What is good about Pop Music?

[s_clover]

etc.

i feel like i'm somehow not fully party to this conversation, but re: zizek and lenin, coming at least from "revolution at the gates" i get the sense that zizek isn't taken by lenin as the purity of the ethical act as such (he'd pass that off as the "secular religion" reading, maybe) but by the notion of a reflexive decisiveness & a restless interrogation of any answer that does not imply its own insufficiency? which also seems v. difft than lukcas' lenin as embodying the reflexive consciousness of totality through positing its totalized character? (tho its been a while for me on that, & i'm describing all this in my own quirky vocabulary)

also it occurs to me that zizek probably confuses multiple meanings of "relativism" as do many foax -- an incapacitating moral relativism and a relativism of constructionism that doesn't preclude using such terms as "social fact" and a relativism of recognition of situated knowledge and action. or rather, he distinguishes them reasonably in practice, but poorly in terminology. (hey -- what if we take Lacan's four knowledges/discourses and turn them into four relativisms!?)

from k-punk i'd be interested in more examples of what you'd consider an "event" (my own use of the term is sorta a contingency/necessity derived notion -- a post-facto situated determination of the relation between the two as "historic" is thus what determines what constitutes one).

also re: belief before belief -- we totally part ways on this & my reading of zizek seems to back me up, in that he at least argues this "belief before belief" is a retroactive creation, sublime in its "irrational" character, but ultimately subject to techniques not of "rational" persuation but of the "analyist". in other words it is only ineffible to the extent we expect it to play by the rules of a broadly intersubjectively commensurable social field?

 

[adie!72]

Amm?

personally im more of a pepperpot man.

 

[Tim F]

Mark sez: "But where does this 'belief before belief' come from? Not in the act of symbolic commitment (which comes after the fact). You must _already_ be committed.... So in a sense it is not about belief before before belief but _commitment_ before subjective belief. Surely it is clear that 'music' can function to inspire such commitment."

Sterling sez: "also re: belief before belief -- we totally part ways on this & my reading of zizek seems to back me up, in that he at least argues this "belief before belief" is a retroactive creation, sublime in its "irrational" character, but ultimately subject to techniques not of "rational" persuation but of the "analyist". in other words it is only ineffible to the extent we expect it to play by the rules of a broadly intersubjectively commensurable social field?"

I'm quoting both of these because I'm not quite sure who Sterling himself was responding to (myself or Mark), and because it's a good moment to clarify what I'm saying in this regard.

I think there's a disagreement here not in the process but in the terminology and what it applies to - Sterling is using "belief before belief" to refer to the retroactive positing of the official nature of the belief prior to its actual existence, Mark (and myself) are using it to refer to what it is which is <i>actually</i> motivating the belief if the official reason is a retroactive creation/substitution.

So for me "belief before belief" refers to the thing/action which initially motivates the belief, and which is then repressed subsequently (retroactively) and replaced by an official explanation. eg. We believe in the law because it is just (not because it is part of a system of power relationships established through violence, which are then reasserted via tradition). But this "belief before belief" can be both a senseless injunction (as per that example) and an inducement. So when I'm using "belief before belief" for music with a political edge, I mean that the initial motivating factor for appreciation of it is not the fact of the music's socially transformative political power (which is like the law being just: something that can only be believed from within the relationship of interpellation) but rather the act of enjoyment (via locating of object of desire - a desire that may have some political component but is <i>still</i> a desire).

As per Heidegger's point re Jesus (that liking him because he is "good" is heretical, and it is only through already existing faith that we can begin to appreciate Jesus's good qualities), listing the socially transformative qualities of post-punk is ultimately irrelevant to the question of "why did I begin to like post-punk". Social transformation is, of course, something that you can ponder and appreciate once you have become interpellated by the enjoyment of post-punk, and something you can use to justify how yr enjoyment is better than others (as per people explaining why Christianity is a better faith than Islam, or vice versa etc.), but it is not <i>the cause</i> of that enjoyment, which must always be irrational to some extent (but, yeah, not ineffable).

Now Mark when you use "commitment" here it appears to give this irrational enjoyment a noble quality, or at least that's how I'm reading it. Are you trying to make a Pascalian point (paradoxically-heretically in the service of the revolution) - that certain types of irrational enjoyment need to be relionized (as "commitment") in order to cultivate the effects they produce (eg. a zealous belief in the socially transformative power of certain types of music)? ie. that a little false consciousness is good for the soul?

