humour: media / politics

[Slothrop]

I think his point is that pinning down a modernist era is tricky, he's questioning the standard Clement Greenberg version of it.

Should I feel stupid for not knowing that there was a standard Clement Greenberg version of modernism? *goes and looks it up*

It's interesting in the context of this discussion that he views 'essentially ironic' modernist art as being in support of liberal democracy and sees this as a good thing. Contrast Greenberg (thanks, wikipedia) viewing it as being essentially not ironic and directed towards the revolutionary rejection of capitalism but still a minority anit-popular thing (this is similar to what Adorno says, isn't it?) But I guess the products of either sort of modernism are still essentially experienced in a consumerist manner.

Still not sure how Gang of Four fit in, though.

Sorry that was some random first thoughts, probably mostly bollocks, but I'd be interested to know what some of the people with more knowledge think about the article.

 

[IdleRich]

"I think his point is that pinning down a modernist era is tricky, he's questioning the standard Clement Greenberg version of it."

So.... if you redefine modernism to include what is commonly known as post-modernism then you don't have any post-modernism? Seems to me a bit like when the government change what is called a crime and then report that crime has fallen.
The underlying problems (if there are any) haven't been addressed just magicked away.

 

[Mr. Tea]

From my mostly Wikipedia-level knowledge of how postmodernism is defined, it seems a lot of writers don't even really consider it a cultural phase in its own right, but class it as 'late modernism'.

 

[swears]

Should I feel stupid for not knowing that there was a standard Clement Greenberg version of modernism? *goes and looks it up*

In terms of the art criticism of the early 80s, perhaps.

Sorry that was some random first thoughts, probably mostly bollocks, but I'd be interested to know what some of the people with more knowledge think about the article.

Me too, lol.

So.... if you redefine modernism to include what is commonly known as post-modernism then you don't have any post-modernism? Seems to me a bit like when the government change what is called a crime and then report that crime has fallen.
The underlying problems (if there are any) haven't been addressed just magicked away

It seems more like saying that maybe there never was a golden age of modernism and writers like Greenberg were trying to shape history to their own ends. The underlying problems were there in the first place.

 

[IdleRich]

"It seems more like saying that maybe there never was a golden age of modernism and writers like Greenberg were trying to shape history to their own ends. The underlying problems were there in the first place."

OK, I don't read him as actually saying that (when does he identify irony as a problem?) but maybe it's a more interesting corollary.

 

[swears]

It's interesting in the context of this discussion that he views 'essentially ironic' modernist art as being in support of liberal democracy and sees this as a good thing.

I'm not sure what his definition of a "liberal democracy" was then, probably not the same as the current Republican administration's.

 

[gek-opel]

I talk crap all the time. I’m a liar, a hypocrite, and a bastard. I shouldn’t be tolerated….

LOVE IT.

@vimothy: Your simplistic binary world of democracy or tyranny is very cute, but pretty inaccurate. Neither is an absolute, and neither does one necessarily exclude elements of the other. There are degrees of democracy, shades, tones... the mere presence of the ritual of voting means little...

 

[Gavin]

Right after I wrote that rant at Mr. Tea (which I did feel a little bad about afterwards, in spite of myself), I read this story by Stanislaw Lem, "Pericalypse," which references some things said in this thread. The book itself is structured as reviews of imaginary books. There's an excerpt at google books:

Creative work of value is possible when there is resistance, either of the medium or of the people at whom the work is aimed; but since, after the collapse of the prohibitions of religion and the censor, one can say everything, or anything whatever, and since, with the disappearance of those attentive listeners who hung on every word, one can howl anything at anyone, literature and all its humanistic affinity is a corpse whose advancing decay is stubbornly concealed by the next of kin.

 

[Gavin]

From the Halley:

In time of economic adversity and uncertainty, like the present, it is characteristic of the wealthy to retreat into a position of fear and reaction. On the other hand, during these adverse periods, there are also likely to be small groups among those without a large investment in the status quo who will be moved by adversity to a position of intense thought and doubt.

*Almost* sounds like academia ("without large investment in the status quo" arguable at the least). I know that Eagleton at least defines a lot of jargony theory as an attempt at avant-garde art. Though in this case intense thought and doubt haven't produced very much that is actually interesting...

 

[nomadologist]

I probably would have come across them - I studied Continental Philosophy at grad school (leftie powerhouse Essex), English/French at undergrad (at teh top school Oxford Uni), (cultural) Geography (doctoral), Education (ultra-left Homerton at Cambridge for the double whammy innit) at post-grad, so have enjoyed/suffered/read a fair amount of that kind of thing. I also is speaking the five languages so I might even have read the originals on rare occasions!

If this is even remotely true, then why the constant SHOCK and AWE at the fact that some people like to talk about things that they read?

