24 May 2021

Boorstin—On Seeing and Not Being Seen

Daniel Boorstin
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

[My notes say:]

p. 231—"We wish our membership to be reported. We do not care to participate."

This is a very astute observation of how the Image-nonculture bleeds from top-down institutional levels to stain even individual social relationships, at which point it is equipped to become self-perpetuating. The examples of churches and service clubs are also well-chosen since this particular Image is very much bound up with the "democratic-humanitarian" impulse (127).

Then again, ITEA et al have made a stunning reverse achievement: we DO wish to participate (i.e. so we can promote ourselves) but DO NOT wish for this to be known by all of our peers elsewhere!

[from a post-it, 2017]

Boorstin—Look In The Mirror

Daniel Boorstin
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

[My notes say:]

p. 194—"...a vague but attractive image he has of himself."
THIS is a legit example of technology-driven change in society and culture: the sheer growth in ease and frequency of seeing oneself (or if you insist one's own Image) cannot have had less than a total impact on questions of self-image; an environmental change in human development whereby many people remain veritably arrested in Lacan's mirror stage, and are seemingly quite content to be so. Of course I also find the technology useful; it is here to stay in any case. But in that respect, Debord is correct that a "new way of living" is necessary, one which accounts for this question as one of human development.

[from a post-it, 2017]
[The passage:]
It [the image] must be a receptacle for the wishes of different people. Seldom is this so plainly acknowledged as in the recent program by Pincus Brothers Maxwell, clothing manufacturers of Philadelphia. They advertise their new brand of men's suits, not by a sharply focused photograph, but by a blur standing on the street. "The agency, Zlowe Co., New York," Printers' Ink explained (January 20, 1961), "came up with a campaign that discards the fashion plate for personal image. Based on deliberately blurred reflection photography, the illustration is supposed to sell the man through a vague but attractive image he has of himself."

Boorstin—Recordings as Pseudo-Events

Daniel Boorstin
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

[My notes say:]

p. 174—the recording as itself a pseudo-event
This is actually quite provocative, and I'm inclined to agree, at least in the metaphysical sense, not necessarily in the material/functional sense. Generally commercial sound recordings are not quite as central to the Dark Forces of image-mongering as scholars of music (for their own self-importance mostly) would like to think.

Having said that, the sonic wallpaper phenomenon (p. 175) IS real, it has since taken some yet more disturbing (and very functional) turns, and certainly in that metaphysical way referenced above it is nothing less than an affront to our humanity.

[from a post-it, 2017]

Boorstin—The Company We Keep

Daniel Boorstin
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

[My notes say:]

p. 170—"Have you seen my snapshot of the Mona Lisa?"
This point hits the mark but is, let's say, undertheorized here.
p. 171—"We are quite precise when we describe him as a devotee of hi-fi rather than of music."
Also a direct hit, and also undertheorized, though here of course I'm happy enough that he leaves the fleshing out to specialists.
In both cases, the first further order of business is this: the relationship between original and copy, artist and curator, is not symbiotic but in fact parasitic, and this is evidenced by which variable in the equation of valuation must be manipulated in order to change the output on the other side of the equals sign.

[from a post-it, 2017]

Boorstin—Museums and Contexts

Daniel Boorstin
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

[My notes say:]

pp. 99-102—on museum art objects being experienced out of their context; as "an animal in a zoo" (102)

Sadly (or perhaps not!), the "context" always has an expiration date, revolution or no revolution, museum or no museum. Hence the choice is most basic: to show the objects out of context or not show them at all. I'm not so sure that the affinity with the Tourist mindset can be avoided; it is then left to that old bugaboo, Individual Initiative or what not, to deliver a deeper engagement (assuming there is one to be had!) to the individuals seeking it. Museumization and Tourismization, then, are symptomatic of the absence of this Initiative more so than of the presence of dark curatorial forces.

To be sure, attempts to synthesize the missing context in a laboratory, so to speak, ARE absolutely symptomatic of the presence of dark curatorial forces! Culture that is living must shed its skin periodically, hopefully in a mammalian rather than reptilian manner, but it must happen in any case. Resistance to such processes (I'm comfortable calling them Natural) tends to create bigger problems while failing to address the small ones as it purports to.

[from a post-it, 2017]

Boorstin—Immediacy as a Form-Content Issue

Daniel Boorstin
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

Readers and viewers would soon prefer the vividness of the account...to the spontaneity of what was recounted. (14)
[My notes say:]

A classic mapping of the Form-Content problem onto the Seriousness-Accessibility problem; which is to say that both Form and Content so construed do not mediate accessibility with equal force or aplomb; rather, Form is the gatekeeper, with all of the stigma (I would say of course) of that word as we use it to apply to middlemen in the social world of the arts. Of course the market/commodification is the real driving force toward an imbalance; but the dynamic is there in any case, market or not.

Boorstin—The Four Criteria for Pseudo-Events

Daniel Boorstin
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

pp. 11-12—the four criteria for pseudo-events
(1) It is not spontaneous, but comes about because someone has planned, planted, or incited it...

(2) It is planted primarily (not always exclusively) for the immediate purpose of being reported or reproduced...

(3) Its relation to the underlying reality of the situation is ambiguous...

(4) Usually it is intended to be a self-fulfilling prophecy...
[My notes say:]

Does Hopscotch itself qualify?

Does virtually any arts event qualify?!

23 May 2021

Lipstick Traces—Attention-Seeking Ain't Easy

Greil Marcus
Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (1989)

[My notes say:]

pp. 251-252—On Isou's "way[s] of getting attention" (252), incl. fabricating interviews with "luminaries of literary Paris" and titling a publication The Lettrist Dictatorship at a time (1946) when new details of Nazi atrocities were emerging daily.

This certainly could be seen as "worse than the punk celebration of the swastika," and certainly it "worked on the same levels," but more to the point, it probably wouldn't succeed in grabbing attention today, nor would the "placing" of fake interviews. And so there is one point of historical affinity here between then and now (there were and are at least some artists willing to lower themselves to this level in hopes of gaining exposure) and also one disaffinity (there are undoubtedly more of them now, both in absolute number and proportionately, and this cannot be due solely to extra-artworld dynamics but must, IMHO, be in at least small part an inevitable escalation generation by generation).

