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7/25/2019 Notes on the Demise and Persistence of Judgment (William Wood)
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Fillip Folio A
Notes on the Demise andPersistence of Judgment
Some commentators have locatedthe demise of judgment within themassive proliferation of art stylesin the closing decades of thetwentieth century. Others havelaid the blame at the feet of suchculprits as the recently inflated artmarket and the legacy of
institutional critique.
I want to discuss the frameworkfor the Judgment andContemporary Art Criticism forumas spelled out in the organizersprinted Supplement and throughtexts selected and reprintedthere. Through these texts, I
would like to bring in historicaland contemporary references tothe conditions leading to our oldfriend, the putative, recurringcrisis in art criticism. With thatcrisis in mind, and beforeaddressing the impact ofproliferating art styles, theinflated art market, and thelegacy of institutional critique, I
want to touch on a quote whichhas strong implications for thematter of judgment and art.
Art, considered in its highest
Notes
1. Supplement for
Judgment and
Contemporary Art
Criticism(Vancouver:
Artspeak and Fillip,
2009), 5. This booklet
included reprints of
texts by Lucy Lippard,
Sven Ltticken,
Christopher Bedford,
and James Elkins, as
well as Round Table:
The PresentConditions of Art
Criticism, October
no. 100 (spring
2002).
2. The Judgment and
Contemporary Art
Criticismforum was
accompanied by a
reading room/ gallery
installation and a
brochure publication,
both put together by
Fillip and Artspeak.
Besides mapping the
overlapping territory
that prompted the
collaboration leading
to the forum, these
coordinated
opportunities to readthe texts and handle
the products of
criticism also offered
the speakers and the
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vocation is and remains, for us, athing of the past. Thereby it haslost for us genuine truth and life,and has rather been transferred toour ideas instead of maintainingits earlier necessity in reality andoccupying its higher place. What
is now aroused in us by works ofart is not just immediateenjoyment, but our judgment also,since we subject to our intellectualconsideration (i) the content of art,and (ii) the work of arts means ofpresentation, and theappropriateness orinappropriateness of both to one
another.The quote is from GeorgWilhelm Friedrich HegelsLectures on Aesthetics, lastdelivered in 1828. I raise Hegelsreconsideration of art because,on the one hand, we can say thatit engages a massiveWincklemann-like fantasy: thefantasy of citizens of ancientAthens walking familiarly amongpolychrome statues, or theequally erroneous vision of theGothic cathedral as decoratedwith the bibles of the illiterate,both of which represent ideals ofpast art emphasized in forms ofRomanticism contemporary toHegel. Yet, in this fantasy, I want
to note how Hegels emphasis onarts belatedness encourages usto underline separation from artin our consideration of it.Meanwhile, the equally powerfuldesire to overcome that sense ofbeing separate persists, whetherin the revered spontaneity ofAbstract Expressionist brushwork
or the immediacy stressed insome accounts of conceptual artor behind a more currentinvestment in the simulacra of
audience selected
writings and provided
the hint of a history
to consider prior to
and following the two
days of papers and
discussion. For a list
of texts included in
the Supplement, seeBibliography, page
169.
3. G. W. F. Hegel,
Hegels Aesthetics:
Lectures on Fine Art,
trans. T. M. Knox
(Oxford: Clarendon,
1975), 11.
4. Arthur C. Danto,
Three Decades After
the End of Art,After
the End of Art:
Contemporary Art and
the Pale of History
(Princeton: Princeton
University Press,
1997), 35.
5. Michael Fried, Art
and Objecthood,Artforum5, no. 10
(summer 1967), 12
23, as reprinted inArt
and Objecthood:
Essays and Reviews
(Chicago: University
of Chicago Press,
1998), 163.