This doesn't strike me as being totally non-sensical, but at the same time I'm not sure cultural studies should be condemned for resisting this either. I need to think this through more though.

(I like this turn in the conversation because it gives me ideas for my likkle honours thesis)

 

[blissblogger]

shoulders to the grindstone

cmon guys one last push and we can get this mutha to 300 posts/10 thousand views

 

[henrymiller]

next to the 't/s heidegger vs rachel stevens' thread on smashhits.com, this is all pretty lowbrow.

"To go from Zizek's rejection of facile cult studs gestural micropolitics (the view, also rightly exoriated by Baudrillard that watching TV is an act of resistance) to the idea that pheww, coast is clear, get the beers in chaps, it's OK just to enjoy, Slavoj says so, is a leap so stupefying I can hardly credit it. Surely Zizek's most famous move is his critique of enjoyment (i.e. the superegoic injunction to enjoy)... Zizek of course recognizes that acts of consumption are inherently and of their nature political and psychoanalytic. He doesn't buy into a silly commonsense binary between consumption and 'serious' things... HOWEVER that is not to say that reading or listening to music cannot CONTRIBUTE to a transformative political project. They do so PRECISELY WHEN THEY CEASE TO BE acts of consumption and affect ppl's structure of living."

well, the silly commonsense binary here is between people who work in marketing and enjoy pop music (who is k-punk actually referring to? why marketing?) and people who are engaged in the higher pursuit and enjoy pop music: ie between music as soundtrack to boozing (strawman 1) and music as way to 'affet ppl's structure of living' (strawman 2).

the binary is consumption/structure-altering practice. if to dance is to theorize, as i think other people have assumed upthread, what constitutes the difference -- in concrete terms -- here?

but it really is necessary when dealing in strawmen to demonstrate where they come from, their origins. who are these beer-swilling girls aloud fans? in what way has, say, jungle contributed to a transformative political project? on the aesthetic level, if we are concerned with political transformation, at what point does the question of value -- ie the judgement that this post-punk band is better than this indie band --come in?

 

[s_clover]

b-but tim, how to we read "belief before belief" vs. "the unconscious is on the outside"?

 

[Tim F]

"b-but tim, how to we read "belief before belief" vs. "the unconscious is on the outside"?"

Is there a conflict? I'm not sure there is.

 

[k-punk]

next to the 't/s heidegger vs rachel stevens' thread on smashhits.com, this is all pretty lowbrow.

Ah, the service with a sneer we've come to expect from Henry Miller, whose contribution to this messageboard has been immense. 70,000 know-all posts, all of them carping and know-all supercilious...we certainly know what he doesn't like, but does anyone have any clue about what HE thinks? (I know no-one cares, but...)

"To go from Zizek's rejection of facile cult studs gestural micropolitics (the view, also rightly exoriated by Baudrillard that watching TV is an act of resistance) to the idea that pheww, coast is clear, get the beers in chaps, it's OK just to enjoy, Slavoj says so, is a leap so stupefying I can hardly credit it. Surely Zizek's most famous move is his critique of enjoyment (i.e. the superegoic injunction to enjoy)... Zizek of course recognizes that acts of consumption are inherently and of their nature political and psychoanalytic. He doesn't buy into a silly commonsense binary between consumption and 'serious' things... HOWEVER that is not to say that reading or listening to music cannot CONTRIBUTE to a transformative political project. They do so PRECISELY WHEN THEY CEASE TO BE acts of consumption and affect ppl's structure of living."

well, the silly commonsense binary here is between people who work in marketing and enjoy pop music (who is k-punk actually referring to? why marketing?) and people who are engaged in the higher pursuit and enjoy pop music: ie between music as soundtrack to boozing (strawman 1) and music as way to 'affet ppl's structure of living' (strawman 2).

I'm referring to the signatories of the Geezaesthetics manifesto, but I assume that they are not the only people to fit this very real category.

I think you seem to be under some misapprehension about what the term 'straw man' means btw. To produce a 'straw man' is to produce a deliberately weakened version of your opponent's argument so as to more easily knock it down. Thus, while I disagree with him, Tim was using the term 'straw man' correctly when he said I was invoking a Popist straw man. You are using it incorrectly - presumably, to indicate a weak/ unconvincing/ simplistic position - because since so-called 'strawman 2' is my own view, why would I be presenting my own position in a deliberately weakened way?

the binary is consumption/structure-altering practice. if to dance is to theorize, as i think other people have assumed upthread, what constitutes the difference -- in concrete terms -- here?