See also p. 323, final ¶ re: dedication of a film to the masters, "thus placing himself in their company." Is this not always the case with tributes?

[from a post-it, 2017]

Lipstick Traces—Mass Culture's Pop Heart Is Late To The Party...Again

Greil Marcus
Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (1989)

[My notes say:]

pp. 70-73—on the explicit drawing of parallels between Punk and the Frankfurt School
p. 70—"The inane radio jingle you heard too many times a day fed into a totality: to get that jingle off the air, you somehow understood, the radio had to be changed, which meant that society had to be changed."

This "you somehow understood"...how isn't terribly important, unless it is. For me individually this was a (rare) textbook case of maturity interacting with experience; for a larger group of people not understandable as a monolith in either respect (or were they?) it's hard for me to imagine exactly what must/might have been In The Air the moment this totalism was realized as mass consciousness. Which is to say, I wonder if the totalistic thinking actually came first, arising from general (and legitimate) discontent but also being truly ignited by genuinely puerile and anti-social tendencies which are in no way either unique or interesting. Certainly these tendencies will tend towards the Total, and that is not a strength but a weakness, i.e. because this becomes, let's say, a very clumsy (if not bedridden) vehicle of both theory and praxis. It has no nuance or flexibility. And of course everything IS connected, but the connections themselves can be quite varied.

[from a post-it, 2017]

[A second such note:]

p. 70—"...now the premises of the old critique were exploding out of a spot no one in the Frankfurt School...had ever recognized: mass culture's pop cult heart."

Great news as far as it goes. But as for "positing punk music as a transhistorical phenomenon" (paraphrasing a passage from GM's Wikipedia page), the question remains of where/how/why this Critique does and does not bubble up; why it is, say, not always, and not never, but rather Transhistorical, ebbing and flowing. Hence as the punks were getting woke, others were dozing; and now that yet further groups of woke people are coming and going, Punk has passed into History, and a real live Punk is a sight to be pitied at least as much as respected. Hence the Transhistorical encompasses much that is in fact merely ephemeral; much that never Gets Over The Hump; much which cannot manifest and pass gloriously into history because no one person or demographic or occupational group can be counted upon once they're Woke to stay that way. So, uh...were the Frankfurt School ahead of their time, or the Punks behind theirs?

Lipstick Traces—Automatic Writing Is Still Monotonous, After All These Years

Greil Marcus
Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century (1989)

[My notes say:]

pp. 64-65—on what elsewhere gets placed under the heading The Democratization of Creativity

All of this being as it is vis-a-vis "You don't need nothin'. Just play it", it's worth recalling that the Situationists had quite early in their history realized that "We now know that automatic writing is monotonous." It should not have been difficult to see the analogous aspects of unrefined musical technique, especially not since that was well-known by this time in a couple of contemporaneous musical milieux. With THAT context front and center, the explosion of activity recounted so fondly here is much more lucidly viewed as the negative reflection of these people's prior ignorance rather than any kind of blossoming; and if the activity undoubtedly had value for them as individuals to achieve the feeling, if not the state, of agency/empowerment, one imagines that such individual afterglow was easily and precipitously shattered by the eventual realization that so many other musically unrefined individuals could and did do exactly the same things with their newfound agency. I think it is demonstrable that refinement per se was of less interest to the Situationists than was, say, functionalism (e.g. in architecture), ahistoricism/timelessness, etc. Those issues are not directly addressed by the punk aesthetic, as best I can tell from this account; refinement per se is not necessarily related.

[from a post-it, 2017]


[Now:] The Goodreads reviews of this book are vicious and seem to hit the mark. And so here I come, giving it attention it probably doesn't deserve. Ignoring it might be more appropriate. But indulge me here as you might indulge any unrefined technician searching for a sound.

Rereading these pages now, two stickier webs of intrigue leap off the page. First: "A lot of people...didn't think this was music at all, or even rock 'n' roll; a smaller number of people thought it was the most exciting thing they'd ever heard." (64) Great. Just like literally every other new style of music ever. But sure, let's then quote someone who is (1) part of the "smaller number" rather than the bigger one, and (2) famous; then we'll have them yatter about how great it all was; finally, the coup de grace, to make the implicit explicit, (3) we posit this famous person to be representative of all the little people you'll never meet and need not give a shit about: "what Westerberg said, so said countless other people." Sure. History is necessarily reductive, space is limited, etc. But only a broad and, ultimately, superfluous thesis has been thus reduced; Westerberg's own words, meanwhile, occupy quite a chunk of the page in full granular detail and thereby betray elements of his perspective which cannot possibly qualify him as speaking for "countless" others. Historical reductionism is one thing; but here we have, in tandem, an expansion of the personal, an arbitrary diversion which goes on for way too long, and which from a macro perspective thus works rather directly against the reductionist's conceit to authority. What gives? I think there is a sort of currency trading that art and music critics love to transact, whereby a dollar's worth of fame is thought to buy many shilling's worth of representativeness. I have been collecting examples of this. This one is not the worst of them, but it does exemplify the maneuver quite transparently. I gotta think it ain't very punk! So, for those who do think that "criticism" per se has any reason at all to still exist and to be taken seriously by anyone for any reason, I double dog dare you to do "criticism" without doing this. Just once. Please.

Second, "They made a blind bet that someone might be interested in what they sounded like or what they had to say, that they themselves might be interested." (65) Awesome. Regular readers know that I struggle to find the balance between acknowledging my own privilege and making honest sense of things other people say. This "blind bet" remains a crucial aspect of life. Everyone needs to give it a shot! For their own sake, that is. But let's also keep sight of all that has changed since this book was published. When everyone takes their shot, the effect on culture is now somewhat like the effect on the power grid when everyone turns on their air conditioners at the same time. The options at that point are few and they are not good ones: barricade oneself in some form of artificially constructed isolation or small community; or fight for negligibly small, temporary pieces of recognition on the present "mass" level. It's fun to place the bet, but it almost never hits anymore, and when the bet doesn't hit, it can literally kill people from the inside and/or lead them to hysterically kill other people on the outside. Cruelly, in the "long tail" paradigm of cultural consumption, recognition has been capped at an upper limit even for the high rollers, rather than being truly "democratized" or expanded to include everyone whose "blind bets" deserve, cosmically at least, a modest payout. As creativity has been "democratized," recognition has become scarcer. So, uh...are we sure it was their creativity that punks were reclaiming? Or is recognition per se always already at the table when we place our bets?

Now, in hindsight, it was possible to valorize the "blind bet" only because so few people had been making it, or perhaps because it was much more difficult than it is now to know how many people were making it and to what end. The more people who bet, the less valorous it becomes; to the point that nowadays I feel a twinge of guilt even about making a few extra off-the-cuff posts, like this one, which help me to meet my own needs of self-examination and arrogation-of-voice, but which cannot contribute much more than noise to the overall condition of humanity and certainly are quite unlikely (though I'll cop to holding out the same hope as you do!) to pay out much of anything in the recognition department, material or otherwise.

22 May 2021

Jappe—Debord—On Never Asking For Help

Anselm Jappe
Guy Debord (1993)
trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (1999)
Debord claimed, and there is no reason to doubt him, that he never asked anything of anyone, that it was always others who approached him. (111)
Actually, this is not necessarily something to be proud of and could even conflict with the spirit (if not the letter) of Situationist theory given its grand practical pretensions and collectivist ideals. Perhaps this merely refers to the issue of "accommodation...with the system?"

[from a post-it, 2017 or 2018]

Jappe—Debord—Bursting the Third-Worldist Bubble

Anselm Jappe
Guy Debord (1993)
trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (1999)
A bubble that the SI found easy to burst was the excessive enthusiasm for revolutionary movements in the Third World... The SI (like Socialisme ou Barbarie) believed that "the revolutionary project must be realized in the industrially advanced countries"... A bit of mockery of Third-Worldism is no doubt to be detected in the SI's use of such terms as "backward sector," "underdevelopment," and "war of liberation" in connection with the issue of everyday life. ...nor did "the young" per se, or the various "marginal" groups, inspire any confidence..." (97-98)
Really, this misplaced faith in the marginalized is quite a bit more (or, if you insist, less) than comfortable Westerners "striving to cover up their own ineffectuality." (97) That accusation smacks of personal score-settling at the expense of clear thinking. Rather, mustn't there be some species of White Guilt, or some similar organic psychosocial construct, motivating Westeners to offload both responsibility and valorization to the proverbial Third Worlders who have historically been on the wrong end of Western affluence? It seems like it must be a form of self-rejection, as we certainly see among Woke white people all the time in more local issues.

[from a post-it, 2017 or 2018]

Jappe—Debord—Unfulfilled Wishes

Anselm Jappe
Guy Debord (1993)
trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (1999)
...the Situationist criticism of the work of art is curiously reminiscent of the psychoanalytical account, according to which such productions are the sublimation of unfulfilled wishes. For the Situationists, inasmuch as progress had removed all obstacles to the realization of desires, art had lost its function, which was in any case subordinate to desires themselves. (70)
This is a comparison I would not have thought to make, perhaps because psychoanalysis is calibrated toward individual psychology (note lower case) whereas the Situationists often spoke in the broadest (i.e. social/societal) terms. It is thus not clear to me that such a comparison achieves much besides highlighting a common concern with desire. It should therein be kept in mind that cultural production Beyond Necessity does not necessarily entail anything quite rising to the level of "desire" per se; also that it is not quite so easy to compartmentalize the Necessary and the Cultural: if food must be gathered no matter what, there will nonetheless be a different gait (dare I say aesthetic?) to each gatherer.

AJ appropriately labels this critique "debatable," which, channeling psychoanalysis again, is a cue to consider motive. If "the further culture advanced, the more doubt it was obliged to cast on its own social role," (70) then it is but a small step from there to a comprehensive value system (or Revolutionary Program, if you insist) which privileges not only the ultimate Revolution but also what can only be called a certain primitivism vis-a-vis culture prior to its later "advance."

[from a post-it, 2017 or 2018]

Jappe—Debord—The Supersession of Art

Anselm Jappe
Guy Debord (1993)
trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (1999)
...to actualize artistic values directly in everyday life as an art that was anonymous and collective...in such a way as to transcend the dichotomy between artistic moments and moments of banality. (68)
I suppose this drags us kicking and screaming into trying to define Art, for if these are indeed hallmarks of supersession, then as such they betoken something of a radically different type. I usually argue for defining by reception rather than by intent, hence the notions of anonymity and collectivity are certainly not incompatible with classical and romantic conceptions of art. It is the blurring of distinction between the artistic and the banal, rather, which seems so thoroughly at odds with common sense, i.e via the Everything and Nothing problem. What could ever be more numbly terrifying, or terrifyingly numbing, than such a life without contour? This seems to place Art on a pedestal, thus representing the ecstatic pole which in alienated life is necessarily balanced by proportionately severe suffering. If the poles must balance, however, would moderation not be preferable to the opposite extreme?

[from a post-it, 2017 or 2018]

21 May 2021

Accounting For Taste

Louis Chevalier
The Assassination of Paris (1977)
trans. David P. Jordan (1994)
In October 1957 six government ministers along with the cream of Paris society (as was correct) rode the metro to inaugurate the Franklin Roosevelt station which, according to an official speech, "was one of the most luxurious in the world, with its windows depicting famous paintings with cut-glass replicas." Less enthusiastically, some malcontents commented that the uglier things got above ground the more refined they became below. As the Champs-Elysées, with its shrunken sidewalks, began to resemble a used-car lot, the metro, in contrast, was made beautiful. They even considered having music in the station. It would have been installed if those responsible had been able to choose between classical music and pop, a serious problem that remains unresolved as I write these lines.

