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PARTISAN REVIEW
Roger Ga raudy has sugges ted tha t it is time to reaffirm the rights
o f "Dionys us the dancer against Apo ll o the scul p tor and a rtisan . Is not
Zorba the Greek a saint for our time who shows us tha t there a re crucial
things tha t onl y dance can express?" T o reject futu ro logy and empha–
size the importance o f a rt as the true express ion of human needs is not
to say tha t ar t causes po litics to vanish . Despite the claims o f Lasswell ,
who hoped tha t po licy sciences would be beyond politi cs, and the
cl aims o f the dogma tic Marxi sts who beli eve that scientifi c admini stra–
tion takes the place of po litics once social classes di sappear, it should
be clear tha t bo th a rt and po liti cs are man 's na tural condition .
T oday we a re involved in the hi sto ri c effo rt to develop a politics of
transforma tion . Such a po litics requires a constant p rocess, moving
beyond assigned rol e or planner'.s model, and seeking to take each
transitory moment and develop from it a su tained dynamic o f radica l
recon struction . Art, on the o ther hand , succeeds in being bo th timely in
the po litical sense and timeless in the impul ses whi ch it expresses.
It
"outlives its own time and continues to li ve in harmony with the
movement of real life itself," as Sanchez-Vazquez claims: " . .. Inas–
much as art is an affirma tion , express ion and obj ectifi ca ti on of
man, understood in a concrete way as socia l and hi stori cal being, art
sinks its roo ts in tha t profound and authenti c vein of humanity, the
people."
Gramsci's interpreta tion of art as the pro found aspira tion of a
peopl e in any particular historica l peri od sugges ts that once we
recognize unconquered art we can become awa re of parti cul a r human
aspira tions, o f a pa rticul ar crav ing. T hi s crav ing we may ca ll the
principle o f nega ti vity. People have begun to make it clear tha t
stopping and then transforming the social institutions which a ttempt
to coloniz.e time and space, are now crucial po litica l and human tasks.
A reconstruction o f this sort may be accomp lished in man y ways.
Clearl y, one o f them is to recon sider th e dea l whi ch Faust made with
Mephistopheles regarding the rela ti on ship o f know ledge and power.
In
less meta pho rical terms, it is cl ear tha t th e science o f genetics, for
example, is itse lf a study o f limits, structures and essences. These a re
the iss ues from which we canno t escape.
T he fashion today is to reopen th e questi on of planning. Obvi–
ously, planning is merely the refl ection o f the ba lance of social forces at
anyone time. John Dewey had hoped for a different kind o f planning
than has emerged in the world . H e po inted out tha t there was an
immense difference between the planned society and the continuously
p lanning society:
