lütticken neither autocracy nor automatism 2016

7/25/2019 Lütticken Neither Autocracy Nor Automatism 2016

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Sven LŸtticken

NeitherAutocracy nor

Automatism:Notes onAutonomy andthe Aesthetic

Over the last few decades, an increasingidentification of autonomy with the imperialistand colonialist autocracy of Western subjectivityhas led to philosophical flirtations with therejection of both the concept of autonomy andoften that of the subject, for example in variousstrands of posthumanist thought, the works ofLatour, and sundry object-based ontologies.1 TheEnlightenment subject has been unmasked as

nothing but a male bourgeois rights holder andproperty owner, casting large parts of hishumanist entitlements into the netherworld ofabject near-objecthood. Autonomy has alsogotten a bad name in the field of art. In the US inparticular, the association of the concept ofautonomy with Clement GreenbergÕs restrictiveunderstanding of modernism has made the termseem toxic and beyond reappropriation.2

However, AdornoÕs Aesthetic Theory , with itsdialectical account of the artwork as being bothautonomous and fait social, is itself a trenchant

Modernist autocritique.3

For Adorno, autonomy was as problematicand crucial a notion in art as elsewhere, forinstance in education. When debating hisconservative opponent Arnold Gehlen on thesubject of ÒFreedom and InstitutionÓ on Germantelevision in 1967, Adorno defended the DutchProvo movement Ð film footage of which wasused to introduce the debate Ð as well as thebudding student movement in Germany againstGehlenÕs insistence that such contestations weredangerous symptoms of hubris.4 Whileincreasingly wary of the young radicalsÕ anti-institutional Òactionism,Ó Adorno was all tooaware of the reactionary implications of hiscolleagueÕs institutionalism. Referencing HegelÕsnotion of objective spirit, Emile DurkheimÕsconcept of faits sociaux and Thorstein VeblenÕsunderstanding of institutions in terms of habitsof thought, he argued that even while institutionsare not purely external but rather shape our mindand our social habitus, they are still imposed bycoercion and as such are alien, reified, orobjectified Ð vergegenstŠndlicht. While neither Adorno nor Gehlen addressed

this in the 1967 debate, the Amsterdam Provomovement was not purely a matter of youthprotest. With its imaginative and ÒludicÓ tactics,it was a form of aesthetic practice that derivedits impetus to a significant extent from theprovocative happenings Robert Jasper Grootveldhad started staging in the centerof Amsterdam Ðat some remove from the ÒofficialÓ artistic avant-garde, yet basing himself loosely on Americanhappenings and on Fluxus events.5 Furthermore,a crucial point of reference for Provo wasConstantÕs utopia of New Babylon and its vision

of the unalienated life of the homo ludens,inspired by Huizinga.6 First developed under the

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N e i t h e r A u t o c r a c y n o r A u t o m a t i s m : N o t e s o n A u t o n o m y a n d t h e A e s t h e t i c

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The above shows one of the models for a futuristic, anti-capitalist city titled New Babylon designed by Architect and Situationist Constant Nieuwenhuysbetween 1959Ð74.

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auspices of the Situationist International, NewBabylon is art that wants to become livedaesthetic praxis beyond Òthe autonomy of art.Ó When aesthetic theory emerged around1800, it was as an autocritique of Enlightenmentand Idealist thought and its self-legislating, self-governing subject equated with an abstractnotion of reason and devoid of LebensrealitŠt. Tothe extent that aesthetics became a discipline

claiming autonomy for its own area of expertise(aesthetic experience), this relative autonomyconsisted precisely in the problematization ofautonomy, in the creation and examination ofimpure mixtures and intricate dialecticalentanglements of freedom and determination,mind and body, subject and object.7 If theaesthetic also held out a highly ideologicalpromise of imaginary fulfillment within alienatingmodern society, it also proffered a Òvision ofhuman energies as radical ends in themselveswhich is the implacable enemy of all dominative

or instrumentalist thought.Ó8

Aesthetic thought wanted to becomeoperative in the real world and transform it Ð asin SchillerÕs Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man Ð by proposing a different assemblage ofthe conceptual and the sensuous, in which thelatter is an equal partner rather than a kind of idthat needs to be overcome by triumphant reason.If aesthetic experience has a specific autonomy,as Jacques Ranci•re maintains, this autonomyemerges as a practice of resistance to theautocracy of reason.9 The latter is always readyto morph into mere purposive rationality, into anautomaton-like implementation of a ratio thatcannot be argued with Ð as in the laws of theÒfree market,Ó for instance. In fact, todayautonomy seems to be located anywhere excepton the part of human agency, having becomepost-human Ð this is autonomy as automatism,usually presented to the populace as anobjective Sachzwang, usually in the form ofÒsaving the economyÓ or Òsaving the banksÓ orÒsaving the euroÓ because Òthere are noalternatives.Ó As a particular type of asset, art ispart and parcel of autonomist techno-finance.

What value do the old plots of the aesthetic havefor theory and practice under thesecircumstances?

Subjects Leaving the Factory

In the 1930s, Herbert Marcuse had reflected on atendency in bourgeois thought that he tracedfrom Luther to Kant and beyond: a Òunion ofinternal autonomy and external heteronomyÓ inwhich

what is internal to the person is claimed as

the realm of freedom: the person as amember of the realm of Reason or of God

(as ÒChristian,Ó as Òthing in itself,Ó asintelligible being) is free. Meanwhile, thewhole Òexternal world,Ó the person asmember of the natural realm or, as the casemay be, of a world of concupiscence whichhas fallen away from God (as Òman,Ó asÒappearanceÓ), becomes a place ofunfreedom.10

Marcuse notes that Òthis thought reappears in asecularized form in Kant: manÕs freedom as arational being can only be ÔsavedÕ if as a sensualbeing he is entirely abandoned to naturalnecessity.Ó11 In this manner, Òthe duality[between freedom and necessity] is itselfintroduced into the subject. Even the subject issplit into phenomenon and noumenon and theunresolved, insoluble and henceforth permanentconflict between freedom and necessity nowinvades its innermost structure.Ó12 But whosefreedom? If, for Kant, the subject is only truly

autonomous insofar as he or she is the subject ofÒpractical reason,Ó this takes on a rather peculiarform: the subject becomes a conduit for theethical will, which seems to be ratherautonomous from the subject.13 Rather thantruly being the subject of reason, the subject issubjected to a moral imperative that soundssuspiciously like internalized social consensus.Obeying a will that only appears to lay thefoundations for its autonomy, the Kantiansubject engages in Walter Mitty-style self-delusion. Kant himself struggled with the split he hadintroduced into the world and into the subject. Inhis third critique, the Critique of Judgment, heproposed his notion of aesthetic judgment as abridge between the realms he had posited, yetthis particular solution has proved to befrustrating and insufficient. Starting withFriedrich Schiller in the 1790s, post-Kantianthinkers tried to push the EnlightenmentÕsautocritique further Ð in the process giving theaesthetic, as mediator between reason andsenses, subject and object, or autonomy andheteronomy, an ever greater role. Then, in the

1840s, materialist philosophies of (and as) praxismoved more decisively beyond idealist system-building and a priori principles in order toÒgroundÓ thought not in an abstract, notionalsubject but in social, somatic, or psychologicalreality. Defined in MarxÕs early ÒTheses onFeuerbachÓ as Òhuman sensuous activity,Ó praxisis a post-idealist politicization of the aestheticas a transformative engagement with thematerial and sensuous world. Later, in Capital,Marx focused on two concepts that function asreified counterparts of praxis: wage labor and

commodity fetishism.14 With its account of the disjunction between

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This cartoon from Autonomie is based on Jo‹o Abel MantaÕs ÒA Difficult Problem,Ó 1975. Here, MantaÕs map of Portugal is replaced with the Gilbert Sheltoncharacter Fat Freddy.