6. Christopher
Bedford, Art WithoutCriticism,X-tra10,
no. 2 (winter 2008). I
could add that one
can say that
Greenberg had a
clearly explicated
system of value only
if you forget about
the various and often
conflicting attempts
to sort out his
position by critics
and historians such
as T. J. Clark, Thierry
de Duve, Charles
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community achieved throughsocial practice or relationalaesthetics. The pain ofseparation and distance,encapsulated in the notion of artbeing a thing of the past, whichdecisively divorces the present of
forlorn art from its integratedpast, is at least partially (maybesubstantively) compensated forby endorsing and exaltingjudgment. As Hegel has it, artprovides not just immediateenjoyment but calls us to judgeappropriateness as well.Acknowledging that dreams of
reconnection persist alongsidethe compensating reassurance ofjudgment, I wonder whether bothconstitute linked foundationalfantasies: that is, fantasies ofreconnection persist because wewant always to imagine not beingalienated from art, while,simultaneously, judgmentalthough promising finalityinsists that we are, at leastintellectually, constantly at adistance from art.
I came to Hegelsreconsideration of art throughthe end-of-art thesis propoundedby critic and philosopher ArthurDanto. In hisAfter the End of Art,the idea that the proliferation of
art styles in the closing decadesof the twentieth century hasimpact on judgment can be fairlyeasily associated with hisdiscussion of what he calls ademocracy of pluralism incontemporary art. Danto claimsthat there is now no special waya work of art must be, tracing
this condition back to AndyWarhols Brillo Box of 1964, whichpossesses no significantdistinguishing visual differencefrom the Brillo box found in the
Harrison, Caroline
Jones, Rosalind
Krauss, and Barbara
Reise.
7. Fried, Art and
Objecthood, 167.
8. Michael Fried, Why
Photography Mattersas Art as Never Before
(New Haven: Yale
University Press,
2008).
9. Lucy Lippard,
Change and
Criticism:
Consistency and
Small Minds, in
Changing: Essays inArt Criticism(New
York: E. P. Dutton,
1971), 24.
10. Benjamin
Buchloh, Hal Foster,
Andrea Fraser, David
Joselit, Rosalind
Krauss, et al, Round
Table: The Present
Conditions of ArtCriticism, October
no. 100 (spring
2002), 209.
11. Ibid., 217.
12. Sven Ltticken,
Secret Publicity:
Essays on
Contemporary Culture
(Rotterdam: NAi
Publishers, 2006), 8.
13. Ibid., 1415.
14. Ibid., 14.
15. Julian Stallabrass,
Art Incorporated: The
Story of
Contemporary Art
(Oxford: Oxford
University Press,
2004).
16. James Elkins and
Michael Newman,
eds., The State of Art
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supermarket. While Danto has
much more to say about thatexample, his point is thatWarhols box signals the end ofthat notion of the special way artmust be, which he attributes towhat he calls the Age of
Manifestoes. Broadly coincidentwith the period of post-Hegelianmodern art and culminating inthe rise of the avant garde andthe neo-avant garde, the Age ofManifestoes is marked bypractices of inclusion andexclusion which dictate thatcertain types of art work
exemplify the most significant artand that all other contemporaryart is inferior, perhaps not art atall. This declaration of inclusionand exclusion is an exceptionaltype of judgment wherediscrimination takes first place.One of the most often discussedexample of this sort of exclusivejudgment is Michael Frieds 1967Art and Objecthood (discussedmainly by Fried himself insubsequent writing). There,modernist painting and sculptureas distinct media and thetheatricality of minimal art areopposed in a manner whereby,combining aesthetic withtheological judgment, Fried could
emphatically declare thattheatre and theatricality are atwar today, not just withmodernist painting . . . but withart as such. Such exclusive
judgment is presumably whatcritic and curator ChristopherBedford wants when he calls fora return to Clement Greenberg-
style critical criteria, a well-organized, well-argued, andclearly explicated system ofvalue. Yet Frieds essay is
Criticism(New York:
Routledge, 2008),
7274.
17. Art and Its
Markets: A
Roundtable
Discussion,Artforum
46, no. 8 (April 2008),
300.
18. Round Table: The
Present Conditions of
Art Criticism, 220.
