In 2015, to celebrate The Writer and the People’s fiftieth anniversary, the publishing house Einaudi printed a new edition of the book, which included the late unreleased essay “Scrittori e Masse” (The Writer and the Masses). I mention this for the sake of completeness, since Asor Rosa’s late writings are not of much interest for this article. In “Scrittori e Masse” he declares, perhaps too hastily, the disappearance of “the people,” instead of undertaking a cultural and political investigation into what he calls “the masses.” With this latter term he seems to indicate a growing lack of cohesion within “the people”—a crumbling of the unity that paradoxically emerged from different regionalisms and localisms.
Alberto Asor Rosa, The Writer and The People (Seagull Books, 2016).
Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (Verso, 2005).
Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” October 110 (Fall 2004).
Marco Baravalle, “Curare e Governare. Bourriaud e Obrist, la svolta relazionale della curatela,” Opera Viva, December 19, 2016 →.
After 1985 Chantal Mouffe specified that the core of politics has to be found in the transformation of antagonism (a clash between enemies that could resolve itself in a hopeless clash of identities) into agonism, i.e. “struggle between adversaries.” Mouffe explains that “an adversary is an enemy, but a legitimate enemy, one with whom we have some common ground because we have a shared adhesion to the ethico-political principles of liberal democracy: liberty and equality“ Chantal Mouffe, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism,” Reihe Politikwissenschaft (Political Science Series), Christine Neuhold and Gertrud Hafner, eds., (Vienna: Department of Political Science, Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS), 2000)
Laclau, On Populist Reason, 81–82.
Sven Lütticken, “Social Media: Practices of (In)Visibility in Contemporary Art,” Afterall 40 (Autumn–Winter 2015); Ekaterina Degot, “The Artist As Director: Artist Organisation International and its Contradictions,” ibid.
See “ Statement by the Artistic Director and curatorial team of documenta 14,” e-flux conversations, September 2017 →.
Gregory Sholette, Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto Press, 2006).
Christian Marazzi, “La dislessia del manager,” in Il Comunismo del Capitale. Finanziarizzazione, biopolitiche del lavoro e crisi globale (Ombre Corte, 2010).