Hi Alan,
I agree that Claire Bishop has made important contributions to scholarship and
discussion in this domain, not least in the thorny question of the specator’s
position in participatory practice. I think the lively discussions on the list
is testimony to the value of her work. However we would be doing Bishop a
disservice if her work was simply taken at face value. My interest in engaging
with her work was not based on critiquing her work for failing to deliver of
some totalising vision. Ommissions are an essental part of any theorisation. In
Bishop’s case I think that the ommissions are particularly instructive. My
interested was in seeing whether something might be learned from the highly
spescific constellation of practices she sidestepped. It led me to wonder
whether Bishop’s work ultimately follows the logic of the social turn by
seeking to shake the institutional status quo to its foundations. And I
concluded that (taken in the round) she does not. I wold go further and argue
that (under the guise of radical critique) she uses rhetorical analysis and
scholarship to lend institutional power tacit support. We might aply the age
old litmus test to Bishop’s work by asking to what extent it succeeds in
comforting the aflicted whilst afllicting the comfortable.
Best David
-----------------------------------------------
d a v i d g a r c i a
d.gar...@new-tactical-research.co.uk
http://new-tactical-research.co.uk
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