Introduction: Labor, (Workers’) Autonomy, (Art) Work

Oxford Art Journal, 1996

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Anthropology & Materialism, 2019

Preface and Introduction from The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics & Cultural Labor After the Avant-Garde Stevphen Shukaitis How does the avant-garde create spaces in everyday life that subvert regimes of economic and political control? How do art, aesthetics and activism inform one another? And how do strategic spaces of creativity become the basis for new forms of production and governance? The Composition of Movements to Come reconsiders the history and the practices of the avant-garde, from the Situationists to the Art Strike, revolutionary Constructivism to Laibach and Neue Slowenische Kunst, through an autonomist Marxist framework. Moving the framework beyond an overly narrow class analysis, the book explores broader questions of the changing nature of cultural labor and forms of resistance around this labor. It examines a doubly articulated process of refusal: the refusal of separating art from daily life and the re-fusing of these antagonistic energies by capitalist production and governance. This relationship opens up a new terrain for strategic thought in relation to everyday politics, where the history of the avant-garde is no longer separated from broader questions of political economy or movement, but becomes a point around which to reorient these considerations. “With The Composition of Movements to Come Stevphen Shukaitis does again what he has been doing as an author and editor for years: pushing the boundaries of intellectual and activist thought on the Left. By insisting that culture be understood strategically, rather than merely employed tactically, Shukaitis has unlocked the secret of an affective and effective artistic activism for our times. Brilliant and useful.” – Stephen Duncombe, New York University; Co-Director, Center for Artistic Activism “Stevphen Shukaitis has produced an exposition on the strategic – as opposed to purely tactical – possibilities immanent within the post-war avant-garde that is as beautiful as the chance meeting of Autonomous Marxism and the Situationist International on the dissecting-table of critical theory.” – Gregory Sholette, Queens College Art Department, City University of New York “Can strategy emerge from out of the diverse, fragmentary and temporary tactics of contemporary social movements? In this important book, which offers telling historical perspectives and is at the same time forged in the practice of political opposition, Stevphen Shukaitis offers a sustained argument that it can, and that it should.” – Julian Stallabrass, Courtauld Institute of Art “I was convinced it was impossible to say something new about politics and the avant-garde, and I really enjoyed being proved wrong in so many different ways.” – David Graeber, London School of Economics Published by Rowman & Littlefield International: http://www.rowmaninternational.com/books/the-composition-of-movements-to-come

ARS [Journal of the Institute for the History of Art of the Slovak Academy of Sciences] (2-3/1994). Acts of the International Conference “Totalitarianism and Traditions,” Bratislava and Smolenice. October 25-27, 1993, 147-154.

Rethinking Marxism, 2009

Third Text, 2019

BRILL eBooks, 2017

2012