‘Living Artistically’ under Post-Fordist Conditions

Abstract

‘Shaping one’s life artistically’ implies the principle ‘I live as an artist when all my actions, and my expression in general, in connection with any content whatever, remain for me a mere show and assume a shape which is wholly within my power’ (Hegel). Drawing on Hegel, the ‘young’ Marx advocated ‘production in accordance with the laws of Beauty’ (‘artistic work/life’), as a kind of work which, inasmuch as it was ‘free’, provided a model for the elucidation of the presupposition of human emancipation. ‘True Art’ appears to be work performed under the umbrella of a ‘free community’, where the division between masters and slaves, working class and capitalists, emancipators and emancipated, is abolished. Does the conception of ‘living artistically’ (still) have a critical emancipatory value, and how can it be formulated under the conditions of a global market economy and post-Fordism, where every critical act, event and activity is appropriated?