User:Lidia.

Pereira/Trimesters/RWRM/IIEssay

User:Lidia.Pereira/Trimesters/RWRM/IIEssay
Abstract
Ideology is the ruling class's best instrument to organize social relations within a given economical apparatus. When
this instrument is menaced by the power of critique, its best strategy is to co-opt it, void it of political content and
make it so, that, at some point, this monstrous body of capital develops such an immunitary system that even before
critique exists as such, it's been already engulfed in it and instrumentalized. This shouldn't mean, however, the
assumption of a posture of inevitable doom and hopelessness, but rather an attitude of awareness regarding the
challenges it posits for artistic, political, revolutionary critique. Renzo Martens' "Enjoy Poverty" is, in my opinion, a
perfect example of misguided criticism, so lost in its own privilege it fails to present politically relevant content,
leaving it to uncertainty whether this was the artist's intention in the first place.
- 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 analyzed as an historical product, constituting that which is called the
superstructure. This means, as explained by Marx and Engels on the "German Ideology", that 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 its ideas as being in the
common interest of all the individuals in a given society, to provide them with a character of universality. Its strength
relies heavily on its power to coopt critique, to absorb everything produced within the existing apparatus. On his
essay, "The Body of Capital", Steven Shaviro defines our relationship 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, this 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?
- Let me Liberate You 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 clich white filmmaker, "coming up with a novel theory". However, as he himself declares, it only serves
as a reproduction of that same old clich. The cynical reason here shows its face, not at the level of the performance
which mimics it, 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 clichs and altruistic intentions by pretending to mock and deconstruct them,
Martens gets his altruistic rush.
The vanity of the glasses can also be discerned 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. This participation will be done in terms of, for example, engaging
plantation and logging companies' workers, with wages of about a $20 a month, in artistic production. Confronted
with the request to reflect on their situation in an artistic manner, say, through a drawing, the fruits of such an
interaction are then sold to a prominent gallery in the West. Thus, by engaging the worker critically, it is expected

User:Lidia.Pereira/Trimesters/RWRM/IIEssay
that he/she will understand that reflection upon his/her conditions can be more lucrative than just getting the job
done.
However, let me point out the problems of such an approach. While it is true that one can can underline such benefits
as the engagement in critical thinking as being more beneficial to the laborers' struggle than just prolonging their
situation with thoughtless charity,the revenue these locals get from such 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, as
stated already, one can argue that the critical thinking in which this project intends to engage the workers bridges the
gap between short and long-term problem solving. 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 which allows for their conditions in the first
place. It also poses the dilemma of the white Messiah arrogating 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 apoliticism and detachment
from the popular masses can provide some explanation for this phenomena. Gramsci goes so far as to characterize
the volunteers as dclasses, and, in that sense, one can almost talk of the volunteer as being in a state of exception.
Not representing an unified social bloc, the volunteer's political impact and revolutionary potential is never fully
realized, because in itself represents the contrary tendency towards passivity. This "false heroism", as Gramsci puts
it, represents the phenomenom described in Matt Bolton's essay - "The Cult of the Volunteer" as the 'displacement of
politics by morality'. Matt Bolton's picks up on some examples of voluntary work in the context of softening the
effects of several strikes. This voluntary actions generally depart from a common-sense frameset which very clearly
portrays the volunteer as the good, exemplary citizen, as opposed to the striker, characterized as the rebel, the lazy
outlaw - thus undermining effective social change through an hypocritical instrumentalized action which, for the
common good, denies the political rights of the labourer. Ironically or not, these same rights the volunteer denies to
him/herself - not surprisingly, he/she is, for the most times, mobilized by government and state apparatus.
One of the rare successful critiques in "Enjoy Poverty" may actually be the one concerning these voluntary
movements, when Renzo approaches a UNICEF aid worker and confronts her with the need of "a logo everywhere" it seems the message here is one that posits the existence of a Western volunteering market, selflessly providing care
to the ones it enslaves.
All of this can be read in the same line as Zizek's critic to charity work, which alleviates but doesn't solve the
situation that allows for the existence of poverty and inequality. In fact, it ultimately reproduces these conditions.
Notwithstanding the fact that charity and volunteer work are better than nothing at all, they ultimately represent the
instrumentalization of socialist critique towards an ethical capitalism, or, as Zizek puts it, "cultural capitalism".
- Conclusion In conclusion, Renzo Martens' "Enjoy Poverty" can be classified as a redundant piece which insufficiently detaches
itself from media clichs, despite the author's claims of deconstruction and satire. Intending to mimic the power of
the glasses in "They Live", it falls flat when proving itself as a powerful political tool for change; this is mainly
caused by Renzo's inhability to escape his own western privilege, for while "attempting" to denounce it, it still
reproduces the white gaze stigma over the subaltern classes when pretending to know better what is best for them.
Can we really say Renzo's critique was absorbed by ruling ideology or didn't it possess any negative political charge
in the first place? I maintain that the latter is the case, and thus his position was not up to being instrumentalized, for

User:Lidia.Pereira/Trimesters/RWRM/IIEssay

it was already instrumental and in tune with the current ideological apparatus.
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Article Sources and Contributors

Article Sources and Contributors

User:Lidia.Pereira/Trimesters/RWRM/IIEssay Source: http://pzwart3.wdka.hro.nl/mediawiki/index.php?oldid=63711 Contributors: Lidia.Pereira, Steve Rushton