Socially necessary labour: countering the regime of speculative capital. A decolonial case-study from the east-central european semiperipheries in the age of illiberal democracy

This thesis provides an in-depth analysis of ‘postartistic practices’ in Hungary and Poland between 2010 and the present day, a period marked by the far-right authoritarian turn of the two countries in the East-Central European (ECE) semiperiphery, commonly referred to as ‘illiberalism’. To gauge the current state of the ECE region, the work redefines the notion of Europe and Europeanness in the first chapter, relying on the seminal scholarship of fellow Eastern European thinkers. Analysing the period of the region’s transition from late-Socialism to capitalist liberal democracy in the second chapter reveals the major political, economic, and societal restructuring, and exposes the main agents administering the system changes: the alliance of the local elites and the international funding bodies solidified the era of liberal dominance by the early 1990’s. The‘illiberal’turn that took place in 2010 in Hungary and in 2015 in Poland, are scrutinised in the third and fourth chapters not as mere authoritarian ‘democratic backslidings’ but as illiberal regimes of capital accumulation that heavily rely on culture – and contemporary art specifically – in their quest to achieve hegemonic position and‘cultural hegemony’. Both illiberal regimes captured the main institutions of contemporary art and used those as beacons of ‘perverse decolonization’. I argue that both ‘post-fascist’ hegemonic projects are implemented by the ‘illiberal professionalmanagerial class’. At the centre of this research there are the multitude of dissident artistic practices, commonly referred to as socially engaged art, although, given the recuperated nature of the term, I assert to use a local idiom, ‘postartistic practices’ to unearth and overcome some of the key issues with the international discourse. Following the postartistic case studies from Hungary and Poland, the thesis situates these theories and practices within the international vanguard of contemporary critical theory.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

PhD

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Wolverhampton

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Erlich, Gabor

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Penzin, Alexei
• Roberts, John

• postartistic practices
• East-Central Europe
• political philosophy
• illiberalism
• democracy
• global historical sociology
• Hungary
• art
• Viktor Orbán
• Karl Marx

Licence

• https://wlv.openrepository.com/bitstreams/f7a20100-4505-4e92-b75d-81333baf36cd/download