The Street

Conference I am co-organizing next March. Please distribute as you desire.

The 2008 UC Irvine Visual Studies Graduate Student Association Conference
February 29 – March 1


In the most literal sense, “the street” denotes a passageway that connects various points in space. However, a quick catalog of the phrase in everyday language reveals that “the street” is a dynamic social and symbolic space, an intersection of public and private interests that are often difficult to isolate. For example, “the street” does not only refer to a thoroughfare but also denotes the place where one lives. This relationship prompts the phrase “my street,” which connotes a community affected through ownership, and links its author to a greater metropolis at the same time that it embeds him or her in place as owner and agent. In this sense the street also represents the confrontation of a sense of place and the codes of public policy, thereby pointing to a larger interpenetration of the public and the private that lies at the core of this elusive space. In other instances the phrase transcends space altogether, referring instead to a mode of existence that is independent of site specificity. In this capacity “the street” is used to convey authenticity as in “receiving one’s education from the street” or in being “from the street,” a usage that usually implies an opposition to artificial or abstract representations of reality. While these examples make clear that “the street” often functions in opposition to a privileged class, it is, in practice, precisely that space which refuses class distinction by forcing interactions among diverse social groups. This interaction is itself as diverse as the space in which it takes place as one may address the street with the apathy of the flâneur or with the fervor of political protest.

We seek papers, projects, or organized panels from a variety of disciplines and approaches all of which address and expand upon the many layers of meaning that constitute this rich object of study. Please submit abstract (250 words) and c.v. to thestreetconference@gmail.com by Dec. 1, 2007 for consideration.

Fields of interest may include:

The 40th anniversary of May '68
Limits of 'the public' in a surveillance society
Public infrastructure and urban planning
Protest on the global street
Globalization and Wall Street
Benjamin’s Arcades Project
Advertising and public displays of consumption
Homelessness and nomadism
Situationism and the practice of the Derive
Public performance and the choreography of the street
GPS, G-Maps and virtual negotiations
The simulated street of the Sims and Second Life
Car crashes, accidents and public fatality

I don't need your charity!

Another thing I was wondering about, DM, is that you keep mentioning "charity" in your comments to the last post, which you also mentioned in regards to Rorty earlier, and I'm wondering, who said anything about charity, anyways? Is this the neo-Marxist pejorative for liberal redistributive policies?

Charity is, of course, the right wing answer to poverty: No need for the government to help the poor, churches will take care of them, thousand points of light and all that. But it's not an argument that I've ever really seen made by the progressive left.

Typically, the arguments made for redistribution of income/efforts to decrease inequality are that I see getting made are:

1. A social justice argument: The wealth of this country isn't the sole result of any individual capitalist or manager's decisions. Whatever wealth they make is made possible by the people who do the work and all the people (teachers, policemen, construction workers, etc) who make this a functioning society with educated citizens, (mostly) fairly enforced laws and solid infrastucture. Without this social capital, capitalism wouldn't be able to function, so whatever wealth is created needs to be shared by everyone that made it possible.

2. A social compact/fraternity argument: We're all Americans, part of a community, and just like a family has obligations to care for the other members of their family as members of that family, so too all Americans have obligations to care for other Americans as members of their community. A lot of us progressives would like to see that sense of community eventually extended to all people in the world, obviously a tall, maybe impossible, order. And...

3. a utilitarian argument (the flip side of the social justice argument): Society functions better when inequality is minimized and you don't have some groups resenting the wealth or opportunities of others and possibly plotting to take that wealth by force; business does better and more innovation occurs when you've got a healthy, happy, well educated population; it's more cost effective to pay for health care, education, etc. up front for everyone than to pay to incarcerate people, treat the diseases of poverty, etc. down the road.

Of these, I think that the first comes pretty close to saying the same thing, in the end, as your description of Marx in your comment on the last post. While it arrives at this conclusion somewhat differently, the conclusion is still that the capitalist is not entitled to the value created by the laborer. The second argument comes closest to being "charity" but also has, I think, the strongest emotional appeal. This is important as the more we think of and feel ourselves to be "all in this together," the harder it is to think of ourselves as isolated individuals competing for limited resources and thus entitled to whatever we can acquire through this struggle. The third argument has the advantage of being empirically verifiable in a lot of ways: We can actually do research that shows how redistributing resources leads to less crime, greater productivity, better health, etc. down the line.

I don't know how you would evaluate these arguments "on the basis of the degree to which they eliminate the exploitative relationship between owner and worker" but I think that they provide a solid basis on which to argue and develop policies against inequality in our society without bringing in Marx and all the negative baggage that Marxism carries with it. Which, again, is why I'm still unclear on what, exactly, Marx is supposed to provide that I can't get elsewhere.

One more go-round, re: Secularism?

I'm guessing the secularism debate here has mostly run its course. If anyone is interested in reviving it, though, this article by Mark Lilla, a humanities prof. at Columbia from the New York Times magazine, while not without its faults, is a decent, very quick overview of the history of church-state separation in the west and some current challenges it faces. It touches briefly on what I see as one of the biggest problems with mixing politics and religion: Religion is most compelling when it's least democratic.

Describing the mild-mannered Protestantism dominant in Germany in the late 1800s, Lilla states: "Liberal theology had begun in hope that the moral truths of biblical faith might be intellectually reconciled with, and not just accommodated to, the realities of modern political life. Yet the liberal deity turned out to be a stillborn God, unable to inspire genuine conviction among a younger generation seeking ultimate truth." This younger generation, especially after the pointless slaughter of World War I, "...craved a more robust faith, based on a new revelation that would shake the foundations of the whole modern order...When faith in redemption through bourgeois propriety and cultural accommodation withered after the Great War, the most daring thinkers of the day transformed it into hope for a messianic apocalypse — one that would again place the Jewish people, or the individual Christian believer, or the German nation, or the world proletariat in direct relation with the divine."

While the situation today is nowhere near as grave as in 1920s Europe, we're still stuck, as I've said before, with a bland, vague "faith" on the one hand and an intolerant, authoritarian fundamentalism on the other. When I think about what religious belief does for people then the fundamentalist or apocalyptic version makes more sense as religion to me (and apparently I'm not the only one as Evangelical and Pentacostal churches are winning converts away from Catholicism and mainline Protestantism all over the world, and Islamic fundamentalism is gaining on its mellower forms), but as a model for governing a diverse, modern society they're horrible.

Debating Policy

DM thinks it’d be helpful to discuss the actual policy proposals on poverty of some of the Democratic candidates as a way of both seeing what the mainstream left has to offer and to compare it to possibly more dramatic neo-Marxist ideas…well, John Edward’s poverty policy is here and here’s his page on “Working Families,” which covers labor policies. There’s also relevant policy stuff on the website under the several other headings as well. Obama’s (not as detailed) policy page on poverty is here . This is the most relevant page off of Hillary’s website, which seems to focus at least as much on her record as her proposals, which I suppose is fitting given that a big part of her campaign narrative is that she's one of the most experienced candidates in the field. Debate on some of these proposals can be found here and here; this is, I think, an interesting and relevant way of comparing the candidates. I didn’t find as much on Hillary or Obama’s domestic policy proposals, which is probably partly due to their not offering up as much in the way of concrete proposals and partly due to the fact that policy doesn’t get discussed nearly as much as the “horserace” between the candidates. Anyways, that was also after a not very exhaustive search. I’m sure I’m not the only one here who knows how to use Google, so feel free to waste your own damn time and add to the links I’ve provided.

Anyways, while I’m not opposed to discussing and comparing the candidate’s policy programs on poverty or any other topic, there are some real limitations to the usefulness of that discussion. For one, as you’ll see if you read the campaign websites above, the level of vagueness and generality is kept pretty high. In part this is to keep from giving your opponents anything too concrete to use against you. Then there’s the fact that a lot of what matters in a given policy is going to be the fine print, the technical details regarding funding, implementation, etc. that only professionals in the field (or people with far too much time on their hands) can really sort through. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable and interested in this stuff, but I still can’t really make much sense of the advantages or disadvantages of the different health care proposals, for example. Like most people in this situation, I turn to the opinion of those who spend more time thinking about these things than me who seem to share my values and get things right more often than not. Another limitation to the policy debate is that while the President proposes what he or she’d like to see happen, it’s up to the congress to actually write the law putting the policy into effect, and a lot can happen at this level to alter the fine points of a policy. Democrats most likely won’t have a filibuster proof majority in the next congress, so they’ll have to make compromises with Republicans to get any bills passed. So with all that in mind, I think that looking at a candidates policy proposals tell us more about where their priorities and values are than what will actually become law if they’re elected, which is fine: knowing a candidates priorities and values--and whether they have the competence to enact their agenda--is probably worth almost as much as a set of detailed proposals anyway.

Richard Rorty, R.I.P.

