FRANK SIBLEY—Aesthetic Concepts (ii)

Philosophy Looks at the Arts
ed. Joseph Margolis
(Third Edition, 1987)

[Sibley, "Aesthetic Concepts" (cont.)]

---

[41]

II

A great deal of work remains to be done on aesthetic concepts. In the remainder of this paper I shall offer some further suggestions which may help towards an understanding of them.

The realization that aesthetic concepts are governed only negatively by conditions is likely to give rise to puzzlement over how we manage to apply the words in our aesthetic vocabulary. ... One very natural way to counter this question is to point out that some other sorts of concepts also are not condition-governed. We do not apply simple color words by following rules or in accordance with principles. We see that the book is red by looking, just as we tell that the tea is sweet by tasting it. ... This kind of comparison... is indeed familiar;... Yet whatever the similarities, there are great dissimilarities too. ... ...but certain differences stand out, and writers who have emphasized that aesthetic judgments are not "mechanical" have sometimes dwelt on and been puzzled by them.

Lasch—Domination Without Authority

Christopher Lasch
The Culture of Narcissism
(1979)


p. 180, quoting Jules Henry, Culture Against Man:

It is startling for people in a permissive culture to learn that not to be given pain can be felt as a deprivation. Yet it is more painful for some children to bear guilt unpunished than to get a spanking.

Now Lasch:

[182] The appearance of permissiveness conceals a stringent system of controls, all the more effective because it avoids direct confrontations between authorities and the people on whom they seek to impose their will. Because confrontations provoke arguments about principle, the authorities whenever possible delegate discipline to someone else so that they themselves can pose as advisers, "resource persons," and friends. Thus parents rely on doctors, psychiatrists, and the child's own peers to impose rules on the child and to see that he conforms to them. ... In this way, parents make their own problem—insubordination—the child's. Similarly at school, the child finds himself surrounded by authorities who wish only to help. ... The students themselves, according to Edgar Friedenberg's study of the American high school, reject both authoritarian and libertarian measures and regard social control as "a technical problem, to be referred to the right expert for solution."

...

[184] when everyone speaks his mind; when people listen as well as speak; when disagreements surface without causing "obvious tensions"; when the "chairman of the board" does not try to dominate his subordinates; and when decisions rest on consensus. These precepts, which by this time had be-
[185]
come the common coin of the social sciences, summarize the therapeutic view of authority. The growing acceptance of that view, at all levels of American society, makes it possible to preserve hierarchical forms of organization in the guise of "participation." It provides a society dominated by elites with an antielitist ideology. The popularization of therapeutic modes of thought discredits authority...while leaving domination untouched.

Lasch—Enthusiasm Verging on Sentimentalism

Christopher Lasch
The World of Nations
(1973)

Ch. XII, "The "Counter-Culture""

[subheading 3. Some Cultural and Political Implications of
Ethnic Particularism]

[192] The experience of pre-industrial peoples brought forcibly into contact with modern technological society has been highly ambiguous. On the one hand, industrial technology and mass communications have had an undeniably disruptive effect on many patterns of pre-industrial culture; but on the other hand, they have often strengthened the determination to preserve older ways, precisely as a defense against disorganization and loss of identity. ...

[193]
In the United States, and probably in other advanced countries as well, the revival of ethnic particularism has coincided with a new wave of enthusiasm for popular culture on the part of intellectuals and educated people generally —an enthusiasm verging on sentimentalism. Support for black culture is at least as great among educated whites as it is among blacks themselves; and whites are much more likely to romaniticize it, since they do not experience at first hand the poverty that is also an element of black culture, along with its positive features. ...

The identification of reason with technological rationalization has given rise to a revolt against reason itself, one aspect of which is a revival of cultural primitivism among the educated. Intellectual and literary culture has come to be widely regarded as an instrument of exploitation and domination; thus we have the demand, advanced by some black nationalists and supported by many white radicals, that "black culture" replace "white culture" in the schools; that English be taught as a foreign language; and that in the universities, black studies be defined as a completely autonomous branch of learning. To what extent is the scholarly interest in black culture itself tinged with these attitudes?

