{"id":664,"date":"2008-08-05T14:50:20","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T14:50:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.letmekoo.lt\/?p=664"},"modified":"2013-04-05T15:10:31","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T15:10:31","slug":"imaginary-identities-in-contemporary-lithuanian-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.letmekoo.lt\/en\/tekstai\/imaginary-identities-in-contemporary-lithuanian-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Imaginary Identities In Contemporary Lithuanian Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Audron\u0117 \u017dukauskait\u0117
\nArt & Research<\/a><\/p>\n

An earlier version of this paper was published as \u2018Vanishing identities in contemporary Lithuanian art\u2019 in Philosophy. Sociology (Filosofija. Sociologija), issue: 3-4 \/ 2006, pages: 37-41. www.ceeol.com<\/p>\n

In this article I intend to discuss how the recent political changes in Eastern Europe relate to the more fundamental changes in the political imagery. When interpreting political imagination we should consider not only imaginary identifications, e.g. imaginary roles, but also take into account its symbolic framework and raise the question who is the Other, for whom the subject is playing his or her role. The article analyses fantasy and anxiety as two ways of dealing with the question opened by the Other: what does the Other want from me? While fantasy offers and enables some temporal imaginary identification, anxiety, by contrast, destroys this false identification. The interrelation between fantasy and anxiety is obvious when one considers such phenomena as multiculturalism and the fear of fundamentalism: multiculturalism is based on the fantasies we have about the other; paradoxically, these fantasies collapse and immediately turn into the fear of fundamentalism if this other does not meet our expectations. The same structure is also valid when considering the relationship with the so-called big Other: in relating to the big Other the subject experiences anxiety and assumes different positions (pervert\u2019s anxiety, hysteric\u2019s anxiety, psychotic anxiety). The relationship between fantasy and anxiety gets more complicated in the case of gender identities. Which Other is envisaged when the feminine subject identifies herself with a certain image? The article suggests that in the domain of the symbolic power we can find two different Others: the Other of Soviet totalitarian regime, when women were represented as political agents and the Other of global capitalism, representing women as objects of desire. As a reaction to this double surveillance the feminine identity is experienced as psychotic anxiety, destroying all positive fantasies.<\/p>\n

1. Fantasy and anxiety as political factors<\/p>\n

The recent restoration of the nation states in Central and Eastern Europe raises the issue concerning the essence, and, more precisely, the meaning of national identity in an era of globalization. Most of the research on this topic is inspired by a vague intuition that post-totalitarian nations still preserve some specific authenticity, some mysterious x, which makes them different from the Western world. Of course, we should inquire what fantasies or fears underlie this assumption. How, if at all, are these assumptions compatible with the processes of globalization and the rise of the consumer society? And, finally, what is this mysterious x, persisting at the core of national identity?<\/p>\n

If we take a look at the poststructuralist notion of identity we see that the very notion of identity is questioned and abandoned as essentialist. For example, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe claim the impossibility of fixing any identity, because the context specifying this identity is always over-determined and changing: ‘A conception which denies any essentialist approach to social relations must also state the precarious character of every identity and the impossibility of fixing the sense of the ‘elements’ in any ultimate literality.'[1] Any identity is relational, because it is constantly over-determined in the symbolic order, i.e., its content is always changing: \u2018Society and social agents lack any essence, and their regularities merely consist of the relative and precarious forms of fixation which accompany the establishment of certain order.'[2] If we can find certain identities in our everyday reality, these should be regarded not as a \u2018natural condition\u2019, but as a result of hegemonic power relations.<\/p>\n

The impossibility of any stable or fixed identity opens the space for the process of identification. The need for identification arises because there is no identity, as Ernesto Laclau points out.[3] The notion of identification comes from Lacanian psychoanalysis and refers to different stages of subject formation. Slavoj \u017di\u017eek draws a distinction between imaginary and symbolic identification: imaginary identification is identification with the image in which we appear likeable to ourselves, while symbolic identification is identification with the very place from where we are being observed, from where we look at ourselves so that we appear to ourselves as likeable.[4] In fact, these two types of identification are always interrelated, because imaginary identification is subjected to the gaze of the Other, which marks the place of the symbolic.<\/p>\n

