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| Karley Sullivan. Split Image. 2013 |
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| Karley Sullivan. Split Image. 2013 |
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| Karley Sullivan. Split Image. 2013 |
Andrea Fraser. There's No Place Like Home
--"Art and art discourse have become increasingly focused on social and psychological functions and effects, as more and more artists, curators, and critics endeavor to escape the boundaries of the artistic and aesthetic and to reintegrate art and life, to serve social needs, to produce authentic emotional relationships, to embrace performativity, to liberate the spectator, to act in and on urban space, and to transform all manner of social, economic, and interpersonal structures. Art discourse no longer speaks of the social and psychological world as if it did not speak of it. It speaks of that world incessantly, especially in its economic aspects: financial and affective. And yet, it seems to me, to a very large extent, it speaks of that world so as not to speak of it, still, again, in forms that perform a negation in a Freudian sense quite specifically—and not only of the economic....
In addition to functioning as a mechanism of defense, Freud describes negation as central to the develop- ment of judgment, not only of good and bad qualities, but also of whether something that is thought exists in reality. Because what is bad, what is alien, and what is external are “to begin with, identical,” negation is a derivative of expulsion.14 Thus, one can say that what negation performs is a splitting off, externalization, or projection of some part of the self (or, perhaps, any relatively autonomous field) experienced as bad, alien, or external— distancing, above all, our active and affective link with it...
The most prevalent and in some ways effective defenses against the conflicts of the art field, however, may be various forms of detachment and displacement, splitting and projection...
Negation, for Freud, is not only a defensive maneuver. It is also a step in the direction of overcoming repression and reintegrating split-off ideas and affects; it is central to the development not only of judgment but also of thought. ""
