Nice try at a non-bullshit rationale but I actually think it’s calibration of how much you can get away with as a measure of the hegemonic cultural power you have. The Emperor knows he is powerful when his courtiers pretend to believe in invisible new clothes.
Conversation
I like alt reading of the fable. Far from being a gullible fool, the emperor, like the child who calls him out, *knows* he has no clothes. He wants to see if either courtiers or public will dare call out his flagrant lie that he’s wearing invisible clothes. Trumpy loyalty test.
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ROFL this is perfect. Hans Christian Anderson backstory...
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The MFA program fiction thing I mentioned earlier in the thread. This but for any such field.
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Note that critique has its own issues. It’s basically “MFAs should listen to literature PhDs.” It suggests that the ahistorical no-context “innocence” posture adopted by postwar pomo MFA writing should bend a knee to academic-literary history/theory. A cure as bad as the disease.
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I think I’m a historicist-anarchist. Work in the context of a historical sensibility, but avoid being trapped by any *tradition* of history.
Anarchic historical sensibility > historical institutional tradition > ahistorical institutional tradition
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The “tradition” you situate your work in is simply the context created by everything you’ve chosen to consume, not things you were institutionally coerced to consume. Of course you can *choose* to borrow from traditions or entertain suggestions, but agency is yours.
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Traditions make good servants but poor masters. They’re like librarians. A librarian might occasionally make a good suggestion on what to read, but their main job is to help you find things related to what *you’ve* decided to read.
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If you let a tradition pwn you, producing vacuous works of satirical commentary with trollish “certificates of authenticity” is the least of your risks. The big risk is you’ll have no fun at all and wonder why the hell you’re going through motions larping artist or writer.
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Institutionalized art is *safe* like 1980s IBM
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM
Nobody ever got fired for writing MFA program fiction
Nobody ever got fired for making grant-art
Nobody ever got fired for writing Hugo/Nebula-intent sf
“Fired” in art = ostracized from a scene
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The larger idea I’m criticizing is the unspoken claim than the only available contexts to situate anything you do are institutional traditions. That without the imprimatur of a tradition not only is your work suspect/poor/vanity (which is fine), but that it exists in a vacuum.
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One reason I enjoy the wild internet as my context is that it’s actually richer than interior of any given tradition. If you don’t care about your access to traditions being officially sanctioned, you can access all the innards plus 10x stuff in the unincorporated interstices
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Anarchic cultural production principles
Deregulate institutionalized cultural production
Disregard cultural production sumptuary laws
Don’t pay cultural rents
Hold tastemakers accountable
Ignore gatekeepers
Stop treating vacuity like meta-art
Publish online first
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And use comic sans if you want
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What if... institutional art is screensavers for money? 🤔
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Have you seen the "You Tube Certified Master Mechanic" bumper/window sticker? Institutions rely on reputation over substance. Internet strips that away. Video is empirical evidence of action, copy cats/other posters verify if OP is legit.
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