Hasn't k-punk written like a trillion blog posts on this? ...the Oxbridge educated anti-intellectual status-quo warrior gym class hero?

 

[mixed_biscuits]

If this is even remotely true, then why the constant SHOCK and AWE at the fact that some people like to talk about things that they read?

Hasn't k-punk written like a trillion blog posts on this? ...the Oxbridge educated anti-intellectual status-quo warrior gym class hero?

If this is even remotely true, then why the constant SHOCK and AWE at the fact that some people like to talk about things that they read?

Hasn't k-punk written like a trillion blog posts on this? ...the Oxbridge educated anti-intellectual status-quo warrior gym class hero?

Aye, it's all true.

Who is 'k-punk' and what would k-punk know? Even if s/he did have some experience of either university, how can s/he generalise about the tens of thousands of people who pass through them? Has s/he not heard about colleges like Wadham (Oxford) or King's (Cambridge)? They're absolutely packed with name-dropping, left-leaning wannabe intellos (one of my friends is at King's).

Even if your thesis were true (that ppl at Oxbridge pretend to be anti-intellectual), it is still the case that most students there actually are more intellectual than at any of the other universities in the UK, in that they have read more (see performances on University Challenge), are generally more intelligent (some greatly so), are competitive and goal-centred and are given more work to do than anywhere else (Oxf: 12 essays in 8 weeks to defend 1-1 or 2-1 vs world-leading experts).

Re debating styles, what might be believed by many Oxbridge students is that less intelligent people name-drop more in debate than the more intelligent as doing so gives their arguments a ready-made structure and weight - which is easier than fashioning persuasive points on the fly (which skills the Oxbridge tutorial system attempts to develop). I don't remember Union debates involving much name-dropping either.

Many Oxbridge students might well be averse to heavy name-dropping (as I obv am) as it betrays preparation and admits an intellectual debt to others, preferring the implied self-sufficiency of improvised argument (the narcissism of 'effortless superiority'). On a more prosaic note, name-dropping and other excesses of referencing disrupt the flow of an argument, as your interlocutor wastes time vainly trying to retrieve information about GodknowswhatobscureFrenchthinker from memory rather than following your logic.

So, to some extent, I agree with k-punk, but with important reservations: some Oxbridge students are closetly intellectual anti-'intello's (which stance is itself an attentuation of the wider British mistrust of 'intellectuals') while others would fit right in with the handful of Essex students who were set on assuming an 'intellectual' persona.

PS 'Gym class hero'? Is s/he thinking of the right side of the Atlantic?

 

[IdleRich]

"Creative work of value is possible when there is resistance, either of the medium or of the people at whom the work is aimed; but since, after the collapse of the prohibitions of religion and the censor, one can say everything, or anything whatever, and since, with the disappearance of those attentive listeners who hung on every word, one can howl anything at anyone, literature and all its humanistic affinity is a corpse whose advancing decay is stubbornly concealed by the next of kin."

I do think that there is a lot of truth in this ("nothing is true and everything is permitted") but I also think that Vimothy has correctly identified a paradox in that art in a dictatorship is art against that dictatorship and towards a society in which when achieved art will ultimately have less power.
I guess what you (Gavin) are saying is that the west is a society with the worst of both worlds, lack of restrictions on art robbing it of its power and a kind of low-key lack of say in politics that gives the illusion of freedom or justice.

"Hasn't k-punk written like a trillion blog posts on this? ...the Oxbridge educated anti-intellectual status-quo warrior gym class hero?!"

Well if K-Punk wrote about it it must be true (see also a million other sources of name-dropped obedient Big Other pseudo-philosophy).

 

[Mr. Tea]

Well if K-Punk wrote about it it must be true (see also a million other sources of name-dropped obedient Big Other pseudo-philosophy).

Oops, that's torn it! *ducks for cover*

I think you're dead right, Rich, about Vimothy's take on revolutionary struggle: the point of it should surely be that you struggle in order to one day achieve a state where struggle is no longer necessary, not in order to still be struggling in a year's or five years' or twenty years' time. And the state people are usually struggling towards, providing they're not simply trying to set up a new dictatorship of their own, is democracy. The fact that many democracies today obviously have a lot wrong with them - for the record, I do not deny and never have denied this - is not a reason to say anything as facile as "democracy is actually just as bad as tyranny".

 

[vimothy]

@Vimothy: Your simplistic binary world of democracy or tyranny is very cute, but pretty inaccurate. Neither is an absolute, and neither does one necessarily exclude elements of the other. There are degrees of democracy, shades, tones... the mere presence of the ritual of voting means little...

Actually, I think it is fairly simple. In a democracy you can vote your current ruler out in a fair election - in a dictatorship you can't.

