"re tim's recurrent point about people legimitising their own subjective tastes with the seal of the Important
... point taken, obviously, but i should point out that there's loads of things i like and even love that don't have these X-factors i go on about, or only have the most tenuous connection with them.... (snip)
...that doesn't mean that the X-factors haven't existed and aren't worth talking about and aren't worth looking for in the future"
I actually agree 100% with this. I'm not sure what Eppy's comment was getting at b/c I can't remember the broader argument that it was part of. If he's saying that all "x-factors" are a mirage then I would disagree with that. I think it's important to recognise that theoretically any piece of music can be treated <i>as</i> pop, but that doesn't mean that conversations should be restricted to it. I've advocated using the starting point that all music is pop music, but more as a levelling exercise - i.e. when listening to Dylan we should clear away the baggage of received wisdom so that we can then start the process of reincorporating the bits that <i>make sense</i>.
I base this on my obstinate insistence that x-factors are something we only become sensitive to through our engagement with the music - e.g. to understand how something "makes of enjoyment a crime against the state" we need to have a sense of what it is that is enjoyed and how, as much as understanding of why it is a crime.
So in that sense we all go through this process anyway - that is, incorporating received wisdom according to our perception of the music (and this goes back to my original point which started this thread, which is that we wouldn't incorporate received wisdom unless we can see for ourselves how it applied to the music).
I think this is more honest than proceeding from the starting point that "this music possesses the following x-factor sand therefore is great (and by the way I enjoy it too)", which tries to convince us that the writer's personal preference is incidental to the diagnosis of an x-factor.
To use the "I Luv U" example, I think this is doubly true: since v. few of the people who write about these tracks engage with the grime scene in a concrete way, it goes without saying that the presence of x-factors are something we have to sense in the music and then take on faith are the product of the logic of the scene itself (this is not something which simply following grime closely can overcome either: watching a grime DVD does not equal being part of the scene). So to some extent, all of us fatally white middle class blog writers (leaving aside the obvious exceptions) engage with this music first and foremostly as pop music, then reverse engineer the presence of x-factors. To complain about dilettante popist downloaders experiencing this music in an anti-skeptic (ha ha) environment is all very well, but there are few of us sufficiently <i>outside</i> the paradigm who might present our own engagement with the music as structurally radically different.
So we are left with four choices for types of music criticism which we might consider to be logically consistent:
1) Make of oneself a shining example: throw away all yr multi-genred international music and invest yourself in an authentic local scene so you can honestly say that you concretely engage with all the music you enjoy (being in Australia this option does not appeal to me).
2) Adopt a simply journalistic approach, investigating x-factors without presuming to comment on your own engagement with them (this seems run against the thing which compelled me to write about music in the first place - my enthusiasm for it).
3) Deny the presence of all x-factors (I don't agree with this).
4) Attempt to understand how x-factors interface with yr enjoyment, without necessarily subordinating the latter to the former.
"But - just to facetiously play devil's advocate for a moment - on what grounds/ criteria do you propose to distinguish between an orthodox punk and a punk who has effectively re-instantiated the punk abstract machine? How is this to be distinguished from saying that our taste is better than theirs?"
Mark I'm not certain myself! It's not the orthodox punk that worries me, it's the <i>orthodoxy</i> of punk. Which is to say that a "hardline" position has its own potential worth if it acts as an ethical investment above and beyond the terms of the normative order, but not if it is the normative order itself which is hardline.
I suspect this issue informs yours and Simon's argument - i.e. that in today's current climate <i>any</i> hardline position runs against the grain of the normative order. I think this is only half the story though: as much as contemporary society encourages a certain political quietism, it also encourages a multitude of "hardline" cultural stances which we are free to adopt and form communities around: hippies and punks and goths are free to construct their own normative rules, as are religious nuts and extreme economic rationalists. Being a part of any of these groups does not in itself constitute an ethical investment; conversely, not being able to identify a minoritarian cultural constituent group to which you belong does not rule out the possibility of an ethical investment.
At the same time, good politics is about trying to infect the normative with the ethical, to translate an ethical core into a normative construct, so I'd hardly say that we should judge something solely by the extent to which it avoids creating its own normative order.
In the end I think what I like a ethical/normative constructs which take responsibility for themselves, which say "I <i>can't</i> guarantee [x], but you should agree with me and join me anyway." For me good politics is where <i>nothing</i> "goes without saying", and yet that encourages us to be even more passionate in our debate.
So, to eventually answer your question, I think I would approve of the orthodox punk who understands the contingency of their own identity-choices, who doesn't <i>merely</i> refer the justification of their identity to some external law w/r/t to what punk "is", but instead engages with others as to why they think they've made the right choice. Conversely, someone who simply repeated Mark S's argument on punk as if it was canon law wouldn't interest me much.
Finally, most arguments about music carry an implied statement "my taste is better than yours". What takes the sting out of the tail is if you can provide the reader with something they can go away and use. A big part of what I consder music criticism to be "about" is the creation of critical tools for other people to get more out of music.