[194]
In a recent essay on black culture...John Szwed suggests in passing that the expulsion of whites from the civil rights movement was prompted not only by the blacks' desire to assert political control but by a rejection of "unreasonable and irrelevant white cultural models of change." This assertion seems to me to reflect a fairly widespread tendency to furnish cultural explanations for clearly political events, a tendency that can easily end in the complete rejection of politics as itself another "white cultural mode of change"...

[This assertion] also helps to point up the importance of the way culture is defined. The anthropological concept of culture as a people's total way of life, which has given rise to what Szwed calls the "cultural approach" to the study of society, is often confused with culture in the narrowed sense of accumulated ideas and techniques, transmitted for the most part in writing. That this confusion has become pervasive is suggested by the popular use of the term "life-style" to include everything from novels to the length of people's hair. One of its consequences is a growing disposition to regard culture in the more restricted sense—literary culture or "high culture"—not as potentially the common property of all men, but as something peculiarly bourgeois, white, or male, depending on the polemical frame of reference. The revolt against capitalism, racism, and the oppression of women becomes identified with a revolt against culture; or worse, the revolt against culture becomes a substitute for the revolt against capitalism, racism, and sexual exploitation.

Until recently, high culture was regarded, even by radicals—one is tempted to say, especially by radicals—not as the monop-
[195]
oly of any particular class or race but as mankind's inheritance. Gramsci once wrote:

In the accumulation of ideas transmitted to us by a millennium of work and thought there are elements which have an eternal value, which cannot and must not perish. The loss of consciousness of these values is one of the most serious signs of degradation brought about by the bourgeois regime; to whom everything becomes an object of trade and a weapon of war. The proletariat will have to take on the work of reconquest, to restore in full for itself and all humanity the devastated realm of the spirit.

Partly because the proletarian movement never successfully addressed itself to this task, we now find ourselves confronted with demands for cultural autonomy that confuse intellectual culture with bourgeois "life-styles" and reject the former along with the latter. The discovery that ethnic cultures (in the broad sense of the term "culture") have been unexpectedly resistant to homogenization coincides with, and to some extent may be informed by, a misguided and regressive rebellion against literary culture that seeks in the sentimental myth of the folk an antidote to bourgeois decadence. Were the political movements to which the scholarly rediscovery of ethnicity corresponds—movements for ethnic equality and self-determination—to adopt this primitivism as their own, they would then be adopting "irrelevant white cultural models" with a vengeance.

...

[196] The issue is not whether black people have a culture. In the essay already alluded to, the writer sets up a strawman, the contention that Afro-Americans have been "stripped" of their culture, and then proceeds to demolish it—incidentally with many asides to the effect that anyone who questions his own interpretation of the distinctiveness of black culture must be politically on the side of integration. But surely the question is no longer whether blacks have been "stripped" of their culture but whether the culture they do have is primarily African in origin or whether it has been formed in response to oppression in America, as the theorists of the "culture of poverty" have tried to show.

The history of Harlem helps to clarify this issue. As late as the twenties, even after the mass migration from the South had begun to be felt, Harlem retained a vigorous community life. It was at once more prosperous and more self-sustaining than it has since become. The collapse of the Negro artisan class, the Great Depression, the economic deterioration of New York City in general, and perhaps also the ideology of integration, combined to render Harlem vulnerable not only to economic but to cultural penetration from outside. It became an after-hours playground for whites looking for forbidden pleasures and hungry for soul. ...

Those who deny the pathological elements in the culture of poverty would do well to ponder Malcolm's account of his own degradation, in a world where high status meant a light skin, straight hair, the company of white women, and flashy clothes (manufactured by white merchants especially for the ghetto and sold at inflated prices). Relations between blacks and whites—sexual relations in particular—came to be founded on a pattern
[197]
of mutual fascination, exploitation, and degradation. The revival of black nationalism in the fifties and sixties, with its puritanical morality and its reassertion of the work ethic, was directed precisely against this kind of cultural "integration." It reflected an awareness that the two races had too long, and at too close range, witnessed each other's shame.