Richard Rorty has been my favorite philosopher for a while now, probably dating back to when I first read Achieving Our Country when it came out in the late ‘90s. At the time I was finding myself increasingly frustrated and unhappy with the postmodernist/cultural studies/academic leftist thought that I’d been really enamored of as an undergraduate. In that book Rorty showed me that you could criticize that strain of thought, and the sort of political paralysis it seemed to have led to on the left, without abandoning the postmodernist insights (truth as socially constructed, distrust of “metanarratives”) that I think do have real value. Rorty’s commitment to a pragmatic, reformist liberalism has been a real inspiration to me and, as I think most of my posts here show, my political views. I’d highly recommend that book to anyone here; I’d love to get a discussion of it going and would happily loan my copy out to any of the LA crew if they’re interested…more practically, there’s this essay online, which is a pretty good summation of his later political thinking, touches directly on a lot of the discussions we’ve been having here recently and, as with everything he wrote, is a model of clear, unpretentious prose. I'd love to hear your comments on it...

More Thoughts on Secularism

I've had a chance to read a bit more of that Connolly book. I'm not sure if it is really worth reading unless you have a strong interest in political philosophy. Anyway, I need to return the book to the library tomorrow and I thought I would do my best to sum up his argument against secularism. I still haven't read the whole thing, but I think I at least have a grasp on his basic argument, and it may generate some interesting discussion.

Connolly traces the history of secularism back to Tocqueville, Kant, Mill, and Rawls and then uses Habermas as a more contemporary example of a seculuar position. His argument, as I understand it, is that early secularists in the West insisted on a separation of religious and political forms of argument, but they did so with the assumption that political and social life would always be guided by a shared sense of Christian values. From this perspective secularism is only possible when everyone shares a common set of values. Early secularists argued that without shared values to replace a connection with organized religion, then politics would devolve into endless conflicts that could never be solved. Habermas does not assume that public life will always be guided by Christian values. I'm a little hazy on this, but it seems that Habermas pushes for discussion and debate that is based in reason and particular types of communicative practice.

Connolly's critique of the early sense of secularism is that it assumes that politics are guided by a relatively narrow set of values. Clearly we live in a diverse world that cannot be understood based on only one set of values. From the early secularist perspective it seems that those who do not possess Christian values are unable to participate in politics. However, the more contemporary Habermasian approach does not really solve this problem. There is still the problem of how to deal with those who believe politics should be influenced by religion. Are they simply not allowed to participate in political life because their beliefs are based in faith rather than reason? For Connolly, a non-secular politics is not necessarily dominated by religion, and certainly not any particular religion. Rather it is a politics that is open to various faith based forms of reasoning and argument.

It seems that there is tendency on the part of the left to push for the elimination of religious arguments from political thought. On the radio this morning I heard Bush giving a speech in the Czech Republic in which he says something about "freedom" being granted to us by our "maker" and that it is a "true expression of the soul" or something like that. My initial reaction was to question what "maker" he is talking about and to wonder if non-Christian souls are also expressed through freedom. However I'm not sure if my instinct to critique the presence of religious thought in a political speech is very useful. The current secular state seems to produce policies that are based in the religious rhetoric at the same time that it denies any relationship with religion. One solution to this problem is to eliminate religious based arguments. Perhaps they would be replaced with empirically based reasoning. Another solution would be to accept that multiple forms of belief and reasoning will always exist and to try to create space for all of them in the construction of policy.

I am still in the process of thinking through all of this and I would welcome some input from you folks. Should non-secular forms of thought provide a basis for political decision making? If so (at this point I'm answering yes to the first question), how would this work?

Moral Dilemma

I’ve recently encountered a personal problem that I could use some advice on and it relates to issues of politics and values that we’ve been discussing. I’ve been approached by CENTRA, a private company that works for the US military, to edit a “smart card” that they are distributing to Marines in Ethiopia. A smart card provides basic cultural information that is intended to facilitate interactions between marines and Ethiopians (see: http://www.mediafire.com/?ezznyjz1n3d for more details). My understanding is that US marines are advising the Ethiopian military concerning their recent invasion of Somalia. Essentially the Ethiopian government has been roped into fighting our war on terror in exchange for our ignoring their human rights abuses and importation of weapons from North Korea. I oppose the US military presence in the Horn of Africa for a number of reasons that I can go into in more detail if you’re interested.

So, clearly there is good reason not to participate in this project. On the other hand, the marines will be in Ethiopia regardless of what I do. Perhaps by getting involved in the production of information that will guide the actions of the marines I can reduce the damage done by their presence. It is debatable how much these cards actually could have an influence the behavior of marines, but assuming that they have at least some impact I think it is reasonable to assume they could do some good.

By participating in this project would I be legitimizing a military action that I strongly oppose?

Does the possibility of shaping marine views of Ethiopians in a direction of my choosing outweigh this possibility?

Will the impact of these smart cards be so negligible that it doesn’t really matter what I do?

I’m not sure if this is relevant but CENTRA has offered to pay me $500 for what would amount to at most one day of work.

I look forward to your advice.

responses and appeals

The previous post has blossomed into a fascinating testament to the limitations and possibilities of political discourse. Although there is on some level a shared desire for concrete specificity, I am left with the impression that to prefer the nation over the local and vice versa (like all aesthetic choices, this preference is subject to specific situations and within the practices of everyday life have a multiplicity of expressions. E.g. one can prefer national news media to local media- they are in fact as A points out nearly the same- and at the same time one can prefer local restaurants to national chains) is to produce a set of binary oppositions that in turn produce a preference for abstraction. Thankfully no one here is making absolutist claims of an either or logic but I do see a rich spectrum of abstraction and specificity being produced through this topic. And this is indeed a very good thing.

The issue as I see DM’s responses pointing to is not however any demand that politics should adhere to his preferences which in any event include both the local and the national- he does not oppose these in a binary way in these responses- but a call for the abstractions and mediations of the national spatial-temporal scale of politics to engage the concrete social realities of what is sometimes called the local level- but perhaps would better be called the everyday level. Here in our own everyday practices which include occasional blog postings, we can address that there may be a kind of pleasure derived from our speculations on politics- whether over how to best appeal to the american people in TN’s personal preference for the national, how to appeal to reason in A’s responses, or how to appeal to place in the construction of our identities in DM’s responses. These are just a few of the many pleasures we derive from our everyday practices but certainly there are more when we consider how rich the lives we lead are. That we live in cities must in some way contribute to the shape of these everyday practices. That we travel through the spaces of these places and encounter myriad individuals and material forms may indeed shape the contours of our everyday practices. But to ask ourselves why it is that these spaces do not elicit identifications as pleasurable as the national- an object of identification only possible through abstraction and mediation- is not to abandon the national.

I think for each of us who have the privilege to speculate on these and other matters of pleasure, some attention should be paid to our own individual everyday practices, if only for the new pleasures one may discover there. It seems deeply irrational to oppose politics to these practices as if politics could only survive through an absolute separation from the foundations of our everyday lives. Furthermore, this separation and abstraction of politics from everyday reality is all the more dangerous when we begin to speculate on the political desires of other social entities including marginalized others. Without attention to the social realities of inequality on the level of everyday practices we risk appropriating and instrumenalizing their existence as figures or mere representations of the powerless. This does not mean we should not attempt to understand, engage and confront inequalities as they are experienced by others but rather that we must directly engage and confront these inequalities from the everyday practices that produce them. Proceeding case by case, site by site, level by level the specificities of these experiences and practices of inequality will demand a rigorous engagement with both local, national and increasingly transnational scales of political practice. The verb to appeal (which occupies a mediatory role between an abstract politics and practical realities) represents in its current usage the purely aesthetic dimension of politics as in the following definition:

“9. a. To address oneself, specially and in expectation of a sympathetic response, to some principle of conduct, mental faculty, or class of persons. Also, to be attractive or pleasing to (a person).To ‘make an appeal’; to be attractive.”

This pleasure it would seem has a particular direction when it comes to the abstraction of politics from everyday practice. By speculating on the attractiveness of particular candidates, policies and values to “the american people” or “the powerless”, the pleasure seems to dwell with the speculator, much in the same way real estate speculators thrive in the debates over public space and urban renewal.

The historical origins of this verb according to the OED in fact demonstrates the power differential it once (and perhaps still does) defined:

“1. To call (one) to answer before a tribunal; in Law: To accuse of a crime which the accuser undertakes to prove. spec. a. To impeach of treason. b. To accuse an accomplice of treason or felony. c. To accuse of a heinous crime whereby the accuser has received personal injury or wrong, for which he demands reparation.”

It seems the directional orientation of contemporary appeals to the american people should indeed be reversed, and it is those agents of abstraction-the politicians and their corporate bosses- who should be called to answer before “the american people” in this original form of appeal. But at the same time I recognize within the logic of this request I have just made a sense of an ancient danger. For this is indeed a call historically made by fascism in the moment of its ascendancy as it rips democratic potential from people just as they come into awareness of their collective body. I think the question of mediation returns most forcefully at this moment between fascism and actual democracy. I think this moment depends upon the degree that the abstractions and mediations of the ‘nation’ contribute or rob a people of their ability to practice autonomous forms of community. If our democracy is as fine as the liberal and conservative parties’ ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ political discourse would have us believe our nation is, then we may indeed be at the threshold of a more democratic state. But when I reflect on all that I encounter in my everyday practices, traveling through the material and virtual spaces that occupy my time, there are many serious limitations to accepting their rhetoric at face value.