sensuous appearance and underlying productivelogic, the chapter on the commodity fetish isMarxÕs negative aesthetics. As the product ofdisavowed wage labor, the commodityconstitutes an alienated world of falseappearances that needs to be shattered bytransformative and revolutionary praxis. Incharacterizing the commodity as fetish, Marxpolemically appropriated the term with which the

Enlightenment categorized sub-aestheticmagical objects in ÒprimitiveÓ tribal societies inAfrica.15 Like the Òbenighted AfricansÓ imaginedby Charles de Brosses or Hegel in their writingson ÒprimitiveÓ religion, the capitalist subjectsubmitted to magical thinking when faced withthe commodityÕs mysterious price Ð seeminglydetermined in Òsocial relationsÓ with othercommodities, but in fact determined by the labortime invested in its production.16 But is theartwork not a kind of third fetish, next to thereligious and the commodity fetish? Noting that

MarxÕs critique of the illusory sensuousness ofthe commodity as fetish is coupled with hisattack on the Òillusion of the autonomy of thevalue-form,Ó which is concomitant with areversal of subject and object, Stewart Martinargues that in his Aesthetic Theory AdornoÒmobilizes the first illusion (fetishism) against

the second illusion. The autonomous artwork isan emphatically fetishized commodity, which isto say that it is a sensuous fixation ofabstraction, of the value-form, and notimmediately abstract.Ó17 In art, this sensuousfixation is pushed to an extreme that betraysartÕs roots in magical fetishism. The artwork isthe absolute fetish. In his early essay on Wagner, Adorno noted

that the appearance of the artworkÕs autonomy ispossible only because of Òthe concealment ofthe labor that went into it.Ó18 What is true ofWagnerÕs phantasmagorias also applies toAdornoÕs modernism: Modernist works may bemore overt about their constructive logic, but theconstruction becomes another form ofobfuscation behind which living labordisappears. This is precisely where the Italianoperaists parted ways with Adorno: for RanieroPanzieri, Adorno remained fixated on the level ofconsumption with his focus on the artwork as

autonomous aesthetic fetish.19

With hisinsistence on the primacy of labor and ofworkerÕs resistance in the historical developmentof capitalism itself, Mario Tronti aimed atforegrounding a different autonomy, as opposedto the illusory autonomy of the commodity orthat of capital.

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Marx had polemically and ironically notedthat Òin the circulation M-C-M both the moneyand the commodity function only as differentmodes of existence of value itself,Ó which Òisconstantly changing from one form into theother, without becoming lost in this movement; itthus becomes transformed into an automaticsubject.Ó20 The notion of the Òautomatic subjectÓof value, as constituted by the circulation of

capital, has been taken up in Germany inparticular by authors intent on forging a Marxiancritique of value.21 However, for Tronti and otheroperaists it was crucial to assert that from ahistorical point of view there could be no realautomatism here, no real autonomy of capital;any specific iteration of the M-C-M cycle has tobe seen in the context of capitalÕs responses toforms of refusal, of workersÕ autonomy. Today, the artwork, that particular fetish,has become the model for an economy in whichthe commodityÕs theological whims are

boundless. Branded designer goods (sometimesin quasi-unique Òlimited editionsÓ) behave likegenuinely autonomous Baudrillardian signfetishes, deriving their price from theirmanufactured qualities rather than from labor-power. Given the absurd surplus value forsomething like the iPhone, the autonomy ofcapital seems rather real. While factories inBangladesh or China continue to producephysical goods, both their symbolic and culturalvalue and, significantly, their price aredetermined by the vanguardists of immateriallabor; by post-Fordist auto-productivists whoseautos is less self-determination than self-control. In an overdesigned world, the ultimate indesign may not be the design of objects but self-design.22 The autonomous subject has becomeprimarily its own autocrat, perpetually self-managing and self-optimizing Ð while foreverbeing illuminated by the dark light of datasurveillance. As self-management takes the form ofperpetual decision-making, even if under intensepressure, it can revive a sense of individualsubjective mastery; Òthe illusion of choice and

autonomy is one of the foundations of this globalregime of self-regulation.Ó23 Always busysurviving and self-optimizing, this self has notime for revolt, which can only be a waste of timeand a career-killer.24 What would it mean toreintroduce the Òlabor point of viewÓ in thiscontext and to once more foreground workersÕautonomy over the autonomy of the commodityor of capital? In line with Italian autonomia, into whichoperaismo morphed in the early 1970s, latermovements from alterglobalism to Occupy Wall

Street have insisted on autonomy not as aproperty of the subject, but as Òcollective

adventureÓ produced by transversal connectionsand groupings.25 The success of autonomisttheory and activism in the art world can be seenas a continuation and intensification of theaesthetic critique of the Enlightenment conceptof the autonomous subject Ð and of its evenmore abstracted double, the autonomous will. Ifreal self-determination is the right to chooseoneÕs dependencies, then genuine autonomy

would have to start from an acknowledgement ofheteronomy and the need for collaboration, co-individuation, and co-creation.26

Actionism and Krautonomy

ÒActionism is regressiveÓ: in the later part of the1960s, Adorno not only opposed GehlenÕsconservative over-valuation of institutions, butequally rejected the Aktionismus of youngradicals such as Rudi Dutschke (who in turnregarded Adorno as a Modernist mandarin whofiddled Schoenberg while Vietnam burned).27 For

Dutschke, Òour cultural revolutionÓ was anchoredin actions during which the participants Òfocuson themselvesÓ and Òdevelop their self-enlightenment about the meaning and purposeof the action itself.Ó28

In Germany and Austria, ÒactionismÓ was acode word for the neo-avant-garde and itsdangerous aesthetic transgressions. In the1950s, the term ÒactionÓ had been promoted inthe context of action painting by HaroldRosenberg, with the canvas allegedly becomingan Òarena in which to actÓ for Pollock and DeKooning & Co.29 RosenbergÕs theory of theartistic act was an individualized Cold-Wartransposition of the Marxist philosophy of praxishe had espoused in the 1930s, in the context ofTrotskyism. Praxis became a sequence of acts, ofmock-heroic and existential actions. Praxis as aÒsensuous human activityÓ that is as aestheticas it is political becomes an individual act thatcan be hung in a living room. Towards the end ofthe 1950s, Allan Kaprow and other neo-avant-gardists argued that it was now crucial to leavepainting behind and create actions (orhappenings, or events) more directly and

theatrically, without an object as intermediary.30

In the early 1960s the German-speakingworld embraced the term Aktion mainly becauseit discursively enacted the Òblurring of art andlifeÓ advocated by the neo-avant-garde.31 In linewith the Situationists, who had advocated Ònewforms of action in politics and art,Ó the notionwas applied both to more strictly artistic and tocountercultural-cum-political actions. The post-Situationist group Subversive Aktion, with formerSI member Dieter Kunzelmann and futurestudent leader Rudi Dutschke Ð who used an

entrist strategy to infiltrate the Berlin SDS Ð fellinto the latter camp.32 What artists or Òun-

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Ranci•re speaks at the Maagdenhuis, Amsterdam, 2015. Photo: Nicola Zolin

