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Parrhesiastes/researcher and his opponent the conservator/curator As we have seen, the position of the researcher in the society of communication is in conflict with the fascination with for the mediatic present characteristic of the political economy of the industrialization of symbolic goods. In reality, to carry out the operations of covering up and distortion characteristic of communication, the figure of the cultural mediator is much more interesting; its specific relation with the truth is sustained on an exaggerated transfer of legitimation between technology and presentation. In contrast with research requiring time, the cultural mediator seeks to constantly generate events created for the media, the content of which is endowed with an ambiguity that enables the linguistic reductionism that manipulates the semantic transference between different concepts, at the same time as it diminishes the distance between truth and likelihood, knowledge and spectacle, making the appreciation of the true and the taste for knowing, so necessary and scarce in this society of knowledge increasingly more difficult. The truth games in the relation of the art historian with the conducts, relations with others and the procedures used to transmit knowledge to society are influenced by compulsion to bring reality up to date. The context of superficiality in which the ‘media’ culture takes place, the immediacy of the celebratory event, and the commercial power of mass means of communication unfold a power scheme for which the introduction of a document of reflection and verisimilitude is a threat. Faced with the dominion of this emerging ideological apparatus, the researcher is obliged to a fight for the truth that implies a certain lifestyle characterized by the liberty to state and the risk to argue the truth at any time, confronting the threat of the disappearance of literate culture and its capacity to serve as an arbitrator of taste, visual codes and thought. Faced with this trivialization and the corresponding degradation of the foundations and methods of scientific knowledge, the art historian has the opportunity to reactivate ethical behaviours, insisting more than ever on the rigorous use of the scientific method and the commitment to the object of study, with the full knowledge that on this boundary where ethics and politics coincide, the parrhesiastic risk of «telling the truth» at any price implies a constantly negotiated practice of power, which also means renouncing certain economic privileges. A dialectic of negotiated cultural practices, where the ideological function of historic interpretation should be openly recognized and not concealed behind an ideal of objectivity, to diminish the efficacy of the practices of the curator protected under the umbrella
of the institutional and dominated by the desire of notoriety. The figure which may stimulate an honest research practice is the parrhesiastes who «acts on other people’s mind by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes» [Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) Foreign Agents Series, 2001; the author quotes from Foucault. M., 2004: 37]. This position of frankness is precisely that which incorporates a discursive mode capable of directly affecting the action and the form of life that makes the veridical possible, making the established relations of power more fluid and enabling practices of negotiation between the different discourses of power. History may no longer be contemplated as the interpretation of the past from a neutral perspective, but as an investigation of a past produced from a personal perspective, driven by our own interests in conflict (Moxey, K.: 2004), and what was previously concealed in the interest of forming a common front with the idea that human subjectivity was of universal nature, according to critical theory should now openly appear negotiating the conflicting interests of the different interpretative communities. Position of frankness, honesty in the truth games, defence of a literate culture and rigorous use of the scientific method which are absent from the economy of symbolic goods unfolded by the authentication expert/curator devoted primarily to organizing blockbuster exhibitions. Admitted in the environment of art collections as a privileged figure, this ‘communicator’ is the researcher’s opponent and works stimulating the mobility that is characteristic of celebrations, making the bond between the circulation of symbolic goods and communication extraordinaril y attractive. The casuistry illustrative of these practices of power has is visible in the world of the media and the transfer of notoriety into the size of the conservator/curator’s honoraria. Together with the index of mediatic relevance, we find another determining factor in this practice of power; that of the duplicity of the figure of conservator/curator and the ease or difficulty of lending the works of the collection he administers. The duplicity of functions that is typical of these instigators of temporary exhibitions in the large museums allows for diverting the risk towards the institution, as well as for the recognition of the excellence of the curator by the patrons, the governments and the crowd, as a function of the media relevance given the exhibition. In this competition between communication and founded knowledge, the desire for notoriety manifested by qualified members of the museum institution on taking the position of the authentication expert/curator/communicator, embracing the communicational ideology like new converts, is not strange. Protected by the hegemonic position of the museum, spurred on by the benefits of publicity and shielded by the complexity of their actions, they diligently seek to obtain notoriety at any price as a way to legitimize operations specifically opportune for personal enrichment. As promoters of an economy based solely on obtaining
profits, they certify the authenticity of works of art before the market and the crowd in the same fashion in which the manufacturers of sneakers use the mysterious appeal of their products to generate consumerist subjectivities for the crowd’s use; neither the former nor the latter are moved by any other matter than the added value created in the circulation of the goods. On their passage through prestigious institutions, they transform community interests into personal interests, employing all sorts of recourses of mystification of the operations of power through which their intentions are carried out. These operations of power imply the transfer of the resources and truth games from the literate culture to mass communication, seeking to elude the scientific method for demonstrating the difference and distinction between one thing and the other. The perverse game of personal enrichment justified by a vocational commitment in favour of the «people» or the service of «art» is another recourse of mystification based on the rhetoric abstraction of incommensurate concepts. This rhetoric abstraction allows to conceal the perverse and conscious utilization of the infantilism of the crowd, which can be seduced with substitutes, given that all the ideas, even if contradictory, can contain a grain of truth (Perniola, M., 2006). Full of the certainty of possessing the secret of the universe, of the world, of happiness, of the authorship of the works of art, etc., these cultural mediators conceal the obvious contradiction implied in, on the one hand, alluding to the scientific foundation of the analyses of works of art and, on the other, negating the researchers their competence14. Protected by the superficiality of communication, they take for granted the unintelligibility of the ‘secrets of art’ for the crowd, for whose breeding statements obtained on the surface of scientific knowledge are sufficient. Elevated by the very institution, they manage to use the legitimacy of the museum as the promoter of cultural hegemony in order to situate themselves on the platforms of the cultural industry from which they operate economically, as the brokers of cultural business. For them, cultural goods are equivalent to the property available on the business market. While they inform, value and allow the circulation of the works of art in curating temporal exhibitions, they prosper in a bureaucratic career which pursues solely self-promotion. Forcing the limits of facility reports, operating in an area with sufficiently ambiguous boundaries