At the same time, as TN, A, GreenMedallion and DM have pointed out in different ways in posts here, we are also facing incredible new possibilities for autonomous forms of democratic communities. I would suspect these possibilities would become more concrete realities if we took a closer look at the level of practice in order to appropriate the networks of mediation as they are inscribed in space and time. Looking at the places and practices of our everyday lives we may encounter the national and transnational contours of the local in unexpected ways. But perhaps ultimately this is a matter of taste, in which case we really cannot separate aesthetics and politics today.

Once more against localism

Before moving on to debating secularism versus...something else, I wanted to say regarding DM's advocacy of localism that one of the reasons I just don't find this very compelling is that I feel that the "national" is in a very real way the "local" for me, and I suspect for lots of other people. I identify myself as an American more than an Angeleno, or any other regional identity I might've laid claim to in my life to date, and I'd wager that most Americans are the same way. So when my national government is run by crooks and/or imbeciles, when it does stupid shit like invade countries for bad, deceptive reason, this effects me at least as much as, if not more than, if my local level politics is corrupt or dysfunctional. This is part of the reason that 33 dead at Virginia Tech or a Kansas town wiped out by a tornado merits days of non-stop coverage while death and destruction several magnitudes greater in Iraq day after day merits hardly a mention. What happens in America is the local, what happens in other countries isn't. I think a good liberal hope/goal is that someday we could think of all the world as "local" and feel the same concern for suffering in, e.g. the Congo, that we do (hopefully) for suffering in the states. I don't know if that's possible, but I think it's a decent thing to aspire to and I think the environmental problems facing the world today demand that we try.

There's a sense in DMs arguments that the identity of "American" isn't worth laying claim to or arguing over--he seems to think that this identity can't provide the sort of affective, aesthetic intensity that he thinks politics should possess. I'd disagree. I'd clarify that I certainly don't support a xenophobic or jingoistic nationalism. The bond I feel towards my country is kind of like the bond I feel with my family--it's based more on an emotional identification than any belief that it's objectively the best country. You still love your family even if they do things that drive you crazy, and you don't stop caring about them even though your friend's family is obviously a lot cooler; you don't love them uncritically--you're aware of their failings and concerned when they fuck up. I can imagine scenarios where I'd pretty much give up on America, just as I can imagine scenarios--chronic, hardcore theiving junkiehood, for example--where I might have to give up on a family member, but I don't see the US as anywhere near that point.

Of course I'm in no way opposed to being involved with politics, including "lifestyle" politics, at the really local level, either, just don't get advocating giving up on the national.

Why I'm Not a Secularlist

I picked up a book at the library yesterday titled Why I'm Not a Secularist, by William Connolly (apparently the title is a riff on Bertrand Russel's Why I'm Not a Christian). Connolly is in the political science department at Johns Hopkins. I had a chance to read the introduction and it seems like an interesting book, and extremely relevant for some of the conversations we've been having. Perhaps if some of you have the time we could try to read a couple chapters of it. Connolly deals with a range of philosophers like Kant, Nietzsche, Arendt, Deleuze, and Foucault and at least in some of the chapters he applies these ideas to very concrete political issues in order to argue against secularism, at least in the manner that it's practiced in the west today. If you all can't get to the book I'll try to do some reading and maybe paraphrase Connolly's arguments in a future post, if they are actually as useful as I suspect they might be.

Burnside Part II - Combining Aesthetic and Political Goals Through Place

In the early 1990’s when tigrenoche and I were both college students we would sometimes fill a backpack full of cheap beer and together with another friend of ours (who was generally responsible for obtaining the beer through the use of a shaggy wig and hacking cough) wander through Old Town Portland. I’m not sure if Old Town can really be said to exist anymore but back then it made up the section of Northwest Portland extending from the water up to maybe 7th or 8th and then bordered by Burnside on one side and the train tracks on the other side. It was full of bums and junkies and industrial urban decay. We would alternate between hiding out in various alleys drinking cans of beer and walking the streets vaguely hoping that something would happen. Old Town and Burnside represented zones of potential and mystery. All of us had been raised in semi-rural settings and the urban poverty fueled our imaginations. Today Old Town and Burnside have changed. There are still some bums and junkies there, but they are easily outnumbered by the wealthy young people who live in the newly built condos. The Henry Weinhard’s beer factory that used to give that section of town such a distinctive smell has been replaced by a Whole Foods. I believe that this transformation demonstrates the political nature of the Rats’ song Burnside, the importance of acknowledging the interconnections between aesthetics and politics, and the significance of place and localism for a politics that I would be interested in participating in.

Burnside is political in a very specific and personal way, that I don’t expect everyone to experience. That said, I think in the context of Fred Cole’s lifestyle and musical history virtually every song he has made has had political dimensions, but that’s another issue. For me, Burnside is political first because it evokes an intense set of emotions through the manipulation of a meaningful symbol. “Electricity flows through your veins!” This was the same excitement that I felt wandering that street on a Saturday night.

Motivating action can be political, but it can take many directions. In the context of the history of that street that direction is clarified. The song was written in the early ‘80’s when Burnside probably had far more of that urban grit that I idealized and it is very unlikely that Fred Cole anticipated the changes that would come twenty years later. However, the song documents a particular place at a particular time. It describes a process of meaning making through a connection with a specific place.

Like taste, meaning making is a shared activity. I disagree with tigrenoche’s separation of the public and the private. Our aesthetic activities are no less public than our political. The meanings that Burnside had for me were entirely social. If politics primarily involves the redistribution of resources then the transformation of Burnside was a political act. I am not interested in debating the merits of gentrification. However, there should be no doubt that gentrification drastically changes our ability to construct meaning. Burnside is becoming less and less of place where teens can place themselves within an urban myth. In 2007, to scream “Burnsiiiide!” is to express anguish and nostalgia for the past and the loss of a particular form of experience. This clearly aesthetic process of transformation is necessarily political and involves negotiation, compromise, and distributing resources.

In my posts I have continually returned to issues of place and localism. Perhaps this goes back to my favorite aesthetic activities. I love tooling around – moving through a place and appreciating its qualities. My ability to pursue this activity is directly influenced by politics, but I think the relationship goes deeper than this. The kind of politics that I want to pursue is also one that acknowledges the importance of making meaning through place. Aside from the occasional flare up of nationalism I don’t see this value being represented or pursued by the Democrats or the Republicans. As I have argued in relation to ZZ Top, it would be impossible for a nation-wide party to effectively negotiate the meaning making potential that exists within specific places. One needs to understand Burnside before this can be accomplished.

Perhaps not all aesthetic and political goals are best served through local action. However, I do believe that these goals are best accomplished when taken together. Tigrenoche claims that his aesthetic interests in marriage, trippy music, and distance running are more or less distinct from politics. I assume in the case of marriage that TN means this should be distinct from politics. I would argue that certain values are present in trippy music and distance running. Why not promote political action that serves the same interests as trippy music? Certainly music can be used to promote a politician and politicians can distribute resources in order to promote music. But, isn’t it also possible for resources to be distributed according to the same logic that makes music and running pleasurable? I would like to see my love for tooling combined with politics by giving more attention to the local dimensions of space in all aspects of negotiation and redistribution. Couldn’t a similar relationship be formed with long distance running? In order for this to occur we would first need to understand the value of distance running, but having done that I am confident that we could arrive at an effective political/aesthetic synthesis.

Wherein A explains the difference between politics and aesthetics

Okay, here's a quick and dirty essay in reply to DM's request that TN explain why he thinks there is a difference between political and aesthetic goals. I'm putting it up as a new post so I don't hijack the the thread about The Flying Burrito Brothers, which deserves to be continued.

I don't think politics or aesthetics (as the word is being used here; as a field of study it does have goals) have goals. People have goals, and there are political goals and aesthetic goals. Political goals have to do with the way you want some government to run. Aesthetic goals have to do with the type of aesthetic experience you want to achieve.

There are a wide variety of types of political goals, but I think that most people in the US want the government to coordinate resources so that people are in general able to pursue whatever things they find valuable. If you want to have a toothpick collection, you want to be able to pursue that unhindered. If you want to play baseball on the weekends, you want some resources to be used to make and maintain a baseball diamond. Proposing ways of doing these things will always involve an aesthetic element, since pretty much everything has an aesthetic quality (e.g. food, numbers, ideas, words...). A proposal will tend to be more appealing if both the means and ends it proposes are presented in an aesthetically compelling way. A proposal may even be more effective if presented in an aesthetically compelling way, since it's best if people find the way their government is run appealing, and sometimes the aesthetic appreciation of an end is sufficient for one to value the end in itself. An aesthetically appealing proposal is not necessarily a good one, however. Given a certain goal, it is possible that the means we find most appealing is not the best means (it could even work against our goals). Perhaps the free market is like this, as was suggested in David Graeber's article: People love the idea that they could become rich themselves, and so oppose legislation that would help them attain more modest and realistic goals since that legislation is also a barrier to them becoming Rockefellers. If you don't like this example, think of another one; if it's possible for people to prefer what goes against their greater interests (interests that they themselves would admit to, mind you), then an aesthetically appealing politics and the best politics will be distinct things. Ideally they overlap, but they don't do so necessarily, and I don't see any reason to think they do in general, either. The bad politics behind the appealing facades of "strength," "family values," "faith-based initiatives," etc. are all evidence that they needn't overlap.