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artistsÓ from Allan Kaprow and George Maciunasto Jean-Jacques Lebel and the Situationistsadvocated were generalized and at times highlypoliticized forms of aesthetic praxis in which theexternal world is no longer purely external,confronted by a disembodied subject, but is trulyÒhuman sensuous activity.Ó33 For all of the validpoints of institutional critiqueÕs covertlyAdornian rejection of the transgressive gestures

of the neo-avant-garde, the neo-avant-gardewas right in opposing the reduction of theaesthetic to institutional art. ÒActionismÕsÓrefusal to accept institutional and disciplinarylimits, to respect functional differentiation, ishighly relevant at the present historical junctureÐ which is, after all, marked by an erosion ofrelative autonomy in art as in academia andelsewhere. However, Ò AktionismismusÓ was part of ahistorical constellation in which the Left was onthe offensive and conservative and half-

heartedly de-nazified institutions provided cleartargets. By the early 1970s, the remains ofactionism and related strands of left-wingactivism and theorizing morphed and crossbredin various ways, with Kunzelmann or his formerKommune 1 comrade Fritz Teufel embracingarmed action as members of the Bewegung 2.Juni. Meanwhile, a group of members andhangers-on of Rainer Werner FassbinderÕs ActionTheater (later Anti-Theatre) group in Munich hadbeen instrumental in forming the Rote ArmeeFraktion.34 While the RAF and the Bewegung 2.Juni attempted to impose a definitive avant-garde model via Òurban guerrilla,Ó former SDSmember Karl Heinz Roth and others looked toItalian operaism and the beginnings ofautonomia for alternative models. In 1975, Roth was one of the confounders ofthe periodical Autonomie, which was subtitledMaterialien gegen die Fabrikgesellschaft(ÒMaterials Against Factory SocietyÓ). In aprogrammatic article in the first issue with thewonderful Denglish title ÒFacing Reality:Organisation Kaputt,Ó Thomas Schmid called fora post-Leninist, post-vanguard mass movement

anchored in (while transforming) daily life,tracing the transition from workersÕ autonomy(operaismo) to a more general conception of anautonomy of movements and structures nolonger necessarily containable within old-schoolconceptions of class struggle (autonomia).35

Here a dissensus at the heart of theÒKrautonomieÓ project already began to manifestitself.36 Like Joschka Fischer (another Autonomieauthor), Schmid was a member of the FrankfurtÒSpontiÓ scene and like Fischer, he alreadyseemed keen to ditch Marxist conceptions of the

working class in favor of more glamorous andless frustrating cosmopolitan micropolitics and

career-friendly semiotic labor. By contrast, Roth had presented a muchmore rigorous and orthodox operaist account oflabor history in his 1974 book Die ÒandereÓ

Arbeiterbewegung (The ÒOtherÓ WorkersÕMovement), which focused on the refusal of workby German Òmass laborers.Ó In contrast to thereformist politics of the ÒprofessionalÓ labormovement, Roth qualified their stance as

Òaktionistisch.Ó37

While complaining that thelate-1960s SDS had been blind to the reality ofthis radical tendency among workers, focusinginstead on Òinstitutional critique,Ó histerminology suggests that his analytical focuswas itself informed by student and APOactionism.38 On May 9, 1975, Roth was seriouslywounded in a shootout between police and amember of the Bewegung 2. Juni; hence he wasnot a strong presence during the first issues of

Autonomie. However, his brand of Germanoperaismo filtered through in texts by authors

such as Angelika Ebbinghaus (a critique of SovietTaylorism) and Walter GŸntheroth, who in thefirst issue delivered a critique of ÒMarxianorthodoxyÓ that revolved around the rejection ofauthors who assume an Òautonomous movementof capital.Ó Like Tronti, Roth and GŸntheroth assertedthe primacy of living labor and resistance, not ofany automatic subject of capital. GŸntherothcriticizes a Marxian orthodoxy (he mentionsJŸrgen Ritsert) that has reversed MarxÕsmaterialist reversal of Hegel: this orthodoxy doesnot take as its starting point an analysis ofhistorical struggles and class antagonism, butinstead ontologized and autonomized capital.39

While RothÕs contention that there is noautonomous development of capital Ð which isalways forced to respond to forms of resistanceÐ was shared by most Autonomie authors, Rothwas concerned that the increasing focus on thepostindustrial sector and services was a feintthat distracted from the real issue: an ever moregeneral proletarianization.40 The rift runningthrough Autonomie to some extent paralleledthat in Italy between TrontiÕs attempt to define

and defend an Òautonomy of the political,Ó whichin his case involved a return to Communist Partypolitics, and NegriÕs post-operaist or autonomistembrace of new subjectivities and precarioussocial formations.41 In Germany, those most keento distance themselves from traditional workerpolitics would in some cases end up as firmestablishment figures Ð with Fischer as foreignminister and Schmid working for the right-wingSpringer press corporation. An illustration in the first issue of

Autonomie encapsulates this move towards

post-workerism. The basis for this image is acartoon by Jo‹o Abel Manta about the Carnation

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Revolution in Portugal, which showsrevolutionary thinkers and political leaderslooking at an outline of Portugal drawn on ablackboard (Hegel is present in the form of aportrait bust). In the Autonomie version, theoutline of Portugal has been replaced with FatFreddy, a character from Gilbert SheltonÕsunderground comic The Fabulous Furry FreakBrothers.42 Absurdly, the thinkers and makers of

World History now stare intently at a chubbycartoon character who here stands for thePolitboh•me of Spontis and Aktionisten. ForRoth, this montage will perhaps have served as awarning sign: disappointed by the traditionalworking class and as yet lacking any newproletariat, the autonomists now substitutedtheir own interests and activities as autonomousfrom any actual political project. When Roth and a few allies founded a ÒnewseriesÓ of Autonomie in 1979, their journal stoodgrimly apart from the embrace of the desires,

senses, signs, and art that characterized thepostmodernism of the nascentReagan/Thatcher/Kohl era. With its yuppiecollectors, this era saw a financialization of artthat was the pre-internet model for todayÕsspeculative market, in which the autonomizationof capital appears to make an ontological leapfrom theoretical fallacy to reality.

From Artwork to Art-WorkIn the early 1980s, theorists of postmodernismobserved and often ideologized anaestheticization of daily life via commodificationin what seemed like a parody of old avant-gardeambitions, problematizing or flat-out rejectingModernist theories of art as having a largelyautonomous history in which the Òunsolvedantagonisms of realityÓ are reconfigured timeand again as Òimmanent problems of form.Ó43 Asthe greatest Modernist aesthetician, Adorno hadof course acknowledged that the autonomizationof art was itself a consequence of the division oflabor in capitalist society.44 However, for Adornothe faits sociaux enabling Modernist art are inthe end just that; the art cannot be reduced to its

heteronomous conditions. Film was part of theculture industry and needed sociologicalperspectives; one chapter of Adorno and EislerÕsbook on film music is called ÒSociologicalAspects.Ó45 By contrast, art itself is a highersociology; it is critical theory in the form ofaesthetic objects. The fait social of modern artwas ultimately articulated best on the level ofthe autonomous artwork, mimetically andfetishistically. However, throughout the twentieth centurya more purely sociological account of the

autonomy of art, whose foundations were laid byMax Weber, gained traction.46 In his 1980 attack

on postmodernism, JŸrgen Habermas would relyon this Weberian model not so much to analyzeas to defend modernism in art, and the Òprojectof modernityÓ in general:

[Max Weber] characterized culturalmodernity as the separation of thesubstantive reason expressed in religionand metaphysics into three autonomous

spheres. They are: science, morality andart. These came to be differentiatedbecause the unified world-views of religionand metaphysics fell apart. Since the 18thcentury, the problems inherited from theseolder world-views could be arranged so asto fall under specific aspects of validity:truth, normative rightness, authenticity,and beauty. They could then be handled asquestions of knowledge, or of justice andmorality, or of taste. Scientific discourse,theories of morality, jurisprudence, and the

production and criticism of art could in turnbe institutionalized.47

While the sprawl of the field of art and artÕsprogressive institutionalization andcapitalization fuelled neo-avant-garde protestduring the 1960s, it also made gambling on arevolutionary break with the system seemincreasingly unfeasible once the impetus of1967Ð68 waned. What emerged very forcefully inthis situation was a sociological turn in the formof those practices that later came to be knownas institutional critique. Early protagonists ofinstitutional critique such as Broodthaers,Buren, and Haacke rejected both the Modernistobject and the avant-garde event or performanceÐ both the Modernist conviction Òthat an object,by its distinction from all others, can serve as amirror for an equally singular and independentsubjectÓ and the avant-garde belief in radicallytransgressive gestures that in fact leave thesystem intact and await their own institutionalrecuperation.48 Andrea Fraser has registered herdoubts concerning Òformulations that seem toreach for a kind of pure autonomy, a kind of pure

freedom, in which avant-garde practices aresometimes identified with radical politicalpractices, such as anarchist traditions andautonomia.Ó49 Much like Horkheimer andAdornoÕs critical theory, institutional critique isan immanent critical practice in disciplinary andinstitutional frameworks Ð a series ofinterventions in their dialectics of enablementand constraints, their processes ofsubjectivation and subjection. Spectaculartransgression was swapped for patient criticallabor.

Andrea Fraser has argued that ÒartisticautonomyÓ has four dimensions: aesthetic (the

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Situationist May Õ68 posters from the catalog of the collection of former conservative French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, auctioned at Piette BergŽin 2013.

artwork as following its own intrinsic logic, freefrom instrumentalization), economic (thebourgeois, modern art market), social (the artworld as a relatively autonomous field with itsown protocols and criteria), and political (whichFraser identifies with freedom of speech andconscience).50 While Fraser here uses a limitednotion of the aesthetic, which is identified withone particular aspect of Òartistic autonomy,Ó her

distinctions are nonetheless useful whendiscussing ÒinstitutionalizedÓ modern art; theaesthetic in its more fundamental sense involvesa constant questioning of art and its institutions.If various avant-gardes and neo-avant-gardessought to destroy or at least escape from thefield of art, institutional critique ˆ la Haacke orFraser becomes an immanent critical practicewithin this field. However, when both selves andinstitutional structures are subject to permanentredesign, the old opposition betweentransgressive and immanent practices loses

much of its relevance. If the term ÒautonomyÓ has any meaning inart, it is not as a label for a historical series ofartworks that somehow have the property ofÒbeing autonomous.Ó With institutional critique,artistic autonomy came to be redefined in termsof art-work, or artistic labor that aspires tobecome immanent critical practice. Ifinstitutional critique was highly critical of the

artwork as object, it did not necessarily side withthe art objectÕs familiar neo-avant-gardealternative: transgressive actions that seek toescape institutional art altogether. Artisticpractice became project-based, and the focusshifted from the artwork as object to artisticlabor Ð the artistic version of the shift fromFordism to post-Fordism, from commodity-objects to ÒservicesÓ and ÒimmaterialÓ labor.

The opposition between the (supposedlyillusory) autonomy of capital and the (real)autonomy of living labor and workerÕs action wasalways dialectical: the autonomy of capital wasboth ideological and a fait social. It was a sociallyproduced and conditional autonomy thatdepended on the obfuscation of its ownproduction. We have now reached the stage inwhich Òintellectual labor becomes a part of theautonomous process of capital,Ó as Franco ÒBifoÓBerardi has put it.51 At the forefront of practicesthat engaged with the contradictions of art-work

in the context of the transformations of the widereconomy since the 1960s and Õ70s wasinstitutional critique. Andrea Fraser and HelmutDraxlerÕs exhibition and discussion seriesServices (1993Ð94), for instance, analyzed theservice industries as a possible model for artisticproject work, without disregarding the new formsof (self-)exploitation and precarization thatemerge with such non-object-based work.52

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IBM promotes a computer, Watson, in this video titled ÒWhat Will You Do with Watson?,Ó 2014 (video still). Seehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_cqBP08yuA

However, Haacke, Buren, or FraserÕscommon ground with Pierre BourdieuÕs sociologyof art and his analysis of the Òartistic fieldÓ andits institutions has also resulted in afetishization of said field, and a tendency todisregard its ongoing transformation anddisintegration.53 The autonomy of modernsocietyÕs differentiated fields or spheres was infact always highly relative; as Kerstin Stakemeier

has emphasized, art being Òmeticulouslyisolated as a fieldÓ and given relative autonomywas precisely how the subsumption of art undercapitalism operated in modernism.54 Thissubsumption now being much more radical andextreme, with economic logic penetrating artmore fully and the fieldÕs splendid isolation beingreduced to a mere figment, some of the avant-garde practices that were brushed aside asfatally naive by institutional critique now take ona renewed relevance. What used to be known asart and culture now having been

reconceptualized as Òthe creative industriesÓ; ina country such as the Netherlands the stateactively encourages research on (and in theservice of) said industries, with a focus on designand new media. Both art and academia are made moreimmediately productive now that they are nolonger seen as relatively autonomoussupplements of the Òreal economy,Ó as

supplements that are essential for thereproduction of the system, but that, likedomestic reproductive labor, do not directlyenter into the productive equation. Today theyare being ideologized as the new knowledge-based and creative economy for thisdeindustrialized country. Ironically, it is oftenprecisely the lingering, residual specificity ofthese fields that propels their integration. The

art market and the academic market alike existby virtue of unique protocols (theincommensurable value of the unique work ofart; academic ranking systems) whose seeminglyautonomous logic is a perfect vehicle forfinancialization and the imposition of neoliberalprograms that result in a process ofdecomposition; not just of art and science, whichneed to be ÒvalorizedÓ much more directly thanin the past, but also, for instance, law Ð which isbent or cancelled in accordance with politico-economic imperatives. What if a ÒfieldÓ is now a

kind of scattered archipelago Ð an institutional,para-, and extra-institutional Balkans ofconflicting ideologies and practices?

