The Work of Culture

The arts and culture industry, as an institutional space of cultural management and education (museums, theaters, neighborhood cultural centers, art shows, etc.), is in grave danger today as austerity measures drastically reduce, if not eliminate, the public subsidiaries that fund the sector’s activities while taxes are raised in an attempt to generate revenue from the arts. Locally, regionally, and nationally, the government must prioritize spending, the argument goes, to meet the basic needs of citizens in times of crisis, whether in healthcare, education, housing, or other fiscal categories where spending is more justified. This argument seems to preclude refutation, were it not fallacious from the outset: for, the question is not how one could possibly view an exhibition as a more responsible expense than healthcare coverage—neither of which is mutually exclusive, I would add, and neither of which represents the Spanish government’s primary concern to dismantle the remnants of the Welfare State under the guise of “saving the Euro”—but rather, if the very priorities of government spending on the private sector and military constitute, in fact, responsible reasoning.

What lies behind the logic that views the arts and culture sector as a frivolous expense for the State? It is well known that the culture industry, understood as an “official” realm of institutional activities, ranks low, if not last, in the neoliberal prioritization of public spending. Culture is viewed as a frivolity that does not bear utility for the necessary functioning of society. This circumstance is not unique to Spain, or even Europe. Recast within consumerist logic, the culture industries (in which I include film) have had to survive for some time now, against the neoliberal perception that reduces it to a static—and, paradoxically, subjective—utility, regarded valuable only for the mere pleasure (superfluous “gains”) for a subject who “consumes” a cultural object or event. And, again paradoxically, the culture industries have had to survive by subscribing to the same logic, in the case of museums, cinemas, and art fairs, among others, increasingly so through revenue generated by ticket sales--the product of which often eclipses critical thought in favor of what the public is most willing to pay to see.

The reductive assumption of neoliberal thought furthermore negates the collective and more crucial role of culture for its potential to critique the complex, shifting forces (economic, social, historical, etc.) that produce it. Stated in economic terms, the “work of culture” lays bare a critique of its own sociopolitical and historical circumstance—a critique which is vital to questioning our present reality and the very possibility of imagining plural alternatives which proves a necessary task today. To deny the “work of culture” as intellectual work is, effectually, not only to imagine a society without cinema, literature, the arts, but without a plurality of voices from which to critique the present circumstance. Let’s say, in synonymous terms, it is to imagine a society in which politics goes unreported by the news media. 

However, what remains to be explained amidst the lack of transparency about the Spanish government’s austerity measures, is what, chillingly, already seems evident: that public spending itself—on education, healthcare, etc.—has been consigned, along with culture, to the same category of superfluous expenses.

From this sense of urgency, I have decided to write again on my blog (NB returning readers will note that former entries have been archived), with matters on culture, politics, and society in contemporary Spain. Many thanks for reading and, as always, comments are much welcomed.