"If negative dialectics calls for the self-reflection of thinking, the tangible implication is that if thinking is to be true – if it is to be true today, in any case – it must also be a thinking against itself. If thought is not measured by the extremity that eludes the concept, it is from the outset in the nature of the musical accompaniment with which the SS liked to drown out the screams of its victims." Theodor Adorno "What are we to make of a mainstream media, along with the American public that appears more concerned about Kim Kardashian flaunting her post-baby body than about the Obama administration ordering a drone strike in Yemen that killed 17 innocent civilians who were part … [Read more...]

In clinical pictures of schizophrenia, according to Gabel, "a degradation of the dialectic of the totality (of which dissociation is the extreme form) and a degradation in the dialectic of becoming (of which catatonia is the extreme form) seem to be intimately interwoven." Imprisoned in a flat universe bounded on all sides by the spectacle's screen, the consciousness of the spectactor has only figmentary interlocutors which subject it to a one-way discourse on their commodities and the politics of those commodities. The sole mirror of this consciousness is the spectacle in all its breadth, where what is staged is a false way out of a generalized autism. Guy Debord The topic of … [Read more...]

One thing is becoming increasingly clear; the infantilization of society. It is obvious in almost every area of life today. But, there are secondary, or parallel themes attached to this encouragement to stay childish. One is the creation of constant needs. As Jonathan Crary says, the term "24/7" is one without real meaning, except to suggest a "ceaslessness of needs and their incitement, but also their perpetual non-fulfillment". What is worth looking at, and Crary makes this point, too, is that today people in the West sleep about, on average, six and a half hours a night. A generation ago it was eight. And at the turn of the 20th century, it was ten. The pre industrial revolution saw … [Read more...]

Several things have bounced around in my head this week. One is that I think it is hard for critical thinkers, for analysts of culture and of society, meaning politics, to know when perspectives change. When a corrective sort of response becomes something other then intended. I was reminded of Marcuse's essay on tolerance. "Tolerance toward that which is radically evil now appears as good because it serves the cohesion of the whole on the road to affluence or more affluence. The toleration of the systematic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for and training of special forces, the … [Read more...]

There have been a number of discussions I have come across, recently, about this term 'privilege' (or really, the privilege theory) and also about class, and both, to a degree, in relationship with art. Before getting into these debates, I wanted to quote some extracts from a piece on Art and Class, written by Ben Davis. But even before I do that, I wanted to put this dicussion, the discussion of art, culture, and U.S. society, capitalist society, in the proper light. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/11/30/losa-n30.html This is a nation which recently implemented a drastic cut in food stamps. This is a nation where almost fifty million people go to bed hungry and of that number … [Read more...]

"It is true, we only see what we look for, but we only look for what we can see." Heinrich Wolfflin The last posting generated a long comment thread. Not surprisingly, it wasn't about the main subject of the post, but about the shorter film critique at the end. There is no escape from the implications of mass culture. I want to examine, a little, two things; one is the idea of fashion, and the other is how this is the way in which the classical idea of culture has been subsumed in a sense by the rise of the culture industry. And by extension, then, the ways fashion has affected even political thinking. From the middle of the 19th century, ideas of style became something labled … [Read more...]

There is a very good piece here, by Marc Parry on Alice Goffman's book on crime in the U.S. (this is Erving Goffman's daughter) "On The Run". http://chronicle.com/article/The-American-Police-State/142965/?cid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en This serves as a good intro to the topic of the white liberal denial of inequality. And perhaps no single story better encapsulates the criminalizing and loathing of black people by the state, and that denial by a large chunk of the white populace, as the Renisha McBride killing. From Joel Reinstein: "A 19-year-old African American woman is dead for the "crime" of asking for help after a car accident in a predominantly white suburb of … [Read more...]

Tim Parks wrote a short essay in The New York Review of Books recently. His subject was literature and style. He concluded it this way: "Such is the future of literature and literary style in a global age: historical novels, fantasy, vast international conspiracies, works that visit and revisit the places a world culture has made us all familiar with; in short an idea of literature that may give pleasure but rarely excites at the linguistic level, rarely threatens, electrifies, reminds us of, and simultaneously undermines the way we make up the world in our own language. Perhaps it is this development that has made me weary with so much contemporary fiction. In particular I have … [Read more...]