On the level of imaginary identification we can define two modes of relationship with the Other: fantasy and anxiety. Both concepts, borrowed from psychoanalysis, can be productively applied in the ideological context. In The Sublime Object of Ideology \u017di\u017eek referred to fantasy as \u2018an imaginary scenario filling out the void, the opening of the desire of the Other’.[5] Fantasy enables us to evade the submission to the Other\u2019s desire and to counter this desire inventing imaginary roles. From this it follows that every identity is some sort of imaginary scenario, a fantasy, which is constructed as an answer to the question ‘What does the Other want from me?\u2019 For example, \u017di\u017eek interprets the case of anti-Semitism in terms of a fantasy about \u2018Jewish conspiracy\u2019, of some mysterious power manipulating events. This fantasy of conspiracy is continuously updated and applied to different phenomena, from Da Vinci Code to September 11. In all these cases fantasy functions as a desperate attempt to deal with the lack and the inconsistency of the Other, an attempt to offer some limited answer (anti-Semitism, anti-terrorism, feminist theology) to the question opened by the demand of the Other.<\/p>\n

The most important thing here is making clear who is this Other for whom the subject constructs his or her fantasy. As \u017di\u017eek points out, \u2018apropos of every imitation of a model-image, apropos of every \u201cplaying a role\u201d, the question to ask is: for whom is the subject enacting this role? Which gaze is considered when the subject identifies himself with a certain image?'[6] It is precisely this uncertainty about the Other that provokes the subject\u2019s anxiety: its uncertainty about his or her place in the Other\u2019s desire. As Renata Salecl points out:<\/p>\n

[F]antasy and anxiety present two different ways for the subject to deal with the lack that marks him as well as the Other, i.e., the symbolic order. If fantasy provides a certain comfort to the subject, anxiety incites the feeling of discomfort. With fantasy, the subject creates for him- or herself a protective shield towards the lack, while in anxiety the object which emerges at the place of the lack devours the subject, i.e., makes the subject fade. [7]<\/p>\n

So if fantasy offers and enables some particular identities, which the subject mis-recognizes as his or her own (for example, a housewife allegedly \u2018recognizes\u2019 the insufficiency of her life in the conspiracy \u00e0 la Da Vinci Code), anxiety destroys this false identification, throwing the subject back into the abyss of emptiness.<\/p>\n

In his Seminar on Anxiety[8] Lacan introduced a specific approach to this phenomenon. Whereas Freud distinguished between fear (focused on a specific object) and anxiety (which is not), Lacan posits anxiety as having an object, though a peculiar kind of object, one that cannot be symbolized like other objects. This object is objet petit a, the object-cause-of-desire, and anxiety arises when something fills the place of it, when the subject is confronted by the desire of the Other and does not know what kind of object he is for that desire.[9] This means that for Lacan anxiety is not without an object, it is only that this object is unknown. It is important to stress that objet petit a, one of Lacan\u2019s most famous \u2018mathemes\u2019, is a constituent part in the Lacanian definition of fantasy. Lacan defines fantasy as the relationship between the \u2018barred subject\u2019 and objet petit a, which refers to an \u2018element standing in for the Real within any symbolic system. It is at once what cannot be accounted for within this system and yet that produces this system as the attempt to speak of it.\u2019[10]<\/p>\n

From these psychoanalytical definitions it follows that both fantasy and anxiety operate in the imaginary domain and their function is to fill in the gap opened by the demand of the Other. What’s more, both fantasy and anxiety deal with objet petit a, a specific object standing for the Real, yet not translatable into the terms of the symbolic. Fantasy and anxiety thus function as a mediator between the Real and the symbolic, and the same element of the Real functions either as a support for fantasy, or as an eruption, which causes the disintegration of the imaginary unity. For example, the dominant ideology of late capitalism is that of calling to invent oneself, to choose between different social identities, genders, and lifestyles. At the same time this ideology reveals the opposite: the impossibility of reaching self-coherence and unity, the \u2018unfreedom of choice\u2019. The pressure to choose one\u2019s identity makes real choice impossible, first, because the possibilities of choice are always limited and, second, the subject can never be sure if his or her choice is final, or if this identity is precisely that which is expected from him or her. In this way the imperative to choose one\u2019s imaginary identity reveals its reverse: the \u2018dizziness of freedom\u2019, the subject\u2019s original emptiness and inconsistency.<\/p>\n

