“We undertook a certain process we didn’t really understand, but it was tremendously important” ~ Bezalel1.
This article provides a long glance at the resonance in Israeli art of a 1977 student uprising. The uprising is a microcosm of postmodernism itself and continues to echo through the Israeli art scene. It occurred in the context of Western student uprisings in the previous decade and contemporary Arab/Muslim student uprisings in the region. Disaffected by the creeping managerialism in Israeli education at that time the staff and students created subversive art and attempted to take control of the institution against the powers of bureaucracy and government. They did this to the backdrop of the moral collapse of Israeli society following the Yom Kippur War, which saw the Likudniks come to power and permanently weakened the Labor Mapai Party as well as foreshadowed the demise of the Zionist and Socialisti Zionist Labour Kibbutz movement. The (Labor?) Zionist belief project suffered a crisis of legitimacy. Many of the students were radicalised by the War which shattered their belief systems. This can be seen in identity and culture as a major convulsion symptomatic of the postmodern ascension following the collapse of the USSR in later decades. It parallels the rise of neoliberal culture. The revolt represents an explosion of postmodern pointlessness and the art of fighting back against an undefined meaninglessness as well as establishing an anti-culture (see the identity stunts of Klezmer and Kuppermintz)2. Parallels:
Loss of control: (the search for autonomy and self-directed learning)
Loss of identity: (the end of the Zionist myth and creation of deviant art/counterculture)
End of (culture) narratives: (the end of a soft-communistic-kibbutz Israel)
Profound void: (senseless violence)
The chauvinist right: (Likud, ethnic chauvinism, neoliberalism and the rationalisation of the academy)
New Left: (as an identity-politics, libertarian anarcho movement from below replacing the Democratic Socialist hegemony)
The rise of identity politics in education features heavily in the course. For the interplay of culture in, education and culture externally see Wadham et al3. For the yearning to fill a postmodern God-Marx-truth-are-dead narrative void see Gewirtz and her fruitless attempts to recreate a social justice myth4. Gewirtz may also have nodded wisely at injured people, well looked after by the state still asserting themselves to receive power over their own destinies rather than receive goods complacently. To see how social oppression and education are potentially explosively interlocking see Apple5. How it all intertwines is fairly self-evident. A cultural crisis created a crisis in education where people tried to assert basics of human dignity against a state machine, but also against their own dying culture. Ultimately new identities had to be created, they did echo through wider culture but they could not bring down neoliberalism.
Long live the Meretz revolution. Without giving people control over their own educations and while brutalising young people the old belief systems and future of neoliberalism can’t really work, without becoming forced. These former students will continue to educate culture and create new identities for themselves.
1. Shany Littman, “We had to derail the train': Memories from the Student Rebellion in Jerusalem's Fine Arts Academy,” Haaretz, September 18, 2013, http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/high-holy-days-2013/high-holy-day-news-and-features/.premium-1.547737#.
2. Ibid.
3.
Pudsey,
Boyd and Wadham, “Culture and Education in a Global World,” in Culture and Education, ed Wadham,
Pudsey, Boyd (Frenchs Forest: Pearson, 2007).
4.
Gewirtz, S.
(1998). Conceptualizing social justice in education: mapping the territory.
Journal of Education Policy, 13(4), 469-484. doi: 10.1080/0268093980130402.
5.
M. W. Apple, Cultural Politics and Education, (New York: Teachers College,
1996).
For
an article on the effect of the War on young Israelis see:
No comments:
Post a Comment