19. Along with the
Art and Its Markets
roundtable, the April
2008 issue of
Artforumhas a
discussion of how asizeable posthumous
market for the work
of Lee Lozano has
been generated
through a circle of
belief consisting of
fellow artists, critics,
curators, dealers, and
collectors. See Katy
Siegel, Market Index:Lee Lozano,
Artforum46, no. 8
(April 2008), 330,
390.
20. For a study of at
least one aspect of
this complex and
contradictory
diffidence, the
pricing of works ofcontemporary art,
see Olav Velthius,
Talking Prices
(Princeton: Princeton
University Press,
2005).
21. Pierre Bourdieu,
The Field of Cultural
Production, or: The
Economic FieldReversed, The Field
of Cultural Production,
ed. Randal Johnson
(New York: Columbia
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remembered and expresslyrecalled as a bellicose swansongfor a type of critical diktatwhichpurported to offer exclusivejudgment while actually beingspecial pleading based on anattack on certain artists (and
critics) and a defence ofothers. Bedford may point
favourably to the richness of thedebates that ensued, but I havedoubts that anyone today couldfind in medium specificitysufficient grounds, or ferventfaith in certain artists asrighteous proof, truly to emulate
Frieds 1960s exampleexceptFried himself in his 2008monographic paean disguised asan explanation of WhyPhotography Matters as Art asNever Before.
In her essay Change andCriticism: Consistency and SmallMinds, also from 1967, Lucy
Lippard is already preparingground for moving away from theexcluding mode when she arguesthat a judgment oncontemporary art is tentativelytrue, like a scientists law andunlike a legal law. This
comparison of types of lawsindicates something whichFrieds call for medium specificitycannot tolerate, for she isencouraging looking not to acanon but to experimentation forcriteria in engaging art andcriticism. When Lippard goes onto say that the critics role isdescriptive rather thanprescriptive, combined with herallusion to the scientist, she
points towards the oft-forgottenattraction of technocraticadventures such ascommunications and systems
University Press,
1993), 2973, 27379.
22. Art and Its
Markets, 300.
23. Round Table:
The Present
Conditions of Art
Criticism, 213.
24. Ibid., 205.
25. Ibid., 214.
26. Ibid., 223.
27. Ltticken, 16.
28. Boris Groys, Art
in the Age of
Biopolitics: From
Artwork to Art
Documentation,Art
Power(Cambridge,
Mass.: The MIT Press,
2008), 53. On the
subject of Flavins
certificates, see
James Meyer, The
Minimalist
Unconscious,
Octoberno. 130 (fall
2009), 14376.
29. Andrea Fraser,
Performance
Anxiety,Artforum14,
no. 6 (February
2003), 103.
About the Author
William Wood is anart historian and
critic. Since 1984, he
has published on
recent art in journals,
anthologies, and
exhibition
catalogues, as well as
held editorial
positions with C
Magazine, Public, Van
guard, and Parachute.
Recent catalogue
essays and articles
have dealt with
artists such as Stan
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theory and the philosophy ofscienceas elaborated in bookssuch as Thomas Kuhns 1962book The Structure of ScientificRevolutionson contemporarythinking about the arts andculture in the 1960s. Besides
indicating an expanded fieldbeyond media specificity, oneoutcome of this attraction whichLippard seems to be anticipatingwas her own subsequent practiceas a descriptive critic of theconceptual art that overtly triedto avoid or render useless thecategories of painting and
sculpturenot to mentionaesthetic conviction and culturalprivilegewhich upheld theexclusionary judgment of criticslike Fried, as well as her laterinclusive approach to feministand activist art projects and herconcern with aspects of locale inher writing.
We can see the legacy of thismove from prescriptive judgmentto tentative description operatingin the Octoberround table whenDavid Joselit speaks of judgingwhat constitutes an object . . . anobject of history and object ofaesthetic interpretation or
speaks of judging theboundaries of a field in the
context of engaging both art andvisual culture. Joselit is making adouble move. On the one hand,we need to judge what is anappropriate object for criticism,as when a critic passes over thephantom of the thing in itself todetermine how the work of art isarticulated and refracted through
institutional framing, curatorialcontext, and the histories,conventions, and subjects itemerges through and calls upon.