Unfortunately, this same nationalism proved unable to formulate an adequate politics. Like other black nationalist movements in the past, it advocated physical separation. At the same time it put forward a mythical view of the Negro past, which encouraged an escapist preoccupation with Africa. Neither at the political nor at the cultural level did it succeed in expressing the two-sidedness of the life of American blacks. For a time, it appeared that the black power movement of the mid-sixties would achieve a real unity, combining an emphasis on the distinctive elements in black culture with a struggle for power in American society as a whole. But this movement quickly split in two. The political wing propounds a new integrationism in the name of "Marxist-Leninism," while the cultural nationalists ignore politics altogether. Meanwhile, a new generation of academics had rediscovered popular culture as a field for scholarly research—and also, perhaps, as a way of resolving nagging doubts about their own relevance. The question, as I have already suggested, is whether this new scholarship will encourage a better understanding of the relations between modern technological society and the pre-industrial cultures it has partially absorbed, or whether it will merely surround poverty with the romantic glow of the intellectuals' own alienation. An appreciation of the resilience of pre-industrial culture could contribute, however indirectly, to the growth of a genuinely antitechnolgical politics. Romanticizing poverty, on the other hand, would merely prolong the present political stalemate and at the same time encourage a process of cultural "Balkanization"—a regression to a state of generalized ignorance disguised as ethnic pluralism and having as its political counterpart a system of repressive decentralization, combining "community control" of culture with centralized control of production, and a
[198]
colorful proliferation of "life-styles" with the underlying reality of class domination.

Karen Kurczynski—Jorn on Human Potential

Karen Kurczynski
The Art and Politics of Asger Jorn:
The Avant-Garde Won't Give Up (2014)

He [Jorn] believed that expression is a basic human potential that the institutions of art actually deny ordinary people by turning it into the specialty of a few heroic geniuses. (8)

What "institutions of art" "deny" to "ordinary people" is NOT their potential, but rather recognition and resources. If Sunday Painters believe they are entitled to those things simply for being human, then they deserve neither!

As a child of the 1980s who is suitably well-versed in motivational posters, I believe it to be true and prescient that No One Can Make You Feel Inferior Without Your Permission. They ought not, at least, simply by forming insitutions for the pursuit of a common agenda, or not necessarily. Past and present adherents to the doctrine enumerated in this passage hence contradict themselves by seeing institutions as inhibiting potential, since it is recognition that is withheld rather than freedom. Certainly it seems true that mere knowledge of the existence/praxis of recognition does inhibit many amateur artists; but this merely proves (proves!) that recognition is in fact their motive! This is SELF-inhibition!

The SI ultimately considered visual art mere cultural capital with no agency to effect broader social change (a belief that led Jorn to leave the movement). While Jorn's ongoing engagement with such neo-Marxist critiques of the institution of art was one of the driving forces behind Situationist theory, he also remained firmly committed to the idea that art plays a very specific role in society. For Jorn, art fulfilled a basic human need for expression. Yet even as modern art foregrounded personal expression for the first time in history, its institutionalization as a specialized sphere of the social elite cheated the non-artist out of a fundamental aspect of human experience. (10)

...the young and idealistic artists regarded Helhesten's ["Hell-horse," journal published in Denmark from 1941 to 1944 by Jorn and colleagues] activities as a direct intervention in social life, rather than simply an art movement. (27)

Jorn would continue to uphold this view of the avant-garde as an emancipatory force in both art and life, writing in 1949 that, "The purpose of art is first of all moral, and subsequently aesthetic." (27-28)

Oddly, this wording connects the seemingly new, proto-postmodern focus on the everyday to the older (typically intensely ideological) trope of "moral" uplift through the arts.

[from a notebook, 2018]

Parsons on the Instrumental and the Expressive

If we are right in thinking that special pressures operate on the younger generation relative to the general pressures generated by social change, on the other side of the relationship there are factors which make for special sensitivities on their part. The residua of early dependency, as pointed out above, constitute one such factor. In addition, the impact on youth of the general process of social differentiation makes for greater differences between their position and that of children, on the one hand, and that of adults, on the other, than is true in less differentiated societies. Compared to our own past or to most other societies, there is a more pronounced, and above all (as noted) an increasingly long segregation of the younger groups, centered above all on the system of formal education. It may be argued especially that the impact of this process is particularly pronounced at the upper fringe of the youth period, for the rapidly increasing proportion of the age cohort engaged in higher education–in college, and, very importantly, in postgraduate work. These are people who are adults in all respects except for the element of dependency, since they have not yet attained full occupational independence (172)

...