... point taken, obviously, but i should point out that there's loads of things i like and even love that don't have these X-factors i go on about, or only have the most tenuous connection with them.... (snip)
...that doesn't mean that the X-factors haven't existed and aren't worth talking about and aren't worth looking for in the future"
I actually agree 100% with this. I'm not sure what Eppy's comment was getting at b/c I can't remember the broader argument that it was part of. If he's saying that all "x-factors" are a mirage then I would disagree with that. I think it's important to recognise that theoretically any piece of music can be treated <i>as</i> pop, but that doesn't mean that conversations should be restricted to it. I've advocated using the starting point that all music is pop music, but more as a levelling exercise - i.e. when listening to Dylan we should clear away the baggage of received wisdom so that we can then start the process of reincorporating the bits that <i>make sense</i>.
I base this on my obstinate insistence that x-factors are something we only become sensitive to through our engagement with the music - e.g. to understand how something "makes of enjoyment a crime against the state" we need to have a sense of what it is that is enjoyed and how, as much as understanding of why it is a crime.
So in that sense we all go through this process anyway - that is, incorporating received wisdom according to our perception of the music (and this goes back to my original point which started this thread, which is that we wouldn't incorporate received wisdom unless we can see for ourselves how it applied to the music).
I think this is more honest than proceeding from the starting point that "this music possesses the following x-factor sand therefore is great (and by the way I enjoy it too)", which tries to convince us that the writer's personal preference is incidental to the diagnosis of an x-factor.
To use the "I Luv U" example, I think this is doubly true: since v. few of the people who write about these tracks engage with the grime scene in a concrete way, it goes without saying that the presence of x-factors are something we have to sense in the music and then take on faith are the product of the logic of the scene itself (this is not something which simply following grime closely can overcome either: watching a grime DVD does not equal being part of the scene). So to some extent, all of us fatally white middle class blog writers (leaving aside the obvious exceptions) engage with this music first and foremostly as pop music, then reverse engineer the presence of x-factors. To complain about dilettante popist downloaders experiencing this music in an anti-skeptic (ha ha) environment is all very well, but there are few of us sufficiently <i>outside</i> the paradigm who might present our own engagement with the music as structurally radically different.
So we are left with four choices for types of music criticism which we might consider to be logically consistent:
1) Make of oneself a shining example: throw away all yr multi-genred international music and invest yourself in an authentic local scene so you can honestly say that you concretely engage with all the music you enjoy (being in Australia this option does not appeal to me).
2) Adopt a simply journalistic approach, investigating x-factors without presuming to comment on your own engagement with them (this seems run against the thing which compelled me to write about music in the first place - my enthusiasm for it).
3) Deny the presence of all x-factors (I don't agree with this).
4) Attempt to understand how x-factors interface with yr enjoyment, without necessarily subordinating the latter to the former.
"But - just to facetiously play devil's advocate for a moment - on what grounds/ criteria do you propose to distinguish between an orthodox punk and a punk who has effectively re-instantiated the punk abstract machine? How is this to be distinguished from saying that our taste is better than theirs?"
Mark I'm not certain myself! It's not the orthodox punk that worries me, it's the <i>orthodoxy</i> of punk. Which is to say that a "hardline" position has its own potential worth if it acts as an ethical investment above and beyond the terms of the normative order, but not if it is the normative order itself which is hardline.
I suspect this issue informs yours and Simon's argument - i.e. that in today's current climate <i>any</i> hardline position runs against the grain of the normative order. I think this is only half the story though: as much as contemporary society encourages a certain political quietism, it also encourages a multitude of "hardline" cultural stances which we are free to adopt and form communities around: hippies and punks and goths are free to construct their own normative rules, as are religious nuts and extreme economic rationalists. Being a part of any of these groups does not in itself constitute an ethical investment; conversely, not being able to identify a minoritarian cultural constituent group to which you belong does not rule out the possibility of an ethical investment.
At the same time, good politics is about trying to infect the normative with the ethical, to translate an ethical core into a normative construct, so I'd hardly say that we should judge something solely by the extent to which it avoids creating its own normative order.
In the end I think what I like a ethical/normative constructs which take responsibility for themselves, which say "I <i>can't</i> guarantee [x], but you should agree with me and join me anyway." For me good politics is where <i>nothing</i> "goes without saying", and yet that encourages us to be even more passionate in our debate.
So, to eventually answer your question, I think I would approve of the orthodox punk who understands the contingency of their own identity-choices, who doesn't <i>merely</i> refer the justification of their identity to some external law w/r/t to what punk "is", but instead engages with others as to why they think they've made the right choice. Conversely, someone who simply repeated Mark S's argument on punk as if it was canon law wouldn't interest me much.
Finally, most arguments about music carry an implied statement "my taste is better than yours". What takes the sting out of the tail is if you can provide the reader with something they can go away and use. A big part of what I consder music criticism to be "about" is the creation of critical tools for other people to get more out of music.
