Exceptional us

Within any generic argument about education’s capitalisation, or the meritocratic ascendency warranted by a practice-based PhD; beyond the circularity of calls for artistic entry into, then rejection of, the ‘higher’ academy, lies a continuously denied repetition of the production of exceptionalism.
Carl Schmitt designated a state of exception as that which occurs when a sovereign (or someone determined to assert their sovereignty) takes the law into their own hands, bypassing juridical – ‘democratic’ – legislation. From democracy (the artist demands their rights to the self-determination of the shape and form of their PhD) to exceptionalism (the artist refuses the regulations of the PhD on the basis of their difference), the artist-researcher, like the market in which their subject is conditioned, must negotiate how to be exceptional to governance frameworks. A saviour of critical research practice, or an autocrat perfecting self-mastery? The institution lags behind, afraid of its own market redundancy, rendered speechless through the fog of bureaucracy. The supervisor, an implement, plays back and forth.