I won’t take a position on the issue at hand - whether gender roles existed or not at said period.

But there is quite a tension in your presentation of your view. On the one hand you stress the importance of having a critical disposition, yet on the other, you seem unwilling to even imagine the possibility that your views on gender relations is wrong.

To be critical - I would have thought - is precisely to hold this possibility in mind while presenting one’s positive view. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have a positive view - but it does mean that the process of critical discussion should present the arguments for the opposing point of view - and show why they are wrong.

This is something you leave out in your presentation above. You state the view you wish to argue against - and you give your positive reasons for thinking it false. But what you don’t do is state the positive arguments for the opposing view - nor do you show why such arguments are unsound.

As such your presentation lacks generosity to the opposing view - making you seem like the dogmatic one! Of course, since I know you personally, I know this isn’t the case. But I’m speaking to your presentation in this entry.

Actually - on the issue of gender roles - I find it hard to believe that the lecturer stated the position so straightforwardly. I did some searching among academic journals - and the most cited paper that I found (over 300 citations) was the following:

# Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Job Segregation by Sex
# Heidi Hartmann
# Signs, Vol. 1, No. 3, Women and the Workplace: The Implications of Occupational Segregation (Spring, 1976), pp. 137-169 (article consists of 33 pages)

And it argues that not only did gender roles (and hierarchies) exist prior to the advent of capitalism, but that this fact is important in explaining the continuance of patriarchal gender roles in modern capitalistic society.

I just find it hard to believe that the lecturer would have been ignorant of one of the most cited papers in her field. And what’s more that it she was aware - that the arguments for this opposing point of view weren’t put forward to the students.

If she did fail in this respect - then sure - it’s negligent. But this isn’t any reason to dismiss academia as a whole as being incapable of genuinely critical thought. The fact that there are 300 citations of a work of the opposing view suggests that there is active discussion and engagement in the academic community.

Now - I want to address what you say about genuinely subversive art. Hopefully you are up for some criticism in this respect.

As you well know, I genuinely admire your work - and have often commented as such and have made suggestions… etc

But what I want to question is whether it is as genuinely subversive as you claim.

I want to suggest two criteria for genuinely subversive work. It has to:

1) Critique, undermine - or at the very least - examine honestly the dominant cultural institutions and attitudes of the day.

2) It must be situated culturally in such a way as to make a genuine impact - it must be something that people are capable of engaging with.

Now - I would submit that your work meets the first criterion but not the second.

No doubt the second criterion will be considered controversial - so allow me to argue for it briefly.

Imagine an artist who creates a brilliant piece of subversive art. So brilliant that if people saw it - it would revolutionize the way they view the world. But for some reason or another the artist refuses to display it. I would submit that the artist has failed to act in a genuinely subversive way - because he doesn’t have to courage to unleash his creation on the world.

For this reason - you can’t divorce the subversive artwork from the ACT of subversion. An artwork is subversive only if it is something which the artist forces on the world - so to speak. It has to reach people in order to do its subversive work. Keeping it locked in the basement - then renders it impotent.

Now - you might reply - how can this apply to you? After all - you have a website - you exhibit. Surely you cannot be accused of locking yourself in the basement?

So let’s change the example a little. Let’s consider the case where the author has hung the artwork in a gallery - where there is nothing physically stopping people from seeing the work. But say - he fills the room with such a pungent and horrible odour that no one wants to go in? As such the artwork still doesn’t get seen - not because people are physically barred (they could still go in if they held their nose) - they just aren’t sufficiently interested enough to withstand the discomfort.

Surely in such a case we would still think the onus is on this artist to remove the smell. After all - why should we expect the viewer to persevere through the smell, especially when they have no idea of what the reward might be?

Again - you might reply, this has little to do with you, since you aren’t erecting great smells around your work. And surely this would be a poor argument if this is what I meant. I’m leading you to a point here - so please bear with me.

But consider if it wasn’t an odour or something external to the art which was deterring people from looking at the work - suppose it was something about the artwork itself. One can imagine that the work itself was smeared with excrement - something so vile that no one would want to approach the work to look at it. Again - our intuitions seem to suggest that the onus is on the artist to remove the impediment.

Finally - what if it is something conceptual about the work itself that is so off putting? No doubt you’ll disagree at this point. But my intuitions suggest to me that the onus is still on the artist to remove the impediment. If they don’t remove this impediment - the audience will never connect with it - and it will never influence anyone. As such, I maintain, it cannot be genuinely subversive.

I understand this won’t be agreed by everyone. The counter-argument will be - I imagine - that sometimes the offensive conceptual element is integral to the work itself. To remove that element is to destroy what is integral to the artistic expression.