18 May 2021

Strategist, Specialist

McKenzie Wark
50 Years of Recuperation of the Situationist International (2008)
The strategist is not the proprietor of a field of knowledge, but rather assesses the value of the forces aligned on any available territory. The strategist occupies, evacuates, or contests any territory at hand in pursuit of advantage. (28)
This is very illuminating...which is not to say that it reflects entirely positively on Debord in light of his predilection for speaking in absolutes. The strategist could well be any or all of the following: alienated, parasitic, specialist, Man Without Qualities (i.e. "proprietor" without a "field of knowledge"!); all metiers which he saw no possible role for or revolutionary potential in.

[from a post-it, 2017]

Give Me Back My Music, You Damn Romantic

McKenzie Wark
The Beach Beneath the Street (2011)

p. 106—music as the highest Romantic art; and Romanticism as the Dionysian opposite of classicism

Both taxonomies are trite, but I'd never considered them together, which places music precisely where polite Bourgie non-culture places it: unclaimed, mercurial, ultimately not to be trusted. As just one half of a dialectical pair (Apollonian-Dionysian), music is also incomplete, in need of grounding.

Incidentally, it is hard not to notice the complete absence of musicians in the SI and subsequent accounts of it, as well as similarly scant mention of music in SI theoretical statements. I suspect this has nothing to do with its Dionysian nature and much more to do with the Apollonian side of music's internal technical dynamics which the established mythology has reduced away.

Added Later: music CAN be just about perfectly balanced in the Ap.-Dion. respect. If anyone cares to pursue this. Probably true of all the arts. So, music pre- and post-dates Romanticism, but the Romantics get to claim it for their ends, and no one else's. Not productive! Music could, via a one-sided account, be posited as the ultimate Romantic art; but Romantics were hardly the ultimate musicians. In fact the opposite, strictly IMHO.

[from a post-it, 2017]
[the passage:]
The classical assumes a legitimate order, revealed by the light of the sun. God's in his heaven, the king's on his throne, all is right with the world. And what goes wrong can be rectified. Like Le Corbusier's plans, classicism favors the right angle and the straight line. It favors the form of the myth, in which order is destabilized, restored, legitimated. Its privileged medium is architecture. Its method is imitation. Everyone imitates the one above them in the social order, just as the king imitates God, and the whole social order imitates nature. Classical humor, from Molière to Sacha Baron-Cohen, ridicules failed attempts at imitation. In Molière's satirical attack on the Precious movement, provincial ladies shun some nobleman as beneath them, so these retaliate by having their grooms pretend to be Precious sophisticates. Hilarity ensues, but classical humor serves order.

The romantic is a corrosive fluid that attacks the classical on every front. It is a refusal of obedience. It lurks in the dark, in the mist, within the eclipse. Time is out of joint. It favors the wave, the vibration, the curlicue. It mixes forms, detaches symbols from myths, and puts them in play against all that is legitimate. Its medium of greatest affinity is music. Its method is creation, which it claims as a human potential, not a divine attribute. For Lefebvre the romantic intersects with a certain strand of irony. Unlike Jorn he idolizes the achievements of the Greeks, not least Socratic irony, which is the undoing of any order of belief. The subjective irony of Socrates anticipates the objective irony of history, which sweeps order away in its aleatory currents.

17 May 2021

Nancy Isenberg—Liberty and Freedom Meant Different Things

Nancy Isenberg
White Trash: The 400-Year Old Untold History
of Class in America
(2016)

p. 75 -- "Franklin certainly never endorsed social mobility as we think of it today, despite his own experience."

pp. 81-82 -- "Paine was careful to downplay the distinction between the rich and the poor. He wanted his American readers to focus on distant kings, not local grandees."

p. 85 -- "[Jefferson] called the new western domain an "empire for liberty," by which he meant something other than a free-market economy or a guarantee of social mobility."

Ostensibly, then, the broader objective throughout this part of the book is to restore to various figures, documents, and events the historical context which ensuing centuries of reductionism and ideology have gradually eroded. I must confess, though, that even (or especially) after a second pass, I really need her to say more about each of these interpretations. (Start with the fact that that's what they are.) And if it is as simple as three colonial-era ivory tower dwellers "reveling in rhetorical obfuscation" (p. 86 re: Jefferson specifically, though frankly I wonder if this isn't an apt criticism in all three cases), then this needs to be made more clear.

I would say as well that the laying bare of, variously, Franklin's hypocrisy, Paine's charlatanism, and Jefferson's rhetorical obfuscation is an exercise which, notwithstanding any visceral satisfaction it might provide for cynics (among which I proudly count myself here), is inherently more biographical than historical. Did these conceptions have legs? What countervailing position(s) emerged? And how and to what extent were these various positions, as Erich Fromm might have asked, "socially patterned?" This is a tall order of course, but without its fulfillment I'm left with a vague aftertaste of Great Man Theory. As "elites," perhaps these were, in the long run, influential thinkers; but given the topic of the book, one must wonder as well how representative they truly were.

The story of Oglethorpe and Georgia was new to me, and perhaps only because it was new did I come away from that chapter with fewer concerns about the overall narrative being spun. But by the end of Chapter 4 it certainly has become clear that this is a series of case studies more than a comprehensive account. I'm not oblivious to the many factors which tend to push an author in that direction; I've just evolved into an all-or-nothing reader, hence I would have been game for an exhaustive study.

[from a Goodreads post, 2017]

16 May 2021

Consensual Art—Interlude

Peter Laugesen: And I also think that, you know, connected with potlatch and art and all this stuff: Art is simply a gift. Art should be a gift. Art should be given freely to everyone. Not because they maybe want it, but maybe because they don't want it. That's potlatch. I think we should change the slogan we have here to exactly the opposite: "Fear Everything Expect Nothing".

"Fear Everything Expect Nothing"
in Expect Anything Fear Nothing (2011)
ed. Rasmussen and Jakobsen
p. 281
Living in Los Angeles has convinced me that this only works if people have a reasonable means of escape/abstention. Trapping those who "don't want it" in subway cars or in their own neighborhoods seems to me quite contrary to much Situationist thought. We become the bureaucrats this way, no matter our intentions or class position. The saying "captive audience" comes from a bourgeois idiom; radicals nonetheless ignore at their own peril.

Perhaps if people can escape then it's no longer a potlatch. Fine. Sending them running is warlike enough for me! But they don't all run, not even when you most expect them to, not even in San Diego, Bismarck, or Pocatello, and that is the wisdom of sentiments such as the above.

