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Document Type

Article

Author Biography

Dr. Tyson E. Lewis is a professor of art education in the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas. Essays by Dr. Lewis have appeared in a number of critical humanities journals inside and outside the field of education, including New German Critique, Social Text, Thesis Eleven, Angelaki, Symploke, Cultural Critique, Journal of Italian Philosophy, Educational Theory, and Journal of Philosophy of Education. He is also author of numerous books, including Studious Drift: Movements and Protocols for a Postdigital Education (coauthored with Peter Hyland) and Walter Benjamin’s Antifascist Education: From Riddles to Radio. He serves as commentaries editor for the journal Studies in Art Education and is the coeditor of the book series Radical Politics and Education published by Bloomsbury Press.

Abstract

This essay turns to Giorgio Agamben and Theodor Adorno to understand the antifascist politics of gestural loss. Adorno offers a historical materialist framework for grounding this loss in the rise and fall of the bourgeoisie while Agamben offers a political response to this crisis of the gesture. This essay focuses on one gesture in particular—tact— in order to illustrate a series of dialectical turns that lead from tactful tact to tactless tact to tactful tactlessness. While these versions all lead to dead ends—culminating in either the reification of the culture industry or the domination of the fascist agitator—Agamben offers a paradoxical alternative: tactless tactlessness as the absolute inoperativity of tact. This final gesture is exemplified in visual comedy and in particular the Marx Brothers’ work, which demonstrates its potentially antifascist possibilities.

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