FLUXLIST: One instance of "telling truth to power."

[Jennifer Sheldon]

Dear Mr. Brace,

If you want an example, I�ll be happy to provide one.

First, I want to clear up your misquote. I did not write the words you quoted me as having written. You changed my words, placing your own addition word in quotation marks to make it appear that I wrote about �art historical scholarship.� I didn�t write this.

Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 19:25:56 -0800 (PST)
From: { brad brace } <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: FLUXLIST: Re: Ruse (was History?)

aw, Jennifer... ok, out of curiosity, please provide one
instance when �art historical scholarship has served human
freedom in important ways by shedding light on the false
assumptions and claims that are sometimes used to support
oppressive institutions.�

/:b

What I wrote was, �While I don�t want to stretch the point too far, there are cases in which historical scholarship has served human freedom in important ways by shedding light on the false assumptions and claims that are sometimes used to support oppresive institutions.� The word art does not appear here.

Now for the example.

During the Middle Ages, there was a major clash between the papacy and the temporal powers. Over the period of several hundred years, papal power grew and the pope became a temporal lord in addition to his spiritual authority.

At one point, a document known as �The Donation of Constantine� emerged. This document purportedly represented a gift from the Emperor Constantine to Pope Sylvester I. This gift purportedly gave the pope and his successors TEMPORAL authority over the entire Western Roman Empire. This is the entirety of today�s European Union.

This document was used to support the idea that all kings and princes were subordinate to the pope. It was also used to argue the case for direct papal control over the Papal States. Given the immense power and corrupt nature of the medieval Catholic Church, this document was used to support what most of us (including Catholics) would recognize today as an oppressive institution.

In 1440, an Italian humanist and philosopher named Lorenzo Valla proved that this document was a forgery. This proof deprived the papacy of a major tool used in pressing its supposed legal claims to supremacy over the political and economic life of Europe. It played a great part in the new thinking that gave rise to the Renaissance and to the reformation.

You can read the full story of Valla and the Donation in the on-line edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia, or in Daniel Boorstin�s book, The Seekers. I�m not a general historian, but I know that other examples exist. (This specific example comes from my correspondence with Ken Friedman. I have pretty much copied what he wrote me in a note answering some questions on hermeneutical research methods.)

Your comment to Bertrand, and the question that follows, can be easily answered. You wrote, and these ARE your words, �well Bertrand, it�s perhaps art-history�s very blinkered �disinterest� in the face of ongoing and outright institutional abuse that�s pretty hard to stomach... has there ever been a �radical art historian?� [Are they all essentially failed artists?] Pick a card, any card.�

Disinterest in the sense that Bertrand used the word mean freedom from partisan interests. What Bertrand was saying was that there are some people interested in truth, no matter where it leads. To be a radical art historian, you must be disinterested, and you must be willing to challenge convention.

Art historians can rarely affect history as Valla did. Even so, they can make a difference. The new Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, is a good example. The new museum installation will examine Belgian racism and oppression in the Belgian Congo. This important project is already changing the way that Europeans consider their own past and future. It is a major contribution to the on-going struggle against racism in Europe and the Western world.

The work that art historians have done in examining and publishing scholarship on the art and culture of first peoples and people of color is a real contribution to human knowledge. This work demonstrates the varieties of cultural, artistic, and religious expression. It often shows how Western culture has growing and benefited from the contributions adapted and imported from other cultures. In doing this, art historians contribute to an important public debate that does have political impact. What has political impact in the Western democracies eventually has economic impact, and this effect weakens the power of oppressive institutions.

In some places, art historians and other scholars have paid a heavy career price for telling the truth. Some have paid the price in freedom, and some have even paid with their lives for writing and publishing facts that make established powers uncomfortable. Your failure to recognize that some people serve freedom by telling truth says more about you than about them.

Are all art historians failed artists? Don�t be silly. You might do a little research on art historians before falling for that old clich�. It�s true that some art historians started out as artists. But then, some successful artists started out as wine merchants, housepainters, or even art historians.

The best quote in the last Fluxlist digest came from Bertrand: �C�mon, Brad, don�t get so much on clich�s�

Jenny Sheldon







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