User:Lidia.Pereira/Trimesters/RWRM/IIEssayDraft

INTRODUCTION

In the chapter "The Concept of 'Ideology'", from his Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci clarifies the meaning of ideology as a "system of ideas", as opposed to its original meaning as the "analysis of the origin of ideas”. In pure marxist terms, ideology needs to be analysed as an historical product, constituting that which is called the superstructure. That is, as explained by Marx and Engels on the "German Ideology", the ruling ideas appear as expressing the dominant material relationships (infrastructure) of a given time - hence, only those in control of the means of production hold the power of producing and distributing ideas, thus guaranteeing their dominance over the whole economical system. In order to do so, the ruling class has the need to represent their ideas as being in the common interest of all the individuals in a given society, giving them a character of universality. Its strength relies greatly on its power to coopt critique, to absorb everything produced within the given apparatus. On his essay "The Body of Capital", Steven Shaviro defines our relation with capital as one of a Kantian transcedental condition of experience, as something we cannot experience directly, but within which we are deeply embedded. Only in the sense that it depends upon the labor of the multitude can we control it, for, as Gramsci put it, as "organizing" of the human masses as it is, ideological organization also refers to its dialectic negative - the gaining of consciousness of the masses and subsequent struggle. Even though capitalism has proven its power to instrumentalize critique, it is worth noticing the disruptive power of the antithesis. In his "Enjoy Poverty" documentary, Renzo Martens pretends to act as the glasses of the movie "They Live", which, as Zizek points out, function as critique of ideology glasses. Did Martens embark on a mission his privilege doesn't allow him to accomplish successfully without falling on the same traps he unveils?

DEVELOPMENT

- Why Renzo Fails -
Says Zizek, on his "Pervert's Guide to Ideology", that in order to become part of a community you need to follow some unspoken rules which regulate your identification. In his interview to "The Politic", Renzo states he plays the role of the cliché white filmmaker, "coming up with a novel theory". However, as he himself declares, it only serves as a reproduction of the same cliché. The cynical reason here shows its face, not at the level of the performance, but when the performance becomes the self. That is, when ironically portraying the role of the white filmmaker, Martens falls into the pit of the enlightened individual, whose non-altruism and "honesty" provide him, conversely, a sense of good-doing. Slavoj Zizek says of the cynical reason:"Pretend to renounce and you can get it all" - when renouncing all clichés and altruistic intentions by pretending to mock them, Martens gets his altruist rush. The role becomes the self.
The vanity of the glasses can also be discovered in Renzo's project as the Artistic Director of the Institute for Human Activities. This project consists of building an art center in the Congolese rainforest, a workspace where the participation of locals will be encouraged. That will be done by, for example, engaging plantation and logging companies' workers, with wages of about a $20 a month. It will be asked of them that they reflect on their situation artistically, say, through a drawing. The said drawing is then sold to a prominent western gallery. Thus, by engaging the worker critically, it is expected that he/she will understand that reflection upon his/her conditions can be more lucrative than just getting the job done. One of the goals, Renzo says, is to have an actual impact on the places where the artistic critique came from, instead of just generating revenue in big art centers such as Berlin and New York.
However, let me point out the problems of such an approach. It is true that one can can underline such benefits as the engagement in critical thinking as being more beneficial to the struggle and social change than just prolonging their situation with thoughtless charity. But the revenue they get from these sporadic drawings, assuming they actually get it, represents no long-term solution to their problem - in that sense, it is very much like charity - even though we can argue the critical thinking in which this project intends to engage the workers bridges the gap between short and long-term. Nonetheless, we can counter-argue that the basic problem with this is the very inhability to escape the privileged western gaze over the subaltern classes. Engaging in a conditional training that, in a very reductive fashion, equates critical thinking with "immediate" financial gratification provides no real tools of liberation, and only reproduces the ruling ideology that allows for their conditions in the first place. This also poses the dilemma of the white Messiah which arrogates to teach them how to think of their own situation, how to represent themselves - "Let me liberate you!".
This same problematic can be witnessed when, in "Enjoy Poverty", Martens attempts to teach the locals how to exploit their own resource - poverty. Despite incurring in the same logic of impacting social relations somewhere else but their own, this exploitation and its aesthetics are still pretty much informed by the "post"-colonnial gaze. They still provide the western society with a pretence of renunciation, the cynical reason of our enjoyment, an atonement for the dependance of our commodified culture on their low-waged labor.

- On Volunteering and Charities -
Another aspect of this pretence is voluntary work. Says Gramsci, on this subject, that apoliticim and detachment from the popular masses provide some explanation for this phenomena. Gramsci goes so far as to call them "déclasses", and, in that sense, when can almost talk of the volunteer as being in a state of exception. Not representing an unified social bloc, a class, the volunteer's political impact and revolutionary potential is never fully realized. However, this is just one type of volunteering - on this same chapter, Gramsci accuses it of being falsely heroic. This can be read in the same line as Zizek's critic to charity work. (under construction)

CONCLUSION

Questions to reflect upon in the conclusion, still under construction
Should Renzo Martens "Enjoy Poverty" be read as an attempt to provoke social change? Can we really say that his critique was co-opted or can we dismiss it as not possessing negative political charge in the first place, and thus not up to being instrumentalized, for it was already instrumental and in tune with the current ideological apparatus, despite claims of deconstruction and sattire? (under construction)