What I have called the romantic trend can be broadly expressed in two directions; the tentative terms "regressive" and "progressive" are appropriate, if not taken too literally. ...the former, at social levels, tending to resist change, the latter to anticipate and promote it.

...The cult of physical prowess [e.g. athletics] has clearly been a reflex of the pressure to occupational achievement in a society in which brains rather than brawn come increasingly to count. From this point of view, it is a regressive phenomenon. (175)

...

On the other side, the progressive one, the most important phenomena are most conspicuous at the upper end of the range, both in terms of the sociocultural level and of the stage of the life cycle. This is the enormous development of serious cultural interests among students in the more elite colleges. The most important field of these interests seems to be that of the arts, including highbrow music, literature, drama, and painting.

The first essential point here is that this constitutes a very definite upgrading of cultural standards, compared with the philistinism of the most nearly corresponding circles in an earlier generation. Second, however, it is at least variant and selective (though not, I think, deviant) with respect to the main trends of the society, since the main developments in the latter are on the "instrumental" rather than the "expressive" side. As to the special involvement of elite youth in the arts, it may be said that youth has tended to become a kind of "loyal opposition" to the main trends of the culture, making a bid for leadership in a sphere important to balanced society yet somewhat neglected by the principal innovating agencies. (176)

Talcott Parsons
"Youth in the Context of American Society" (1962)
in Social Structure and Personality, pp. 155-182

Note (12 May, 2016):
So, among the "romantic," "progressive" elements of youth culture, the arts present a sort of path of least resistance, an opening created by the slippage between society's stated valuation of the arts on one hand and its material/actual devaluation of them on the other. The arts are both socially acceptable and (TP explicitly denies it, but I would not) in some sense also deviant. Further, as TP perceptively identifies here, the source of the arts' deviant tinge is the broader trend of society in the "instrumental" direction at the direct expense of "expressive" concerns. Rapid change of this type creates anomic strain, which feeds youthful romanticism (the "unreality" component TP identifies elsewhere with "romanticism" is very apt here too). Even so, the "elite," "progressive" elements of youth culture, while they are not immune to romanticism and unreality, are still of their own volition bound to common social values and norms; hence, their brand of "youth culture" is merely "loyal opposition" rather than out and out rebellion. TP only IMPLIES that this "loyalty" is a direct and predictable product of this youth's socialization as "elite." He doesn't actually say so, at least not here. But isn't it obvious that those born "elite" have an awfully tough time later admitting that the society which delivered them to such privilege does not treat all people equally or equitably? IMHO, this is an important explanation for the "loyalty" of their "opposition" to a society which they inevitably, be it consciously or unconsciously, come to understand as fundamentally inequitable. The dialectical ring of the term "loyal opposition" is a reflection of the unresolved inner guilt which underlies it. So, it's true, TP has perhaps underemphasized the elements of class conflict here, choosing instead to conduct distinct analyses of the "regressive" and "progressive" elements. I would say that this approach is "incomplete" without being out-and-out "flawed." In fact, this is a brilliant take on the explosive escalation of post-secondary arts education that was just beginning to take shape as he was writing. VERY perceptive.

---

Kluckhohn, among others [The Evolution of Contemporary American Values, 1958], comments on the current expansion in America of aesthetic and expressive activities "greatly beyond mere 'comfort.' Riesman [in The Lonely Crowd] calls attention to the concern with taste in the widespread sophistication about food and dress. We suggest that this rise in aesthetic appreciation, in hedonism, if you will, is not merely an effort to establish new criteria of status through marginal differentiation but mainly a heightened expressiveness–complementary to, rather than conflicting with, a rise in instrumental demands for achievement. (229)

"The Link Between Character and Society"
(with Winston White) (1961)
ibid, pp. 183-235

19 April, 2021: In other words, this "expansion" of "aesthetic and expressive activities" is compensatory and equilibriating in a world where the "main developments" have for long been "on the 'instrumental' rather than the 'expressive' side." The idea is facile. Probably it is all but untestable scientifically. But there is lots of anecdotal evidence for it, and it holds great explanatory power.