As stated earlier, the relationship between fantasy and anxiety can be exemplified by such phenomena as enthusiasm for multiculturalism and fear of fundamentalism. Enthusiasm for multiculturalism is usually based on fantasies about the Other that are attached to some particular trait, objet petit a, e.g. specific appearance, habits, or cuisine. Though always reductive and limited, these fantasies function pretty well till the moment when a specific trait starts to appear threatening or even dangerous. If this specific trait, this objet petit a, suddenly appears incompatible with our symbolic values, multicultural fantasies immediately dissolve and turn into an anxious obsession with fundamentalism. As \u017di\u017eek points out:<\/p>\n

liberal \u2018tolerance\u2019 condones the folklorist Other deprived of its substance \u2013 like the multitude of \u2018ethnic cuisines\u2019 in a contemporary megalopolis; however, any \u2018real\u2019 Other is instantly denounced for its \u2018fundamentalism\u2019, because the kernel of Otherness resides in the regulation of its jouissance: the \u2018real Other\u2019 is by definition \u2018patriarchal\u2019, \u2018violent\u2019, never the Other of ethereal wisdom and charming customs.[11]<\/p>\n

2. Fantasy and anxiety in contemporary Lithuanian art<\/p>\n

Lacan draws a distinction between two types of anxiety: the hysteric\u2019s anxiety and the pervert\u2019s anxiety. As \u017di\u017eek puts it:<\/p>\n

Lacan emphasizes the way the hysteric\u2019s anxiety relates to the fundamental lack in the Other which makes the Other inconsistent\/barred: a hysteric perceives the lack in the Other, its impotence, inconsistency, fake, but he is not ready to sacrifice the part of himself that would complete the Other, fill in its lack\u2026 (In contrast to the hysteric, the pervert readily assumes this role of sacrificing himself, i.e. of serving as the object-instrument that fills in the Other\u2019s lack \u2013 as Lacan puts it, the pervert \u2018offers himself loyally to the Other\u2019s jouissance\u2019).[12]<\/p>\n

The pervert\u2019s anxiety is characterized by the lack of any questioning; the pervert does not doubt that his or her identity is serving for the jouissance of the Other. A good example of such perverse anxiety is national identity, performed for the gaze of the Western Other. \u017di\u017eek argues that Emir Kusturica\u2019s film Underground represents<\/p>\n

an exemplary case of \u2018Balkanism\u2019, functioning in a similar way to Edward Said\u2019s concept of \u2018Orientalism\u2019: the Balkans as the timeless space on to which the West projects its fantasmatic content. \u2026Underground is thus the ultimate ideological product of Western liberal multiculturalism: what these two films offer to the Western liberal gaze is precisely what this gaze wants to see in the Balkan war \u2013 the spectacle of a timeless, incomprehensible, mythical cycle of passions, in contrast to decadent and anaemic Western life.[13]<\/p>\n

