Kunsttheorie: Alexi Kukuljevic

Alienation and the Perils of Self-Expression
Vortrag

The critical force of Rousseau?s thought lies not simply in the construction of a concept of alienation, but the fact that he attributes this alienation to a historical state of affairs, to the corrupting influence of civilization and its institutions. For the revolutionaries that laid claim to Rousseau?s discourse as a singular precursor, it was the pessimism of Rousseau?s critical judgment – the fact that any return to the pre-civilized state is bared – that necessitated a revolutionary conclusion: the demand for a radical reform if not overthrow of the cultural and political institutions responsible for the individual?s alienation. Yet, in so doing, politics gets hinged to a moral sentiment (the hope of a nonalienating institution). The paradox that haunts Rousseau?s critique is that the authentic (non-alienated self) can only be attested to through identifying and ultimately purging alienating structures – a process that is infinite since no return to nature is possible. Condemnation, persecution and victimization become the sign of authenticity. The
Roussean subject is condemned to strange dialectic in which its authenticity can only be avowed through a logic of purification and constant victimization. It is this logic, this need of martyrdom, and how it results from Rousseau?s moralism that I want to sketch in this presentation.