<\/a><\/p>\nOriginally published as a letter<\/a> in <\/em>Weekly Worker<\/strong> 997, February 13, 2014. Rex Dunn replied<\/a> in <\/em>Weekly Worker<\/strong> 998, February 20, 2014.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
With a series of exclamation points, Rex Dunn<\/a> attacks Paul Demarty\u2019s assertion that Robert Mapplethorpe\u2019s black male nude photos are \u201chot\u201d<\/a>. Why?<\/p>\n
Dunn attacks \u2018sexual fetishism\u2019 as a species of \u2018commodity fetishism\u2019 in Marx\u2019s sense. But this specifically neglects and actively elides the crucial difference<\/em> of Marx\u2019s critique of anthropological \u2018fetishism\u2019 from Freudian psychoanalysis\u2019s theory of \u2018(sexual) fetishism\u2019 that postdates Marx and has nothing to do with political economy. Marx\u2019s theory of \u2018commodity fetishism\u2019 has nothing to do with truth versus deception, and everything to do with the \u2018way things really are\u2019, the Hegelian \u201cnecessary form of appearance\u201d of social reality.<\/p>\n
Dunn makes a plea for \u201chumanism\u201d and for \u201cthe person\u201d against sexual objectification, claiming that Demarty\u2019s defence of avant garde art is in league with the capitalist dehumanisation of people, the \u201cshock effect\u201d that enhances \u201cexchange value\u201d, but is spurious as the true aesthetic value of art. But is that all that the avant garde can be reduced to? Aren\u2019t Mapplethorpe<\/a>\u2019s nudes more meaningful – don\u2019t they make one think? – rather than merely shocking? Demarty makes a good case for Mapplethorpe\u2019s art as art.<\/p>\n
Dunn restates something observed originally in bourgeois thought long ago: that art must go beyond mere propaganda or entertainment (which is what all art in traditional civilisation was), that it must make one think about aesthetic experience. The question is how<\/em> it might do so. Sexual objectification can be an occasion for thought and not only mindlessness. It is impossible to separate art – \u2018good art\u2019, that is: art that makes one think – from the transformation of humanity in capital, however that may be distorted by unfreedom.<\/p>\n
If Dunn thinks that an overly great theoretical effort is required to redeem avant garde art\u2019s social value, then this neglects Hegel\u2019s observation that art in modern society cannot stand on its own, but must be made sense of conceptually, through criticism and historical comparison, which Demarty\u2019s article does attempt to do – for instance, showing how Bjarne Melgaard\u2019s \u2018chair\u2019 might relate to its historical reference and predecessor as artwork, Allen Jones\u2019s The chair<\/em><\/a>. By contrast, Dunn seeks to anathematise art works, such as Mapplethorpe\u2019s black male nudes, for their complicity in capitalism, as if it were possible to be otherwise.<\/p>\n
Yes, in capitalism, sex is \u201cbought and consumed\u201d as a commodity in the \u2018culture industry\u2019. But is that what is wrong with capitalism, that people participate in sexual availability through commodification? Or is the problem rather that human sexuality is rendered worthless, the way any commodity is, in the \u2018alienated\u2019 crisis of value in capital? Furthermore, if art that participates in sexual objectification is rendered out of court, then this will cut us off from being able to contemplate and think about the specifically aesthetic experience of sex (not reducible to and apart from its other aspects: for instance, emotional intimacy).<\/p>\n
Why is the appreciation of another as a sexual object in itself dehumanising? Aren\u2019t human beings (also) objects? As Kant put it in the moral \u2018categorical imperative\u2019, the point is to not treat other humans \u2018only\u2019 as objects, but \u2018also\u2019 as subjects. We inevitably treat one another as objects in our social relations, but this is not the problem with capitalism. The problem in capitalism is that objects (and not only subjects) become worthless. We all want to be valued objects, erotically and otherwise.<\/p>\n
Dunn\u2019s comparison with \u2018alienation\u2019 in religion is problematical, in that it turns religion into an attribute of social oppression in itself, rather than recognising that this is what it became in retrospect, by comparison with bourgeois freedom. Religion not only oppressed the peasants, but also made their lives meaningful. The analogue between capitalist alienation and religion is retroactive: indeed, the ancient gods were not nearly as evil as capital!<\/p>\n
It won\u2019t do to attack the \u2018false idols\u2019 of art for participating in capitalism. For human beings in the present system are no less false. As Adorno wrote, \u201cWrong life cannot be lived rightly.\u201d<\/p>\n
— Chris Cutrone, Platypus Affiliated Society<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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