Contemporary Realisms of The Self And Classless Representation.

Abstract

This paper focuses on perspectives for selfhood representations in contemporary era, whether autobiographical or not and is situated in the widened field of visual arts from the point of view of art as a practiced discourse.  Therefore, the subsequent questioning of trends and traits that characterize contemporary realisms of the self aims in discerning possible fruitful representational tendencies within the interests of contemporary visual art debates. The idea of Mark Fisher, that class is omitted from almost all current academic discourses so that a classless understanding of self is the predominant understanding in sociopolitical selfhood representations is central in this review which discusses both high and low categories of such visualizations. For the former, the work of Richard Billingham Ray’s a Laugh from 1996 is examined in comparison to his film Ray and Liz, made in 2018, in terms of the sociopolitical debates they have fostered. This conversation is extended to encompass poverty-porn Reality TV shows, a case which introduces into the conversation, apart from the obvious class debate the present competitive encounters of the real against its visualized representations. In order to review the understanding of realisms in the contemporary era, I also look in pertinent definitions from literary theory, employ current sociopolitical positionings and probe the circulation of class-asserting representations in the art field. In this multifold albeit brief examination of dead ends and opportunities I aspire to bring forth a live field of possible exits for the realisms of the self, where contemporary representations can lead to new, emancipatory understanding beyond the stale, stagnant dreads of late capitalism political fatalism.