It's an interesting aspect of this rather circular debate that by going so far into it we've actually erupted back at the "surface" somewhat.
"It can, of course, be a source of fascination - but the political and ethical questions are what we do about that - whether we think that anatomising fascinations is enough, or whether we choose our fascinations
and fixations on the basis of their transformative power."
This raises some stumbling blocks for me because again I'm not sure of how to conduct structural analyses of my own responses that don't get tripped up in my experience of those responses - ie. how do i know that I've been transformed by my enjoyment other than by some conscious (but not necessarily reliable) sense that I have been transformed? Or, even if I am transforming or have transformed, on what basis can I determine that it is the music that is transforming me? Isn't it equally possible that I'm projecting onto the
music a reflection of the transformative process that I am going through whose causes lie elsewhere? I'm not saying it's one or the other, just that I'm not sure how you'd necessarily determine without the "belief before belief" which enjoyment/experience provides. (ie. if it is "the music" that transforms you, isn't it likely that it does so by providing a convenient objet petit a in which to locate your desire for transformation?).
Partly it comes down to is an ethics of desire - which sorts of transformation are, um, <i>desirable</i>? I once met a (somewhat unlikeable) woman who once sincerely attested to the transformative power of reality tv shows, saying they'd helped her realise she could "shine" in her own life. From her elaboration of the factual details of her life, it was clear that her social behaviour had indeed changed remarkably. And yet, presumably, this transformation is not the sort you mean. Is it a "false" transformation or merely a politically misguided one? If the former, does that mean that the precondition for a "real" transformation is a liberation from ideology, and can that be something less than a whole-hearted engagement in
revolutionary politics? If the latter, does that mean that the only meaningful basis for judging responses to music is their political efficacy?
At any rate the desire for transformation must exist <i>beyond</i> the particular piece of music at hand. Doubtless cultural conditioning will be instrumental in shaping the sorts of transformations a person is in a
position to undertake, but this gets us back to the conundrum that our responses are never just responses to a single piece of culture under observation.
Dominic might say here that it's not about a single piece of music so much as immersion within a scene, and the scene as a whole conditions the participant to be open to a certain type of political transformation
(expressed in this case as a lack of satisfaction with the political/social status quo). But this seems to me to be the type of "structural" observation one makes only as an interested observer, ie. as someone who has already undergone the interpellation which they attempt to explain. I would have to
assume that there were outside observers (Marxist or otherwise) who dismissed the "rave dream" from the start as being merely another form of youth culture that was, um, "always already" co-opted by capital. To such outsiders, whatever emancipatory potential some ravers might perceive within their weekend activities, this would be simply another example of false consciousness, a fetishization of rave with a political patina as justification.
(the sexual revolution is a good reference point here) (of course even if this is true it doesn't deny that rave could have concrete and beneficial social/political/cultural effects - the same is true for
liberal feminism, human rights discourse, liberal multiculturalism etc.) (and of course what is true for rave is as true for post-punk, US hardcore, hip hop - the moment pre-selling out is always, from the perspective of the disinterested outside observer, a moment of collective misunderstanding of the fact that the scene is by definition "sold out", capitalised.) (ie. in the Jamesonian sense all these movements are made possible only insofar as they are moments in late capitalism).
It strikes me that the raver's answer to this skepticism is simply the fact of their own passionate belief, their faith in the genuiness of their transformation (predicated on an experience as such); their zeal (which Dominic talks about) is what for them prevents this moment being <i>objectively</i> a mere perpetuation (via niche marketing) of capitalism. Per Zizek (in his reading of Lenin through Lukacs through Hegel), this is the Lenin-style leap-of-faith: raving as an act which cannot be legitimised by the Big Other of scientific materialist diagnosis or etc (including structuralist analysis) because according to any such criteria the act would fall short of its ambitions/potential - it is therefore self-motivated, it is fired by a faith which is inevitably quasi-mystical. But is the faith pathological? That is the question.
Zizek agrees with Kant (and with myself ha ha) that with any alleged "ethical act" there is always the inescapable risk that it was actually done for pathological reasons (ie. enjoyment, narcissicism etc.). Zizek would go on to say that, while that is the case, ethical acts (ie. Real acts) nonetheless do occur, and the challenge is to recognise them for what they are. I would agree with that but I just don't know how to distinguish between the two when it comes to people's responses to music - esp. if we accept that responses to music are almost by definition pathological. Again the Lenin-via-Zizek answer is to say, why are you still waiting for some form of legitimation or guarantee when we have faith that our position is right and righteous (or, perhaps, will retrospectively be conferred rightness/righteousness in the changed landscape post-act)? This is a bit like yr K-Punk posts recently re Ratzinger etc. maybe.
And that's fine, but if we're using that as a basis then perhaps in these sorts of debates what is at stake is a politically motivated revolutionary faith rather than a consistent rule about music as such; neutral structuralism ultimately concludes that all acts are pathological and an insistence otherwise is built on a faith that cannot be proven by structural analysis, only felt. And, moreover, an argument like "[x] piece of music is more transformative than [y]" is a "universal" that is grounded in a particular social-historical moment, political objective and transformative possibility (all of these being constellated in... experience? Someone help me out here my brane is sore). It all becomes very circular, because if we do accept this then the question is consequently, okay but isn't that experience inherently unreliable?
This is what I meant about the "short circuit" in the argument. In that sense I never meant that you talking about Scritti Politti was inconsistent with the theoretical position you were putting forward; it was totally consistent, but currently I can't help but see it as being the inconsistency in the theory itself. And it's not just you Mark obv, this is the moment when I find it difficult to trace Zizek's footsteps as well; my route to Zizek was via <i>The Sublime Object</i> and so I had this vaguely Althusserian reading of him, and then this comes up against something which reminds me almost of Sartre-style Dialectical Humanism. Which is a pretty strange collision...
Because of this I can sort of follow Zizek's recent (as in, er, over the last ten years or so) turn away from Real-as-Impossible to Real-as-very-possible-but-traumatic, but I still have heaps of ambiguities over the exact nature of the ethical act, and I wonder when Zizek talks about it to what extent it's basically shorthand for Badiou (who I need to read a lot more of).
And I wouldn't have the faintest ideas as to how Spinozian ethics would potentially get around all of this!
And I should note finally that I don't really have a point to all this! I guess I'm just trying to work out in my own head how these sorts of distinctions can possibly be made.
"I'm interested in love songs too - but interestingly not because 'my own idea of love' differs from it. I tried to bring this out in my posts on Love Hangover' and the one I did at Christmas on Roxy: partly what
interests me about love songs is that they reveal the structuration of love' - the very fact that they seem meaningful is not due to some emotional communion between listener and performer/writer, but because they emerge from a structure. Of course, awareness of the structure doesn't make you immune to it... on the contrary, being in love is a great deal about reflecting on the state of being in love!"
Actually I don't think this is different from my enjoyment of love songs, I think you just worded it better...
"Isn't the Zizekian analysis more about mindless structure/ drives rather than mindless sheep?"
Yes, I wouldn't like him much otherwise!
"I'm happy with all of this, though I am interested in the ways in which musicology (even though I know nothing about it), neurology (ditto) and structural analysis might mesh..."
Totally!
"2. Pop isn't just about the sonic components; the record sleeves, photos, interviews etc form part of the Pop assemblage."
I presume you agree though that all other forms of music do this too, openly or secretly? (eg. no scene is more fetishist about record sleeves than IDM) In this sense, as much as popism is often rockism about pop, rockism is often popism about rock... (and even with eg. classical music there were all sorts of "frames" that were equally part of the picture, so to speak).