Liquid InertiaThe nature of institutions has changed alongwith that of the artwork and the subject. Even inthe 1970s, corporate sponsorship and theinfluence of trustees became the focus of Hans

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HaackeÕs work; the seemingly autonomous logicof capital transformed the art field from theinside. By now, the logic of capital has in turnlargely merged with that of technoscience: if wepay up, we can get real-time algorithmic adviceon which artists to buy and which to dump.Andrea FraserÕs sometime collaborator HelmutDraxler has eloquently critiqued the avant-gardelogic of transgression, of abandoning oneÕs field,

of becoming another, a better, a more politicalsubject.55 But what if institutions themselvesbecome transgressive; what if subjects arealready constantly being reshaped? In 1838, in the first young-Hegelian attemptat a theory of praxis, August von Cieszkowskiidentified institutions with Òthe conscious actsof humankind.Ó56 In contrast to this still idealistdefinition, Sartre in The Critique of DialecticalReason famously placed institutions on the sideof the practico-inert: they are the result ofprevious being and previous praxis, now

congealed into reified structures and ossifiedprotocols. Their movement is inert movement.57

For a conservative like Gehlen, this kind ofcritique is proof of the covert idealism ofMarxism: it is nothing but a ÒmaterializationÓ ofFichteÕs Ich, which cannot accept any objectivereality outside of it.58 For crypto-Fichteantheories of praxis, everything needs to bedissolved into human activity Ð dissolved,liquidated, liquefied. Such a polemicalmisreading may at best be applicable to someforms of Aktionismus that Adorno opposed asmuch as he opposed Gehlen. However, is the contemporary institutionitself not a ÒfinancializedÓ version of idealism?Offices are transformed beyond recognition asworkers become flex workers on flex time.Academics donÕt need books anymore, hencethey no longer need to have a study. Theinstitution is less than ever a mere bureaucraticmonolith whose ossified structures need to beovercome through action or praxis; in manycases, an ÒactionisticÓ managerial caste imposesÒmarket imperativesÓ on those who are told toÒget with the program.Ó What is needed in such a

situation, as Gerald Raunig has suggested, areÒpractices that are self-critical and yet do notcling to their own involvement, their complicity,their imprisoned existence in the art field, theirfixation on institution and the institution, theirown being-institution.Ó59 In such an account ofÒinstituent practices,Ó institutional critique isreinvented along autonomist lines, and viceversa. When Rudi Dutschke coined the phrase Òthelong march through institutions,Ó he was thinkingof a process in which revolutionaries undermine

one institution after another from within.60 Asthe revolutionary impetus of the late 1960s

petered out, institutional critique at timesreplaced avant-garde transgression with anequally problematic fetishization of immanentpractice within institutions. Critique that isperfectly content with its immanence becomes akind of higher Biedermeier. Moments ofexternality, of externalization, are part of theprocess. It is no longer a matter of choosingbetween anti-institutional aesthetic practice

(1960s neo-avant-garde tendencies) andembedded critical practice within institutions(1970s institutional critique). By now, thecomplementary nature of both approaches isclear, as artistic and theoretical practicenavigate institutional as well as extra-institutional contexts and interstices. Existinginstitutions such as museums or universitiesshould be engaged with and worked with to theextent that this is possible and productive,without constituting the horizon. Under neoliberalism, we constantly

encounter and participate in a paradoxical liquidinertia of structures and procedures. Often Ð forinstance at universities Ð workers are entangledsomewhat haphazardly in restructurings andretoolings that they have not desired and havelittle control over. However, under specificcircumstances, especially in smaller artinstitutions, transformation and ÒliquefactionÓcan take the form of an active and activist praxis.A case in point is the Van Abbemuseum inEindhoven, which enabled the project Picasso inPalestine (2011), initiated by Khaled Hourani. ThemuseumÕs apparatus was used to send a Picassopainting to Palestine, where most institutionalniceties that are taken for granted elsewhere areabsent; Israel has blocked and sabotaged theformation and maintenance of institutions,including that of a Palestinian state, for decades.Picasso in Palestine emphasizes andexacerbates the paintingÕs status as art, as apainting by Picasso that allows for certain kindsof aesthetic experience. It is precisely becausebringing the artwork as object and as producer orenabler of such an experience to Palestine is sogrotesquely difficult that the painting here also

has different meanings and functions Ð anunexpected use value that enriches rather thancancels out the workÕs aesthetic qualities. In theprocess, the work also maps the inequalities andasymmetries in todayÕs Òglobalization,Ó which isthe continuation of imperialism and colonialismby different means Ð including those ofinternational law. Picasso in Palestine dealt with a highlyspecific situation, but it did so by foregroundingthe various forms of curatorial, critical, artistic,legal, police, and manual labor involved Ð all

revolving around a precious and precariousobject. It was an attack on IsraelÕs stranglehold

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on Palestine, but the attack came from theinside, by foregrounding the contradictions ofworking in a ÒglobalÓ economy rife withasymmetries and inequalities between themigration of commodities and of workers, ofskilled and unskilled labor, and from theperiphery to center and vice versa. Picasso inPalestine takes as its point of departure aquintessential Modernist artwork, but shows its

entanglement in activities that ensure itstransportation, its protection, its legal status,and so on. The artwork as object becomesworking, becomes labor; noun becomes verb.Many contemporary practices thus seek to revertor at least counteract the concealment of labor.But Òthe labor that went into the work of artÓ canbe manifold and contradictory, and it mayinclude the labor of guards or cleaners neededfor the maintenance of the system. What hashappened in the last decades is the progressivesubjugation of art and of academia to an

economistic logic that allows for no alterity, noother criteria. The Situationist-dominated ÒCouncil forMaintaining the Occupations,Ó which wasfounded at the Sorbonne in May Õ68, put out aposter decreeing the ÒEnd of the University.Ó61 Bythe early twenty-first century, universities andmuseums alike have been occupied by ratherdifferent forces. In dealing with suchinstitutions, it may be wise to consider themalready gone, already plundered and ruined. Butthese ruins are not the crumbling edifices knownfrom old-master paintings. Ruination now takesthe form of constant liquefaction. Workplacesliterally disappear, with unworkable Òflexi-workstationsÓ at Dutch universities having the effect(and no doubt the unstated intention) of severingties of solidarity between and among staffmembers and students. A situation marked bythe liquefaction of institutions and by the erosionof the relative autonomy of fields presents hugeproblems, but also possibilities. WorkersÕ disinvestment from the liquidinstitution can lead to ever more completeinscription in the isolating protocols of pseudo-

autonomist self-management. However, at timesthe liquidation of old structures can in factgenerate solidarization and action. In the midstof institutional turmoil, new forms of cooperationand new alliances can emerge within liquidinstitutions and ex-fields, but also betweenthem. As the institution becomes networked anddiffused, it intensifies its grasp on subjectivationand introduces ever greater numbers of culturaland intellectual workers into precarity.62 Thefactory is now truly a fabbrica diffusa, as theoperaists put it. When the same Òiron logicÓ of

financialized capital as enabled bytechnoscience as much as by financial capital is

imposed on all different fields and occupations,then is there not potentially a common ground?In art as in academia, many may no longerconsider themselves to be part of the sameÒfieldÓ as some of their (former) peers. Does thisnot also create new possibilities for networks ofsolidarity within but also between (ex-)fields?

Are We the Robots?

