[iDC] Praxis-based Ph.D.s OR IN OTHER WORDS IF WE DON'T CHANGE IT THEY WILL

[saul ostrow]

Looking  for a Future
  In recognition that the nature of art, culture and society has  
significantly changed in the last 50 years we have to face that   
change for the good or what so the bad is inevitable.  We can not  
dismiss these changes as either just a question of fashion, or  
technological mutation – for what has actually changed is  not our  
modes of expression but our self-perception - we no longer view  
ourselves in the context of Modernism as agents of change, but  
individuals struggl ing to control our own subjectivity.   As  
constructs and assemblages, we are no longer who we thought we were  
going to be.  Obviously such changes do not take place all at once  
and therefore contradictions and inconsistencies mark such changes.   
Due to this fact our expectations, understanding, and conception of  
the new are always already informed by old habits. – what we wish for  
is always just the beginning.   In the present case our habits of  
thought revolve around a modernist heritage characterized by  
historicity,  negation, and a notion of progress which promised to  
exclude or supercede all that came before.  Yet, we seem to have  
abandoned this model and in the  process have realized that it is not  
always form or content that must be rejected, but the very logic by  
which we have come to understand these.  Consequently, we need not  
announce the end or death of our cultural traditions to accept that  
these are always indeterminate in their development, incomplete in  
their conception and are  subject to judgment, revision and the  
unexpected.  Given the nature of our present situation which is  
characterized by an interconnectivity of disciplines and fluid  
practices, a  Graduate Studies Program cannot be ordered along the  
lines of the old Beaux Art or Bauhaus model, nor even that of a vague  
commitment to the detached principles of the past.  Any such  
reformulation of how best to educate and train those who would be  
intell ectuals and cultural producers turns on among other things,  
the setting aside of habits, conducts, customs and traditions that no  
longer are capable of being expressive accept in a predictable and  
customary manner.  The solution to this on the other hand is not  
merely choosing  some readymade other, or fighting to preserve what  
we already have.

   It is therefore perhaps fair to claim that within this
   context,  what was and still is the task ahead consists of  
occupying a position that is not premised on  fighting rear-guard  
actions by attempting to revise old forms but  by occupying new  
positions that reflect a new  understanding of the contradictions we  
face.  Such positions may range from a subtle dynamic of  
substitution, to those that are perceived as crudely and brutally  
disruptive of those practices of which  we have fond memories in   
that they gave birth to us as we are now.  Yet, reform, revision,  
and  transformation  do not exclude one another – in that  reordering  
is a process and as such requires flexibility, imagination and an  
ability to rethink problems in the face of the opportunities they  
bring to us.   The benefit is not always to the other. This requires  
that we recognize that to maintain the validity of our respective  
tradition s commit ourselves to sustaining them.  in substance and  
not necessarily in form. A history of a Principal contradiction   
While participating in a conference in  Glasgow 2004,

I heard Slavoj Zizek give a talk on the Real. He used this as an  
opportunity to take to  to task those who think multiplicity – a  
thinly disguised version of the old pluralism is a solution to all  
our problems – that mutual respect of difference is enough to advance  
our goals of equality based on difference rather than similarity.  He  
rejected this position – in that not all difference are resolvable in  
this manner and that in those situations the momentary status quo it  
produces is actually a period in which the most virulent aspects of  
our society gnaw away at those territories that are willing to abide  
by the terms of this truce.  Zizek point was what might appear to be  
a solution to one problem it is not necessarily a solution to all  
such problems – because problems differ both qualitatively and  
quantitatively – race, gender, cultural differences are quantitative  
– class is qualitative to solve the former is not to resolve the  
inherent conflicts of the latter.  For us involved in intellectual   
and cultural endeavors a fundamental conflict is that the totalizing  
and functionalist logic of variation and repetition of the market  
place is incompatible with creativity – commodity culture settles for  
problem solving – rather than problem making.  Obviously, this  
conflict is also  now at the center of  education  which is ever  
increasingly is pressured to adapt itself to being in the business of  
marketing information and fulfilling consumer(students) demands.

      The situation As such the blurring of boundaries and the merger  
of categories and practices that we hear so much about should not be  
perceived of as representing the disappearance of disciplines, or a  
leveling of socially established hierarchies of values and standards,  
it actually represents just the opposite in that we have not only  
come to accept that one discipline augments and supplements another  
so as to be kept them robust, but how vulnerable a discipline is to  
those logics/ ideologies that circumscribe it – consequently, the  
blur is the effect of a break with the logic of autonomy, which had  
at first represented a break with the past and then increasing became  
a source of isolation and regularity.

  In the case of our society their remains a contradiction between  
our cultural values and those of the economy – these have made  
culture a contested terrain Those who promote that the differences  
between high and low, critical and commercial culture are  
disappearing in actuality are deluding themselves – if these  
differing areas are being merged it is under the banner of making art  
functional – as if it already isn’t.  The real question do we believe  
that purpose of the arts is to propose critical models capab le of  
resisting the instrumentality of positivism and pragmatism of  
industry or are we to become an integral component of the culture  
industry in which our own products will be determined by what the  
market will support.  So, the structural questions that need to be  
asked in developing a Graduate Studies Program must focus on what  
part of the residual traditions of training cultural produces still  
works, how might these be paired with those that have emerged in the  
last 50 years?  – It seems to me that it c ontinues to be in our  
interest as a society to sustain the creative tension the distinction  
between commercial and critical culture generates – I believe that  
any program committed to educating artist at this time must be one  
capable of producing students  committed to critical rather than  
functional ends.