Here we can observe that very similar trends are guiding contemporary Lithuanian art, especially cinema and the video art of the last decade. The artist usually takes the position of an \u2018ethnographer\u2019 investigating the \u2018savage\u2019 and documenting the dull and poor reality. This artistic practice can be interpreted as an attempt at self-exotisation, of acting or playing the masquerade for the Western Other. The films of Lithuanian film director \u0160ar\u016bnas Bartas provide good examples of this self-exotisation. All his films, starting from The Corridor (1994) to the last one Seven Invisible Men (2005), depict marginal characters, who rarely speak, but spend their time drinking, smoking, and staring at the wall. The films create the image of \u2018Soviet existentialism\u2019 and in this way provide the answer to the question: \u2018What does the Western Other want from us?\u2019 It is no coincidence that foreign companies are the co-producers of these films: they function as commodities produced precisely for the Western market. The same tendency can be observed in contemporary Lithuanian video art: the examples are the videos by Gintaras Makarevi\u010dius (Naicai 2002) and Egl\u0117 Rakauskait\u0117 (Gari\u016bnai 2002). The ideology of self-exotisation becomes obscene in the case of Lithuanian artist Evaldas Jansas\u2019 work Family video: Eastern (Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius, 2004). In this video the artist films his relatives meeting for Easter Holiday, and portrays them in the \u2018ethnographic\u2019 manner as \u2018savages\u2019. Incidentally, one of these relatives saw the exhibition in Vilnius and immediately demanded an end to the screening of the video. As Lithuanian art critic Erika Grigoravi\u010dien\u0117 pointed out, \u2018the lessons of multiculturalism were learned by our artists\u2026 They make the international audience meet Lithuanian marginals. But do they realize that they themselves are becoming the products of political phantasms of Europeanism? Do they analyze the on-going ethnic hierarchization and asymmetry of the European space?\u2019[14]<\/p>\n

While the pervert assumes the role of serving as the object-instrument that fills in the Other\u2019s lack, the hysteric, by contrast, questions the Other, and makes his lack and inconsistency visible. One example is the latest wave of emigration. An emigrant\u2019s point of view can be described as an \u2018error in perspective\u2019, an anamorphic element, which distorts the otherwise well-balanced view of society. Lithuanian artist and author Paulina Pukyt\u0117, now living in London, in her texts for a Lithuanian weekly column[15] regularly depicts London from a very specific perspective, that of a foreigner, so that the city looks like a strange, forbidding place full of ridiculous habits, things and rules. Another interesting example of emigration is a recent advertisement of a cell phone card \u2018E\u017eys\u2019 on Lithuanian TV. The advertisement consists of four video clips that depict two guys from the Lithuanian countryside (speaking a funny dialect) wandering around in London. Here we find the same strategy of an anamorphic gaze: anything that we perceive as a trait of \u2018traditional\u2019 England, they interpret as proof that London is an awful, weird place.<\/p>\n

Here we see the same element, the mysterious x, which constitutes the core of national identity in fantasy and has the opposite effect in anxiety: it becomes a symptom of a lack and inconsistency, of failed identification. The same mysterious x, which guarantees and supports imaginary national identity in one case, appears as an \u2018excess\u2019 or \u2018lack\u2019 in another. This feeling of inconsistency can only be \u2018cured\u2019 if we accept the Lacanian definition of anxiety according to which anxiety is a lack of a lack. What causes anxiety is not some specific lack or inconsistency (mysterious x), but the lack of this lack, the impossibility to fix and define a particular national identity. We can say that the function of art is precisely that of questioning any fixed and stable meanings and demonstrating the relational nature of any identity.<\/p>\n

One attempt at deconstructing national identity is the work of Lithuanian artist Audrius Novickas. In the installation entitled Tricolour sets (CAC, Vilnius, 2005) Novickas reflects on the tricolour flag as a national symbol of Lithuania and on its role in the formation of national identity. How unique is our national identity? The artist provides the answer by collecting the flags that use the same tricolour combination: the installation consists of flags of Benin, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea, Lithuania, Mali, and Senegal. The reproduction shows that Lithuania is the third country in the world that has officially announced red, green and yellow as colours of its national flag. So if this mysterious x, which grounds our national identity, appears to be a Pan-African peculiarity, may we not consider Kazimieras Pak\u0161tas\u2019 idea of moving Lithuania to the island of Madagascar in Africa?<\/p>\n

