Mladen Bizumic- Global truths vs. Local reflections

Who speaks? What speaks?

Who speaks? What speaks? The question is implied and the function named, but the individual never reigns, and the subject slips away without neutralizing its voice. S/he who speaks, speaks to the tale as S/he begins telling it and retelling it. S/he does not speak about it. For without a certain work of displacement, ‘speaking about’ only partakes in the conservation of systems of binary opposition (subject/ object I/ it, we/ they) on which territorialized knowledge depends
(Minh-ha 327).

In the quote above from the essay “Cotton and Iron”, film-maker and feminist theorist Trinh Min-ha foregrounds the dilemma of cultural representation. In this piece of writing, I will consider two ways in which the politics of representation might be evidenced and navigated in artistic practice.

Trinh Minh-ha poignantly articulates two fundamental issues within the philosophy of language. Min-ha presents firstly the inherent dissonance between the speech act and the subject speaking. Secondly, she highlights the implicated relationship that exists between speech and subject.
Here the subject (speaking or representing) is presented in a double bind of never being able to fully communicate embodied experience, while also being unable to fully displace themselves as subjects from the speech act itself.

This dilemma of representation poses challenges for any individual or practice engaging in communication. In an interview with artist Amal Kenway, Kunsthalle Wien director Gerald Matt queries how representational issues might be navigated amid “...tendencies towards generalization or geographical standardizations...” (Matt 137). Kenway notes:

I make a point however of presenting something contrary to what is expected, contrary to clichés. I do so by focusing my work on a subjective level, by producing art that looks at the intimate. I believe this is an effective way of changing existing perceptions and misconceptions (138).

Here, Kenway presents a concentrated focus on the subjective and intimate as two ways of subverting generalisation and determinism. Employed as strategies within art production and everyday communication, the subjective and intimate lend agency to marginalised representation.


Matt, Gerald. “Amal Kenawy.” Interviews 2. Vienna: Kunstalle Wein, 2008. 134-144. Print.

Minh-ha, Trinh. “Cotton and Iron.” Out there: marginalization and contemporary cultures. Ed. Ferguson, Russell and Martha Gever. New York:The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1992. 327-336. Print.

Contemp(t)orary: Part 1

Contemp(t)orary: Part 2

Allegory and Anthropology

Michael Taussig’s study “The Language of Flowers” is positioned in the discursive context of Medical Anthropology. Taussig evidences the logical schemes of analysis of this academic discipline. At he same time however, Taussig deviates and subverts anthropological convention through his use of content, and form of writing.

Taussig prefaces his essay “History as Sorcery” with a quotation of Walter Benjamin:
Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things (87).

What strikes me here is Taussig’s validation of allegory within anthropological study. Here allegorical representation; the figurative; the symbolic; the emblem, seems to be framed as a fertile and legitimate method of mapping socially and culturally embedded structures. In his study “The Language of Flowers” Taussig draws on peripheral narratives such as The Flower Vase Cut, the Mandrake, and the Acéphale. These narratives are proposed as critical vantage points on Western socially and culturally bound understandings, of violence, humour and art.

Taussig validation of the allegorical is also reflected in the forms of writing he employs. In “The Language of Flowers” Taussig uses juxtaposition, metaphor, pop culture references and self-effacement. These forms are used in such a way as to tentatively claim “I do not understand this. Perhaps I am not meant to. But what I do know…”forms an intellectual montage (191). Subsequently, while engaging in high level Anthropological research Taussig’s writing denies cohesive interpretation and meaning making.

Lastly, as a creative practitioner Taussig’s citation of artists such as Juan Manul Echavarria and George Bataille is enlivening. Taussig’s engagement with their cultural production legitimates their often peripheral work as anthropologically relevant to the academic discourse.

Taussig, Michael. “History as Sorcery.” Representations 7 (1984): 87-109. Web

Taussig, Michael. “The Language of Flowers.” Walter Benjamin’s Grave. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2006. 189-218. Print