What are you talking about? You are saying that there is no difference between sinking a few pints while bawling along to Kylie's Greatest - or even more preposterously, are you claiming that NO-ONE has ever, ever done such a thing, nor defended such behaviour? - and listening to Gang of4/ Slits and thinking about what consuming pop means, about what the relationship these sounds might have to the rest of your life might mean?

but it really is necessary when dealing in strawmen

It is never necessary to deal in strawmen.... Can you get quoted on the stock exchange for 'dealing in strawmen' btw?

to demonstrate where they come from, their origins. who are these beer-swilling girls aloud fans?

Look, if you're going to stalk me, you've got to work much, much harder. Me attacking Girls Aloud fans? Don't think so.

in what way has, say, jungle contributed to a transformative political project?

I don't think it did, which was why, despite the unprecedented power of the sonic invention, it lacked something that postpunk had...

on the aesthetic level, if we are concerned with political transformation, at what point does the question of value -- ie the judgement that this post-punk band is better than this indie band --come in?

[/QUOTE]

Surely we can all agree that all indie bands are rubbish AND reactionary, end of story.

 

[henrymiller]

'strawman 2' is my own view

me using 'strawman 2' is just a way of saying that the binary 'geeza [s'man 1]: thinka [s'man 2]' won't hold, in other words that what thinkas are doing is not all that far removed from what the geezas are doing. i found it hard in your post to distinguish between abstract positions and the people who hold them, and so the binary looked ominously like one between different sorts of people, rather than just different moments of consumption/ways of hearing.

You are saying that there is no difference between sinking a few pints while bawling along to Kylie's Greatest - or even more preposterously, are you claiming that NO-ONE has ever, ever done such a thing, nor defended such behaviour? - and listening to Gang of4/ Slits and thinking about what consuming pop means, about what the relationship these sounds might have to the rest of your life might mean?

but i'm not saying this, not going this far, because i don't think the simple binary will operate. i think there's *some* difference between dancing and theorising, between having music-as-background-to-drinking and music-as-machine-for-thinking, *but* it's not a binary opposition, it's not either-or.

more to the point, it seemed to me that you were personalising things, but not very well: the geezas, when they write about pop music, do it well, and on occasion kylie can be for them a vehicle for writing about 'what consuming pop means,' as much as gang of four -- the material for this writing may be the experience of consuming kylie in a pub or consuming gang of four on the headphones or, vice versa.

in other words even if the binary *does* operate, it operates within people, some of whom may be drinking and talking shit one minute and thinking their relation to [25-year-old] records the next (well, the previous, thinking about it).

unless we're criticising drinking, bawling and pubs *in general*, i don't see a contradiction here.

 

[k-punk]

Meanwhile, back to serious and worthwhile posts....

So for me "belief before belief" refers to the thing/action which initially motivates the belief, and which is then repressed subsequently (retroactively) and replaced by an official explanation. eg. We believe in the law because it is just (not because it is part of a system of power relationships established through violence, which are then reasserted via tradition). But this "belief before belief" can be both a senseless injunction (as per that example) and an inducement. So when I'm using "belief before belief" for music with a political edge, I mean that the initial motivating factor for appreciation of it is not the fact of the music's socially transformative political power (which is like the law being just: something that can only be believed from within the relationship of interpellation) but rather the act of enjoyment (via locating of object of desire - a desire that may have some political component but is <i>still</i> a desire).

As per Heidegger's point re Jesus (that liking him because he is "good" is heretical, and it is only through already existing faith that we can begin to appreciate Jesus's good qualities), listing the socially transformative qualities of post-punk is ultimately irrelevant to the question of "why did I begin to like post-punk". Social transformation is, of course, something that you can ponder and appreciate once you have become interpellated by the enjoyment of post-punk, and something you can use to justify how yr enjoyment is better than others (as per people explaining why Christianity is a better faith than Islam, or vice versa etc.), but it is not <i>the cause</i> of that enjoyment, which must always be irrational to some extent (but, yeah, not ineffable).

Now Mark when you use "commitment" here it appears to give this irrational enjoyment a noble quality, or at least that's how I'm reading it. Are you trying to make a Pascalian point (paradoxically-heretically in the service of the revolution) - that certain types of irrational enjoyment need to be relionized (as "commitment") in order to cultivate the effects they produce (eg. a zealous belief in the socially transformative power of certain types of music)? ie. that a little false consciousness is good for the soul?

This doesn't strike me as being totally non-sensical, but at the same time I'm not sure cultural studies should be condemned for resisting this either. I need to think this through more though.