15 May 2021

today i found a tiny bit of courage floating in the cesspool of compulsory optimism that is our postmodern, postjudgmental world

Subjectivity as the Beginning of the End

Richard Gombin
The Origins of Modern Leftism (1971)
trans. Michael K. Perl (1975)
on the Situationists:

p. 72—"This incorporation of the subjective dimension in the revolutionary quest is a completely new phenomenon in the tradition of the labour movement...
...the struggle of the subjective broadens the front of the old class struggle. ...this notion [is] completely foreign to Marxism..."
It's worth pausing to consider the last bit, ca. 50 or so years on, in light of PoMo, Intersectionality, etc., where this point is acknowledged only to widely varying degrees. Also to reiterate a point which those movements make abundantly clear, and which the Situationists didn't always acknowledge: subjectivity is messy, infinite regress is the rule, and hence this veritably railroads movements into "total contestation," incremental/single-issue work being impossible this way.

[from a post-it, 2018]

The All-None Problem

Richard Gombin
The Origins of Modern Leftism (1971)
trans. Michael K. Perl (1975)
per H. Lefebvre:

pp. 70-71—"...before life can become the art of living, art has to invade life. ...artistic activity enables participation by the individual in the world: art has always been the highest form of creative work. The individual can only become liberated if art ceases to be a specialized activity, ceases to be, in its mercantile form, a reified activity. ...men will only be happy when they are all artists."
And yes, if they are all artists, then none of them are artists. Hence "supersession." Is there more? If we deconstruct the "mercantile form" of modern art just a bit, we in fact find quite a few artists (both pros and committed hobbyists) seeming/claiming to derive their specifically artistic brand of fulfillment either directly or, more often, indirectly (yet unmistakably) from the receipt of external validation via the reified form of practice/reception. It is "reified" per se specifically for creating an exchange value, which is the quantificational vehicle of this external validation. The all/none issue, trite as it may be, thus asks us to consider whether art is really "the highest form of creative work" or whether it is, rather, merely the most powerful differentiator among subjects, hence the most powerful ego stroker. The latter is certainly ripe for supersession, but I suspect the result to be None rather than All, and that sounds less like utopia than a different kind of pestilence.

[from a post-it, 2018]

14 May 2021

Vincent Kaufmann—Debord, Autobiography, Exemplarity

Vincent Kaufmann, trans. Robert Bononno
Guy Debord: Revolution in the Service of Poetry (2006)
Debord is one of the great autobiographers or self-portraitists of the second half of the twentieth century... He developed an unchallengeable form of autobiographical writing, through which a statement coincides with an act (and could coincide with an act only because it amounted to no more than "not showing himself".)

...

In this light, it is clear that it is precisely because of their exemplarity that Debord's autobiographical writings must at the same time be "theoretical," or that, at the very least, there is continuity between these and his autobiographical writings in the strict sense of the word. From Saint Augustine to Rousseau and beyond, this has always been the case. Exemplarity always serves ideology (religious, political), at least when the opposite is not the case. With Debord this continuity is especially obvious in the most autobiographical of his films [In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978)]...

...

The film does not start out autobiographical. It begins, like the film version of The Society of the Spectacle (1973), as a work of social criticism, with themes that will be familiar to anyone who has seen his previous films: the critique of passivity, of separation, of the vapidity of art in general and film in particular... But this tone is abandoned after some twenty pages (and a little more than twenty minutes), replaced by a long and explicitly autobiographical narrative, introduced in the following terms: "Thus, instead of adding one more film to the thousands of commonplace films, I prefer to explain why I shall do nothing of the sort. I am going to replace the frivolous adventures typically recounted by the cinema with the examination of an important subject: myself." There is no film, let's move on to a discussion, to conflict, that is, to me. Such a change of register is indeed an echo of the declaration of 1952, and it is emblematic of Debord's oscillation between "theory" and "self-portraiture," or, if you will, of their continuity. Autobiography is here a form of social criticism by other means; exemplarity, in a way, constitutes the proof of the relevance of theoretical discourse.

As I have already suggested, this exemplarity is negative. The period during which Debord was active, which he anticipated to a certain extent (if we imagine him beginning in 1952), is one in which autobiography, and more generally biography, triumphed. But it's just a short step from triumph to the most repulsive degradation. The death of the author foretold by Barthes and Foucault seems quite distant, and if there ever was a time when the author, modestly converted into an anonymous writer, signed his works only for the sake of form, he is now more alive than ever, and more desirous of proving this, of leaving traces of the life he so enjoys. Proof of this can be found in the recent success of intimate memoirs, correspondence, and biography, and more generally the autobiographical turn taken by contemporary fiction. Hasn't the right to create "personal fiction," as it is called, become as unquestioned as human rights once were? Everything would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds if contemporary authors still had the time, between book signings and television appearances, to lead a life that was unique enough not to depend on the clichés of sentimental personal fiction. It is one thing to have reestablished the author's rights, quite another to identify a life that is prestigious enough and, especially, unique enough to justify their use. The danger of the democratization of the right to self-expression is that when it is overused, the claim to authenticity and singularity that historically justified autobiography quickly fades into indifference and a lack of differentiation. It then becomes no more than a rhetoric of authenticity. Singularity is the condition of authenticity and authenticity is corrupted in the presence of the commonplace. From this point of view, the critical importance of Debord's actions lies in his ability to turn his epoch upside down, to make a break with it, to turn himself into its other." (28-30)
"At the very least, there is continuity between these [theoretical writings] and his autobiographical writings," and the reason is the "exemplarity" of this work, which is to say that "a statement coincides with an act" at all times. (28) VK seems to be getting at something deeper and more profound than mere consistency of words and actions, but I can't tell what. This consistency means that Debord's work is always "theoretical," even when it is also (and more explicitly) "autobiographical." "Exemplarity always serves ideology...at least when the opposite is not the case." (28)

"Exemplarity, in a way, constitutes the relevance of a theoretical discourse." (29) That is, one may prove (such a strong term, but whatever) the validity of a piece of Theory by practicing it oneself; and at that point, a chronicle of such life and living takes on a new relevance.