(As a closing aside, personally, I think that there is a very appealing aesthetic dimension to effective, fair, and humane governance.)

Wheels

The song “Wheels” by the Flying Burrito Brothers on their 1968 album "Gilded Palace Of Sin" LP has been haunting me for some time now. It is one of the more recent encounters with music that caused me to initially began thinking about music as a means of questioning our politics in the present as I attempted to provisionally explore in the previous post. They are in fact directly related in many ways, the byrds overlapped with the flying burrito brothers and later wholly incorporated this song’s composers Hillman and Parsons as significant contributing members over their multiple configurations. In the prior post I outlined the structure of contradiction in a byrds song at once an expansive liberating space that is repeatedly interrupted, constrained forcibly and tamed by a countrified slide guitar ridden chorus. Here we find another, nearly opposite use of precisely the same instrument to insert expansive dimensions into a typical song structure.

It opens with what can only be described as bare, bar room temperament: a brittle tremolo guitar, dry tinny snare, and a rubbery cardboard sounding bass lead us into a “honky-tonk” piano-lined room where two harmonizing voices sing, one close, one slightly distant, with a slippery slide guitar adorning the corners of the first verse.
“We've all got wheels to take ourselves away/ We've got the telephones to say what we can't say/We all got higher and higher every day/Come on wheels take this boy away”

The democratic imagination of a collective “we” narrated here is defined by means of transportation, telephones, and stuff that makes you higher and higher. These are the foundations of the postwar image of freedom: vehicular escape, mediated communication, and infinite self-administered pleasure. A ceaseless rite of passage never completed that forever postpones “our” transmission from boyhood is wrapped in the cloak of the timeless honky-tonk of a long lost folk authenticity. But the chorus disrupts this repetition of deferral and displaced subjectivity inhered in the confines of a mediated honky-tonk with the linear expanse of the road. Although distant, the end of the road is always present in the linear expanse of lines of flight afforded by the wheels that will take this boy away, like the angels of death themselves. “We're not afraid to ride/We're not afraid to die/ So come on wheels take me home today/So come on wheels take this boy away”
The fearlessness of the choruses’ collective we suggests a subject full of certainty in the face of limitless uncertainty, it is a subject differentiated from the verses’ subject by a decisive recognition of the profound limitations of their own eternal escape. The piercing of the song space by two resonating notes of a distorted slide guitar’s open strings sustaining a lone note embodies this decisive state of both limitation and freedom, a state produced by the collective we’s confrontation with its death as it permeates the very conditions of their freedom. That is, in the resonating sustain of the two notes born in the wake of the linked verbs to ride and to die we encounter a world at once infinite and finite, a contrary form of possibility and constraint which calls into being a “we” whose wheels are the sole means of their becoming, their angel of hope and death all rolled into one. Between their ride and their death, punctuated by the resounding drones of fuzz distortion “we” must decisively submit to their wheels having abandoned all fears as well as the fraught distractions of a ceaseless escape that has reached its limits; the wheels embody both discrete worlds of verse and chorus, and are thus the transport between these realms. This chorus repeats instrumentally and the interaction between these contours of possibility and constraint between two worlds plays out in the exchanges of the instruments leading ultimately to a return of the honky-tonk world played by the conventional country slide guitar and insistent piano.

From there, the second verse ambiguously attempts to align these separate worlds with a single subject who faces their death with a joined fatalism with faith to plead their wheels to transform him at last into the deferred manhood: “Now when I feel my time is almost up/And destiny is in my right hand/I'll turn to him who made my faith so strong/Come on wheels make this boy a man” This turn to the spiritual through the material produces a deep contradiction between the liberating and confining functions of the wheels which differently embody each world of verse and chorus. At the same time, in both realms, they increasingly become the only means of salvation for both collective and singular subjects. The chorus returns as the mediation of the timeless individual versus community opposition and that resigned, decisive collective subject, which now includes all individuals capable of inserting themselves into the “I” of the second verse. “We're not afraid to ride/We're not afraid to die come on wheels take me home today/ come on wheels take this boy away/come on wheels take this boy away.”

I could go on with these contrary forms of mechanical escape and liberation tangled up in the image of wheels but want to instead come to the point of my encounter with this song. While not the first “road song” by any means, this song about wheels contains many of the contradictions from which the present was born and in particular, identifies a very concrete set of political limitations active in the present.

The interstate highway network legislated into being under pressure of the auto-makers in 1956 would have by 1968 been largely completed. (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System for a brief overview of this network)
The wheels of this song in fact seem to represent the profound shift in the spatial-temporal dimension of the American landscape and the contradictions the highway system brought into being. Most importantly these lyrical wheels belong to a new we of a political subject linked through a interstate road system and a landscape increasingly oriented towards this new scale of exchange. The degree to which we can trace the material foundations of the so-called party of “strength” and its martial logic through this particular form of wheels is the degree to which we can locate our own possibilities and limitations in opposing them in concrete ways. That is, quite literally by encountering the contrary form of wheels brought into being at the same time as a new spatial-temporal scale inscribed upon the landscape throughout the 1960’s, we can uncover the conflicted origins of a present all the more submitted to the wheels which this song hailed as our angels of salvation and death. This is not a question of a new language, nor of a new set of values but identifying within these materials present everywhere a space of leverage that can offer us a better understanding of the present. If we can locate the places and times when and where the “politics” of the present have come into being, those who oppose the right need not merely find better counter-slogans, but can perhaps begin to displace their practices of inequality with practices that undo those inequalities. I am using very general terms here again to emphasize the need to think both beyond and through the politics given to us by a deeply mediated world (a world of politics indistinct from the politics of news channel hair stylists and make-up technicians). Our own strong valuations of “equality” will never being able to engage the practices of inequality until their material foundations are confronted with opportunities for all to take part in their undoing.

Song link in comments

Burnsiiiide!!!!!

It sends shivers up my spine. “Paralyzed by electricity! It was the guns of rock and roll! It was a sound that was out of control! Burnsiiiiide!!!!!”

The Rats off of their early 1980’s album In a Desperate Red. This is what I mean by a new language for politics. On the album, Burnside is preceded by a song called Working Class and followed by Come On Toody in which the band leader Fred Cole laments his wife Toody’s inability to get out of the house in a timely manner – “Come on Toody, Why’s it always take you so long?” If this is a political language it is extremely specific. It speaks to that handful of people who know about a street called Burnside and understand why it might have something to do with electricity flowing through your veins. Specificity has good and bad qualities. For those of us who are participating in the same language game as Fred Cole it makes the song take on an amazing power. For those who have never experienced Burnside it is more or less meaningless. Maybe you get what he’s saying but it’s not the same as having lived the street. So, this means of communication has limits.

A person might also question the actual message of this song, but I will assume that after all of our preceding discussion that this is no longer an issue. Burnside is no less of a call to action and values than appeals to strength and equality.

The problem is one of sacrificing the power of localism for a larger audience. Both are important and sacrificing one for the other would be a mistake. Fred and Toody Cole later formed two-thirds of Dead Moon, a band that consistently sought to use local symbols in order to create an international set of values. The title and chorus of the Dead Moon song 54/40 or Fight, refers to the slogan that was used to claim the independence of Oregon territory from the British in the 1840’s. Previously the territory was administered by both the British and Americans and 54/40 was the line of latitude that marked the northern border of Oregon territory. While the US did take control of much of Oregon territory they had to settle for the 49th parallel, which is now the northern border of Washington state. The song has little in the way of historical reference. Rather it is a song about being pushed until you can take no more. In some ways it is a song of rebellion not unlike other classics like Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It. However, both the Dead Moon lifestyle (being old, putting out your own records in mono, wearing black) gave them a credibility that kept irony at a minimal level. Despite the Oregoncentric nature of Dead Moon’s lyrics their biggest fan base was in Germany.

Dead Moon and The Rats never sold themselves as an “Oregon” band in the manner that ZZ Top catapulted themselves with the symbol of Texas. Perhaps the notion of staying true to one’s roots enabled them to expand their audience, but there was never a point when it seemed that Dead Moon was sticking close to Clackamas in order ensure their credibility and therefore sell more albums in Germany. Even with international acclaim, the localism of Dead Moon was maintained.

If there is a new language it must be one that combines specificity and mass appeal. It’s necessary to grab hold of a symbol with the power of Burnside that people all over the world can recognize. This is why peace, love, and war are so popular. This is also why peace, love, and war fail to generate any real passion in so many people – they are too abstract. This is a problem, but as 54/40 or Fight (sorry no digital copy to post) illustrates there is no inherent barrier to constructing symbols that are locally specific and appeal to people in different places. The political success of the left depends on generating such symbols that are rooted in place but are capable of transcendence as well

Political Rhetoric

This short article by Julian Baggini discusses a certain type of rhetorical device that is common in politics, where what is said is uncontroversial but what is implied is not. It meshes nicely with DM's comments in another thread about the invocation of strength in a lot of the right's political rhetoric. From the article:

When a political party is making its case by, in effect, not really making a case at all but creating an impression, it can be hard to pinpoint errors of reasoning. Indeed, a really good campaign will only use slogans and arguments that are irrefutable.

