What is it about?
Much contemporary artistic activity today is related to marketing. The institution of a consumption culture within the domain of arts is not necessarily a good thing for creativity. Subsuming artistic activities to utilitarian ones can create the illusion of providing final answers to open questions and thus reduce the potential of creativity as such. Society cannot only rely on utilitarian activities to innovate and communicate! Innovation and communication do not only concern production and distribution. Community does not rely on marketing alone. Society is more than a market and involves more than economics. The social bond – which also consists of society’s bond to nature – involves and relies on much more than utilitarian activity. The arts have played a central role in the institution and development of society, and for the kind of relation humanity has to nature. At a time when the nature of the social bond and of its relation to nature seems to be quite challenging, it seems important to reflect upon the consequences of a confinement of the arts to market related activities. In order to do so, one should have a clear understanding of how art, society, nature and utility relate: A kind of issue that cannot be said to be of the highest concern in a marketing era. It is precisely the case because marketing does not only promote products and services; marketing promotes itself as an evaluation principle favouring utility and efficiency, thus casting a shadow on the complexity of the issue and throwing people into confusion.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
At a time when the nature of the social bond and of its relation to nature seems to be quite challenging, it seems important to reflect upon the consequences of a confinement of the arts to market related activities.
Perspectives
From force of habit when I write such texts in English I will again, here also, refer mostly to French literature. I have a couple of main reasons for doing so. It is a way to express gratitude and pay tribute to the giants I quote and who taught me so much, often in person in the years of my youth. Also, since I cannot deliver works of the same quality as my masters, I see it as my academic responsibility to contribute to the flow of scholarly literature entering the contemporary Anglo-Saxon debate which all too often ignores the quality of what is written in some of the languages I have the privilege to be able to read fluently. Recently a couple of my good Danish colleagues told me how surprised they were after taking a look at my home page: they only knew less than a third of the one hundred and fifty names listed there. Those colleagues were pleasantly surprised. Others only expressed their surprise not to find authors they fancy. Some people never learn to listen to new music. They only want to know if we like what they like. During the many years of my academic career. I also heard many a colleague haughtily propagating among students the idea that English is now science’s lingua franca. This ignorance of all that literature not written or translated into English tends to turn contemptuous, as this global ideology imposes the dominion of English Journals within all universities and disciplines around the world. Anyway, I still feel a responsibility to fight for pluralism. Diversity is what life and science feed upon.
Dr Dominique Bouchet
Syddansk Universitet
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: 9 The Innovative Role of Art in the Time of the Absence of Myth, January 2014, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004274723_011.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
