DOI Artikel:
Turowski, Andrzej: L'imagination au pouvoir: Art history in the times of crisis, 1960s-1970s
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52521#0260
254
Andrzej Turowski
In the past, the equivalent of the word "outrage" was "contestation." Mi-
chel Foucault wrote in his "Preface to Transgression":
Perhaps when contemporary philosophy discovered the possibility of nonpositi-
ve affirmation it began a process of reorientation ... and opened the way for the
advance of critical thought and the principle of contestation. ... Rather than being
a process of thought for denying existences or values, contestation is the act that
carries them all to their limits and, from there, to the Limit where an ontological
decision achieves its end: to contest is to proceed until one reaches the empty core
where being achieves it limit and when the limit defines being.9
Foucault, similarly to Nietzsche, placed the contesting and anarchistic
"yes" in the center of the conflict (agon) that stimulates society, where "yes"
means disagreement, an expression of protest, a revelation of difference, an
emphasis on otherness, the essence of hiatus, a result of anger, a symptom of
indignation, a form of rebellion, the need for revolt, the (im)penetrability of
the limit.
Even though the artist's position in today's democracy has been defined
many times by artists themselves, it still requires continuous reformulation.
This is a problem that is both artistic and political, which means that it per-
tains to art history Whenever I start thinking about it, what comes to my
mind is the Polish March 1968 in Poznań, which back then was my present.
The present always calls for being alert, just like Émile Zola was alert when
he pronounced his famous "J’accuse!.'' He did it in a public letter addressed
to the President of the Republic in relation to the anti-Semitic trial of Drey-
fus, which included sharp criticism of the French government and its frauds.
Fully aware of the consequences, Zola was ready to face a libel lawsuit that
indeed ended with a sentence and his emigration. He wrote that his letter, like
a revolution, was intended to foster an "explosion of truth" - with passion, in
the name of suffering humanity, it was supposed to remember the public that
"people are entitled to happiness"; as an act of indignant protest, it was a "cry
of his heart."10
The Poznań art historians learned their lesson of imagination and engage-
ment m March and May of 1968, and I practiced art history throughout the
1970s accordingly until I made a difficult decision to leave for Paris and take
an academic job in France.
9 M. Foucault, „Preface to Transgression," trans. D. F. Bouchard and S. Simon, in:
idem, Aesthetics and Methodology, Essential Works of Foucault, vol. 2, ed. J. F. Faubion,
New York 1998, pp. 74-75. English translation slightly modified - M. W
10 É. Zola, "J'accuse!," L'Aurore, January 13, 1898. English translation by Wildsource.
Andrzej Turowski
In the past, the equivalent of the word "outrage" was "contestation." Mi-
chel Foucault wrote in his "Preface to Transgression":
Perhaps when contemporary philosophy discovered the possibility of nonpositi-
ve affirmation it began a process of reorientation ... and opened the way for the
advance of critical thought and the principle of contestation. ... Rather than being
a process of thought for denying existences or values, contestation is the act that
carries them all to their limits and, from there, to the Limit where an ontological
decision achieves its end: to contest is to proceed until one reaches the empty core
where being achieves it limit and when the limit defines being.9
Foucault, similarly to Nietzsche, placed the contesting and anarchistic
"yes" in the center of the conflict (agon) that stimulates society, where "yes"
means disagreement, an expression of protest, a revelation of difference, an
emphasis on otherness, the essence of hiatus, a result of anger, a symptom of
indignation, a form of rebellion, the need for revolt, the (im)penetrability of
the limit.
Even though the artist's position in today's democracy has been defined
many times by artists themselves, it still requires continuous reformulation.
This is a problem that is both artistic and political, which means that it per-
tains to art history Whenever I start thinking about it, what comes to my
mind is the Polish March 1968 in Poznań, which back then was my present.
The present always calls for being alert, just like Émile Zola was alert when
he pronounced his famous "J’accuse!.'' He did it in a public letter addressed
to the President of the Republic in relation to the anti-Semitic trial of Drey-
fus, which included sharp criticism of the French government and its frauds.
Fully aware of the consequences, Zola was ready to face a libel lawsuit that
indeed ended with a sentence and his emigration. He wrote that his letter, like
a revolution, was intended to foster an "explosion of truth" - with passion, in
the name of suffering humanity, it was supposed to remember the public that
"people are entitled to happiness"; as an act of indignant protest, it was a "cry
of his heart."10
The Poznań art historians learned their lesson of imagination and engage-
ment m March and May of 1968, and I practiced art history throughout the
1970s accordingly until I made a difficult decision to leave for Paris and take
an academic job in France.
9 M. Foucault, „Preface to Transgression," trans. D. F. Bouchard and S. Simon, in:
idem, Aesthetics and Methodology, Essential Works of Foucault, vol. 2, ed. J. F. Faubion,
New York 1998, pp. 74-75. English translation slightly modified - M. W
10 É. Zola, "J'accuse!," L'Aurore, January 13, 1898. English translation by Wildsource.