What I like about the article is that it does a pretty good job of highlighting the real tension I feel between the need to make your political position attractive, and presenting the best reasons for your political position. Ideally the latter would be the best way to do the former, but unfortunately this might not be the case.

Baggini doesn't offer any solutions. One good question, I think, is what the best response is to this sort of rhetorical device. Do you call out its implications? Or do you reply with your own rhetoric? Or do you ridicule it? Or does it vary from case to case?

Next Level Blogging

The subject of Iraqi blogs came up in conversation with TC08 and Greenmedallion last weekend, and I totally forgot about























AliveInBaghdad, a video blog shot in Iraq and in Iraqi expat/refugee communities...very powerful, very depressing stuff; probably some of the best journalism on Iraq anywhere now.

On the music blog front, my vote for best music blog (criticism, not downloading, category)























Woebot has branched out into video blogging with the amazing























Woebot.tv The current "episode" is about British folk music, which should be of interest to at least one of the other contributors to this blog...whenever he puts up a new post, the old one disappears forever, so you gotta check back often (I think you can subscribe now too, and get e-mail notifications when a new post goes up).

Any of you have any recommendations for blogs taking it to the next level, breaking boundaries--or just doing typical blog stuff particularly well?

Army of Altruists - Getting Back to Our Discussion on Identity

There was an article in Harper's a few months ago that essentially argued that the military is an institution where working class Americans can fulfill the need to help others and lead meaningful lives. I think you should be able to access the article at: http://harpers.org/archive/2007/01/0081344. If not I can possibly create a link to the PDF. Perhaps you've already read it. In any case I think it's quite interesting and it fits well with some of the discussions we were having earlier. If you agree with the author's (David Graeber) argument then it seems that creating institutions that facilitate the construction of a meaningful life in a non-militaristic manner is a worthy goal. Not to dredge up a topic that we have discussed to great extent in the comments section of another post, but it does seem that among the democratic candidates Kucinich is making proposals that move in this direction. The military offers a powerful myth/narrative in which one accomplishes great things, travels the world, and positions one's self to access a desirable career. It seems that offering other opportunities/narratives for accomplishing this is something that should be explored further.

A super depressing start to your weekend:

Oy. Might try to comment later (when I'm done rocking back-and-forth and mumbling to myself). What do you think?






And how come I'm the only one putting any new posts up in, like, a week now?

Yeah for unions!

I started my new, union job yesterday. I've got the SEIU watching my back now. What does union membership get me? About $3600 more per year than the same position at my last workplace, annual cost of living increases and overtime pay. At the last place I worked the clinicians were expected to work 50 or more hours per week on salary. So better pay and 10+ hours more per week to live your life--to blog, start back running (soon, I hope), get a community garden going. That's a pretty sweet deal.

I think that increasing union membership and clout is one of the most important goals that progressives need to be supporting. Since political aesthetics and identity is such a hot topic on this blog; I think it's nice to read this which reports that 53% of Americans say that they would join a union if they could. Maybe the image of unions as mob run rackets that just keep lazy incompetents from getting fired that the corporate bosses is no longer operative. Anecdotally, when I caught the local news the other night they were doing man-on-the-street interviews about the threat of another grocery strike in the near future, and they didn't have anyone on who didn't support the workers and the strike. You know that if the TV news folks had found anyone to bitch about the inconvenience or how those people are already paid too much to bag groceries, they would've been prominently displayed to provide some "balance." I'm not sure how we could go about making the union worker identity a more appealing one, especially to our generation and younger, people growing up entirely in the age of shrinking unions. Maybe humorous, ironic ads would help?

Evaluating Identities

I’ve got no problem accepting the importance of aesthetics in the formation of political identities; but then comes the question of how you justify (if you can justify...) one choice of identity, one aesthetic, over another. Below is an attempt at evaluating a couple of the political lifestyles available to choose from in this day and age, a justification of my own choices; my response to this from DM in comments: “This would involve constructing an argument for why involvement in the Democratic Party enables the production of an identity that is more appealing than being an evangelical, an anarchist, or an apathetic academic....” This ended up pretty long, so rather than take up the whole front page with my post, I’m going to start it here and continue it in comments...there should be a way to collapse longer posts; I don’t feel like messing around with Blogger right now to figure out how, but if any of you know how, please fill me in! Anyhoo...

Basically, right now in the US you've got a coalition of evangelicals, neocons, and various other right wingers that has attained an enormous amount of power in our society. Intrinsic to these different strains of right wing identity is the desire to limit the ability of other people to freely form their own identities. This can be a very direct attempt to limit identity formation: The attempt to deny gays and women identities not confined to traditional gender roles. It can also be a more indirect, secondary effect of other actions: Economic policies that result in stagnating wages, the accumulation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands and the erosion of the social safety net leave more and more people, including increasingly more affluent members of the middle class, on shaky ground. In this state you're far less free to construct a a satisfying identity for yourself as you're too busy just trying to meet basic needs. My dream may be to, say, open a 24 Hour Pho Restaurant, but I can't follow that dream because I've got a health condition and can't afford to buy private health insurance; so I stay at a job I don't like that defines me in a way I didn't choose. Another example is the suppression of unions and unionization by the right. The ability of workers to take back a little control over their workplace, to improve the work environment and get fair hours and compensation, which allows them to pursue non-work identities in their leisure time. We could also mention the right’s attempts to limit immigration, their apathy and incompetence leading to lives lost and destroyed in New Orleans. We could talk about how the increasing authoritarian streak on the right limits political identity formation by limiting protest and conducting massive surveillance of their opponents. At the extreme end they've claimed the right to arrest Americans on American soil, classify them as enemy combatants, torture them and imprison them without trial indefinitely. I could seriously keep going in this vein for quite a while, but you all know about this stuff. If you want to talk about politics in terms of how we form identities that make us feel good or provide meaning to our lives, I think it's clear that the right wing in America wants and acts to seriously limit our ability to do so.

Continued in comments...

Hollywood is Burning

Not sure how this relates, but thought you all would like to see it.

"Change is now"

The Byrds most commonly appear as the poster boys of the 60’s peace rock revolution as it appears in the sweeping montage of love-ins and the mass hippy momentum that is all somehow signified in their 1965 song “Turn, Turn, Turn.” But this collapsing of image, historical moments and song is deeply unstable, just as are most representations of the complex decade of the 1960’s. Bob Dylan is of course the most idolized figure of this moment of “change,” one defined by a scale of mass cultural production and consumption very difficult to understand today. The Byrds made hits by making electrified pop versions of Bob Dylan songs like Mr. Tambourine Man and the Time Are A-Changin’, thus solidifying their “peace band” image. Of note however is that the majority of the songs from their ’65-’66 period albums are basically songs that demand anonymous sex with women that they encounter as world traveling peace-rockers. Intertwined with raw sexual pleas and peace anthems are also psychedelic romps like Wild Mountain Thyme, Fifth Dimension, Renaissance Fair, Mind Gardens that derive their content from the mainstream culture of “change” and contribute to it. I mention this loose outline of their role in that moment for the Byrds offer a stark contrast with the present situation of cultural production. At both the mainstream and the emergent sub-main field of cultural production, there has been no similar capitalization of “protest music” “peace music” or any other form that can engage the complexities of the present as naively as the Byrds once did. Any discussion of this particular group should also point out the popularity of the group at the sub-mainstream level which adores their pleasant sound and has spawned a handful of pastiche bands since Beachwood Sparks onwards.

But here I turn to the 1968 song “Change is Now” from the Byrds album “The Notorious Byrd Brothers”, released Janurary 3, 1968. Minimal pounding drums, a single note bass line, and a electric twelve string guitar line lay the foundation for this mind-blowing jam that demands not the fleeting pleasures of free love, but insists “Change is now.” This chanted prioritization of the present as the locus of “change” seems common sensical enough, and merely reasserts the urgency of the mass culture of “change” produced and consumed by a society conventionally represented as torn between “change” and the “status quo.” This opposition was on some level a political one for the same clearly meant war, racism and other bad stuff like the military-industrial complex. But not only is change now, the lyrcis continue to state that in this mass moment “things that seemed to be solid are not,” and thus possibilities abound. In fact, “All is now, all is now, The time that we have to live” which totalizes the present as the only moment in which reality exists. History and future utopia be damned, all is now is the infinite possibility of the present, now freed from that which was solid by the mass forces of “change.” But then the song’s driving chant is interrupted by its chorus, filled with harmonious country slide guitar and the simple lyrics, “Gather all that we can, Keep in harmony with love's sweet plan.” This chorus here presents a profound contradiction for the infinite possibilities of the present must be gathered to our ability as they accord with “love’s sweet plan.” There is order in the liberating possibilities of the present produced by “change ” and it demands we comply with an unknowable plan that is sweet and belongs to love. Luckily, while we are briefly thrown aback by this ambiguous demand to accumulate according to the invisible designs of agreeable pleasure evoked by the rush of slide guitars, we return to the driving foundation where fuzz guitars illuminate an expansive terrain with their aleatory harmonies. This middle passage offers a more concrete space representative of the possibilities stipulated by the phrase “Change is now.” For it is one that could go on forever, locked in a groove driving and pounding through the extensive immediacy of the present.