Douglas, Brian
Jungen, Mike Kelley,
Becky Singleton, and
the entity known as
the Vancouver
School. He has
taught art history and
critical theory at
universities inCanada and the
United Kingdom.
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On the other, where do thebounds of aestheticinterpretation lie? Are art critics(or art historians who act ascritics sometimes, like Joselit)and their competencies able toreach meaningfully to other
areas? Are we (since I occupy thesame field) in possession ofspecially pertinent tools andanalyses which might be fruitfullyapplied to a broader range ofimages and objects, from popularculture, non-elite spectacle, andsubcultural practices? I do notwant to get caught up in this
question, but want to argue thatthis double move means that weneed to come closer toconsidering not the proliferationof styles but the proliferation ofobjectsand the proliferation ofaspectsin the field ofcontemporary art and criticism.For Sven Ltticken, the issuepivots on the distinction JosephKosuth is credited withelaborating between specificand generic art, with generic orart-in-general being a situationwhere objects nowadaysexhibited as art no longer derivetheir legitimacy from a traditionor an artistic medium but fromthe very fact that their artistic
status is initially dubious.Such a proliferation of objects forcontemporary art has aconsequence that, to Ltticken,differently politicizes the sort ofpluralism Danto cheers on asdemocratic. Since art can includemost anything, it is then open ina new way to the commodity
relations of spectacular society,and so the artist has become anexemplary consumer. Meanwhile,the sort of criticism which
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stresses arts potential fordissent and difference risksbeing merely the marketingslogans for art that hassabotaged such a project,promoting its consumption in adeceptive, probably repressive,
but incrementally different typeof pitch.
In response to this potentialsabotage, Ltticken (with a nodto Boris Groys), discusses MarcelBroodthaers, seeing him as afigure whose acts ofconsumption amounted to notmerely a reflection of spectacle
but a reflection on it and furtherclaims that this sort of meta-consumption can result indecoding, deviant commoditieswhich are more thought-provoking and productivecompounds of the irrationalrationality of the spectacle.
Though he appears to laud thistendencyand to link it to otherscripto-visual artists like DanGraham and Robert SmithsonLtticken is also concerned withthe way in which the ideology ofart stipulates that the cultureindustry represents the big BadCop while the art businessrepresents the Good Coptheone who is good for people,
refined, complexand critical.Aware that critical writingwhether or not it is exclusivelyjudgmentalis part and parcel ofarts privileged position assomething somehow regarded asnot entirely instrumentalized,Ltticken writes of theuninflected importation of
contemporary cultural theory intoartistic and critical discourse asoften constituting unreflectiveconsumption, what he calls a
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pathetic, pathological tangle ofslogans and hype. Here we
might also consider JulianStallabrasss contention that agood deal of contemporary artscharm lies in the way it acts as acipher for notions of artistic and
creative freedom whilesimultaneously being nicelypositioned as spectacle in thestatus stakes played out bypowers who are bent onincreased capital accumulationthrough increasing inequity.
We are now up against thequestion of the recently inflated
market and its impact onjudgment. Is this really aproblem? Many commentatorson contemporary criticism,including Ltticken and JamesElkins, write of an imperative thatart must appear with some formof writing attached to it and,equally that there has recently
been more publishing ofcommentary, gossip, blogging,publicity, and art writing thanever before. In addition, Elkinsclaims that most of what isproduced is not read andcertainly not worthy of closereading. Meanwhile, in a 2008
discussion of Art and ItsMarkets, Tim Griffin, editor of
Artforum,said that theabundance of advertising in hismagazine had lead him awayfrom the market to areas wherehe could use the ad revenue todo something completelycounterintuitive: slow down, belate, even slightly out of sync.
Hence, the magazine had
recently featured articles andtributes to figures seeminglyextraneous to the fungibles of artdealing and collecting
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philosopher Jacques Rancire,dancer Michael Clark, novelistAlain Robbe-Grillet among them.In this example, the judgment ofan object of historywhichJoselit upheldsustains what HalFoster calls the archaeological
function of criticism,returning the forgotten orrevaluing the marginal thanks torevenue from a market whoseinterests it, nominally, does notrepresentthough here, we mustrecall that reviving marginalfigures extends the stockavailable for dealing. As well,
dealing, whether in words or ofworks, can come to havereciprocal effects by generatingsubsequent circulation of worksand in words.
