Contesting concepts.

   

I  have a concept about what is 'good' architecture. I have a concept about what technology is. I have a concept about gambling. I have a concept about the value of time. I have a concept about what medicine is. I have a concept of what good educations should be. Yet certain concepts, say art or democracy, have disagreement about their essence built into the concepts themselves.

Political struggle is waged on the legitimacy of concepts. So how do concepts come into being? Well, they must be derived from an original exemplar, or exemplars whose authority is acknowledged by all the contestant users of the concept. Yet, equally, concepts are open-ended and subject to considerable modification in the light of changing times, and such modification cannot be predicted or prescribed in advance.

So, concepts denote an essentially complex activity and differences will arise in their use. For concepts are appraisive and contentions will arise about the different perceived elements in the complex activity. As a result, in employing concepts, each party in a dispute recognises that its own use of the concept is contested by those of other parties. Therefore, to use an essentially contested concept means to use it against other users, either aggressively or defensively.

I would argue that 'art'  has become just such a concept, developed in an atmosphere of sophisticated disagreement. The implication in ‘contested concept’ is that we do not expect to defeat or silence opposing positions, but rather through continuing dialogue to attain a sharper articulation of all positions and therefore a fuller understanding of the conceptual ranges. The essential contestation to the notion of art gives it a post structured edge (we are post the idea of concept as a thing) which problematises its own categorization.

Equally, I would argue that the 'subject' may be viewed as having a post-structured edge and therefore problematising its own categorisation. If  our own subjectivity is a contested concept, this might help us to understand the futility of seeking some over arching semantic field (concept) to cover disparate usages.