Coming aground in the second verse, from this brief glance at the abyss of the infinite groove, we come to the truth: “Truth is real, truth is real/ That which is not real does not exist”. This could be reduced to the phrase, “That which is not true it does not exist”, or “all that exists is truth, and it is real”. This logic of pure immediacy locates truth in the infinite present, forever bringing into existence the real and then instantly becoming untrue as it becomes past, where it no longer exists. Next we encounter a different temporal dimension: “In and out roundabout/ Dance to the day when fear it is gone” A day will come, (as a result of the change perhaps) when fear it is gone, and we can dance in and out, roundabout until then.

The circular form of the truth of the present, the bringing in and out of existence is oriented towards a future when “fear it is gone”. This phrase is the trajectory of “change” promised by this song. Rather than simply saying change will bring the day when “fear is gone” it seems that it could also say “‘fear it’, is gone” or “fear of ‘it is’, is gone”. The present tense ‘is’ reproduces the time of the present which here, although displaced to a future to come, embodies an immediacy without fear, where fear is not. However, the ‘it’ inserts a further ambiguity that is compounded by the chorus which reasserts itself at this point, almost as if from an entirely different sonic universe. “Gather all that we can/ Keep in harmony with love's sweet plan” The two interruptions by the chorus inscribe a thought provoking contradictory form within this anthem of change. Are we gathering the present, accumulating change in compliance with some divine plan that will bring the day when fear is gone? Is this a Buddhist ethics of karmic accumulation? Do we have here a primordial formulation of the experience economy which prioritizes the consumption of experiences and emotional intensities so well in tune to the marketing of extreme culture? Can we detect herein the deeply contradictory origins of present?

What is the point of confusingly unfolding the contents of a naive mainstream hippy jam? That “Change” is ambiguous, and to understand the present we might be able to trace its key features to specific moments of contradictions within the very fabric of aesthetic production and consumption (here I use the dictionary meaning of aesthetic that includes decorative and affective functions). Popular music seems to be a form ripe for these questions regarding the political. For example the present absence of self-described “political” music may be a fascinating point of departure for further inquiry. As DM demonstrated in his use of ZZ top, these forms have a very concrete way of illustrating abstract contradictions that define the recent past and present in complex but interesting ways.

Download “Change is Now” link in comments.

Lyrics:
Change Is Now (Hillman/McGuinn)
Change is now, change is now
Things that seemed to be solid are not
All is now, all is now
The time that we have to live

Gather all that we can
Keep in harmony with love's sweet plan

Truth is real, truth is real
That which is not real does not exist
In and out roundabout
Dance to the day when fear it is gone

Gather all that we can
Keep in harmony with love's sweet plan

Change is now, change is now
Things that seemed to be solid are not
In and out roundabout
Dance to the day when fear it is gone
Fear it is gone
Fear it is gone

Critical Theory Reading List

Not being very familiar with critical theory stuff, I'd like to ask the critical theory people: What critical theory texts (either "classic" or contemporary) do you think are most relevant to politics today? What would you recommend I read, and why? You can put Das Kapital on the list, but I'd also like to see some things I might actually have the time to read and understand.

Continued Thoughts on Aesthetics, Identity, Value, ZZ Top, and Localism

I think the fundamental difference between Tigrenoche’s position and my own is in how we define value. Perhaps this moves us towards transcritiques initial question of “what is politics?” TN mentions the inability of anarchists or other small politically radical activist groups to have an important impact on “creeping authoritarianism and inequality.” In emphasizing the importance of aesthetics and identity for politics I am also questioning how authoritarianism and inequality are defined. Tigrenoche states, “It sounds a little too close to saying that striking some kind of radical pose and feeling good about yourself for doing so is more important than actually accomplishing anything; image over substance and all that.” In fact this is exactly what I am saying, although not necessarily that one is more or less important than the other, but that feeling good about yourself is accomplishing something. Just as working at a job that pays a living wage can improve a person’s mental well being, so can being accepted by one’s peers. If our notion of value is expanded to include the ability to construct a desirable identity or a meaningful life, then the purpose of political action must also be expanded.

Tigrenoche mentions the evangelical right, and I think that this is an excellent example of the successful linking of identity and politics. To be an evangelical is to construct a definite identity that is positively evaluated within a particular community. It is an identity that is closely related to consumer practices surrounding clothing, music, choice of neighborhood, housing, and food. In this sense, The Evangelical is similar to The Anarchist in that for both politics and lifestyle are inseparable.

The question is often raised of why the working class votes against their economic interests. In the United States this seems to frequently be the case among poor, rural or suburban whites. I would argue that no one votes against their interests, they simply define their interests differently. It is more important for the evangelical to have the peace of mind that comes with peer acceptance and success in the afterlife than to have a living wage or health insurance. Differences in values are often overstated, and this was particularly common after the ’04 election with all of the blue state/red state talk. Understanding the political differences between the left and the right as based in different systems of values is no better than analyzing the war on terror as a clash of civilizations. Rather, my argument here is that the political action of evangelicals is inseparable from a desire to feel good about one’s self, and attaining that desire represents a real accomplishment that cannot simply be explained away as ideology or false consciousness.

Returning to the Tigrenoche’s continual defense of the democratic party, I welcome a more in depth discussion of actual policy, particularly foreign policy. However I think this is only half of the discussion and we must also consider the sort of identities formed through participation in party politics. If, as I have argued, the Democratic party works to continually transform Progressive Obamas into Nationwide, Long-Beard, Sleeping Bag Era ZZ Top Obamas then we certainly need to question if this is the type of meaningful life that we wish to be producing. Because of the need to appeal to a broader audience macro level politics is inevitably problematic. I may enjoy dancing to a disco remix of sleeping bag, but I can be no more sincere in my appreciation for this experience than I can in my committment to party politics.

On earlier discussions of the aestheticization of politics, my notion of the term aestheticize here probably fits more closely with the dictionary definition of “beautify” and “decorate” that A mentions in a comment on transcritiques “ambiguous politics.” I welcome a more thorough discussion of Marx, Benjamin, and others (I think David Harvey deals with these issues in a relatively clear manner), but really all I am saying is that participation in politics is in part an attempt to beautify one’s life. That beauty comes both from changing laws and changing one’s identity. Neither should be prioritized over the other. In this sense, to acknowledge the aesthetic dimension of politics is to take identity seriously. This not only refers to identities directly produced through political action (anarchists and democrats), but the manner in which policy impacts one’s ability to construct an identity (for example, forest management may prevent people from becoming loggers).

Means and Ends

To me, asking “what is politics?” is asking about what kind of society I want to live in, how that society might function, and how to get “there” from “here.”

I was thinking that maybe trying to answer these questions would be a way of bridging my very pragmatic orientation, transcritique’s desire for a more radical re-thinking of the political, and the different posts and comments on localism.

So, whether you’re interested in the local, the national or international, whether you’re a radical or a moderate, what’s your end goal? What’s do you think it's going to take to get there? Do we need a revolution? Better elected officials? Communal living and more free love?

I’ll post my own thoughts later.

Who's responsible?

TC08 worries in comments that we're not addressing responsibility for the (Iraq, I assume) war. OK, starting with the Republicans, the whole party shares in the blame. I don't know of a single prominent Republican or Right Winger who opposed the war, at least not until it had already become obvious to everyone that it was an absolute disaster. Not only did none of them oppose it, they actively exploited it as a political cudgel to bash the Democrats and pick up seats in '02 and '04. The Republican party of today is corrupt from top to bottom, intellectually bankrupt, and run by and for authoritarian extremists and religious fanatics. I don't think there's anything redeemable left to it.

In the run-up to the war in '02 and '03, the vast majority of Democrats were either too chickenshit to speak out against the war, cynically hoping to achieve some political advantage by supporting it themselves, or actually thought it was a good idea. Regardless of which of these reason any individual dem was operating from, they failed miserably at the greatest political test of the decade (and beyond). Those that have admitted that they were wrong and show some signs of having learned from the experience (Edwards) I'm willing to cut some slack. Those that continue to support the idea of the war, and only criticize its execution (Hillary) deserve nothing but scorn. Those that didn't support the war (Obama, Gore) deserve praise. Talking about responsibility for the war's continuation into it's fifth year now is a bit more complicated a question as even though a growing number of dems have wanted to end the war for a while now, they're actual ability to do so is pretty limited. It's a lot easier to start a disastrous war than it is to end one.

The mainstream media also deserves huge heapings of blame and scorn for their role in this. They completely failed in their duty to question the claims made by the government, to investigate and try to find the truth. They were too excited about the ratings boost they'd get from showing bombs raining down on Baghdad and get to dress up as soldiers and embed with the troops.