I am not, like Dave Hickey, anapologist for the art market, butdiffidence about the art marketsrelationship to questions of
criticism and judgmentnecessitates neither an embraceof the ubiquity of marketpressures nor a disavowal ofthose pressures. Rather, we canlook to the art markets manycontradictory aspectsthe lackof a clear sense of what art isworth, what it can do, how it ispromoted simultaneously as
token of freedom and as ownedobject, as luxury goods and ascultural patrimony, as thingsuseless as instruments but viablefor all sorts of speculativepurposes. These questions are
grounded in matters of autonomyand heteronomy, the two poleswhich, according to Pierre
Bourdieu, structure the field ofcultural production, making itsnineteenth-century Frenchformation the economic world
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reversed. (To revise the terms
for the field of contemporary artin the recent past, we mightspeak of the art market asrepresenting the economic worldsynchronized.) It is not that themarket dictates criticismTim
Griffin wondered: Could apublication seriously damageanythinganymore? but to
recognize that inflation in abubble market and especially thecorrosive effects of presumingmarket relations to be theprevailing model for social lifehas taken on the character of a
neoliberal monolith, resulting inthe eradication of remainingvestiges of publicness whileendorsing weak citizenship.
In front of the Richard Serra-like monolith, we might turnaway from the art markettowards the question of fundingand governance of public
institutions like museums. AsAndrea Fraser points out in the2002 Octoberround table onThe Present Conditions of ArtCriticism, the privatization andcorporatization of museums andgalleries is the result of ahistorical shift since the 1970swhere: The progressive ambitionof building audiences for art
museums . . . [whereby] museumsbegan to recognize that they hadpublics and publicresponsibilities, as did artists andcritics and curators came to beseen through the prism ofprofessional and institutionalneeds. As she concludes: So
art for arts sake was replaced by
growth for arts sakewhich wasoften seems a thin cover forgrowth for growths sake. This issomewhat related to an
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argument brought forth byBenjamin Buchloh concerninghow one target of conceptualarts thorough criticism of thefield of contemporary art in the1960s and 1970s was thesecondary discursive text that
attached itself to artisticpractice. As he further states,readers competence andspectatorial competence hadreached a level where themeddling of the critic washistorically defied anddenounced. What interests
me here is the trend to revise the
relatively recent past regardingthe encouragement ofdemocratization anddecentralizationin theprogressive bureaucraticlanguage of the dayin postwarcultural organizations andindividual reception. That is, tosee how laudable aims thatpointed away, again, fromexclusive judgment and inheritedprivilege, need to be understoodas plays in a field where everypart is active and unforeseenconsequences need to beexposed and subject to analysis.If, in the museum, opening up theinstitution to more publicallysensitive accountability also
advanced administratorsadoption of corporate methodsand standards, so the redirectedenergies of the empoweredviewer/reader of conceptual artcould also be seen to contributeto the quelling of the exclusionistcritic as well as a harbinger ofintensified heteronymous,
inclusive forms of art writinglike gossip, blogging, andpublicity. A further implication isthat, just as the corporate
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methods of the museum stressattendance numbers andfundraising goals, so inclusivemodes of art writing removebarriers to publication along withthe residual conscientiousness ofthe professional critic.
