In an identity war, hostilities sometimes flare up in the most unexpected places.
Just as can happen in any major conflict, the contest over the identity of a nation can appear on the map as a cold war far from the primary battlefront. Since the election of President Obama, an identity war has steadily escalated in national politics over whose tribe best represents the nation—Conservative, Progressive, Tea Party, Libertarian. But there are other fronts in the war over which identity characterizes America at its best.
I am part of an unmoderated but generally collegial professional listserv in a prominent art education organization. Recently, one of my colleagues circulated a draft of an organizational position statement seeking discussion and feedback before officially submitting it for consideration by our delegates and board. It proposed that our national organization adopt a position calling for “an end to the ongoing blockade of the Occupied Territories by the State of Israel” and a condemnation of Israel for the destruction of Palestinian schools and the “murder” of nine humanitarian aid workers aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. The core argument was that our organization should take this stand because a social justice platform allows art educators to promote the freedom of expression necessary in a democratic society. However, this argument was framed within inflammatory charges of state crimes that were sure to spark intense debate as to its overall merit.
Unfortunately, the colleague who initiated the proposal also took the least collegial approach imaginable in a follow-up email that included a blanket indictment of some who reacted strongly to her proposal as doing so because of their inability to overcome “their ethnocentric racism.” The feedback from that point on was dramatic and vehement. But most revealing in the many listserv responses was the resistance not to the label of “racist” but to the label of art education as a vehicle for “social justice.” The most far-reaching of such responses was recently published as a June 25, 2010 Opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal titled “The Political Assault on Art Education” by Ms. Michelle Marder Kamhi. A cold war had erupted.
One thing that stands out in the clamor—identities are often shaped in opposition to what we most adamantly claim not to be. There are those who will only recognize a conservative as a great American, or a liberal as an open-minded American. Yet just as there is more than one model for defining yourself as an American, there are a number of contrasting models for defining what art is and, by extension, what art education is. Ms. Kamhi’s claim that art education is under assault by intrusive politics also implies a singular definition of art or education that is apolitical, socially inert, and powerless to alter the status quo. On the contrary, definitions of art and art education abound, as do ideas of America, and the proliferation of new interpretations has important consequences. Some define the arts as practices generating beautiful forms and objects crafted through carefully honed techniques and observation; others define the arts as interpretive, communicating cultural meanings and allowing self-expression; still others define the arts as critical interventions interrogating our common beliefs and social structures through acts of appraisal, agitation, and activism.
Competing definitions sometimes overlap and are just as likely to confound. There are conservative art educators who are elitists and who indoctrinate in and out of the classroom; likewise, there are social justice advocates who are anti-Marxist and have no interest in overthrowing American traditions. In truth, the diversity of the art education field reflects the diversity of our nation.
By labeling others as dangerous merely because they do not belong to the tribe we associate ourselves with, we can drum up quick support to expel anyone who threatens the gates of our identity’s home. People will fight to the death to maintain an unassailable identity because they think they will die if they don’t. Thus, there are some who will never accept an African American who has a name like Barack Hussein Obama as the President of the America they have defined for themselves. There are others for whom any “social justice” initiative is read as an assault on capitalism. But so what? Resistance to opposing ideas is not unexpected and isn’t even necessarily a bad thing. Art ever reinterprets itself and thrives on the resistance of ideas worth rethinking. So does the American identity. At the end of each reinterpretation, there is a new possibility. So assail away.
3 comments:
An addendum. I entirely agree that there are Marxist social justice advocates who also have NO interest in overthrowing American traditions. In fact, I could also argue that there are capitalists who are more likely to overthrow significant American traditions, including the traditions of civil rights and social justice advocacy, than any Marxist they are falsely indicting of the same.
Although I came upon this post belatedly, I must respond, both to correct the factual record and to dispute some of Professor Rolling's claims.
First, contrary to his inference, my June 25 Wall Street Journal article was not written in response to anything posted on the art education discussion list we both belong to. It was in fact solicited by (and, I believe, submitted to) the Journal before I had even joined that list. Prompted by an earlier article I had published online in Aristos ("The Hijacking of Art Education," April), a Journal editor had asked me to write a shorter piece for them on the same subject, which was published seven weeks after I submitted it.
Second, and more important, let me answer some of the substantive points raised by Prof. Rolling. He argues that "definitions of art and art education abound." Indeed they do, and ample thought has been given to them in the 400-page book I co-authored--What Art Is (Open Court, 2000)-—and in the numerous articles I have published since. As my co-author (Louis Torres) and I have argued, not all definitions are equally valid. An important task for art educators is to determine which definitions really make sense.
Having offered an in-depth justification for my view of art, I would expect others to do the same for theirs. A book I am writing now aims to carry my argument further. It is incumbent on those who disagree with me to consider the reasons I give and rebut them accordingly.
Prof. Rolling claims that my June 25 Wall Street Journal article "The Political Assault on Art Education" implies a definition of art that is "apolitical, socially inert, and powerless to alter the status quo." In so doing, he ignores the following paragraph: "True, works of visual art have often protested injustice. Examples such as Picasso's Guernica (representing the suffering of a village bombed during the Spanish Civil War) and Goya's Third of May (depicting Spanish patriots facing a brutal firing squad of Napoleonic invaders) come to mind." Such works dealing with political content, I clearly implied, are indisputably art.
What I further implied in contrast, however, was that Judi Werthein's Brinco—-a "performance piece" in which she distributed specially designed and equipped sneakers to Mexicans waiting to cross the U. S. border--does not qualify as art in the minds of many reasonable people (see the Comments posted by Wall Street Journal readers in response to my article). Such a work is, quite simply, a purely political gesture by someone who thinks she is an artist. If Prof. Rolling would like to explain what makes it art in his view, I would be glad to debate this point with him.
Michelle Kamhi
Co-Editor, Aristos (An Online Review of the Arts)
I believe Ms. Kamhi has missed my larger point. Occupying a significant portion of the landscape of definitions of art and art education are those that fall within the critical-theoretic paradigm which seeks to critique unjust social relations and empower marginalized individuals and communities situated within the practitioner’s social worlds (see the writings of art educator Harold Pearse). And there is no shortage of reasonable people who accept and embrace this as a valid purpose of the arts. If the "Brinco" piece that Kamhi cites falls off the edge of the spectrum for you, there is also no shortage of other works of art within the social justice paradigm that are closer to the canonized end of the spectrum where the work of Picasso and Goya are typically situated. But be aware, the critical-theoretic spectrum is wide and any book that claims to tell you "what art is" is incomplete unless it validates and fully explores this portion of the landscape. To claim this social justice paradigm has "hijacked" arts education practice ignores the reality in contemporary K-12 schooling and art teacher education institutional practice. Other paradigms and definitions of art and its purposes are alive and unharmed. There continues to be a useful coexistence.
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