3. Feminine identities: beyond sexual fantasy?<\/p>\n

The relationship between fantasy and anxiety gets more complicated with gender identities. Gender roles, as well as national roles, are played for the Other; this is why before starting an analysis of gender roles we should ask for whom these roles are being enacted. Lacanian psychoanalysis and the feminist critique have shown that the \u2018play of imagination\u2019 is always enacted for the gaze of the Other.[16] As \u017di\u017eek argues, imaginary identification is always subjected to the symbolic; this is why it is not enough to criticize or disclose the feminine masquerade, what the feminist critique usually does. The most important thing is to disclose and define the symbolic Other for whom this masquerade is being enacted: \u2018Behind an extremely \u201cfeminine\u201d imaginary figure, we can thus generally discover some kind of masculine, paternal identification: she is enacting fragile femininity, but on the symbolic level she is in fact identified with the paternal gaze, to which she wants to appear likeable.\u2019[17] Peggy Phelan, too, argues that the image of the woman always serves as a screen for a male fantasy: \u2018The fetishized image of the female star serves as a deeply revealing screen for the construction of men\u2019s desire. The image of the woman displays not the subjectivity of the woman who is seen, but rather the constituent forces of desire of the man who wants to see her.\u2019[18]<\/p>\n

When considering how gender images are constructed in Eastern Europe we should raise the same question: Who is this Other for whom women are enacting their roles? Paradoxically, in the domain of the symbolic power we can find two different Others: the Other of the former Soviet totalitarian regime, when women were represented as political agents (\u2018a worker\u2019, \u2018a farmer\u2019), and the Other of the capitalist regime, when women are represented as objects of desire. Of course, the former, the totalitarian Other is denied and neglected in the current political discourse. At the same time any attempt to represent women as political agents is neglected as well. This might be one of the reasons why feminism never became a political priority in Lithuania. The effort to restore the nation state with the traditional values of nation, homeland and family prevented the otherwise \u2018natural\u2019 processes of emancipation. Paradoxically enough, this totalitarian Other, though politically outdated and invalid, still has an influence in the economy of visibility. Thus the lack of the political representation of femininity signals that the gaze of the totalitarian Other persists in the economy of visibility and regulates what may be seen and what should remain invisible. Of course, the preference goes to the Other of the capitalist consuming fetishistic gaze: this gaze is omnipresent not only because of old patriarchal traditions, but also because in post-Soviet Lithuania the capitalist regime is conceived as the only possible way of political and social existence, as a \u2018natural\u2019 condition.<\/p>\n

How to evade this double Gaze? How to invent new forms of visibility? The problem here is that anyone speaking about non-patriarchal, non-sexist and non-totalitarian feminine representations should act like Mata Hari and invent the double strategy of non-visibility. Yet even this double-strategy would not guarantee adequate representation. On the one hand, some feminists insist on making visible some otherwise \u2018invisible\u2019 groups: ethnic or sexual minorities, disabled or aging people. But does this \u2018visibility\u2019 make them into real political agents? On the other hand, we can imagine some resistance to the fetishist consuming gaze. But does this refusal to be visible changes the real constellation of power? In this context it is worthwhile to consider Peggy Phelan\u2019s concept of \u2018active vanishing\u2019, a kind of compromise between the condition of being unmarked and the condition of being represented: \u2018I am not suggesting that continued invisibility is the \u201cproper\u201d political agenda for the disenfranchised, but rather that the binary between the power of visibility and the impotence of invisibility is falsifying. There is real power in remaining unmarked; and there are serious limitations to visual representation as a political goal.'[19] Phelan speaks about \u2018active vanishing\u2019 or \u2018active disappearance\u2019, which should be understood as a resistance to existing forms of representation: \u2018I am speaking here of an active vanishing, a deliberate and conscious refusal to take the payoff of visibility. For the moment, active disappearance usually requires at least some recognition of what and who is not there to be effective.'[20]<\/p>\n

The concept of \u2018double vanishing\u2019 can also be interpreted in terms of fantasy and anxiety. The intrinsic problem of the feminist critique is that it neglects any positive fantasy about femininity; instead it manifests itself as a constant anxiety about inadequate representation. This anxiety, as we demonstrated apropos of national identity, can acquire different forms. We can speak about perverse anxiety when the feminine subject enacts fragile femininity for the paternal gaze; hysterical anxiety, by contrast, expresses the fundamental lack in the Other, which incites the feeling of discomfort and confusion about which Other should be taken into account. Another possible reaction is the psychotic denial of one\u2019s own gender identity, the refusal to construct a positive fantasy about feminine subjectivity.<\/p>\n