I think that there's plenty of blame to go around, and I don't think anyone should be let off the hook for their role in making the Iraq war a reality.

One option, but I can't quite get this figured out...

Here's the code for one music playing option. There should be a way to make this into a little music player/playlist thingy rather than a link, that currently consists of one of the ZZ Top songs and the Boston song, but this isn't working out right...maybe one of you could mess with it and have better luck

href=http://www1.projectplaylist.com>href=http://www1.projectplaylist.com/standalone/4916219 target=_blank>src=http://www.projectplaylist.com/files/pplaylist.gif>src=http://www.projectplaylist.com/files/download.gif>

New Links!

I've added a couple links...There's a couple of the liberal political blogs I keep referencing; my favorite music criticism sites (all you theory fiends should check out K-Punk, which talks about music, culture and politics from a far-left and theory heavy perspective); and a couple great (if usually incredibly depressing) examples of blog journalism out of Iraq.

The post in which I respond to DM and further establish my identity as a boring sell-out

Hmmm...I'm not sure how I feel about DM's argument. It sounds a little too close to saying that striking some kind of radical pose and feeling good about yourself for doing so is more important than actually accomplishing anything; image over substance and all that. Maybe it's just the example that you're using. I mean, what have the black-clad anarchists really accomplished, even at the local level (and outside of Berkeley)? And how powerful and desirable an identity is that? The anarchists are a subculture, and I like having lots of subcultural folks around, it makes for a more interesting cultural environment, but I don't see how they do anything to slow the creeping authoritarianism and inequality of our society.

I do agree that local political action is important (though I think we need a clearer definition of "local"--Greenmedallion jumps between local=town councils and local=the state of California in his post below, for example), but don't see this needing to take the form of some radical avant-garde outside of the larger political culture of the country. Why not be involved in the Democratic party at the local level? In this position one could potentially influence who ends up running for city or state office, helping more progressive candidates to get elected or pushing the party platform to the left; state and city offices function like the minor leagues, helping groom people for national office; more real leftists at the local level will eventually translate into more real leftists at the national level.

This is something that the right, especially the evangelical right, has done to great effect, while the Democratic party totally neglected their local level party organization throughout the '90s, which arguably played a big part in their losses in '00, '02 and '04. Howard Dean got elected head of the DNC in large part because he promised to strengthen the local party infrastructure and run candidates in every congressional election, not just the ones that looked like safe bets. As a result, we've got a Democratic congress that's raised the minimum wage, passed a (decent, not perfect) resolution to end the Iraq war, passed card-check union elections and started investigating the incredible abuses of power that defined the last six years of Republican one-party rule. What's wrong with all that? Bush will veto everything they pass, but that just says to me that it's that much more important to elect enough dems to overturn a veto and a dem president next year, not that we need more local avant-gardes.


The other area I wanted to bring up in response to DM, is that while the local is important, I think that the rise of political blogging, on-line communities and on-line activism means that there's the potential to reach people, influence national debates and advance progressive goals beyond just the local level in a really direct way. For example, you can go on Dailykos, register and post a diary, and possibly have it be seen by the over-100,000 people a day that check out the site. Lots of dem politicians now post there regularly, and if you want to comment on what they've got to say, you can (Admittedly, I'd assume that a lot of the posts by politicians are really being posted by their aides, but the parties and candidates definitely track what's being said about them on the political blogs). Another example is the on-going US Attorney firing scandal, which looks likely to at the very least lead to the resignation of Alberto Gonzalez. The blog Talking Points Memo was writing about this and doing actual investigative journalism on it a full month before any of the mainstream media picked up on it. Those are just two examples of some of the new possiblities that I think are opening up; you could also get into the ability of campaigns to raise money online through large numbers of small donations, thus being less beholden to the big money donors representing narrow corporate interests; the ability of groups like Moveon to influence debate...lots going on; lots of possiblities.

I don't know. For myself I don't see anything wrong with being involved in Democratic party politics; I don't see the need to claim some radical or hip, above-it-all identity, and I don't think we necessarily need to choose between local and national involvment.

A Response to Tigrenoche: Some notes on localism.

A Response to Tigrenoche: Some notes on localism.

The discussion about choice and no choice, two party or no party, pragmatism or idealism, is ultimately not much fun. All of TN’s (Tigrenoche) arguments are more or less irrefutable. Clearly the democrats are a better option than the republicans and there is a significant difference between the two on a number of levels. It is almost as clear that actively seeking to change the democratic party is a better option than non-participation and griping. And yet this argument brings no satisfaction. It leaves me feeling bad about being old and selling out. Both of these sensations are more or less irrational. I am old and I’ve never really had anything to sell. But I think that we can both acknowledge the truth of TN’s argument and also accept that political activism has an aesthetic dimension. (I originally wrote this before transcritique’s comments. I like his references to Benjamin, as the “aestheticization of politics” has usually been used as a sort of critique. The discussion that follow can be seen as sort of a recuperation of aesthetics – an argument that regardless of their political significance, aesthetics are impossible to ignore.)

I stumbled across an anarchist book fair in Golden Gate Park last weekend. A powerful and clear aesthetic that offers the participant a chance to feel good. Many of the items for sale were obviously image oriented. Clothing patches with drawings of beets and kale. Everyone in layers of black. Nikki McClure calendars for sale in the main hall. There is part of me that wants to scoff at such obvious fashion among anarchists. But at some level I think it feels good to be active in this environment. To combine activism with a feeling of in-group avant garde. I’ve always wanted to be an anarchist (or at least a hippie), but I’ve never had much interest in being a democrat.

There is an important conflict between the aesthetic and political dimensions of activism that I think can be solved by focusing on the local. A third party or an avant garde has no ability to impact national level politics. The best that one can do is become involved in the Democratic party, but this has absolutely no appeal. Involvement in local politics brings the chance to have a voice and operate in a manner closer to one’s choosing. The anarchist is able to effect change at multiple levels while also living a lifestyle that creates a powerful and desirable identity.

I think the contrast between the local and the national may be well illustrated through the career of ZZ Top. If we were sitting around my living room drinking cans of Hamm’s right now I would probably play the first couple of tracks off of Tres Hombres and pass around some of the album covers. “Waitin’ For the Bus,” smoothly segues into “Jesus Just Left Chicago.” (I will attempt to post these tracks in the comments section later – although others should feel free to do this for me.) This is Top’s third album and some say the best. The album features an amazing centerfold of a TexMex feast. Back before the beards ZZ Top played fucked up Texas blues. Texas was essential to their sound and image. Their next album came out in ’74 and represented a slight transition although the long beards were still yet to come. Fandango is a live album and the sleeve features a photo captioned “ZZ Top’s First Annual Texas Sized Rompin’ Stompin’ Barndance and BBQ, With 80,000 Friends.” Texas was still essential to ZZ Top, but Texas was becoming an image. Some of the live stuff is amazing and certainly ranks up there with some of the other amazing stuff that was coming out in ’74, but ZZ Top was changing. A few years later they were playing on a Texas shaped stage and bringing lives buzzards and longhorns with them on tour. By 1980 they had the long beards and popular tune with a chorus of “I’m Bad. I’m Nationwide.” The Texas blues band uses the symbol of the local as a tool to transcend. Soon Texas was forgotten for the spectacle of fur covered guitars and long beards. I love the song Sleeping Bag and I think there are some beautiful things about their transformation, but on some level I think it demonstrates the strange interplay that exists between the local and national (macro) within politics.

Obama demonstrated some progressive ideals while he was in Illinois. He uses these ideals and accomplishments as symbols of progressive credibility in order to advance to the national level. The transformation occurs and spectacle takes the place of policy.

The local provides a concrete space where images and actions may be melded. It is a space where we can act and feel good about it. We should not deny our vanity and need for constructing identities. We simply need to find a context in which identity and action are united.

Ambiguous politics

Here by initiating an attempt to question what is politics I think I have opened a particular kind of Pandora’s box. The discursive space of a common usage defined “politics” is one that I would not feel comfortable with even provisionally entering into without some caution. By asking what is politics I had in mind something that does not exist, or rather, something that could exist, a sort of possibility inherent in the present moment but denied by what is called in common usage “politics.” I have come to realize in reading the initial reactions posted here and beyond this blog that they are in fact the correct, “irrefutable” engagements with the existing language of politics. In my ignorance of this actual language of politics, I have assumed it would be possible to articulate through a perpetual questioning of this inherited “political” language, a sense of this possible politics. But even before this possibility can come into view, some engagement with the existing realm of political language must be performed. The difficulty is however, that given the structure of political language, a universal language that guarantees the equality of all by he perpetual articulation of inequalities within social reality, it would be a fairly precarious and irresponsible gesture to somehow pretend I had the capability to “deconstruct” the linguistic space of politics in a moment such as this. Which I think points to the need to identify the particularly ambiguous contours defining this moment.

