Free exchange

How can we affirm the independence of critical artists and intellectuals when confronted by the new crusaders of Western culture, the neo-conservative champions of morality and good taste, the sponsorship of multinationals and the patronage of the state, and the self-indulgent preoccupations of fashionable theorists who have lost all touch with reality? How can we safeguard the world of free exchange which is and must remain the world of artists, writers and scholars?

These are some of the questions discussed by the leading social thinker Pierre Bourdieu and the artist Hans Haacke in this remarkable new book. Their frank and open dialogue on contemporary art and culture ranges widely, from censorship and obscenity to the social conditions of artistic creativity.

Among the examples they discuss are the controversies surrounding the exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, the debates concerning multiculturalism and ethnic diversity, and the uses of art as a means of contesting and disrupting symbolic domination. They also explore the central themes of Hans Haacke's work, which is used to illustrate the book.