Importantly, "this exemplarity is negative," (29) meaning that it instantiates an example of living differently than the predominant examples in one's immediate midst. The "most repulsive degradation" of autobiography occurs when authors no longer "lead a life...unique enough not to depend on the clichés of sentimental personal fiction," when "the right to self-expression...is overused [such that] the claim to authenticity and singularity that historically justified autobiography quickly fades into indifference and a lack of differentiation." Seeing this, Debord achieved a certain "critical importance" by "turn[ing] his epoch upside down...mak[ing] a break with it...turn[ing] himself into its Other." This is Negative Exemplarity. Otherwise known as swimming against the current, zigging as others zag, or perhaps simply being born in the wrong era, city, country, milieu, etc. That is certainly not unique, but consistency is, so that as far as that goes the point is well-taken.

The critique of the prevailing practices in "personal fiction" is always timely. I hesitate to say that it is well-articulated here as I have had to reread the passage several times in order to fully grasp it. But let's just say I'll Take It, which is to say it's good to know I'm not crazy for groping towards more or less the same critique of the Autobiographical Turn. In fact I would say that VK actually doesn't go far enough vis-a-vis "the right to create personal fiction" becoming "as unquestioned as human rights once were." In fact the Autobiographical Turn has become an Autobiographical Imperative in many circles. One such circle is populated by the Arts Entrepreneurs or Arts Businessperson (-Milo's verbiage), who have found (or claim to have found) that the personal sells. It would of course be quite fruitful to attempt to ferret out the essential from the contingent here, as well as the simpler question of whether the seeming infallability of this business plan is the reality or merely the perception.
The consequences are rather different for each combination, including one logical impossibility. But regardless of the truth, I'd expect that this Imperative is here to stay for a good while. It is, let's say, quite overdetermined, no?

[from a notebook, 2017]

13 May 2021

Fenstermaker—The Division of Household Labor

Sarah Fenstermaker
"Work and Gender" (orig. 1985)
Doing Gender, Doing Difference: Inequality, Power, and Institutional Change
ed. Fenstermaker and West (2002)
pp. 105-118
p. 110—At least metaphorically, the division of household labor facilitates two production processes: the production of goods and services and what we might call the production of gender. Simultaneously, household members "do" gender, as they "do" housework and child care, and what I have been calling the division of household labor provides for the joint production of household labor and gender; it is the mechanism by which both the material and the symbolic products are realized.
Indeed, are there not as many "symbolic products" manufactured this way as the given society is able to conceive of and value? Because this seems to me also a perfect description of how what might be called status, prestige, distinction, or more likely simply conformity (in a nonetheless intensely value-laden sense) is produced; "normative conceptions," all of them, and none precisely coextensive with "class" per se. Seems to me as well that the holding-to-account that is done with regard to family distinction is, more often than in more widely discussed, historically fraught arenas such as race, undertaken quite bald-facedly and unremorsefully. If indeed it belongs in the category of manufactured accountabilities, it could for this reason be uniquely susceptible to study; but then, for it to be thus studied would require the studiers to treat the artifacts of family distinction as no more absolute or imperative than gender, race, or class identities are treated in Doing Difference; and thereby one may, I think, occasionally be up against the White Bourgeois streak in Feminism that we read so often about but less often can put a finger on.

[from a notebook, 2018]

12 May 2021

Collins and Bilge—(Young) Bolsheviks in the Bathroom

Intersectionality (2016)
Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge

p. 167—schools as "important venues for youth activism," because "that's where they spend their time"

Indeed, they presently spend virtually all of their time there, which forces the channelization of all kinds of impluses into the School life, most of them only rather uncomfortably. This takes the longer-standing suspicion of youthful rebellion by adults and adds the more basic grounds for skepticism that so much such rebellion is so obviously of limited scope. The element of sequestration is, if not more pressing than the issues raised by Freire, certainly more basic and expansive. That is to say that even with an ideal "critical" education, no student can possibly develop evenly if they are sequestered. This has nothing to do with school failing to reflect the Real World; school should not reflect the Real World quite so thoroughly, but nor should students be holed up in one airless corner of it to the extent that the discussion of youth activism necessitates accounting for the peculiar form of their location. It is an unfortunate (and one hopes unintended) consequence of the focus on expanding access that this side of the discussion is more or less beyond the pale for most of the Left. What are we expanding access to? The fact that student activism has a sociological literature devoted to it is one big cue to ask that question.

[from a post-it, late 2017]

Collins and Bilge—It Takes Skills and Time

Intersectionality (2016)
Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge

p. 116-123—on Hip Hop as youth culture

One point of affinity here with "the neoliberal status quo" (117) is this: art is worthy of mere mention only in the context of a (very questionable) theory of youth. Do any adults make Hip Hop?! Does their work aspire or achieve in simlar or different manners? Youth "rarely have the skills and time to get elected to public office" (117), but somehow these limitations are not only surmountable but in fact salutary to their making socially engaged art! This, then, if it is such a great situation, exemplifies art's place in society, namely as literally juvenile and stunted, the best among a few bad options for the unripe to be up-waivered to an adult level of agency without actually living the life of an agent.

Art being among the "areas" of which the authors "could not include an extensive discussion" (viii), this case study is implicitly asked to bear quite a bit more weight than it is able to.

[from a post-it, late 2017]

Collins and Bilge—Disciplinary Segregation

Intersectionality (2016)
Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge
p. 100—"Overall, the non-intersectional approach of each area limited its ability to consider the ways which other areas might shape its distinctive concerns."
My gut reaction to this paragraph was that it is too sweeping/total in its dissent. Upon a second reading, the word "limited" seems a satisfactory qualification. It is even so hard to believe that disciplinary "segregation" was ever fatal; more likely, I would think, the cross pollination, being of that inevitable/ineluctable type that we all love to invoke in situations like this, was, variously: unintentional, inexplicit, fluid, chaotic, ebbing/flowing, etc. If so, the contribution of Intersectional thinking vis-a-vis advancing said work to a more powerful, relevant, effectual place, would be selective and incremental rather than total and sweeping; and that matter bears as heavily on internal academic politics/legitimation/turf wars/etc. as it does on the Cause. Just saying.