Zander @ TED

As further evidence that if classical music is dying it may well be at the hands of its own advocates and practitioners, I give you this lecture from the TED conference by Benjamin Zander, who commits therein what are, in my mind, three of the deadliest sins of classical music proselytizing: attempting to use analysis to synthesize experience, arbitrarily imposing a narrative on a piece of abstract instrumental music, and appealing to novelty in place of substance. I'll examine them one by one:

(1) Attempting To Use Analysis To Synthesize Experience

Much of the talk seems to be preparatory in nature, getting the audience ready for the final, complete performance of the piece under discussion at which time they are expected to suddenly "get it" by virtue of their recently acquired experience. Zander ensures that they hear the piece (or at least fragments of it) several times throughout the course of the talk, a worthwhile effort as repeated hearings of the same piece heighten the experience for many listeners. Unfortunately, when Schoenberg wrote that in order to like a piece one must first be able to remember it, he wasn't talking about 10 minutes ago; more like ten months or years. The mechanism by which memory becomes an asset rather than a liability to the listener takes longer and cannot be synthesized quickly. It also cannot be done by simply telling people what they're supposed to be listening for. Describing music verbally cannot possibly give the recipient any idea what it actually sounds like, but more importantly, one should never expect that every audience member would describe it the same way were they asked to do so themselves. Analysis cannot stand in for experience because the latter is unique and personal. It cannot be formed on one's behalf by someone else simply rhapsodizing on a piece's structure.

Zander avoids the pitfall of imposing an overly technical analysis on what one must assume is an audience that lacks an academic musical background, but what he performs is analysis nonetheless, taking elements of the piece out of time and explaining "what's really going on." When it comes to the aesthetic experience, educating listeners into conformity in this way is impossible, but even if it were possible, it would not be desirable. There is a certain biodiversity that makes the musical ecosystem run, exemplified by creative musicians who draw on a wide range of influences, as well as certain strains of pedagogical tradition that encourage this (it's no coincidence that the terms "inbreeding," "incestuousness," and "cannibalization" are often used figuratively in this way by musicians, including those steeped in the classical tradition).

(2) Arbitrarily Imposing a Narrative on a Piece of Abstract Instrumental Music

This favorite pastime of Musicologists everywhere is no more useful in outreach than it is in scholarship. On a personal level, I make no bones about the fact that I have absolutely no interest in engaging in this pursuit, and that doing so detracts from rather than enriches the experience for me. Nevertheless, I think there are some more objective critiques to be made here. One could argue that prescribing a narrative for the audience robs them of the opportunity to form their own, the latter option being, I would think, the preferred outcome for those who enjoy such activities. One could also assume that even if the technique is wildly successful here, there's no guarantee (in fact, it's rather unlikely) that anyone in this audience will be able to reproduce the same results in themselves when confronted with an unfamiliar piece in absence of Mr. Zander's coaching.

I would go even further and argue that Zander does more harm than good here. To tell a roomful of novices that the key to listening to music is coming up with the right story to accompany it is to tell them that the art of music is weak, dependent, intellectually murky, and aesthetically frail; it is to trivialize the art form as one which cannot stand on its own, painting its greatest exponents as mere taunters and its greatest works as somehow incomplete; and it does the greatest of all disservices to those composers who actively oppose(d) this attitude and its consequences for their work. To repeat this blasphemy in front of an impressionable audience is to sell out one's own art form as a mere component part of some grander scheme. Conversely, the greatest gift one can give such an audience is the experience of music as an autonomous art form; music at its most powerful, unencumbered, and aesthetically unique, the way every musician, academic, and listener who has ever been inspired on a spiritual level by a piece of music has experienced it at one time or another in their lives. This experience is absolutely for everybody; anything less sells the audience and the art form dreadfully short.