In contemporary capitalism, the seemingautonomy/automatism of value productionreaches new heights due to the synthesis oftechnology and finance.Fredric Jameson hasargued that finance capital has been marked by afurther autonomization vis-ˆ-vis industrialcapitalism, just as the postmodern play ofÒautonomized fragmentsÓ goes beyond therelative autonomy of Modernist forms. Financecapital brings into being Òa play of monetaryentities that need neither production (as capitaldoes) nor consumption (as money does), which

supremely, like cyberspace, can live on their owninternal metabolisms and circulate without anyreference to an older type of content.Ó This alsomanifests itself in Òa new cultural dimension orrealm that is independent from the former realworld.Ó63

Such pronouncements on the autonomy offinance enter into a coalition with statements onthe autonomization of technology. In the 1970s itwas commonplace for Marxist critics ofcapitalist ÒcommunicationÓ to assert that Òin theuniverse of fetishes, the communications mediaappear to be endowed with autonomy, Ôa will andmind of their own,ÕÓ which was to be counteredwith steps Òtowards an autonomous culturalproductionÓ by Òthe popular classes.Ó64 Suchmedia-operaism seems quaint now that we aredealing with a techno-economic system that isconstantly spawning new products and tools thatdemand an instant reschooling of the subject,which has to keep up with developments to shoreup its own much more precarious illusion ofsubjective autonomy. As Jonathan Crary hasnoted, Ò[the] idea of technological change asquasi-autonomous, driven by some process of

auto-poesis of self-regulationÓ has becomeubiquitous Ð and it is this process that willpresumably result in the singularity.65

Technoscience merges with the apparentautonomy of finance capital to form an imposedsense of capitalist technoscience as automaton,as unstoppable juggernaut. Of course, in its veryautonomization from the social, techno-financialcapitalism keeps producing social problems Ðand ecological problems. Recently a number of Dutch institutionspoured significant funding into a new Center for

Humanities and Technology (CHAT), whichenables researchers to use IMBÕs Watson system

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for research in the field of cognitive computing,network analytics, visualization, text and socialanalytics, search and data representation Ð andnow, of course, the humanities, withunderfunded academics bending their researchagenda to come up with something, anything,that could get them a bit of cash. CHAT had aninaugural budget of Û65 million Ð which musthave come from somewhere Ð but now that

money has been earmarked to promote aparticular research agenda. The call forproposals gave researchers a full three weeks tocome up with a proposal. Art historians werepresented with suggestions that are patentlyirrelevant in relation to contemporary artisticpractice: ÒCan we detect meaningfulrelationships between artworks when we do notunderstand the semantic labels (due to languagedifferences), or with insufficient clues (untitledworks)? Can we search for artworks on the basisof pattern recognition of e.g. color, composition,

texture, rhythm?Ó66

Dreaming of a cut of that Û65million, some art historians startedbrainstorming: Should we rather focus ondiscourse analysis, and have Watson parsethousands of texts on the basis of keywords?Which keywords? ÒAutonomyÓ perhaps? A humanist defense of the lone researcheragainst the evil machine would clearly beregressive and unhelpful. Clearly the pointcannot be the resuscitation of some deliriouslyautocratic Enlightenment subject, let alone ofsome Fichtean Ich. Autonomy needs to bedefined in terms of assemblages that includetechnological tools as well as institutions. Theyare pharmaka, to use Bernard StieglerÕsterminology; they are coproducers of subjectivity.But what kind of subjectivity? What isdisconcerting about the Amsterdam project ishow this proprietary version of cognitivecomputing is naturalized, and never questioned.Do we want students and staff whom it nevergives any pause to be WatsonÕs Watson? Andhow, as Matteo Pasquinelli asked ˆ propos ofWatson, Òdo you think a form of capital that isalready thinking you?Ó67 To open up a serious

debate about these and other matters wouldrequire conceiving of the university Òas a site ofstruggle, or education as a reason for it,Ó and asSarah Amsler puts it: this is something that fewacademics are willing to do.68 Staff and studentsfind it difficult to organize and undertakecollective action Ð if they see the need for it atall. Many have been depoliticized by theperpetual need to perform, and to compete. Amsler sees such developments assymptoms of a Òdeep neoliberalismÓ that

moves beyond daily erosions of autonomyto become a hollowing out of the

relationships, ideas, and subjectivities thathelp maintain critical spaces fromneoliberal rationality and a temporalcontracting of the distance between thesespaces. If we can identify how and whythese processes become possible, wemight also get a better grip on how criticalspaces can be reclaimed or created.69

Again the question of labor rises, with evergreater urgency. During the late-1980s mock-academic panel performances by the feministcollective V-Girls, Andrea FraserÕs persona wouldoccasionally end some demonstration of hertheoretical skills with a desperately peppy ÒIwould like to conclude by saying that I amavailable for immediate employment.Ó Thismessage tends to be implicit in all we say and do.Like workers at Foxconn or Pegratron, mostacademics may be easily replaceable by the nexteager candidate available for immediate

employment. Self-design and self-surveillancedo their job Ð until they donÕt. ÒIn the information age, there is not going tobe a privileged set of knowledge producers whowill be allowed an autonomous space, a safehaven to explore and invent.Ó70 In art as inacademia, what used to be a carefullymaintained reserve, a research facility in whichprocesses that could be subject to later capitalization had to be given some room tounfold, is now mined much more directly, withoutdelays. The exception has been subjected to therule; the seeming alternative to capitalism hasbecome the avant-garde of capitalism. But ifartÕs and academiaÕs inscription in the automaticlogic of (finance) capital entails a loss of aspecific type of disciplinary autonomy, this alsomeans that transdisciplinary endeavors thatfollow a non-CHAT logic have become both morenecessary and more possible Ð which does notmean that their intrinsic contradictions andcentrifugal forces are any less real. A starting point would be precisely the evermore problematic status of work incontemporary capitalism. The Òrefusal of workÓ

was a key notion in 1970s autonomism. Refusaland sabotage had long been central to theÒotherÓ workersÕ movement, but in 1970s Europe,unemployment was on the rise. The system wasitself increasingly refusing people work, in partprecisely due to industryÕs response to previouslabor action, which had resulted in increasingautomation as well as the relocating ofproduction to Asia. While autonomists sought toexacerbate this crisis and push it to its tippingpoint (using the welfare state that was still inplace), more generally the situation resulted in a

life-long scramble for jobs in an economy inwhich every crisis seems to be followed by a

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techno-financial Òjobless recovery.Ó As the integration of semi-autonomousfields and the integration of workers intoneoliberal capitalism is being pushed forward,divisions between legal and illegal, first-classand second-class citizens, workers and non-workers proliferate. In such a situation, theimpetus to stay on the ÒrightÓ side of thesedivisions is strong and often overpowering; but

conditions of generalized precarity can also leadto the realization that there are no right sides.Networks emerge in which collaborationbetween artists, lecturers or PhD candidates,activists, and illegal immigrants may start tomake more sense than the usual field-immanentactivities of pursuing gallery exhibitions orgrants for mega research projects. This canresult in attempts to forge alliances between, forinstance, artists or academics and the Òillegals"who provide a surplus labor force for the informaleconomy. In early 2015, the protesting students

at the Maagdenhuis in Amsterdam insisted onconjoining their struggle with that of rejectedasylum seekers, who are not legally allowed towork and be Òproductive members of society.ÓThe students did so against protest from thosewho thought it unwise to Òcloud the issue.Ó At its best, todayÕs autonomist practicestrives for an autonomy of chosen dependencies;an autonomy that practices entanglement, thatdances with heteronomy. Meaningful aesthetico-political praxis will often be slow or intermittent.In the fabbrica diffusa of contemporarycapitalism, autonomy can only occur asassembly and assemblage of disparate workersand non-workers. Everything conspires againstthis occurring. It is time to conspire back. !

This article is based on the introduction to the Art andAutonomy reader, to be published by Afterall later this year.

Sven LŸtticken teaches art history at VU UniversityAmsterdam, where he coordinates the ResearchMaster's programme Visual Arts, Media andArchitecture (VAMA). Sternberg Press published hisbookIdols of the Market: Modern Iconoclasm and theFundamentalist Spectacle (2009) and History inMotion: Time in the Age of the Moving Image (2013).

