Paper short abstract:

Art in the last century has been premised upon the withdrawal of agency. Irresponsibility, failure and idiocy are central to art practice, and I would argue, also to anthropological practice. In this paper, I will argue for irresponsibility as a form of politics in art and also in Anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

One of the key questions in art in the last century has been the disavowal of agency. Art practices of sharing, delegating, or withdrawing authorship are at the foundation of modern and contemporary art practice. Chance and encounter, besides intention and expression, are central to artistic experimentation. The work process is emphasised over the final result, and failure is embraced. In this sense, artistic practice seems to run against notions of responsibility as the assumption of agency. But that does not imply a renounce to politics. On the opposite, these practices are political precisely because they question the ontological division of labour, so to speak, upon which notions of responsibility are premised, namely the bourgeois subject. The bourgeois subject is founded upon the responsibility of the good citizen, and its opposite would be the idiot, who does not assume its political duties. I would argue that idiotic practices of irresponsibility and failure are radically political precisely because they question this model.