Everyone knows what the predicament of privilege is. In the contemporary world of Western popular culture, the reassuring tone of markets telling us, as one consumer brand has it, that This is Okay, Certified Okay, takes up a lot of space. This is the culture of the materially privileged who have come to see their privilege as their problem. In a 2014 campaign the Danish branch of Doctors Without Borders likewise reminded their constituency that it was okay: "With the campaign we also want to get across to the Danes that it’s perfectly okay to live a good and safe life here in Denmark – and to do so without feeling guilty. It’s okay as long as every now and again we look up and refrain from closing the door to those, who live in a part of the world that is neither safe nor good." This reassuring tone of okayness, however, does not necessarily or entirely calm and relieve the experiences of guilt, confusion, ambivalence, injustice, resignation, boredom, and anger that have become part of the materially privileged sensorium of late capitalism. In this lecture I explore the mode of "the predicament of privilege" in relation to one important playground for this predicament, namely humanitarian arts and culture.

The seminar is public, and we welcome everybody.

Programme: Aesthetic Seminars Spring 2018