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1For a critique of the modernsubject as autocratic, in thecontext of a Latour- andStengers-inspired curatorialproject, see Susanne Karr, ÒWeHave Never Been Alone: TheContinuing Appeal of Animism,ÓSpringerinhttp://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=2701&lang=en

2

In contrast to his later critics,Greenberg himself rarely (if ever)used the term; however, hisÒKantianÓ definition ofmodernism in terms of Òthe useof the characteristic methods ofa discipline to criticize thediscipline itself, not in order tosubvert it but in order toentrench it more firmly in itsarea of competenceÓ is of coursea definition of Modernist artÕsautonomous self-development.Clement Greenberg, ÒModernistPaintingÓ (1960), in The CollectedEssays and Criticism 4:Modernism With a Vengeance,1957Ð1969, ed. John OÕBrian(Chicago: Chicago University

Press, 1993), 85.

3Theodor W. Adorno, AestheticTheory (1970), trans. RobertHullot-Kentor (London:Bloomsbury, 2013), 7.

4Die Freiheit und die Institutionwas broadcast on WDRtelevision on June 3, 1967,presented by Alexander vonCube. While the debateÕs titleuses the term Òfreedom,Ó Adornodoes at one point recast theissue as being one of autonomy,of self-determination. Arecording of this broadcast has

been posted online with a 1965date (possibly due to a confusionwith a famous 1965 radio debatebetween Adorno and Gehlen, ÒIstdie Soziologie eine Wissenschaftvom Menschen?Ó), which anumber of recent Germanacademic publications haveerroneously taken for a fact.Right at the beginning of thebroadcast, the reference to thedissolution of the Provomovement (which happened onMay 13, 1967) should make itpatently clear that 1965 cannotbe the year of this debate. Thefootage shown is from Louis vanGasterenÕs 1966 film Omdat mijn

fiets daar stond, whichdocuments police violenceagainst people (Provos andothers) who had just attendedthe opening of an exhibition thatdocumented and criticizedpolice actions during thewedding of Princess Beatrix andClaus von Amsberg.

5In 1962, Grootveld witnessed anevening of ÒParelleleAuffŸhrungen neuester MusikÓorganized by Wolf Vostell, andincluding contributions by DickHiggins, Alison Knowles, andNam June Paik; the evening ofevents became a model for

GrootveldÕs happenings whenVostell attempted to perform a

dŽcollage action outside, on thestreet, and the policeintervened. According to a reportpublished by the weekly HaagsePost at the time, Grootveld triedto convince the remainingattendees that Amsterdam wasto become a magic center. SeeLudo van H alem, ÒParalleleAuffŸhrungen neuester Musik.Een Fluxusconcert inkunsthandel Monet,Ó JongHolland 6, no. 5 (1990): 26(quoting from Haagse Post,

October 13, 1962). 6Constant and New Babylon werefted in Provo 4 (October 1965).

7In this sense, any mention ofÒaesthetic autonomyÓ shouldcome with immediatequalifications; otherwise theresult will be a conceptual fetishthat negates a core quality of theaesthetic itself. On ÒaestheticautonomyÓ in relation to Òartisticautonomy,Ó see also Aestheticand Artistic Autonomy , ed. OwenHulatt (London: Bloomsbury,2013).

8Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: BasilBlackwell, 1990), 9.

9For Ranci•re, see ÒThe AestheticRevolution and Its Outcomes:Emplotments of Autonomy andHeteronomy,Ó New Left Review12 (MarchÐApril 2002), 133Ð51.

10Herbert Marcuse, A Study on

Authority (1936), trans. Joris deBres (London: Verso, 2008), 7Ð8.

11

Ibid., 8.

12Georg Luk‡cs, ÒReification andthe Consciousness of theProletariat,Ó in History and ClassConsciousness (1922), trans.Rodney Livingstone (London?:Merlin Press, 1971), 124.

13Peter Osborne, ÒTheorem 4:Autonomy. Can It Be Part of Artand Politics at the Same Time?,ÓOpen 23 (2012), 116Ð26.

14On praxis and labor see also

Josefine Wikstršm, ÒPracticeComes Before Labor: An Attemptto Read Performance throughMarxÕs Notion of Practice,ÓPerformance Research: A Journalof the Performing Arts 17, no. 6(2012). DOI:10.1080/13528165.2013.775753

15The term was key to Charles deBrossesÕs Enlightenment theoryof ÒprimitiveÓ African (butimplicitly also CatholicEuropean) religion in Du cultedes dieux fŽtiches (1760).

16See, of course, the famous

section on the fetishism ofcommodities from Capital, vol. 1

(chapter 1, section 4)http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S4

17Stewart Martin, ÒThe AbsoluteArtwork Meets the AbsoluteCommodity,Ó Radical Philosophy 146 (NovemberÐDecember2007): 23.

18Theodor W. Adorno, In Search of

Wagner , trans. RodneyLivingstone (London: Verso,2005), 72.

19Raniero Panzieri, ÒRelazione sulneocapitalismo,Ó in La Ripresadel Marxismo-Leninismo in Italia(Milan: Sapere Edizioni, 1972),212, quoted in Pier VittorioAurelli, The Project of Autonomy:Politics and Architecture Withinand Against Capitalism (NewYork: Tenple Hoyne BuellCenter/Princeton ArchitecturalPress, 2008), 27.

20Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of

Political Economy. Volume I,trans. Ben Fowkes (London:Penguin, 1990), 255.

21See for instance Dasautomatische Subjekt bei Marx ,eds. Hans-Georg Bensch andFrank Kuhne (LŸneburg:Gesellschaftswissenschaftliches Institut Hannover 1998); inrecent art theory, see KerstinStakemeier, for instance ÒArt asCapital Ð Art as Service Ð Art asIndustry: Timing Art inCapitalism,Ó in Timing: On theTemporal Dimension of Exhibiting, eds. Beatrice vonBismarck et al. (Berlin:

Sternberg Press, 2014), 15Ð38.

22Hal Foster, Design and Crime andOther Diatribes (London: Verso,2002).

23Jonathan Crary, 24/7: LateCapitalism and the Ends of Sleep(London: Verso, 2013), 46.

24See Byung-Chul Han,Psychopolitik. Neoliberalismusund die neuen Machttechniken(Frankfurt am Main: Fischer,2014).

25Brian Holmes, ÒArtisticAutonomy and theCommunication Society,Ó ThirdText 18, no. 6 (2004): 548http://www.nettime.org/Lists -Archives/nettime-l-0310/msg00192.html

26ÒSelf-determination is the rightto choose your dependenciesÓ;Vivian Ziherl quoted by JonasStaal in ÒTo Make a World, PartII: The Art of Creating a State,Ó e-flux journal 60 (December 2014)../journal/to-make-a-world-part-ii-the-art-of-creating-a -

state/

27Theodor W. Adorno, ÒMarginalienzu Theorie und PraxisÓ (1969) inKulturkritik und Gesellschaft II(Gesammelte Schriften 10.2)(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,2003), 760Ð82 (quotation from776). In his attacks onÒactionism,Ó Adorno here himselfuses the impoverished andundialectical notion of praxis (asantithetically opposed toÒtheoryÓ) that he accuses hisopponents of employing.

28Rudi Dutschke, in UweBergmann, Rudi Dutschke,Wolfgang Lef•vre, and BerndRabehl, Rebellion der Studentenoder Die neue Opposition(Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1968), 63.

29Rosenberg launched the termÒaction paintingÓ with his 1952essay ÒThe American ActionPaintersÓ (in ARTnews 51, no. 8[December 1952], 22Ð23, 48Ð50),which was widely supposed tobe based on Jackson PollockÕspractice, although Rosenbergdid not mention a single artistÕs

name and was much closer to DeKooning. See also my History inMotion: Time in the Age of theMoving Image (Berlin: SternbergPress, 2013), 223Ð32.

