The Problem of Representation

Abstract

In Postmetaphysical Vision: Art Education's Challenge in an Age of Globalized Aesthetics (A Mondofesto) (2008) and Beyond Aesthetics: Returning Force and Truth to Art and Its Education (2009), jan jagodzinski argued for politics that go representation-a project that radically questions visual culture pedagogies that emphasize the dynamics of representation as the key for social change. Despite jagodzinski's willingness to dispute theoretical positions that are easily taken for granted, he has sustained a very specific understanding of visual culture in his theorization that neglects various forms of digital media. In this commentary, I critically examine the focus of his critique and expand it outside the realm of fine art and cinema by introducing new arenas of scrutiny, where art educators may tackle problems of designer capitalism.The underlying theme throughout jagodzinski's (2008) theorization was the tension between control and attempts to escape it. From Lacanian perspective, this followed the distinction between the non-discursive site of the unconscious (the Real) and the Symbolic-Imaginary axis that restrains the former, jagodzinski's theoretical shift from Lacan to the works of Deleuze and Guattari put his political emphasis on strategies that aim to break despotic forms of social control and free the flows of desire that are captured and commodified by the libidinal economy of neoliberal market economy. For jagodzinski (2008), the problem of representation was connected to the fluid non-identity (p. 148) of capitalism: arguing over better or more authentic and/or critical depictions of various subject positions (representing different genders, sexualities, social classes, races, abilities) does not only produce more representation but, implicitly, promotes new possibilities for capitalism to expand its markets into more refined target audiences.To seek for lines of flight from the neoliberal politics of representation, jagodzinski turned to Badiou (2005), whose writings on inaesthetics (contra aesthetics) attempt to establish a relation between art and philosophy that challenges every trait of didacticism that haunts artistic movements and artmaking. For Badiou, the ephemeral nature of an artistic event (contra object) did not offer subjects a stagnant point of identification that could be captured by despotic regimes of control. In this respect, jagodzinski (2008) called for relocation of subjectivity in art education as a necessary strategic move against capitalism because [capitalism] continues to target the conscious ego by enlarging and gratifying its narcissism through the demand of (p. 156).It is notable that jagodzinski seemed to locate the narcissist enjoyment primarily to the screen society (p. 149) and its increasingly popular production of visuality. This appears to fortify a dichotomy that stagnates various locations of visual culture ('high,low', 'commercial','emancipatory', etc.) into alwaysalready fixed relation to control. For example, he referred to digital technologies of communication as synopticon,coined from panopticon, where no longer do the few watch the many, but the many watch the few on the screens that pervade our lives (p. 149), which assumes that there is something inherently persuasive in these screens, something that determines their place in jagodzinski's signifying order. However, instead of labeling these technologies as merely forms of control, I believe that art educators need to theorize their potential as sites of visuality that can go beyond any predetermined formations and create new forms of subjective, societal, and cultural relations.In order to grasp subjects'affective investments in the despotic didactics of capitalism, jagodzinski (2009) introduced the term self-refleXivity, where the X refers to the void of the Real, the level of molecularization of forces (p. 346), which is a critical answer to discourses on cognition that do not recognize the level of non-symbolic affects (the Real) as part of subject's being. …