Welcome to a K3 seminar with Berndt Clavier and Asko Kauppinen, senior lecturers in English Studies, K3. It will be held on Wednesday, March 8, 10.15-12.00, in The Open Studio on the fifth floor of Niagara (Room NIC 0541).<\/p>\n
The title of the talk is On Veridiction: Metrologies of Art in the European Welfare State<\/em><\/p>\n Abstract for the talk:<\/p>\n In this paper, we elaborate on Foucault\u2019s term \u201cveridiction\u201d and explore how it illuminates the recent developments in the governance of the arts in European Welfare States. Veridiction is basically a calculus, which measures governmental intervention to ensure that the intervention is of the right kind and intensity. Since Foucault\u2019s analysis, the instruments of veridiction have evolved considerably. This development, we believe, warrants an analysis of its own. Borrowing the term \u201cmetrology\u201d from Latour, we hope to expand Foucault\u2019s analysis of veridiction in ways that illuminate contemporary neoliberal governmentality.<\/p>\n In Biopolitics, Foucault develops veridiction along two lines: the market (exchange) and the public authorities (utility), which together form the principal \u201cinterplay of interests\u201d in liberal and neoliberal governmentality (45). Further, the market becomes something like \u201cnature,\u201d a site and principle of veridiction (verification-falsification) of liberal governmental practice. Foucault talks about the process of veridiction developing in the 18th century involving \u201ca number of technicians who brought with them both methods and instruments of reflection\u201d (33), but he never elaborates on the details of these methods and instruments in Biopolitics. Instead, he traces liberal and neoliberal governmentality as a \u201cnumber of economic problems\u201d that are \u201cgiven a theoretical form;\u201d for instance, he delineates how the council brought together by Erhard in 1947 successively paved the way for the abolition of price-controls in Germany, or how the analysis of \u201chuman capital\u201d by Schultz and Becker produces the notion of the \u201centrepreneur of himself\u201d (33, 80ff, 226ff). Ultimately, Foucault\u2019s analysis develops a link between economic activity and political sovereignty that joins exchange and utility. This joint, we argue, is developed concretely in the instruments of veridiction. Understood as metrologies, such instruments constitute a critical but under-examined development of neoliberal governmentality. Our case will be the metrologies of art and culture in the European Welfare State.<\/p>\n In a Welfare State context, the governance of art and culture has been comparatively exempt from sustained references to the market, and thus from the processes of veridiction. However, recent decades have seen this situation change. In the 1960s and 1970s most European states formed Ministries of Culture and they quickly developed concrete forms of governmental intervention in the arts. At first the focus was on policy goals such as democratization and increased access to excellent art together with allocations of funds for these purposes. More recently, however, the focus has been on developing cultural policy into industrial policy, and into policies of sustainability and social cohesion. In this respect, the market is now undeniably an important site of veridiction for the governance of art and culture.<\/p>\n And here, precisely, we find the most heated contemporary debates about the arts and culture: what should act as the \u201cnature\u201d against which the right level and type of intervention is measured? Should the arts and culture be managed in the name of merit goods, such as shaping \u201creflective individuals,\u201d producing \u201cengaged citizens,\u201d helping \u201cpeace building and healing after armed conflict,\u201d creating \u201cvibrant urban life\u201d and improving \u201chealth and well-being\u201d? And if so, how is this calculated? Or should the arts belong more strictly to an economic calculus and be a feature of city development and the creative economy with trackable knowledge, industry and network spillovers such as \u201cfacilitating knowledge exchange and culture-led innovation,\u201d \u201cboosting innovation and digital technology,\u201d and \u201ccreating an attractive ecosystem and creative milieu for city branding and place making\u201d?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Welcome to a K3 seminar with Berndt Clavier and Asko Kauppinen, senior lecturers in English Studies, K3. It will be held on Wednesday, March 8, 10.15-12.00, in The Open Studio on the fifth floor of Niagara (Room NIC 0541). The … Continue reading