Of course, simply having elections is not enough (Iran, Palestine), nor is simply stating that you are a democracy (er, North Korea). What we are really talking about is liberal democracy, where representatives are subject to the rule of law, moderated by a constitution and protective the rights of its citizens, where there is a free press and an independent judiciary.

Otherwise, one could simply vote in a tyrant or megalomaniac who might do something like, I don't know, murder lots of people...

That also strikes me as one of the possible outcomes of your desire for a more radical, immediate form of government. A government where the people can affect any kind of change they want, no matter how ridiculous or unrealistic, is one in which all kinds of evil are possible. "Nothing changes, we want more power!" Mob rule, by any other name - there has to be limits to prevent the (ruling) majority acting at the expense of the minority. (Also, it often strikes me how much people complain about demoracy when they disagree with the (aggregate) decisions made - the election of Bush, the occupation of Iraq, etc - as these are not demoractic simply because they are not one's own decisions. And of course, there is always someone who knows best...).

 

[vimothy]

There are also some very important correlations between non-democracy and democide (i.e. the state murdering the people), famine and war.

Rudolph J Rummel makes some good points:

• Democracies don't go to war with one another.
• Tyrannies don't stand together; democracies do.
• Democracies don't wage war on their own citizens.
• Democracies don't have famines - famines are political failures.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Gek does have a point though, Vimothy. Democracy is surely not doing what it says on the tin (i.e. as far as is fair and possible, enacting the will of the people) if, on some important major issue, all (or, in the US, both) major parties have essentially the same policy, with perhaps at best a few cosmetic differences for the sake of 'opposition'. Especially if this policy is at odds with what most people want, of course. Plus there's the fact that a huge proportion of the population simply import their opinions wholesale from newspapers, although this is a problem that doesn't have any clear solution that's not massively illiberal and totalitarian...

 

[vimothy]

Gek does have a point though, Vimothy. Democracy is surely not doing what it says on the tin (i.e. as far as is fair and possible, enacting the will of the people) if, on some important major issue, all (or, in the US, both) major parties have essentially the same policy, with perhaps at best a few cosmetic differences for the sake of 'opposition'. Especially if this policy is at odds with what most people want, of course. Plus there's the fact that a huge proportion of the population simply import their opinions wholesale from newspapers, although this is a problem that doesn't have any clear solution that's not massively illiberal and totalitarian...

That's why I'm saying that liberal democracy is the important system. Gek wants democracy in the style of ancient Greece (or so it seems to me): majority rule. Certainly we don't need every other fucker with an opinion jumping in every time they feel that their veiws are not being heard. So what if one million out of work hippies wander the streets of London getting stoned and listening to really, really shit samba (I was there, so I know it happened)? That isn't how decisioins get made. It's also not the case that you personally should be allowed to make decisions that effect everyone generally. And it's also not the case that everyone should get a say on everything that happens in a democracy, because there are plenty of things that are way outside your own remit (which is why we have professionals and experts who (we hope) know better).

Besically, we don't need any of the radical change that gek wants - it would be bad for everyone (inc. Gek), despite it possibly making a percentage of the population feel more "represented" or empowered.

 

[vimothy]

What about Rummel's points? How do people feel about them?

I remember one pundit somewhere (can't remember who) saying that the most important political task in the world at present is to stop mass murder/democide/genocide. It looks to me like (real) democracy is the answer. Isn't that more important than being able to wreck the system just because you think that you should be able to?

 

[vimothy]

Gek does have a point though, Vimothy. Democracy is surely not doing what it says on the tin (i.e. as far as is fair and possible, enacting the will of the people) if, on some important major issue, all (or, in the US, both) major parties have essentially the same policy, with perhaps at best a few cosmetic differences for the sake of 'opposition'.

What about mob rule, how do you read that in relation to simply enacting the will of the majority? For instance, what if the majority of the people wanted to round up Muslims and put them in concentration camps?

 

[Mr. Tea]

Well hang on, I'm certainly not advocating mob rule. As you point out, a decision that happens to reflect the will of the majority, although democratic, may severely infringe the rights of a minority in a very illiberal way. Switzerland is arguably the most democratic country in the world - not that they necessarily have the most efficient or fair form of democracy, but they almost certainly have the greatest amount of it - and the party currently enjoying the most votes is trying to introduce some appallingly xenophobic anti-immigration legislation...

What I will say, however, is that my intuition is that a country with a large-ish number of major-ish parties (more than two, anyway!), with a wide range of ideologies and policies, perhaps ruling by some sort of PR system, is probably a better kind of democracy than one in which power is invariably held by one party or the other, whose differences in policy are increasingly becoming invisible to the naked eye.

Hell, at least if we had a Le Pen in the UK we'd all have a clear idea of who not to vote for...