FYI: Art Historian Amelia Jones is a seasoned pro when it comes to curating her own
(faux) radical credentials – and self-promotionally disseminating that
self-constructed myth via mainstream media and august podiums at airless
academic conferences.
Jones is particularly deft at
opportunistically placing herself (in word, if not deed) at the
hypothetical barricades of whatever cultural war(s) she sees being
fought – fought by actual, participating, stakeholders.
Jones is
the quintessential academic, careerist-sayer, posing as an activist
player. Her two main claims to ‘fame’ are coining the grammatically
jaw-breaking trope “Pollockian performative” … and her infamously
demonstrated willingness to accept a lucrative Chair at UCSC – where she
functioned as upholder of, and appartchik spokesperson for, the
party-line at Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern
California – just as the entire 2016 post-graduate cohort of the school quit en masse, in protest over the organizationally inept
corporatization of the art school. Including, but not limited to,
broken, contractual, promises to its post-grads.
From the
elitist promontory of her academic sinecure Amelia Jones loftily
pronounces on “trans-identity” and righteously excoriates ‘privilege’ –
all-the-while nibbling Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre’s 70 million dollar
petit fours.
Jones has positioned herself in such a way as to
lump anyone who questions her radical legitimacy with those who oppose
the cultural “re-questioning” she herself has co-opted from its rightful
owners.
