Anarchism and Art: Democracy in the Cracks and on the Margins

179 Pages·2016·1.53 MB·English

by  Mattern

Anarchism and Art
SUNY Series in New Political Science
Bradley J. Macdonald, editor
Anarchism and Art
Democracy in the Cracks and on the Margins
Mark Mattern
Cover image: “Madison Near Pitt—NYC 2000” by Dan Witz. © Dan Witz, 2000.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Eileen Nizer
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mattern, Mark, 1954–
Anarchism and art : democracy in the cracks and on the margins / Mark Mattern.
pages cm — (SUNY series in new political science)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5919-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5921-9 (e-book)
1. Politics in art. 2. Arts—Political aspects. 3. Democracy and the arts. 4. Popular culture—Political
aspects. 5. Art and society. I. Title.
NX650.P6M37 2016
700.1'03—dc23 2015006075
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Anarchism and Democracy
Chapter 3. DIY (Do It Yourself) Punk Music
Chapter 4. Poetry Slam
Chapter 5. Graffiti and Street Art
Chapter 6. Flash Mobs
Chapter 7. Prefiguring Progressive Change
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Michael Rinella, SUNY Press editor, and his assistant,
Rafael Chaiken, for their assistance in completing this project. I also thank
Bradley Macdonald, editor of the New Political Science series at SUNY Press,
for his excellent work in developing the series. I gratefully acknowledge the
scholars and activists of the Caucus for a New Political Science, who make the
series possible.
Nick Riley and Jeremy Feador deserve special thanks for helping me enter
the world of DIY punk music. I thank Alix Olson for her generous insights about
poetry slam, and apologize if I managed to get it wrong anyway.
I thank Baldwin Wallace University (BW) for its financial support during
the research and writing of this book. I thank Donna McKeon, BW Political
Science Department secretary and office manager, for her endless patience and
capable assistance. I thank BW students Dan Clapper, Matt Kusznir, Alex Nagy,
Jenna Perry, and Rich Teel for their research assistance.
Chapter 4, “Poetry Slam,” is adapted from my essay, “The Message in the
Medium: Poetry Slam as Democratic Practice,” in Nancy S. Love and Mark
Mattern, Doing Democracy: Activist Art and Cultural Politics (Albany, N.Y.:
SUNY Press, 2013), 121–42.
Introduction
“We don’t believe in waiting until after the revolution. … If you want a
better world you should start acting like it now.”
—Unbound Bookstore, Chicago1
“We need not conquer the world. It is enough to make it anew.”
—Subcomandante Marcos2
“All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated
from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual
habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence
it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical. … The
ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must
be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional
period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life
only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved.”
—Emma Goldman3
In this book, I argue that some forms of popular art exemplify anarchist
principles and commitments that, taken together, prefigure deeper forms of
democracy than those experienced by most people in today’s liberal
democracies. Prefiguration has two meanings, one descriptive and the other
prescriptive. First, it means descriptively that current social forms contain hints
of future possibilities. In this book I will explore hints found in popular art forms
of specifically more democratic future possibilities. Second, and prescriptively,
prefiguration means that the ways we organize our lives in the present should
model the characteristics of the world we want to create in the future. Our means
should match the ends we seek.4
The forms of art that I address in this book include DIY (Do It Yourself)
punk music, poetry slams, graffiti and street art, and flash mobs. Marked as they
are by tensions and contradictions, none prefigure utopian worlds. Yet each
directs us toward alternative possibilities and new horizons. Each embodies
commitments and practices that challenge contemporary political, economic, and
cultural forms of domination while offering promise of more creative, satisfying,
and democratic worlds. People involved in these alternative worlds of popular
art expressly or implicitly signal to the world their unwillingness to play by (all)
the rules imposed on them by others and by institutions and structures of
domination. They instead carve out spaces—both physical and temporal—where
they live parts or all of their lives according to central anarchist principles. My
task in this book is to describe their efforts and show how they prefigure a
different, more democratic world.
Before turning to those art forms, I outline in this chapter the rationale for
pursuing a prefigurative strategy and defend a focus on popular arts and culture.
In the second chapter, I address anarchism and democracy, exploring their
affinities and tensions while identifying analytical footholds for interpreting the
case studies that follow. Chapters 3 through 6 are case study chapters addressing,
in order, DIY punk music, poetry slams, graffiti and street art, and flash mobs. In
chapter 7, I return to the themes of prefiguration and political strategy.
Strategies for Progressive Change
Sociologist Erik Olin Wright identifies three general strategies for progressive
change that he calls ruptural, symbiotic, and interstitial. Ruptural strategies,
which Wright identifies primarily with revolutionary socialism, entail a direct
assault on the state and capital, and are considered successful to the degree that a
wholesale and complete rupture with those institutions is achieved. The vestiges
of state and capital must be decisively destroyed or abandoned for a new order to
emerge. Revolutionary individuals and groups seek not to engage productively
and positively with existing institutional forces; rather, they seek to destroy them
via direct confrontation. Wright characterizes this bluntly as a “Smash first,
build second” strategy.5 Social classes are the main historical actors in this war
of competing forces, with the working class serving as the primary agent for
driving ruptural change.
Some theorists and activists continue to view this ruptural strategy as
viable, despite the apparently long odds. The dissolution of the former Soviet
Union took with it the most obvious threat to neoliberalism, capitalism, and
liberal democracy; and, anyway, few progressives viewed the former Soviet
Union as an example worth emulating. Worldwide, the primary agent of
revolutionary change in Marxist theory, the working class, has largely not