Civic Humanities Javier Suarez Aesthetic honesty What is the difference between art and propaganda?

During the course, we have talked a lot about how art can help people, how art can be useful to society. Sometimes I wonder if we are not using art for our own aims and ideas. Sometimes it seems that our course is ideological. But, wait a minute. I am using the word in the sense that we are using philosophy and art to give a base to the ideas the course wants to teach us. I affirm this because, for example, a communist civic humanities course would not give us the same readings or understanding of aesthetics; even, some of the ideas of that course would be at odds with the ones we learn week by week. One example: a communist (o radical socialist) course would probably not agree with the idea that private funding is the best way of changing the world for the better, for critical emancipation of persons; on the contrary, they would argue, that that approach perpetuates the system that justifies exclusion and injustice. Likewise, the liberal civic humanities course would probably say that a communist approach can be violent or paternalist or even folkloric. From these diverse courses, one question arises: are they right in their way of approaching art? Or they are just, as Orwell would suggest, using art for propaganda of a specific system (liberalism or communism)? Which is my point? That art is not liberal or communist, art is simply art. How come? This phrase may sound as the famous art for arts sake; however, I am not talking about this. What I think is that art is the expression of the uniqueness and relational dynamics of human personality within the world. In this sense, as expression, art does not have to do purposely with any ideology. That is why Orwell says that, before the wars, critics were capable of criticizing with equilibrium the works of art of people whose ideologies they detest. Is this possible within our contemporary world or, as Orwell suggests, today we cannot be but political (with the ever present risk of becoming ideologues)? Art is honesty, or to be more precise aesthetic honesty. One thing that worries me is the fact that art can be subordinated to ideological purposes. Once again, which is the limit between art and propaganda? What would happen if, for example, the Marshall Plan is seen only as a work of art? We will forget the ideological force that it represented for contemporary history. And maybe that fine line between art and propaganda is what we are forgetting. Maybe I am wrong. Art, as Dewey affirmed, can be everywhere, it is part of our experience. However, he affirms, there are forces that tried to make art a different world outside our daily experience. In that sense, he says that the museums were part of a national ideology of the nineteenth century Europe. Can we say something similar about our contemporary understanding of art within our course? Now, lets go to Schiller. His idea of an aesthetic state is really interesting because he emphasizes diversity within the State and the understanding of art as a means of communication and participation (intersubjectivity) whose goal is to give harmony to

society1. However, once again, his idea of a unified State of Reason (Reason demands unity2) subordinates art to that purpose; for him, diversity is important but within the State; art in this sense is a mediation between the unified reason and the particularity of feeling. That is why Habermas thinks that Schillers letters are a precursor of a communicativereason (and politics). For Habermas too every difference is accepted within his public sphere. My question is the following: is there any possibility of not being included in the aesthetic state?3 Is there any alternative to the communicative public sphere? Is there any possibility to escape from propaganda? I think that first of all it is important to recognize that we are ideological4 subjects, we have purposes, we have alliances, we have a political choice. This is intellectual honesty. Another question is the following: what would happen if art becomes an expression of how to help people, in other words, what would happen if we think art in terms of interventions or productions to have funds or to have an impact in our societies? Is not something similar to the social realist art during the Soviet period in Russia? Art has to impact in society seems to be our motto. My question is the following: why? So, art has to be outside politics? I dont think so. Art is always political, but it does not try to be political (ideological). I think that the use of art to concretize emancipatory social goals does not have to do with the personal aesthetic experience. Imagine, in this sense, a work of art like The naked lunch of Burroughs. Art can be understood as an expression of a personal necessity, not a consequence of a funding project. Is bad to use art to make a project more appealing to the public? I do not think so. I think it can help many people and can help to improve our societies in the search for justice. However, I think we have to be always aware that we are using art and not creating/making art. Maybe having this always in mind can prevent us of crossing the almost invisible line, nowadays, between art and propaganda; this is what I call aesthetic honesty. If we forget this and just try to apply our scheme to the world or to art, we are in the State of aesthetic propaganda. Let me say that today I have more questions than answers.

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Habermas affirms this in his Excurso sobre las cartas de Schiller (Spanish Edition). On the contrary, Nature demands multiplicity, it is the empirical. 3 Who were the savages and barbarians Schiller was talking about? 4 For Habermas, it would be enough to say that we have always interests; I think we should go a step beyond and say that we are ideological because we also defend a set of ideas (that is my sense of ideology) according to which we live. That is not morally wrong. What is morally wrong is not recognize that fact within ourselves and consciously or unconsciously think that we have the right to impose that set of ideas to different persons.