And actually - this is not something I deny. I don’t deny that the artwork would be fundamentally changed by such a compromise. All I’m saying is that if the compromise is not made - it is not genuinely subversive, because no exchange of ideas ever actually takes place between artist and viewer.

This means that the most subversive work is not necessarily ever the most extreme. It is usually the more cunning works that get welcomed into the gates like a trojan horse - only to set fire and to burn once inside and everyone is asleep and comfortable. The most subversive art presents itself in its outward appearance as an amiable gift to humanity - and yet contains within itself, in layers of subtlety and skill, all the paradoxes of the age.

But if I’m right - how could any exchange ever happen such that the viewer ever receives a new idea? If the artwork is something that challenges a person - won’t they always just ignore it? Doesn’t this view mean that there is never any possibility of exchange?

I don’t believe so - I believe that most people to have a range of tolerance, a grey area of interpretation which allows them to engage critically with things they don’t necessarily agree with off the bat. This range of tolerance is obviously variable in different people - some have a greater range than others, and many ranges are mutally exclusive (which makes it impossible to pitch a work to everyone).

As such, I see the trick to generating truly subversive art is to pitch it at the range of tolerance of a set of people that don’t already agree with the point of view in question.

It’s my view that your art is perhaps lacking in this respect. Much of the feedback I get when I show it to people - while they admire the obvious talent - they are so offput that they don’t engage with the material at all. It is of course well received within your peer group - but that of course is to be expected since they largely share your values.

Obviously - I’m selecting from a very small sample of people so this assessment could be wrong. But I think there is other evidence that can be cited. Two things come to mind - one is your own admission that you don’t wish to compromise. This betrays that you already understand the kind of reaction much of your work is likely to generate. Secondly, the difficulty I have personally found in trying to market your work across the internet.

That you frame your art as you do is a personal artistic choice - that I wouldn’t expect you to change on account of my criticism. And hopefully you accept the criticism in the generous spirit in which it was offered.

If I haven’t succeeded in making you think about it - even just a little bit - then no doubt the fault is mine. I will go back to the drawing board to see if I can’t package it as a more amiable gift.

Dan- you raise some very good points. I’ll admit my critique of academic culture was ill-planned and hot-headed, being written as soon as I got home. I still think my arguments concerning gender roles are valid, and as you rightly say yourself, you don’t have to look far for proof. As I said in my disclaimer, I’m not attacking all academics. I respect them for the most part, which is why strange claims like the one I heard come as such a shock to me.

Don’t take my issues with one lecturer as a personal attack on you (or universities in general). I’ve always been proud to support academics through the income tax I pay, and the work they’ve done in their various fields has enriched my life considerably.

As to what you say on art - wise words don’t need amiable packaging, at least as far as I’m concerned. Most other people think differently, though, and to make my work more accessible I might need to tone it down. I’ve been thinking about new styles a lot, and a Russian novel I recently read (thanks to uni friends again!) has been a great source of inspiration. One line in particular grabbed me: “Laughter is the most devastating weapon of all.” It may be time to employ it more often - humour’s a language we all understand.

Don’t worry, I’m not deaf to advice, and even a stubborn git like myself can only hear “technically brilliant, but I wouldn’t want it on my walls” so many times before taking note. As I’ve hinted on the site, my cartoons have a much wider appeal than my darker images - you’re likely to see more of them.

It’s kind of ironic - after all artists are meant to be the sensitive souls. As a final note to all viewers, I’m sorry I haven’t put much up of late - besides working full time again, I’m honing my skills on Flash Animation.

Until next time,

JF

I should have qualified my statement - of course - that I feel this criticism applies only to some of your art. Your cartoons, the best of which you still haven’t put up I think are incredibly subversive, but precisely because I think they have a real potential to have an impact, to make people think.

Manipulation, for example - I think most people will disagree with me and say that it’s highly subversive. But I just don’t see many christians looking at it and saying - yeah… I AM a puppet. The image is incredibly powerful and arresting - but it has no chance of really getting under the skin of the religious to make them question their beliefs. They might get outraged by it… and go on the nightly news decrying you for it, and bringing you all the reactionary attention an artist could ever dream. But they won’t ever engage with it.

Being subversive isn’t the be all and end of all of artistic expression either. As I said - manipulation is incredibly powerful. It’s also necessary - it’s something that needed to be said, in the way that you said it. The christians won’t get it - but that’s their loss. We minority atheists and agnostics need it - perhaps as some small comfort for the endless madness that is religion.