Yes, I <i>have</i> been constructing a strawman nu-rockist because i wanted you guys to differentiate yourselves from it! My position all along has been that none of you are actually nu-rockists (hence me saying that you don't take your own anti-enjoyment crusade seriously); you're all too smart for that.
By the same token (and this is a familiar argument I know) none of the supposed popists are actually popists of the dissensian definition - e.g. to choose one example that Simon raises, while we might celebrate an "instant thrill" of a record, it is not on the grounds that it is a simple pleasure, but rather on the grounds that the temporal nature of enjoyment does not provide a yardstick for measuring its intensity or complexity. For myself, a short-lived crush on a single can be as important as a long-cherished relationship with an artist's ouevre but, of course, the reverse is also true.
I really don't think that, in truth, our final positions are that far away from eachother.
Simon says:
"well i don't think that was , or ever is, my goal, partly because it's impossible (people are very attached to their own enjoyment, it's a visceral thing) and partly because it would be bad manners. but certainly i was arguing against the significance wrapped around that particular object of enjoyment, saying that as a package it didn't really add up. there might well be a significance to the enjoyment in itself but i've not seen anyone elucidate that successfully. "
A perfectly reasonable argument. I think a quite valid point to make is that simply saying "it's fun, you can dance to it" is not a very convincing argument. But that's an entirely different argument to saying that <i>liking</i> the music because it's fun and danceable is an invalid response arising from a warped musical philosophy. Again, I don't really believe that you were arguing the latter, but I've been trying to get a definitive answer because to me the second reaction is rockism quid pro quo.
"it's theoretically possible -- not that the enjoyment would disappear, obviously, but that you could be convinced it was unworthy or trivial. i can't think of any examples where that's happened to me. the closest in recent memory would be ian penman's review of Radiohead in the Wire where he momentarily convinced me that the record had no claims to radicalism (in ways similar to mud hut lady argument actually, that all the good things about Kid A/Amnesiac could be found elsewhere, in their purer, more original source)."
This sort of thing happens to me all the time, and I think it's a positive thing. Of course the obvious next step once the seed of doubt has been introduced is to listen to the album again and see if your reaction changes, or if it still sounds radical. I tend to think that we then decide whether to accept the argument again on that basis.
"obviously criticism isn't a science. on the other hand objectivity might be a useful myth, a noble aspiration, tending to promote rigour and scrupulousness. furthermore it's hard for me to imagine someone embarking on a piece of writing AT ALL if they didn't think their words had some purchase on a truth that extends beyond their own reactions, sensorium, brain. i suppose the most productive approach, for me anyway, would be to embark in a kind of objective spirit, while remaining aware of the perspectivalism of everything and every so often situating yourself."
Simon, I have no problem with this at all. In fact it's very similar to what I posted on the Subjectivity thread. I guess i just can't eliminate the taint of foundationalism which rockism carries for me, and it seems counter-productive to assert it as a critical tenant when it arrives with so much baggage of idiotic thinking. I have no problems with objecting to an artist based on their persona, their interviews etc. (as I've said before, I have no problems with your <i>actual position</i> on M.I.A., merely with the idea that there was no other position one could take that was not self-deceiving).
Generally speaking I have no problems at all with your current criticism (which still provides me with a handy weathervane for my own tastes); what occasionally confuses me is your meta-criticism.
Mark:
Am I austere and puritannical? Perhaps as a writer, yes. I feel a sense of responsibility to articulate myself as precisely as possible, whether it be my reactions or convictions, and this can make my writing very wearying and stodgy to read. As a listener I don't really think I am; I feel no sense of obligation to my enjoyment <i>except</i> when I choose to write about it, which is when the above factors kick in. But then, for me, I think popism and rockism and etc. don't really begin until we start <i>talking</i> (or writing) about records, engaging with other people. These approaches are, after all, not so much about how and when we should be allowed to listen to music in certain ways (which can't really be verified/legislated etc.) but how we can speak about music in a way that deserves to be taken seriously.
"But the complementary affectation of popism is to pretend that there is no distinction between them and 'ordinary' people (i.e. the big Other), nor between their analysis and reaction. That's why Simon was right a while ago to describe Popism as self-cornering; it seems to want to abolish the position of analysis as such, in a bid to get to a 'pure' reaction. "
I just don't think this is true. I think popism, if it exists in any sense <i>beyond</i> being a strawman (and maybe it doesn't), wants to start from the assumption that reactions are never pure, and that therefore we have no <i>a priori</i> better access to the truth of a record than "the ordinary person". This doesn't mean that we should adopt an anti-analysis position in order to imitate the ordinary person; rather, if what we want to do <i>is</i> think about music, it should spur us on to think <i>harder</i>. If all reactions have the potential to be equal, then the weight falls more heavily on the analysis to demonstrate why the writer's opinion should be taken seriously. i.e. the point is that if you had an intense experience at an avant-garde live concert, just saying as much doesn't alone demonstrate a greater insight into music than the manager in the pub listening to Kylie. Nor does using big words or quoting a theorist automatically confer this epistemological privilege (it might make your argument a better one, it might make it worse, it might have zero impact). Nor does being published in a certain publication. In sum: the superiority of your position is never guaranteed by a big Other who can tell the difference between you and an "ordinary person".
The problem with rockism is not that it's impure, but that it holds out certain notions as being self-evident when they are not, and seeks to arrest the flow of meaning so that <i>the thinking stops</i>. To the extent that I do believe in some "purity", it is in that I believe that every piece of music and every reaction (or combination of conviction & reaction if you prefer) is its own beast, and we shouldn't assume that our limited category of ideas-about-music exhausts the insight that is potentially available to us. Again, it's about trying to prevent the thinking from stopping.
Without wanting to sound all theorist insidery <i>and</i> horrendously conceited, Mark have you read any Ernesto Laclau (I would assume you have)? I think his approach to the nature of politics is quite similar to where I'm coming from on this. Mind you I could imagine you don't like him.
"Tim asks: what role would music play at all in a theoretical position which privileged convictions over reactions. I'll answer that, initially, by asking a complementary question: is it really possible to enjoy music UNLESS it connects up with convictions, life projects, affects, etc? In my case, and I doubt I'm alone in this, those x factors are not some extra thing but a precondition for enjoyment. "
I may not have been clear but my position was quite different to this. It was that convictions cannot exist <i>independently</i> of reactions. I was trying to imagine what music criticism would be like which didn't at least acknowledge that reactions shape our convictions as much as the reverse. I would never say that one should limit oneself to only concentrating on reactions; merely that convictions do not arise in a vacuum any more than reactions do, and therefore "taint" of individual enjoyment creeps into any writer's work whether they care to admit to it or not.
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