Having said that, I must admit that this is in itself an incredible challenge, as we are by no means on certain ground and very much in transition between moments, geopolitical systems, and economic modes. As disorienting as this passage is, and despite the effectiveness of the abundant disorienting strategies of neo-conservative global forces that take advantage of this transition, we need some clear lines of sight that can steer us towards the actual possibilities that this perpetual questing hopes to articulate. I think DM rightfully identified one of the central forces of this transitional moment as being the aesthetic dimension of everyday life which confronts the inherited realm of politics with a deep ambivalence. The aestheticization of politics through lifestyles and diversified consumer practices as embodied in the avant garde of the forces of the coming mode of accumulation reveal for us today a deep abyss between not only the black-clad anarchists and national politics, but also a rupture between the affective regime of the aesthetic dimension and the common-usage discursive space of politics today.

The phrase above, the “aestheticization of politics,” was born at a critical juncture when the rising forces of fascism appropriated the inherent revolutionary possibilities of industrial capitalism through its expropriation of the affective dimensions of the collective social body. (I am of course referring to Walter Benjamin’s “The work of art in the age of its mechanical reproducibility,” where he says, “This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicizing art.”) But without going into the past too far, it remains crucial to engage the rising aesthetic regime and map its implications for the coming moment from the contradictions it embodies in the present, between different modes of accumulation. Does the present aestheticization of politics indicate a homologous juncture between fascism and revolution? That is another open question I think we need to address before we can begin to ask what is politics.

To continue with an outline of the present, let me just leave that question open and turn to one of the central ambiguities inherent within the present's so-called political discourse. In tandem with the rise of the reactionary political leadership with which we have justified contempt, the other party has been classically complacent until their gains in the election that brings us to the present moment where Dem ascendancy appears guaranteed. The “choiceless choosings” I referred to as the coming election has less to do with lack of difference between candidates and more to do with the ambiguous nature of the choice. If all goes as the present would indicate, a righteously justified Dem government will right the wrongs of an aberrant leadership, and perform what could be the single greatest accumulation of state power in the name of capitalism ever witnessed. By positing the failings of the abusive few as their literal raison d'état, the war responsibility of hundreds if not thousands will be completely obscured as a better, more polite government “moves forward” and “puts behind its differences” to deliver that idolized “bi-partisan” form of government that gave us such achievement’s as Clinton’s obliteration of the duties of the state to provide social welfare to its less prosperous members. The justified state might even do things we want, like “go green” and “stabilize the inequalities" (that is, not address their origins, but treat its symptoms) but these would all be problematic to say the least. To criticize what does not yet exist may seem ridiculous, but I think this “thought experiment” (although it is admittedly light on any actual thought so far) identifies a need for a means of questioning the “politics” of the present that can at once begin to identify the rightists’ full responsibility in bringing into existence the domestic and international atrocities of the present regime, and, at whatever level, to also identify the dem’s own responsibilities not only in the past six years, but responsibilities towards the coming moment to not sell the country short in the name of doing only a little better than Bush. That is, we need a dual mode of critique that can both confront the obvious wrongs where they exist past, present and future, and also confront the more subtle contours of the past, present and future even when it goes against our common sense. And I hope that is what we set ourselves to do when we ask what is politics.

My Opening Argument...

Ok, here's the e-mail I sent out the other day in response to Transcritique's first post, which has since garnered a couple responses. I want to reply to the replies when I get a chance. In the meantime, I wanted to ask the other folks posting here if they ever read any of the big liberal/lefty blogs (DailyKos, Atrios, Talking Points Memo, TAPPED...there's lots and lots of others)? I've been reading these out regularly for a couple years now and they're probably the single biggest influence on my own politics and I think the most exciting new avenue for political involvement and activism out there. I'll probably get into why I think this more later, but for now I'd recommend you all check out what's already being done with political blogging. Anyways, here's that e-mail:

Ah, I actually (drunkenly) read that AIPAC speech the
other night after getting home and was going to e-mail
you my take on it when sobered up but then forgot.
Not much going on at work today so here goes...

My take on it is that, as much as I'd like to hear a
full-throated denunciation of the Isreali bombing of
Lebanon last summer, no politician who wants to have a
shot at winning any elected office in this country is
going to do so in front of AIPAC. Just speaking
technically, Hezbollah did make the first move in that
whole terrible mess (kidnapping the Isreali soldiers)
and, once Isreal then attacked them, shot off lots of
Iranian supplied unguided rockets that inevitably hit
some civilian areas. Those are both illegal acts, the
second is definitely a war crime, and the fact that
Isreal caused far more damage and killed far more
people in Lebanon, that their actions were most
definitely war crimes as well, doesn't change that. I
don't see that being disgusted with the Isreali
response means that I've got to support Hezbollah.

Now, if I'm a politician and want to be able to raise
money from prominent American Jews, and don't want
AIPAC shelling out millions of dollars to run ads
accusing me of anti-semitism and probably morphing my
face into Ahmadinajad's, I'll denounce the actions of
Hezbollah and just skip over any objections I've got
to the Isreali response, at least when speaking to
Jewish right-wingers. What I'd be curious to
read/hear is what Obama would have to say when
speaking in front of an Arab or Lebanese American
group.

On the Iran issue, while Obama, like everybody else,
seems compelled to repeat the "all options on the
table" phrase, I think that it's pretty clear that
he's not interested in military action against Iran,
and sees diplomacy as the course to take. Note the
reference to negotiating with the Soviet Union during
the cold war--they had thousands of nuclear weapons
aimed at us, and we were willing to talk to them; Iran
doesn't even have one yet, so why not do diplomacy.
Actually the best response on Iran from any of the
Democratic candidates that I've seen was a while back
from Bill Richardson, who has way more experience in
diplomacy than any other candidate on either side, and
he didn't even bother with the stupid "all options on
the table" crap. I could look up his statement if
you're really curious...

I'm curious if when you say our big choice in 08 will
be among very similar people who have already made the
major choices for us, if you mean the entire field of
candidates dem and rep or not. If so I've got to
strongly disagree with you; even if you're just
talking about the dem field I think that implying that
there is no real choice is wrong. I think that
there's huge differences between the democrat and
republican candidates, on both domestic and foreign
policy. Another republican president, even a
"moderate" one like Guiliani, will end in income
inequality continuing to worsen, poverty increasing,
unions weakened even more, another four to eight years
of doing absolutely nothing about global warming, a
supreme court willing to outlaw abortion, and probably
a continued belligerent, warmongering approach to the
rest of the world. A democratic president may not be
able to fix global warming or income inequality, and
whatever they do will be constrained by the numbers in
congress and how viciously the right wants to fight
whatever they put forward, but I think they'd at least
consider these (and others) to be real problems worth
addressing.

On the dem side, there's differences as well. I'm
actually not sure about Obama, who's a hell of a
speaker, but who's actual policy stuff is really vague
right now. I could see him being a transformative
progressive president, like FDR...or just as easily a
decent but totally middle-of-the-road president like
Bill Clinton. Hillary on the other hand I don't see
as having any real progressive potential; her health
care ideas are the weakest of the big dem candidates
and her foreign policy is the furthest right. She's
the only one still saying it was right to go into
Iraq, and for that alone I'd have a real hard time
supporting her. Edwards is taking a really strong
progressive/populist economic stance, and has some
pretty strong, concrete proposals out on things like
health care. Richardson is pretty good on most
things, too, but is overweight and apparently has a
tendency to sexually harass women, so he's probably
not going anywhere.

Anyways, any one of them though would be a huge
improvement over the current president as well as
anyone the republicans could run this year. Saying
there's no real choice is garbage. There isn't the
choice of "the guy who believes all the same things as
me and could convince enough people to vote for him
and enact all my/his ideas" but there's never going to
be. In 2000 I didn't think the choice between Bush
and Gore was a real choice at all, and look how that's
turned out. A president Gore wouldn't have solved all
our problems and made everything perfect, but he
wouldn't have led the country into one disaster after
another for eight straight years. I think that you or
I or probably any of our friends are secure and
affluent enough that the admittedly often small range
of allowed differences in mainstream politics don't
affect us much or seem like much of a difference. But
if you're someone who relies on the social services
that are getting defunded, or live near a power plant
that doesn't have to worry about pollution regulations
being enforced, is a woman seeing their reproductive
rights limited or has a family member serving in Iraq
(or, on the other hand, are one of the handful of
families who will see their income skyrocket if the
estate tax is abolished), then this stuff does matter.


And I think that if you believe that neither of the
big parties are far enough to your end of the
ideological spectrum, the answer isn't to just become
disengaged and curse the system, it's to get involved
and try to sway things in the direction that you think
it should be going. That's one of the reasons that I
believe that the left in America is in such poor shape
these days: the far-right nut-jobs are for the most
part very involved in Republican party politics;
really the far right folks took over the party from
the old-school Rockefeller Republicans and made it
into the crazed beast that it is today. A lof of
people on the left, on the other hand, gave up on the
democratic party and spend all their time talking
about what a sellout it is and supporting little third
parties that can't do anything but get Republicans
elected.

Alright...I should get back to work. I do have a few
things to do. I've got lots more thoughts on all this
stuff if you're interested, so if you're looking into
any sort of online forum for us to discuss I could
probably participate. Feel free to forward this on to
the other bros if you like this topic as a starting
point.