[from a post-it, late 2017]

Collins and Bilge—Experience≠Evidence≠Theory

Intersectionality (2016)
Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge
p. 46—"...foregrounds the ways in which activism or experience shape knowledge, an insight that is often lost when theoretical approaches are institutionalized in the academy."
This is something of a false dichotomy, or at least a diversionary one. What both "experience" and "theory" suffer from, statistically speaking, is insufficient sample size. Hence the more technocratic, mainstream methodologies of Sociology proper typically involve a certain gathering of evidence before any conclusions are (or can be) drawn. It is true that this has historically been the site of myriad biases, usually toward Power and whatever groups hold it; but if that is so scary, just look at what an eerily similar conception of knowledge construction via "experience" currently prevails among the alt-right and the ways which it is called into service by them (e.g. D'Souza's "rational discrimination"). Can we really trust informal consortiums of like-minded activists to pool their experience and look for patterns with any meaningful degree of detachment? Probably no more than we can trust ivory tower theoreticians with no "experience" at all to create it in their proverbial laboratories. Scientific empiricism is hardly perfect, but IMHO it beats the pants off the other options, and I do find it conspicuous by its absence here.

[from a post-it, late 2017]

Collins and Bilge—The Applied Focus and Its Discontents

Intersectionality (2016)
Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge
p. 37—"To varying degrees, scholars and practitioners in social work, criminology, public health, law, and education recognize that knowledge production in their respective fields cannot be separated from professional practices. ... Because they straddle scholarship and practice, academic disciplines with a strong clinical or applied focus have been especially receptive to intersectional frameworks. Intersectionality often finds a welcome home in fields that already see theory and practice as interconnected."
The arts (or some version of them) would seem to merit passing mention here, but alas, another example of their failing to register. I tend to think that such conspicuous omissions are informative for artists.

As far as the internal dynamics of particular art practices, the relevance of intersectionality would seem to hinge on a given practice's relationship to notions like personal expression, telling your story, etc.

Certainly the arts also are, to varying degrees, "oriented to public engagement," but of course it is the basest form of this orientation (i.e. marketing) that brings consideration of identity most directly into the dialogue; and to be sure, much ostensibly charitable outreach work deserves to be categorized under the heading of marketing. The basic problem is that class remains a useful catchall vis-a-vis access to the arts, and in a way that the authors specifically deny is the case elsewhere.

[from a post-it, late 2017]

11 May 2021

Karen Offen—Wherein It Takes One To Know One

Both the relational and the individualist modes of argument have historical roots in what historian Temma Kaplan has called "female consciousness," or consciousness of the "rights of gender." The evidence also suggests incontrovertably that proponents of the relational position possessed a "feminist consciousness": they viewed women's collective situation in the culture as unjust, they attributed it to social and political institutions established by men, and they believed that it could be changed by protest and political action. Nevertheless, they insisted that women had a special role, a role distinct from that of men. Thus, it is clearly erroneous to assert, as Kaplan recently did, that "all feminists attack the division of labor by sex, because roles limit freedom, and to mark distinctions is to imply superiority and inferiority." This is a radically individualist, very contemporary, and ultimately very exclusionary perspective on the history of feminism. ("Defining Feminism," 141)
First, recall that KO, having established the validity, if not the importance, of pursuing the question of definition of terms more than cursorily, dismissed the practice of applying the word "feminism" retroactive to its actual existence as "anachronistic" and, more to the point, "conceptually anarchic." (131) The present passage, then, is aimed at something of the opposite problem, i.e. the narrowing of both the temporal and conceptual bands to which "feminism" might be applied, specifically hinging on whether or not it "attack[s] the division of labor by sex." Without saying so quite so explicitly, KO offers a somewhat broader but ultimately just plain differently-oriented definition of "feminist consciousness."

Indicative perhaps of the social and intellectual fracturing inherent in hair-splitting expeditions, I would say that neither of these definitions quite works for me; though I'm happy to grant Feminism whatever leeway it needs, in terms of the interconnection of Feminist insights with wider social issues (and to be sure, both definitions here seem anxious to embrace those connections) I believe a broader, simpler concept of unprejudiced social agency is both sufficient and more pragmatic. The premise that "roles limit freedom" is central to this concept, but it also rejects Kaplan's rejection of "mark[ing] distinctions" on the grounds that distinctions cannot help but emerge even (actually especially) from ideally fair social intercourses; the fairness of the process generally (though certainly not always) will be reflected in the result.

KO's "feminist consciousness" is, in a word, broader than Kaplan's (anti-)role-oriented critique, and it must be pointed out that my "unprejudiced social agency," being broader yet, certainly allows for the eventuality that, given a fair case-by-case sort of interchange with the social world, a sizable group of women may well emerge whose wants and needs look very Traditional in comparison to present and future prevailing social norms, and that as a group within this larger social world they could have valid and distinctive concerns which need to be addressed. That being as it may, given such an ideal scenario, can we expect this group to be any larger than a middling minority? I for one would be quite curious to know the answer, because it so often seems that despite our present patriarchal malaise there persist nonetheless myriad institutional and psycho-social tithes to the bourgeois, quietist aspirations of this vocal minority; hence, for me, having quite different aspriations, KO's "relational" feminism is what makes feminism scary, and "individualist" feminism, while I certainly see its limitations, usually seems closer to curing what ails us.

