quickly descends into bathos.
But more important, surely than an attempt to find a tidy resolution
to these issues is the determination to consider them carefully, and with
urgency. In order to do so, a prerequisite is the provision of 'space',
within certain parameters, for individuals, of whatever social, cultural,
or physical complexion, to present their experiences of the world for what
they are, without any compulsion to justify or explain their actions. This
'space' may engender bad, irresponsible, or even trivial art, but in many
respects this is irrelevant. Despite Kimball's arguments to the contrary,
the very act of testing the limits of free expression is of value, both
to the individual and to society.
By the same token, however, it is important for marginalised members
of our society, as their right to cultural 'space' is asserted, to realise
that they are not the only ones whose views are entitled to be heard. Furthermore,
artists who choose to use their art for subversive or political means should
not consider themselves exempt from the responses and consequences that
may accrue if they subject the public to gratuitously offensive or banal
work. What falls to us all, in the context of such debates, is the responsibility
to embrace complexity and ambiguity, and to realise that certain truths
reside in the most unlikely places, be they on the left or right of the
political spectrum.
It is now commonly accepted - in the West, at any rate - that art,
social customs, the economy and language are all visibly evolving; yet
many still cling to the idea that matters relating to human nature and
personal identity are, or should be, immutable. The likelihood that they
are not is gradually, and perhaps inexorably, becoming evident. In that
light, each one of us must negotiate a position which neither denies nor
hypothesizes difference, and which ensures the right of all people to the
'space' in which they can articulate a sense of identity without the threat
of derision or hatred from those who may not share their values. and if,
as seems likely, most of the more engaging insights into contemporary life
continue to flow from the cracks, corners, and interstices of our culture,
and not from confrontational or power-based strategies, the 'stories' of
the marginalised will become increasingly significant. This is because
they show us that 'difference' and 'otherness' are not absolute values.
Like life itself, they are always in flux.
John Hutchinson
1996