(I like this turn in the conversation because it gives me ideas for my likkle honours thesis)

I like this turn in conversation too. But I do have a different interpretation of this 'belief before belief' thing, I think.

The move is Pascalian, but that follows Zizek's discussion of belief before belief in The Sublime Object of Ideology, which begins with a discussion of Pascal's wager.

Now the point about Pascal's wager is (1) (according to Pascal at least) it is NOT irrational and (2) it is not based on enjoyment, but on the renunciation of enjoyment or (or of 'earthly pleasures' as he puts it).

Pascal's argument is that it is rational to believe in God because, even though we cannot know anything about God - including whether or not he exists - we 'will maximize our gain' if the belief turns out to be true. Moreover, all we lose is a few earthly pleasures.

What Zizek is particularly interested in is Pascal's subsequent argument - which maintains that commitment will yield immediate positive effects for the believer (they will feel that their life means something, that their actions have significance etc). As I recall (I don't have the book here) Zizek argues that French communists had seized upon Pascal, because his reasoning can be applied to 'faith in communism' as much as faith in God.

Now the point for Pascal, the French Communists and Zizek is that this is NOT 'false consciousness' - on the contrary, it is a means of luring the abject, the desperate and the faithless into the Truth. It is 'as-if' consciousness, or rather 'as-if' behaviour, since part of the point is that you change your beliefs by undertaking 'mindless' behaviours - act 'as if' it is true and you will come to see that it is. So enjoyment is no sense 'at the bottom' of this. Quite the opposite: simply 'going through the motions' of religious ritual is likely to yield no enjoyment at all for Pascal's gambler in the first phase of his conversion.

I think this makes the wider point that 'enjoyment' is not some 'unconditioned' state. Far from it... in a sense, this is not controversial. People who smoke have made a commitment to smoking before they smoke the first cigarette and - likely as not - IN SPITE OF THE FACT that they do not enjoy that first experience.

 

[henrymiller]

As I recall (I don't have the book here) Zizek argues that French communists had seized upon Pascal, because his reasoning can be applied to 'faith in communism' as much as faith in God.

if this vote of confidence in the PCF, whose faith was not rewarded, and whose 'communism' was obscene, is 'serious and worthwhile' then here's to mindless, shallow, drink-fuelled kylie-worship.

 

[k-punk]

but i'm not saying this, not going this far, because i don't think the simple binary will operate. i think there's *some* difference between dancing and theorising, between having music-as-background-to-drinking and music-as-machine-for-thinking, *but* it's not a binary opposition, it's not either-or.

But the point is that this is all on the side of hedonic consumerist subjectivism, for which the ultimate appeal is to what 'real' people actually do, which is, as you say, an inconsistent mess most of the time. From the side of political or religious commitment, it is (a la Kierkegaard) either-or - you either are committed or you aren't, and once you are committed, you seek to make everything you do consistent.

more to the point, it seemed to me that you were personalising things, but not very well: the geezas, when they write about pop music, do it well, and on occasion kylie can be for them a vehicle for writing about 'what consuming pop means,' as much as gang of four -- the material for this writing may be the experience of consuming kylie in a pub or consuming gang of four on the headphones or, vice versa.

in other words even if the binary *does* operate, it operates within people, some of whom may be drinking and talking shit one minute and thinking their relation to [25-year-old] records the next (well, the previous, thinking about it).

I'm only personalising things because ppl try and pretend that these positions don't exist. And what I'm interested in is the position, not the so-called people who hold it.

Once again, your assumption here has conceded everything to Popist consumerism. Of course, you can take anything (Bob the Builder singles, Cliff Richard) and use it as a 'stimulus' for writing about what consuming pop really means. But you're already begging the question that there is nothing in the objects themselves that would stimulate such discussion, such thought. That's partly because Pop today is simply about consuming in a way that it hasn't always been... there was once cultures and groups, not just aggregations of consumers....

unless we're criticising drinking, bawling and pubs *in general*, i don't see a contradiction here.

Yes, I'm criticizing them IN GENERAL... Pubs are a blight, they operate to deaden and dampen everything... quite literally DULLING... Ok for a bit of socializing now and again, but pretty useless for that most of the time.. but destructive of culture....

 

[k-punk]

if this vote of confidence in the PCF, whose faith was not rewarded, and whose 'communism' was obscene, is 'serious and worthwhile' then here's to mindless, shallow, drink-fuelled kylie-worship.

Aha, so it's back to binaries is it?