It is at that point in spite of the admirable breadth and depth of KO's research that this passage crystalizes the impression that there is, as cannot be entirely avoided by any of us, something of an agenda underlying this work, namely to advance a collection of formal (e.g. semantic and historical) arguments for not kicking the family woman out of feminism.
solidarity among women is based not solely on recognition of common oppression but also, historically speaking, on a celebration of shared and differential experience as members of the same sex, the childbearing and nurturing sex. Feminist scholar-activists have discovered, for instance, that women's experience of motherhood as negative and restricting is historically specific and, given a different shape, can potentially offer women much satisfaction. [subsequently argues for a sort of synthesis of the relational and individualistic modes,...]one that can accommodate diversity among women better than either of the two historical approaches can on their own. (155-156)
Suddenly we are mired in consequentialism again: if women lose their greatest (really it is just their easiest)

[now: whoops, this is ambiguous and one of the meanings is offensive; what I mean is that getting pregnant is easy, and deciding to get pregnant is even easier, not that actually birthing or raising kids is easy; e.g. my extremely talented gay roommate at CalArts complaining that his family had lionized his straight brother upon conceiving, just because "he stuck his dick in a pussy"; I'm pretty straight but I resent this kind of thing just like many gay people do; I respect parents bonding over the hard part and I resent them bonding over the easy part; ditto artists; ditto pet owners; ditto scrabble players]

shared experience,

[now: of course she has thought through all this and so says she is actually talking about the hard part; I know this is really mean to say, but I'm dubious about that; please consider the rest of this before dismissing that thought outright]

they could also lose hope of identification with each other, as a group, as women. I would argue that there are more than mere "individualist" arguments to be made for allowing such massive, ancient identifications to stand or fall on the terms of contemporary rather than ancient life. Suddenly KO's brand of relational-individualist synthesis is revealed to have the stunningly flimsy goal of "solidarity" borne of identification, this in service of what is also a very "historically specific" conception, i.e. the need for vigilant feminist organizing/action on a massive scale. There are worse ways to go...but hand to heart, the thought of identification-as-women evaporating seems to me to be the truly radical alternative here, empowerment defined, the conclusive shedding of the Victim Mentality, and the creation of a decentered moving target on which Patriarchy could never hope to strike a direct hit. Merely giving "the cultural experience of motherhood...a different shape" achieves little; rather, individuals (yes, I said it) ought to have the necessary leeway to, for lack of a better way of putting it, find themselves. We can rest assured that plenty of motherliness will arise from such conditions; whether this mode (circumstance, culture, personality, and yes, even a certain accumulation of strictly rational consideration each have a part to play in delivering a person to their Mode of One) needs or deserves to be subsidized, and to what degree, is a rather separate question.

[from a notebook, 2017 or 2018]

Karen Offen—Defining Feminism

Karen Offen
"Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach" (1988)
Signs 14/1 pp. 119-157

pp. 134-135—"relational" and "individualist" modes
Viewed historically, arguments in the relational feminist tradition proposed a gender-based but egalitarian vision of social organization. They featured the primacy of a compassionate, non-hierarchical, male-female couple as the basic unit of society, whereas individualist arguments posited the individual, irrespective of sex or gender, as the basic unit. Relational feminism emphasized women's rights as women (defined principally by their childbearing and/or nurturing capacities) in relation to men. It insisted on women's distinctive contributions in these roles to the broader society and made claims on the commonwealth on the basis of these contributions. By contrast, the individualist feminist tradition of argumentation emphasized more abstract concepts of individual human rights and celebrated the quest for personal independence (or autonomy) in all aspects of life, while downplaying, deprecating, or dismissing as insignificant all socially defined roles and minimizing discussion of sex-linked qualities or contributions, including childbearing and its attendant responsibilities. (135-136)
Thirty or so years on, the phrase that jumps off the page here is, "...made claims on the commonwealth on the basis of these contributions." (136) Indeed, it is only by the logic of what might less charitably be called a sort of genteel difference feminism that a particular "social organization" and/or family structure could be thought so unimpeachable as to entitle its adepts to "claims on the commonwealth." Hence KO's taxonomy here is apt for drawing attention to the profoundly anti-individualistic nature of this orientation, which, even without yet wading into questions of valuation, lays bare the bald-faced contradiction typically committed by today's most simple-minded liberals. I wonder if this cognitive dissonance could ultimately become a stumbling block on the road to UBI of even vaster dimensions than various conservative/right-wing objections, so thorougly ingrained (many on both sides would say organically arising/essential) is the ideal of kids-house-job-car. Concurrently, let's hope that the questioning of the ongoing utility of the rights orientation from within its own tradition might at some point engender a modicum of respect for the myriad non-procreative, non-economic contributions of the willingly childless on behalf of both relationalists and individualists.
Even in Anglo-American thought prior to the twentieth century, these two modes of argument were not always as analytically distinct as I am portraying them here... In earlier centuries, evidence of both these modes can often be located in the utterances of a single individual, or among members of a particular group, exemplifying perhaps that not uncommon human desire to have things both ways. (136)
A very astute conjecture, I think, the missing piece being that such self-contradiction from a psychologistic perspective quite ofen betrays that the utterer is very aware of their own inconsistency.
Lest it be thought that the two approaches I am invoking here represent simply another sorry instance of the much-criticized binary logic endemic to Western thought, or a form of reductionism, let me suggest that there are important sociological reasons for positing two and only two categories rather than "varieties" or "relative degrees" of feminism. These two modes of argument certainly reflect the self/other dualism characteristic of Western thought, but they continue to be meaningful because they also reflect profound differences of opinion that have long existed within Western discourse about basic structural questions of social organization and, specifically, about the relationship of individuals and family groups to society and the state. Both modes must be accounted for if one is to understand feminism historically.
If I might further paraphrase/interpret, the tension between individualism and collectivism IS the essential Feminist issue, of which Feminism's various internal debates can all be understood as proxies. Absolute as it sounds when put so bluntly, there is much to recommend this view, starting with the unfortunate practical political reality that myriad social and political actors' inability/charlatanry vis-a-vis locating themselves and/or their worldview/constituency in this scheme is itself a nearly catastrophic source of friction in the day-to-day functioning of ostensibly democratic institutions. e.g. There seems to me to be some serious cognitive dissonance (or, in the case of groups, unresolved tension) surrounding conceptions of child-rearing as collectivistic ([name of ex-gf redacted]—it's "our obligation" to raise the next, better generation) vs. individualistic (i.e. as the most power the powerless can readily wield; and with that, autonomy in this task of shaping the future according to their views). And yes, it is true that some degree of such confusion is inevitable on account of the ultimate untenability of hard and fast dichotomies; but IMHO, using that as an excuse not to tease out the endpoints of the dialogue seems to me akin to giving up outright.

[from a notebook, 2017 or 2018]