Authentic Function of Intellectuals: Anti-Americanism & Anti-Capitalism

The role of the artist and intellectual in twentieth-century politically convulsed Europe was ambiguous and altogether disagreeable. The source of this dispute is deeply rooted in moral and ethical grounds and, in order to offer a more refreshing view on it, the sociological dialectics of Niklas Luhmann will be exposed. Nevertheless, first we shall consider the philosophical state of the author’s writing context: Postmodernism, and more specifically, poststructuralism.

By the time Luhmann ponders about the meaning of interaction, or better said, the meaning as solely given by interaction, Michel Foucault has already published The Order of the things (Pantheon Books, 1970). In it, the French philosopher dissects the history of knowledge from the Renaissance to his time into individual cases of episteme, a term rather troublesome to apply. It refers to the epistemic order through which the scope of arguments, methods and speculations during a specific period of time are configured. Yet we will not engage in a complex examination of the thesis of that book, for the relevance of such is exactly what it suggests us about contemporary thought: that it is subordinate to the quest for abstract and underlying elements that resolve the meaning of events and images prima facie1. Derrida has spoken up on deconstructivist theories, Judith Butler will soon pronounce herself on the subject of the materiality of the bodies (Bodies that matter, Routledge, 1993). And, within that philosophical framework Luhman develops his theory of systems.

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Later on, in a posthumous book titled Art as a social system, Postmodern German sociologist Niklas Luhmann approaches to the nature of the issue pointed out in the first lines of this essay by tooling his Systems theory. As per it he contemplates artistic production as an autonomous Social system, that emerges upon a constitutive paradox founded on the principle of its very ascetic nature and thus, that is brought to existence by dint of difference. In other words, what makes art art is precisely the acknowledgment of such as itself and in contrast to other autopoietic systems, such as Political systems, Social systems and so forth. By no means does this imply them being hermetically independent but rather as observants of every other. Accordingly, interaction, and more accurately, communication rises as the funding principle of the many possibilities of meaning; for sheer meaning is only to be primarily found in the individual’s consciousness and, the moment it permeates language it becomes subjected to its misrepresentations and deceiving forms. Put differently: “humans cannot communicate; not even their brains can communicate; not even their conscious minds can communicate. Only communication can communicate.”2 Human communication operates within a network in which each system bears a function. For instance, the function of politics would be defined as: that which is constructed on the basis of the organization of the individuals in order to achieve social harmony. Art on the other hand “uses perceptions and, by doing so, seizes consciousness at the level of its own externalizing activity. The function of art would thus consist in integrating what is in principle incommunicable namely, perception— into the communication network”. Therefore, the purpose of the artistic quest, as regarded in terms of Social systems by Luhmann, is to apprehend the cognitive juncture between the acquainted intellect and primary source of external information- which will then be subdued to processing. 3

Henceforth, bearing in mind the contents of the previous paragraph, what would be the role of contemporary artists or intellectuals if suitable for them to have one? One interpretation would be denoting a legitimate position certainly dispatched from morality, principles or collective responsibility compromising their work; for that would circumscribe their processes of creation to the respective lexicon in both time and space hence exclude sundry contemplative lanes.

Albeit, a very concrete inconvenience arises from the latter assertion. An artist is an intellectual notwithstanding vice versa. If with creative production we were to refer to essayistic texts that were to directly address morality... would it still be steady ground to stand on the idea that it should not be condemned to their social effects? If the value of life and human rights was to be subjected to relativization on behalf of stark aesthetic judgements, whose authenticity would be legitimate? And what kind of realpolitik would arise from its social effect? For contemporary crowds it does not appear to be a first-order issue, however and in order to understand the complexity of the undertaking