Peter Osborne

Disguised as a Dog: Cynicism in Politics and Art Today

There are, famously, two very different understandings of cynicism, registered in German as the difference between Kynismus and Zynismus: its ancient, philosophical sense (renewed and transformed successively from the 18th- to the end of the 20th-centuries, in Sloterdijk and Foucault) and its everyday, popular meaning associated with disillusioned self-interest, respectively. This talk will reflect upon the relations of these two different notions and their significance in politics and art, in order to ask (via the emblems of Valie Export and the Occupy movement): is it the artist or the activist who is best placed to play the role of the Cynic today?

Peter Osborne is Professor of Modern European Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University London, and an editor of the journal Radical Philosophy. His books include The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (1995; 2011), Philosophy in Cultural Theory (2000), Conceptual Art (2002), Marx (2005) and El arte más allá de la estética: Ensayos filosóficos sobre el arte contemporáneo (2010). He has contributed catalogue essays to Manifesta 5, Tate Modern, 2006 Biennale of Sydney, Walker Art Center Minneapolis, Office of Contemporary Art Norway, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design Oslo, CGAC in Santiago de Compostela, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León. He was co-curator of the Norwegian contribution to the Venice Biennale 2011. His next book, Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art will be published by Verso in early 2013. He is currently directing the AHRC research project ‘Transdisciplinarity and the Humanities’ (2011–13) and is International Visiting Professor for Problématisations du réel historique et de la pensée sociale in the Philosophy Department at the University of Paris 8, Saint-Denis.