You've missed the point about faith being rewarded: the idea is that faith is IMMEDIATELY rewarded because of the meaning and purpose your life acquires (or seems to acquire).

The PCF were an example of the ways in which Pascal's argument could be used; no-one was advocating their brand of communism

Furthermore, it is not as if 'mindless, shallow, drink-fuelled kylie-worship' is not obscene either...

 

[Rachel Verinder]

Well I certainly agree with that last point Mark made. Kind of what put me off turning up at the Boogaloo last week (and what puts me off going to gigs and clubs in general) - the dread of the prospect of sweaty blokiness; not my thing at all.

 

[Rachel Verinder]

(n.b.: that was the last point in Mark's previous post, though I couldn't disagree with his outlook re. drunken Kylie worship)

 

[k-punk]

Well I certainly agree with that last point Mark made. Kind of what put me off turning up at the Boogaloo last week (and what puts me off going to gigs and clubs in general) - the dread of the prospect of sweaty blokiness; not my thing at all.

Yes, well that e.g. was in my mind as I wrote actually. It did put a bit of a pall on things, as that inevitable tendency for ppl to engage in beer chit chat became more prevalent as the night went on, cloaking the discussion in that alchohol-fuelled dullness...9Kodwo and I were moaning: couldn't Faber have come up with something more classy? ) But it's a shame you didn't go, it managed to work very well in spite of the setting.

 

[henrymiller]

it was enemy territory: shane macgowan was at the bar. elvis was on the wall. god knows who was on the jukebox. neither popists nor post-punkers felt comfortable there. i think this gave it edge, it demonstrated the threat posed to post-punk by boogaloo regulars like razorlight, the whole'revolt into stlye' thing being discussed. faber probably did not have this in mind.

 

[infinite thought]

Re: Boogaloo. I hadn't had such a stimulating night out in ages - the 'sweaty blokey' thing didn't come across at all. On the contrary, listening to the panel debate and talking to kodwo, bat, stelfox, k-punk, owen, other bloggers, etc. is the kind of thing that I really live for - I'm quite serious. If you suspect these events of homogeneous 'maleness' then the only thing you can do is attend and make them different. Besides, I've never gotten a sense of any unmediated alcoholic masculinity from any of the male bloggers I've met - as if people who dedicate their time to music/politics/writing for free are likely to be leering idiots in the flesh.

Raincoat Gina Birch on the panel made the point about carving out her own space in a really straightforward way: it wasn't until she's seen Patti Smith that she realised what really appealed to her about certain forms of music/art and how she could contribute to what was going on...which was only one of the most exciting scenes there's ever been anywhere. But you have to come along! (btw, if you're concerned about being the only girl blog/music person, there's usually me/glueboot at any London meet up)....

 

[infinite thought]

(Er, assuming that "Rachel Verinder" (Wilkie Collins, right?) is 'really' a girl, and not a bloke who doesn't like blokiness). Either way, the point holds - if drunken ejits are outnumbered by non-drunken, non-ejits of whatever biology then things can only improve....

 

[k-punk]

Re: Boogaloo. I hadn't had such a stimulating night out in ages - the 'sweaty blokey' thing didn't come across at all. On the contrary, listening to the panel debate and talking to kodwo, bat, stelfox, k-punk, owen, other bloggers, etc. is the kind of thing that I really live for - I'm quite serious. If you suspect these events of homogeneous 'maleness' then the only thing you can do is attend and make them different. Besides, I've never gotten a sense of any unmediated alcoholic masculinity from any of the male bloggers I've met - as if people who dedicate their time to music/politics/writing for free are likely to be leering idiots in the flesh.

Raincoat Gina Birch on the panel made the point about carving out her own space in a really straightforward way: it wasn't until she's seen Patti Smith that she realised what really appealed to her about certain forms of music/art and how she could contribute to what was going on...which was only one of the most exciting scenes there's ever been anywhere. But you have to come along! (btw, if you're concerned about being the only girl blog/music person, there's usually me/glueboot at any London meet up)....

I agree with all that obv... but it would undoubtedly have been much better if it weren't in a pub. There was just that practical problem to do with the discussion at the end being drowned out by bloke-beer chat, which might not have happened if it was held someone nicer.

It wasn't the ppl who were there to listen who were the problem. It was the people who were there to drink who were... surprisingly enough...

As for HM's comments: why would the Popists - assuming that any such ppl exist, since no-one (apart from Tim, sort of) will admit to being one - have a problem with the venue: they like pub converstations don't they?