This brings me to the legacy ofinstitutional critique inasmuch asBuchloh is credited with its initialanalysis and Fraser is surely oneof its most articulatepractitioners. Indeed, Fraseroffers perhaps one usabledefinition of criticism: I definecriticism as an ethical practice of
self-reflective evaluation of theways in which we participate inthe reproduction of relations ofdomination, which include for methe exploitation of competenceand other forms of institutionalauthority. It is through self-
reflective evaluation thatinstitutional critique causesproblems for judgment sincecritique and reflective thoughtdemand questioning of theauthority of those who presentthemselves fit to judge. Takingthis definition into considerationleads Fraser to recommend asite-specific type of artcriticism that means notmisrecognising your readership
as the other of your discourse butas the actual people who areprobably going to be picking upthe magazine and lookingthrough its pages. Sven
Ltticken comes to a similarconclusion when he writes of thepossibility that the ideology ofart which sponsors Good Cop/
Bad Cop notions can also permitfragile alliances betweeninstitutions and individuals in theart world. This, to me, is a
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large part of the legacy ofinstitutional critique becauseLtticken and Fraser not onlyrecognize the importance ofcritique and contextualization butthey also display an abidinginvolvement in the institutions
they subject to critique. Suchinvestment has always markedthe strongest manifestations ofthe critique of institutionstheethically sound conviction thatHans Haacke held that his 1971real time social system,Shapolsky et al. Manhattan RealEstate Holdings, would be shown
at the Guggenheim Museumbecause officials wouldrecognize its public importance.In the end, of course, they didnot: Director Thomas Messerenacted and excited subsequentcritique by cancelling theexhibition, proving the limits oftolerance within the notionallyliberal establishment. In thisexample, the legacy ofinstitutional critique promptsjudgment of matters of exclusionand inclusion in cultural life andquestions those relations ofdomination we all participate inby venturing that the descriptionor re-description of institutionalconditions leads towards
attempts to fulfill repressed andlatent potentials otherwise notconsidered.
Having discussed the threefactors leads me to proposesome tentative conclusions:
1. If we move from regardingthe proliferation of styles toconsidering the proliferation of
objects or the proliferation ofaspects in the field ofcontemporary art, we realize thatthe actual difference is that weno longer judge works but assess
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or analyze projects or practices.Partly this is an effect of a shift inthe way artists produce work;artists no longer make works butprepare exhibitionsthey makeshows. Again, although one cantrace this back to the decline of
state and private commissionsand the ascendance of thecommercial gallery in the late-nineteenth century, the mostobvious example is the post-studio condition of the 1960swhen artists like Carl Andre orDan Flavin had component partsdelivered to the gallery and
assembled the show there. Onemight go further and, recallingthat a Flavin requires a certificateto distinguish it from directlystore-bought fluorescentfixtures, agree with Boris Groyswhen he argues that much ofwhat we approach ascontemporary art in galleries andmuseums is not art work but artdocumentation that depends onart being no longer present andimmediately visible but ratherabsent and hidden. This
means that we may personallyprefercertain examples but wecan no longer faithfully arguethat this video is better than thatphotograph on secure, pseudo-
connoisseurial grounds.2. The recently inflated market
is an aspect, maybe an extremelyvolatile aspect, of the relations ofdomination whereby art andculture are part of thedominated dominant portion ofsocial life. The feints and movesof all the agents in the field affect
judgment not by dominating it inthe literal sense of dictation, butby inciting all manner of playbetween autonomous and
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heteronomous positions anddispositions. This is not meant tobe comforting but it does offer,though critique and analysis, thepossibility of plotting the playersand comprehending their movesin relation to each other. Once we
cease judging by appeal to animpossible autonomy andrecognize the inevitability ofheteronomy, we see that it takesingenuity rather than faith tomanoeuvre in the field.
3. The legacy of institutionalcritique is best understood as anunrelenting ethical imperative, as
Fraser put it, speaking of her ownpractice, to perform theinseparability of freedom anddetermination; to perform thatcontradiction without distancingit in facile irony or collapsing it incynicism. With talk of
freedom and determination, wecan return back to the quotefrom Hegel and note somethinglatent in his writing which mightbe more explicit in mydescription of the replacement ofexclusive judgment with thejudgment of objects ofinterpretation and of aspects ofthe field of contemporary art.Namely, that art is not now inpursuit of its highest vocation but
the memory of that vocation andthe idealism it entails persists inrumours and fantasies that arthas become alive again undernew circumstances. Though theidea is tantalizing in many ways, Ihope we can also see that it istremendously unlikely to be so.