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The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities

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Doris Sommer

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“For there we sit surrounded by objects which enforce the memories of our own experience... But when the door shuts on us, all that vanishes. The shell-like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughness a central pearl of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. How beautiful a street is in winter!”

“In neoliberal society, the capitalist market is no longer imagined as a distinct arena where goods are valued and exchanged; rather, the market is, or ideally should be, the basis for all of society.” Politics is no longer primarily a negotiation of where the line between public and private falls (as in classical liberalism), for neoliberalism “works to erase this line between public and private and to create an entire society – in fact, an entire world – based on private, market competition. … Consequently, contemporary politics take shape around questions of how best to promote competition.”

“Neoliberal ideology, so accurate in discerning the factors that hinder or promote economic development, is mistaken in suggesting that the “downsizing” of the state—its withdrawal from “inappropriate” activities—is automatically and obviously associated with a promise of greater freedom for citizens. For it is not only through the exercise of inappropriate and incidental activities that the state oppresses people, but also — and above all — through those that are most essential and proper to it: taxation, policing, justice, and public education. And these, rather than retreating in the new neoliberal framework, tend instead to grow disproportionately. There are two reasons for this: first, it was precisely in order to expand them that the state withdrew from the economy; second, as it unloads its economic burden, the state seeks new roles for itself that justify its existence, and ends up meddling in all sectors of human life previously left to private discretion.”

“It's the nature of our specialty: nothing can be explained. One can only achieve understanding on one's own. You are a command, a part of the Speech of Creation. A load-bearing structure. I told you once you were a projection. Remember? Here it is: You are a projection of the Word that is destined to reverberate. And every day you get closer to the original. You are a foundation upon which an entire universe can be built. And this cannot be explained, Sasha, it can only be understood.”