30Allan Kaprow, ÒThe Legacy ofJackson Pollock,Ó ARTnews 57,no. 6 (October 1958), 24Ð26,55Ð57.

31It should also be noted that theterm came with a specificallyGerman pedigree, as FranzPfemfertÕs legendary 1911Ð32magazine had been called Die

Aktion. Starting out as an

expressionist periodical, Die Aktion became progressivelypoliticized during and after WWI.

32On the Subversive Aktion and itslinks to the SI, see AribertReimann, Dieter Kunzelmann:

Avantgardist, Protestler,Radikaler (Gšttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009),49Ð122.

33Karl Marx, ÒTheses onFeuerbachÓ (1845)https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/

theses.htm 34On April 2, 1968 the Anti-Theatregroup of Horst Sšhnlein,Andreas Baader, and ThorwaldProll (alongside Gudrun Ensslin)set fire to two departmentstores in Frankfurt Ð a keymoment in the formation of theRAF.

35Thomas Schmid, ÒFacing Reality:Organisation Kaputt,Ó

Autonomie. Materialien gegendie Fabrikgesellschaft 1 (October1975): 16Ð35.

36The pun ÒKrautonomieÓ can be

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found in the correspondence ofthe editorial group of the neueFolge of Autonomie, which lastedfrom 1979 to 1986. The archive isat the IISH in Amsterdam(ARCH02930).

37Karl Heinz Roth (with ElisabethBehrens), Die ÒandereÓ

Arbeiterbewegung (Munich:Trikont, second edition, 1976),83. See also Steve Wright, ÒTheHistoriography of the Mass

WorkerÓhttps://libcom.org/library/historiography-mass-worker-steve-wright

38Roth, ibid., 229.

39Walter Gunteroth, ÒKritik derMarxorthodoxie, Autonomie 1,46Ð58, esp. 39.

40Karl Heinz Roth, ÒNichtarbeit,Proletarisierung,Ó in Autonomie.Materialien gegen dieFabrikgesellchaft 5 (February1977): 40Ð42.

41For a defense of Tronti andcritique of Negri, see Aureli, TheProject of Autonomy , 39Ð48.

42 Autonomie 1, 22.

43Adorno, Aesthetic Theory , 7.

44Hanns Eisler [and Theodor W.Adorno], Composing for the Films(New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1947), 45Ð61.

45

Ibid. In addition to Composing for the Films, see his late essayÒTransparencies on FilmÓ (1966):ÒThere can be no aesthetics ofthe cinema, not even a purelytechnological one, which wouldnot include the sociology of thecinema.Ó Adorno here stressedthe photographic and ÒobjectiveÓnature of film. ÒTransparencieson Film,Ó trans. Thomas Y. Levin,New German Critique 24/25(Autumn 1981ÐWinter 1982):202.

46See Max Weber, Gesammelte

AufsŠtze zur Religionssoziologie I

(1920) (TŸbingen: Mohr, 1988),536Ð73.

47JŸrgen Habermas, ÒModernity ÐAn Incomplete Project,Ó in The

Anti-Aesthetic, ed. Hal Foster(Seattle: Bay Press, 1983), 8Ð9.

48Holmes, ÒArtistic Autonomy,Ó548.

49Andrea Fraser, ÒAutonomy andIts Contradictions,Ó Open 23(2012): 111.

50

Ibid., 107.

51The quotation is from BerardiÕsThe Soul at Work: From

Alienation to Autonomy , trans.Francesca Cadel and GuiseppinaMecchia (New York:Semiotext[e], 2009) 33.

52Services originated at theKunstraum der UniversitŠtLŸneburg and subsequentlytoured other art spaces.

53See for instance Haacke andFraserÕs obituaries of Bourdieuin October 101 (Summer 2002):4Ð11.

54Stakemeier, ÒArt as Capital,Ó 21.

55Helmut Draxler, lecture at ÒArtand Its Frames: Continuity andChange,Ó symposium at theKunstraum of LeuphanaUniversity LŸneburg, June 14,2014.

56August von Cieszkowski,

Prolegomena zur Historiosophie(1838) (Hamburg: Felix Meiner,1981), 150.

57Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason: Volume One,trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith(1960) (London: Verso, 2004),228Ð52 inter alia.

58Arnold Gehlen, Ò†ber die Geburtder Freiheit aus derEntfremdungÓ (1952), in Studien

zur Anthropologie und Soziologie(Munich: Luchterhand, 1963),232Ð46.

59Gerald Raunig, ÒInstituentPractices,Ó in Art andContemporary Critical Practice:Reinventing InstitutionalCritique, eds. Gerald Raunig andGene Ray (London: MayFly,2009), 11.

60ÒLanger Marsch durch dieInstitutionenÓ is a well-knownphrase in Germany; forDutschkeÕs original use, seeManfred Kittel, Langer Marschdurch die Institutionen? Politikund Kultur in Frankfurt nach1968 (Munich: Oldenbourg,

2011), 6. 61On the Council for Maintainingthe Occupation, see RenŽViŽnetÕs text from EnragŽs andSituationists in the OccupationsMovement (1968) athttp://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/enrages08.html

62AndrŽ Rottmann has focused onthe transformation of theinstitution from site intonetwork: ÒNetworks,Techniques, Institutions: ArtHistory in Open Circuits,Ó Texte

zur Kunst 81 (2011), 142Ð44. Hito

Steyerl writes about theÒintegration into precarityÓ in

ÒThe Institution of CritiqueÓ in Art and Contemporary CriticalPractice, 13Ð19.

63Fredric Jameson, ÒCulture andFinance Capital,Ó Critical Inquiry 24, no. 1 (Autumn 1997): 264,265.

64Armand Mattelart,ÒCommunication Ideology andClass PracticeÓ (Chile, 1971), in

Communication and ClassStruggle, Vol. 1: Capitalism,Imperialism, eds. ArmandMattelart and Seth Siegelaub(New York/Bagnolet:International General/IMMRC,1979), 116. Armand Mattelart,ÒIntroduction: For a Class andGroup Analysis of PopularCommunication Practices,Ó inCommunication and ClassStruggle, Vol. 2: Liberation,Socialism, eds. ArmandMattelart and Seth Siegelaub(New York/Bagnolet:International General/IMMRC,1979), 28

65

Crary, 24/7, 36.

66ÒMeaning and Perspective in theDigital Humanities: A WhitePaper for the Establishment of aCenter for Humanities andTechnologies,Ó eds. Sally Wyat(KNAW) and David Millen (IBM)https://www.knaw.nl/shared/resources/actueel/publicaties/pdf/meaning-and-perspectives-in-the-digital-humanities-white-paper-chat

67Matteo Pasquinelli, ÒCapitalThinks Too: The Idea of theCommon in the Age of Machine

Intelligence,Ó Open!, December11, 2015http://www.onlineopen.org/capital-thinks-too

68Sarah Amsler, ÒBeyond AllReason: Spaces of Hope in theStruggle for EnglandÕsUniversities,Ó Representations116 (Fall 2011): 80.

69Ibid., 68.

70Vidya Ashram, ÒThe GlobalAutonomous University,Ó in

Toward a Global AutonomousUniversity , ed. The Edu-factoryCollective (New York:Autonomedia, 2009), 166. Seealso Gerald Raunig, Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity , trans. Aileen Derieg(New York: Semiotext[e], 2013).

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