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The New Culture Wars

By Peggy Roalf   Friday March 23, 2018

When Donald J. Trump blasted his way into the White House through the bluster, bravado, and false claims of a used car salesman, he launched a new round of culture wars. In the past 14 months, which already seems like an eon, he has attempted to vitiate the foundations of what does make America great, from curtailing diversity through a stranglehold on immigration; attempting to wall off the southern border; and a perverse desire to kill the National Endowments and the National Parks.

Trump’s move to defund the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities is so incomprehensible that the subject has frequently occupied my train rides and waiting time. While checking out goings on at the Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona on Instagram this morning, reading about an exhibition on gender fluidity and sexual nonconformance that resulted from the Independent Studies program at MACB, as it’s known, let loose a thunderbolt. The exhibition Dislocated Archive and related programs that run through July, make a clear statement about a subject that will only become more mainstream as young people—arguably the most socially aware and experimental of population groups—take positions of influence in society.

 


Above: Reading as a form of Protest, courtesy MACB

For Trump, contemporary art, the philosophical grounding of culture today, is a dangerous snake pit where queer vision is honestly expressed—and has been for decades. Just one example is the philosopher Judith Butler, whose queer feminist theories have been embraced worldwide, and whose work forms the foundation of several MACB programs associated with the show.

One of those programs, Reading as a Form of Protest, enabled participants to assume their gender through performance, which is foundational to Butler's thought. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I haven’t notice a major cultural institution in the US taking on the subject of queer vision in such a mainstream way. Could it be that arts institutions here are so fearful of Trump’s toxic masculinity [3 wives; hush money paid to silence paid companions, etc.] and a penchant for revenge, that they shy away from one of the most salient social issue of the day in fear of losing federal funding? With Trump in charge, the pursuit of happiness is in grave danger—for immigrants, for artists, for the young, for all people who seek to live enriching lives.


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