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Leonhard Emmerling
V.
The game of identity art is to establish an ambivalence which always impresses the stain of power on the Other. In terms of a substantial I (Ich), identity art produces a monadic closedness and ideal intactness (or evokes it in the image of damage) in which every threat to its integrity is blamed on the outer world. In a perfidious and paradox manner, identity art closes itself off from the world but nevertheless shifts all the blame on it. Because of these structural attributes, identity art is the perfect medium for the art business as a system of the ‘As-If’. All too willingly, the artist intervenes where he or she has nothing to contribute, nor wants to contribute, to the solution of the problems he or she juggles with.
Identity art as a conservative art, as the manifestation or evocation of ”This is me!“, is incapable of unfurling the utopian horizon bell hooks and Adorno speak about. Utopia, not as a state that could be achieved offhand, right here and right now, if only everybody were full of good will and best intentions; utopia, rather, as a state which to give up as impossible to achieve, even facing the uttermost improbability of its achievement, would simply mean to declare that the world, as it is, is the best of all possible worlds.
Identity art insists on ‘difference’ but does not incorporate it. In this regard, it significantly differs in two respects from what contemporary art can do and what is only fair to expect of it. It affirms prevailing circumstances without unfurling a horizon which would allow us to think beyond the current state of affairs. Identity art also suffers from a lack of self-reflexivity, which it tries to compensate by an excess of moral appeals. This excess is fed by references to the discourse of power.
Moreover, in its insistence on ‘difference’, identity art is probably opposed to what Richard Rorty described as an indication of some form of progress, with progress being defined as “an increase in our ability to see more and more differences among people as morally irrelevant” (1998: 11). When the discourse of “art“ and the discourse of “power“ intersect, difference becomes a moral category, and differences become morally relevant. Therein lies the tragic aspect of identity art. Beyond doubt, the West has deprived uncounted nations and peoples of their right to self-determination, their cultural integrity, their identity, and their economical potential. And, without doubt, art and cultural praxis can be a medium to restore this damaged integrity. But I doubt that art is the appropriate arena to fight the fights which should be fought in the sphere of politics and economics, where the real grievances still prevail.
VI.
My own arguments, too, suffer from an underlying universalism; the application of certain criteria, hopes, ideas in connection with art, which collide with other criteria, hopes and ideas, which in turn demand and deserve, if not universality, then at least unconditional respect. My argument against the essentialism of identity art is itself based on a concept of identity (Lacan), which can be criticised as essentialist and ahistoric, or transhistoric or a-temporal. In its radical criticism of an essentialist notion of the I and identity, Lacan’s concept of identity is itself essentialist.
And even if Butler’s concept of performativity (1990) could offer a way out – how could I be sure that this concept is not essentialist (nor, in this context, colonialist or imperialist)? The same question applies to Habermas’ concept of discursive rationality (1981); Laclau’s idea that all universalisms are subject to constant negotiation (incomplete by definition and necessary at the same time; 2000); [10] or Michael Ignatieff’s concept of deliberation (2001). [11]
The only possible option seems to keep the discourse going, the argument or conversation between particularity and universalism. It bears affinity with the conversation between the je and the moi, it arises from a desire – the desire to understand (not to possess), the desire to be at home in a world, which is less characterized by bounderies and ‘difference’ but more by the quest for commonalities.
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