A little bit of Foucault repeating

Comedy may very well always act as a catalyst for social change but as the song says it nothing but a little bit of history repeating. Nothing truly new will come of any given performance, the current performance may only replace the traditional performance, but again, this is nothing new. Dario Fo may have done well to use comedy to subvert and dispel cosmic terror as he saw fit and the outcome for many audience members may very well have been a more agreeable and even peaceful perspective of God. However, any such performance is merely the exercise of Fo’s power as performer to challenge the power of the traditional persuasion. The question is posed: does this not constitute social change and has not comedy been the catalyst of that supposed change? Well to both parts of the question I suppose the answer is yes and no. The ocean is both changing and unchanging. Waves keep the form of water evanescent while and tides constantly rise and fall all the while our oceans remain constantly wet and blue our ocean is unchangingly changing.

Fo’s art is another wave in the sea of social history all the while society remains subject to the structure of coercion and power that it has always been subject to. The structure that allows the church to disseminate what Fo called cosmic terror is the same structure that allowed him to perform and perpetuate his comedy. Power, coercion, oppression and liberation, even goodness and evil all constitute the structure that does give opportunity to the church, performers, and any other entity lucky, talented, or aggressive enough to seize that opportunity. Each characteristic of the structure is empty until it is filled with a particular ideology. I think of the structure as a suit of armor empty until someone with ideas and intentions fills that suit and uses that suit as their vehicle or “catalyst” to do things as they would see things done.

At the end of Beverly Long’s article “A Distance Art” she offers Morris Weitz’s reservations concerning a theory of art. Weitz insists art theory is doomed to failure because theory attempts the impossible task of “factually or logically defining” art and any example of art is merely an ephemeral manifestation of a continually progressive genre.

Perhaps he is right. One cannot finally and conclusively identify the boundaries of those examples of expression that we call art, indeed the possibility of what may in time be called art is endless and thus unpredictable. But the word “art” remains and retains meaning; and one would have a tough time convincing me that a thing has meaning to us symbol using creatures without defining, factual, and logically identifiable attributes.

Weitz even admits that he “can list some conditions under which I can apply correctly the concept of art”. Would those applicable concepts not be the substance of a theory of art? Would not the transient nature of art be a principal in the system of ideas that constitute a theory of art? One may say that any concept or another is impossible to define but as soon as they give reason for their assertion have they not contradicted themselves? Art is indefinable because art is [by definition] transitory. God is ineffable and utterly magnificent. You don’t know me I’m unique (just like that other guy). You shut up when you’re talking to me!! (ok that last one doesn’t actually apply, it’s just funny).

Art theory is absolutely not absolute because art is certainly never certain. My position is able to be closed because it does not fall in the parameters of that which constitutes art, parameters which exist not at all (because art is after all open). Furthermore, a description of art does not count even as art theory, which is a task “doomed to failure”, and to develop art theory is just silly. My point is not contrary to Morris Weitz’s, I’ve only said it another way.