Shock and the materialist conception of art: Considerations for a politicised cultural psychology

The materialist conception of art understands art in relation to the material conditions within and by which art is produced and consumed. For cultural psychology, the materialist conception of art has been useful for developing insights into how individual perceptions are shaped, and are shaped by, culture as a collectively produced and historically embedded site of meaning-making. However, in much of cultural psychology, the relationship between progressive politics and the materialist conception of art remains under-appreciated. In this article, I consider how cultural psychologists might strengthen this relation through artistic shock, that is, a subjective, perceptual, and/or historiographical rupture brought about through the experience of art. In particular, I outline how Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin theorised and practiced artistic shock, and examine what the work of these thinkers could mean for cultural psychologists working with political collectives to grapple with psychopolitical questions related to subjectivity, contradiction, and memory. I conclude by reflecting on how future work that seeks to politicise cultural psychology might engage with the materialist conception of art.