(3) Appealing to Novelty In Place of Substance

That the TED conference specializes in "infotainment" is no secret, nor is it anything to be ashamed of assuming that both the info- and the -tainment are adequately represented. In this case, however, I see a classic case of sheer entertainment value diverting attention from the fact that next to nothing has actually been accomplished. Novelty is everywhere in this presentation: the white tennis shoes paired with a sport coat, the theatrical manner, and the elementary school bathroom humor form the bulk of it (the phrase "one buttock playing" sets the presenter up for a ruthless parody about "half-assing" it, but we'll save that for later). Zander can't help it that he's enough of a musician to perform his own musical examples, or that he has a foreign accent, but these novel features only contribute further.

Of course, whether there is in fact any "substance" to what Zander is saying here depends on your opinion of his methods. Some people believe that the problem with instrumental music is that there's nothing more to latch on to but the sound itself; I, on the other hand, see that as its greatest attribute. Some people believe that listening to music is a skill that must be taught and learned in an objective and quantifiable way; I happen to think that individual human beings are too different for this ever to be effective, and that even if it were, it would rob us of our individuality. Despite the romanticized folklore about divine inspiration that surrounds many great classical composers, we know from experience that the lifeblood of musical creativity is the unique impression the same piece of music might make on each listener, this being the mechanism by which stylistically diverse musicians often cite common influences. As musicians, our individuality is all that we have, and its expression is intractably mediated by how we see (or in this case hear) the world around us. Take that away and the party is over.

You might label my position that of an "aesthetic libertarian." I believe that if one's favorite music is not very popular, giving a lecture about why it is so great is neither an effective nor a valid way of attempting to improve its standing. Standardizing our perception means standardizing our art, both in creation and reception. I don't want that, you don't want that, and I have a hard time believing that Mr. Zander wants that either. He has had an experience and he wants dearly to replicate that experience in others, which is exactly how most of us feel about whatever music it is we are passionate about. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can actually do to make this happen, and among all the methods yet devised of attempting such a thing (lecture-recitals for captive dinner guests, making mix tapes for friends, etc.), the Saving Classical Music Proselytizing Tour '08 is the one I find the most misguided. Rather than making a mix tape and sending you on your way to draw your own conclusions, imagine that friend of yours putting on a dog and pony show aimed at revealing once and for all why what he/she likes is actually the best. Chances are your response would fall somewhere between boredom and resentment, no matter how well-groomed the dogs and ponies are.

In the middle of a conference where cutting edge ideas about neuroscience, innate human violence, and space colonization are being tossed around left and right, a funny little man dancing around in white tennis shoes and playing the piano is going to go over well no matter what. It's a good way to take a break from the more apocalyptically-themed presentations and increase the audience's intellectual street cred at the same time (listening to classical music is one thing, but to "love and understand" it earns even more points). Meanwhile, in the presentation's second life here in the online world, classical musicians everywhere are thrilled to see their medium occupying such a central place at a conference otherwise devoted to such "serious" topics, since this undoubtedly proves that what they do is important regardless of how well they do it (see the overgrown comments section to the video, where the gallery dutifully repeats a litany of pop culture clichés and fallacies about music that would make Greg Sandow blush). It's a symbiotic relationship if there ever was one, a quid pro quo, tit-for-tat, rigor-for-glamour, info-for-tainment type of deal. It's not surprising, then, that the talk gets a reception from both worlds something like President Bush gets from FOX News; it is, however, earned in exactly the same way.

Some may see in this talk a harmless, lightweight attempt to have some fun with an often unappreciated art form, a pursuit that has many benefits if it succeeds and few drawbacks if it fails. I see in it all the worst things that everyday folk like to accuse classical music of being: bourgeois, conformist, and elitist. It's not for nothing that classical musicians have had this latter term tossed at them with impunity by just about everyone else. As a group, we appear to others to have made our minds up that if everyone else doesn't just love what we do, there must be something wrong with them. Letting people make their own minds up apparently being bad for business, we'd seemingly rather make their minds up for them, as in, "It's not really an experiment because I know the outcome," or, "The other thing I want to do is to tell you about you." If the problem is that lots of people are turned off by classical music, I'd say that with this talk, Mr. Zander has become part of the very problem he seeks to address, leaving his audience as weaker listeners than they were before, and leaving those in the trenches with little to draw upon the next time the e-word is trotted out.