Micropolitics and Southern European socially engaged art practices in the age of austerity

This thesis develops a genealogy of the concept of micropolitics as a militant and analytical tool through the lens of which it examines the institutional dimension of socially engaged art practices in Southern Europe between 2008 and 2015. The period under examination was marked by the emergence of a profound social and economic crisis, which coincided with the proliferation of social movements and practices that were driven by the aspiration to reimagine institutions beyond the traditional macro-political framework of representation. In the same way, any interpretation of socially engaged art practices that actively participated to this climate cannot be reduced to the set of dualities and binary frameworks, including consensus vs dissensus, ethics vs aesthetics, and dialogue vs critique, that have historically been adopted in the Anglo-American context and their reliance on the present as well as on their presumed universalism. Drawing upon the work of Suely Rolnik, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, as well as the militant and theoretical movement of Italian Operaism, the thesis instead adopts a micropolitical lens. This concept taps into the multiple undercurrents present in any form of group politics, from the family unit to the state or political party. In this thesis, micropolitics serves as a valuable analytical tool for examining the role of instituent desire and modes of organising within 'more-than-social practices' through the analysis of four case studies: Intermediae (Spain), Vessel Art Project (Southern Italy), Casa delle Agriculture (Southern Italy), Athens Biennale (Greece). This thesis contributes to the debate around socially engaged art in original terms by: introducing the notion of micropolitics and its genealogy to the debate as well as by using micropolitics as a lens to read and interpret such practices and to analyse their political agency; adopting a conceptual framework that refers to Italian post-Operaism and that sees the notion of commons as it is articulated by Antonio Negri and Massimo De Angelis as directly connected with the conceptual and operational dimension of micropolitics; circumscribing the research spatially and geopolitically to Southern European area understood as a semiperiphery and imagined geography; challenging the dominant Anglo-American discourse around socially engaged art, and introducing alternative genealogies based on the legacy of micropolitics; introducing a series of Italian sources connected to the Autonomia movement and the commons, that have not long been present in English language scholarship.

Citation

Santomauro, A. (2025) Micropolitics and Southern European socially engaged art practices in the age of austerity. University of Wolverhampton. https://wlv.openrepository.com/handle/2436/626007

Publisher

University of Wolverhampton

URI

https://wlv.openrepository.com/handle/2436/626007

Type

Thesis or dissertation

Language

en

Description

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Collections

Theses and Dissertations