Walking with the Enemy: Art of Subversive Mimicry in Post Truth Era

This book is about artists and activists who have embraced mimicry as a subversive tactic and responded to ideologies by imitating their outward forms. Chapters discuss mimicry in reference to the post-truth era, the neoliberal consensus, the politics of race and gender, online subcultures, the rise of the new right, and other topics. Walking with the enemy examines the underexplored history and politics of mimicry in contemporary art. Bringing together artists who appropriate the forms, languages, and rituals of normative culture, this book argues for imitation as a subversive, asymmetrical strategy—one that gains traction in moments like our own, when antagonism, critique, and rational debate have lost much of their force. If critique depends on a shared belief in truth, what happens under conditions of widespread distrust in institutions such as government, media, and science? Does critique retain its authority in a ‘post-truth’ era? This volume proposes subversive mimicry as one response to these questions, making a case for affect, play, and performativity as key tools for navigating an age of uncertainty.Featuring essays by seventeen scholars and artists from around the world, the book offers a wide-ranging account of this often-overlooked cultural strategy. Through figures such as Laibach, Hank Willis Thomas, the Yes Men, and Stephen Colbert, contributors explore how these and other artists have used mimicry in response to state power, neoliberalism, decolonial struggle, race and gender politics, online subcultures, and the rise of the new right. This book is about artists and activists who have embraced mimicry as a subversive tactic. Bringing together the contributions of seventeen writers, it addresses the ways in which artists have responded to power and ideology by imitating its outward forms. These contributors address in particular the current age of fantasy and political deception, and they consider the work of artists who have reacted by using dissimulation and make-believe themselves. Chapters include discussions of mimicry in reference to a number developments and debates: the post-truth era, the neoliberal consensus, the politics of race and gender, online subcultures, and the rise of the new right.An electronic version of the introductory chapter is available under a creative commons licence.

Pagina's: 432, Hardcover, Manchester University Press