Some contemporary artworks, especially those created by female artists, provide interesting examples of this psychotic denial of femininity. Let us consider the performance\/video In Fat (1998) by Egl\u0117 Rakauskait\u0117. In the performance the artist used her own body as a substance and submerged herself into the warm fat to remain there for eight hours. The fat, getting cooler, became opaque and gradually concealed the artist\u2019s body, making it invisible. The process was filmed with three cameras and presented on three TV monitors, which were turned away from the spectator in such a way that one could see not the image itself, but only the reflection of the image, mirrored from the glass surface. In this way the gaze of the spectator was interrupted and broken up, as if trying to evade the standardized types of representation.<\/p>\n

The process of letting the fat get cool and opaque can be interpreted as a psychotic refusal to pose for the consuming gaze of the Other. At the same time it is a refusal to present the body in terms of social or political agency. This body recalls the Body without Organs, described by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Deleuze and Guattari introduced the notion of the Body without Organs as a counter-strategy to the psychoanalytic interpretation of the body, which subjects it to different forms of organization: fantasy, signification, subjectification. As Elisabeth Grosz puts it, \u2018Unlike psychoanalysis, (\u2026) the Body without Organs invokes a conception of the body that is disinvested of fantasy, images, projections, representations, a body without a psychical or secret interior, without internal cohesion and latent significance.'[21] For Deleuze and Guattari the Body without Organs means the possibility of the body, which is \u2018free\u2019 from any sexual, visual, political appropriations: \u2018The Body without Organs is what remains when you take everything away. What you take away is precisely the phantasy, and signifiances and subjectifications as a whole.[22] In this context the impersonal body of Rakauskait\u0117\u2019s performance could be interpreted as the Body without Organs: it has neither function nor signification, and is incapable of feeling any pleasure or inciting any fantasy.<\/p>\n

Kristina In\u010di\u016brait\u0117, another Lithuanian female artist who regularly deals with gender issues, provides an interesting example of \u2018active disappearance\u2019. Her videos usually depict an empty stage, which metonymically refers to the empty stage of representation. What images are eliminated from the stage, which is also the stage of our imagination? A woman\u2019s voice heard from the backstage suggests that it is precisely a woman\u2019s body that is not shown, though the heroines of all In\u010di\u016brait\u0117\u2019s videos are women talking about their femininity. This femininity always stands in conflict with the public space: the videos depict the coming-of-age teenagers in a children\u2019s foster home (Spinsters, 2003), the teenagers constrained by musical education (Rehearsal, 2002), beautiful women of the vanishing town of Visaginas who have nowhere to go in their leisure time (Leisure, 2003), policewomen feeling awkward about their femininity (Order, 2004). But the most important thing in these videos is that although they speak about femininity, female protagonists are invisible \u2013 we can only hear their voices in the backstage. This strategy of psychotic denial is the guiding one in all In\u010di\u016brait\u0117\u2019s videos: women become invisible as objects of scopic desire but they are heard as social and political agents.<\/p>\n

The refusal to participate in the scopic regime is the main theme in the videos Bathhouse (2003) and Lakes (2004). Here the contrast between the video\u2019s topic (woman as an erotic image in film industry) and the visual presentation becomes almost comical. For example, the video Bathhouse is shot in an old Austrian bathhouse, a place where bodies are usually naked. The video consists of the monologues of female students from an Austrian acting school on the experience of acting, on nakedness and the erotic, monologues that are accompanied by still images of the bathhouse. In this video the female subjects vanish from our sight and become invisible, but they are heard as subjects, having political and social weight. Another video project Lakes portrays the Lithuanian actress Vaiva Mainelyt\u0117 who recollects the filming of one of the most famous Lithuanian erotic scenes. Ironically, her narration is illustrated by a static image of a frozen lake (actually the scene took place in the same lake, only in summer time). These videos reveal that sexual fantasy fails if not backed up by standard images, the customary visual codes.<\/p>\n

Thus we can say that fantasy and anxiety operate as two different modes of constructing imaginary identities and dealing with the lack of the Other. The recent changes in the political space caused the subsequent changes in our imagery: the fantasies, which served as a support for some kind of identification disintegrated immediately after the change of perspective. National identity, which was one of the \u2018nodal points\u2019 of identification in the Soviet regime, now became an obstacle, an anamorphic element causing anxiety and the feeling of inadequacy. It seems as if national identity was to be regained in order to give it away as quickly as possible (the psychotic denial?). The play of gender identification is even more complicated, because the restoration of the nation state coincided with the return of patriarchal values and standard gender roles, which led to a total (psychotic) denial of gender identification. Paradoxically, it is precisely this total erasure of gender identification and an unusual politics of \u2018active vanishing\u2019 in the register of visibility, which enabled women to re-emerge as political subjects in the art scene.<\/p>\n

An earlier version of this paper was published as \u2018Vanishing identities in contemporary Lithuanian art\u2019 in Philosophy. Sociology (Filosofija. Sociologija), issue: 3-4 \/ 2006, pages: 37-41. www.ceeol.com<\/p>\n

[1] Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, (London: Verso, 1985), p. 96.
\n[2] Ibid., p. 98.
\n[3] Ernesto Laclau, \u2018Deconstruction, Pragmatism, Hegemony\u2019, in Deconstruction and Pragmatism, edited by Chantal Mouffe, (New York, London: Routledge, 1996), p. 56.
\n[4] Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, The Sublime Object of Ideology,, (London, New York, Verso, 1989), p. 105.
\n[5] Ibid., p. 114.
\n[6] Ibid., p. 106.
\n[7] Renata Salecl, \u2018Something Where There Should be Nothing: On War and Anxiety\u2019, In: Cabinet Magazine Online,issue 1, winter 2000\/01, http:\/\/www.cabinetmagazine.org\/issues\/1\/nothing.php
\n[8] Jacques Lacan, Le s\u00e9minaire, Livre X (1962-1963): L’angoisse, Paris, Editions Seuil, 2004. Cited from: http:\/\/www.lacan.com\/seminars1b.htm
\n[9] Ibid.
\n[10] Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, Interrogating the Real, edited by Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (London, New York: Continuum, 2005), p. 373.
\n[11] Slavoj Zizek, The Universal Exception: Selected Writings, Volume Two, edited by Rex Butler and Scott Stephens (London: Continuum, 2006), p. 162.
\n[12] Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, On Belief (London, New York, Routledge, 2001), pp. 73-74
\n[13] Slavoj \u017di\u017eek, The Universal Exception, p. 163.
\n[14] Erika Grigoravi\u010dien\u0117, \u2018Contemporary Art in Lithuania: Topics and Technologies\u2019. In: Emisija 2004 \u2013 \u0160MC (Vilnius: \u0160iuolaikinio meno centras, 2005), p. 19. The volume documents a series of exhibitions introducing the most important Lithuanian artists who along with the Contemporary Art Centre have generated a new language of contemporary art. Most of the artworks discussed in this article were exhibited in CAC, Vilnius.
\n[15] Weekly 7 Meno dienos (7 Days of Art), published in Vilnius.
\n[16] See: Laura Mulvey, \u2018Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema\u2019, in Visual Culture: The Reader, edited by Jessica Evans and Stuart Hall, (London: Sage Publications, 1999), pp. 381-390.
\n[17] \u017di\u017eek, The Sublime Object of Ideology, p. 106.
\n[18] Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of the Performance (London, New York, Routledge, 1996), p. 26.
\n[19] Ibid., p. 6.
\n[20] Ibid., p. 19.
\n[21] Elisabeth Grosz, \u2018A Thousand Tiny Sexes: Feminism and Rhizomatics\u2019 in Gilles Deleuze and the Theatre of Philosophy, edited by C. V. Boundas and D. Olkowski (New York, London: Routledge, 1994), p. 169.
\n[22] Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi (London, New York: Continuum, 2004), p. 168.<\/p>\n

[nggallery id=4]<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n