"Those hairshirt -wearin' Dissensians", pleasure vs. morality, rockism vs. popism, Finney VS. Reynolds

Whether or not that perspective brings you the "most pleasure" from music, it's certainly not always possible (and may possibly not always be ethical).

(As an afterthought, to be more fair, it's not that you ought to "turn off" this stuff, but rather "turn it off pending reprogramming" -- the problem's with certain kneejerk cognitive impulses, which ought to be altered.)

"14. Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate and to enjoy. We should become the pitiless censors of ourselves."

Alain Badiou: Fifteen theses on contemporary art

1. Art is not the sublime descent of the infinite into the finite abjection of the body and sexuality. It is the production of an infinite subjective series through the finite means of a material subtraction.

2. Art cannot merely be the expression of a particularity (be it ethnic or personal). Art is the impersonal production of a truth that is addressed to everyone.

3. Art is the process of a truth, and this truth is always the truth of the sensible or sensual, the sensible as sensible. This means : the transformation of the sensible into a happening of the Idea.

4. There is necessarily a plurality of arts, and however we may imagine the ways in which the arts might intersect there is no imaginable way of totalizing this plurality.

5. Every art develops from an impure form, and the progressive purification of this impurity shapes the history both of a particular artistic truth and of its exhaustion.

6. The subject of an artistic truth is the set of the works which compose it.

7. This composition is an infinite configuration, which, in our own contemporary artistic context, is a generic totality.

8. The real of art is ideal impurity conceived through the immanent process of its purification. In other words, the raw material of art is determined by the contingent inception of a form. Art is the secondary formalization of the advent of a hitherto formless form.

9. The only maxim of contemporary art is not to be imperial. This also means: it does not have to be democratic, if democracy implies conformity with the imperial idea of political liberty.

10. Non-imperial art is necessarily abstract art, in this sense : it abstracts itself from all particularity, and formalizes this gesture of abstraction.

11. The abstraction of non-imperial art is not concerned with any particular public or audience. Non-imperial art is related to a kind of aristocratic-proletarian ethic : Alone, it does what it says, without distinguishing between kinds of people.

12. Non-imperial art must be as rigorous as a mathematical demonstration, as surprising as an ambush in the night, and as elevated as a star.

13. Today art can only be made from the starting point of that which, as far as Empire is concerned, doesn't exist. Through its abstraction, art renders this inexistence visible. This is what governs the formal principle of every art : the effort to render visible to everyone that which for Empire (and so by extension for everyone, though from a different point of view), doesn't exist.

14. Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate and to enjoy. We should become the pitiless censors of ourselves.

15. It is better to do nothing than to contribute to the invention of formal ways of rendering visible that which Empire already recognizes as existent.

(This first attempt at translation is by Peter Hallward)

I'm sure Darth Vader and Emperor Palatine might have different views about the nature of Empire.

http://lchs.lewi.k12.wv.us/usr/Jposey/images/celeb/deluise.jpg

http://theoscarsite.com/chronicle/1980img/caligula.jpg

Eastside meets Westside downtown.
No time, no line, the walls fall down.

Can't you feel it coming? EMPIRE!
Can't you hear it coming EMPIRE!
Can't someone here stop it...??!!

No. 11 begs to be completed with a contemporary concept of ethics that would allow to do away with the cringeworthy "aristocratic-proletarian". Those are century-old denominations.

Not having a history or sociology degree I can't invent or recall the meme that serves as a catchall for artists "not concerned with any particular public or audience" and who work "without distinguishing between kinds of people".

er well that's all of pop music done with, right?

frankly i think it's a failure of imagination that none of the big names has bothered to try mapping out a general field theory of pop music. maybe it's latent schoolboy nerd fear. or maybe pop production immediately calls into question a lot of the ideas built to handle uh more stable arts (i'm looking at you bordieu)

given the bipolar left-academic imagining of pop (it is revolutionary/it is capital gripping the minds of the young) i'm equally surprised yr radical libertarian anarcho-capital types aren't massive poptimists (it is revolutionary capital gripping the minds of the young hooray etc!)

That's a great line, and it goes in a lot of different directions. I do think it relates to what's being presented as the anti-popist position, although I think the anti-popist position (at least as represented by the threads referenced above) is based on some pretty sketchy interpretations of popism. (Also, this might be the place to say that I really think it should be poppism, which is not just more grammatically pleasing but also has a nicely narcotic echo.) I don't recall anyone advocating the uncontested privilege of pleasure in regard to MIA or anything else, so the question of censoring vs. not-censoring seems like a red herring in this context. The argument is more about the filters that are used in the censoring process (race/class/nationality/genre/etc.), and the way that they inevitably shape perception of and reaction to art (and, by extension I guess, to the world). The popist position, at least as it makes sense to me, argues for a sort of aesthetics of relativity. Which is not the same as "everything is allowed" and does not in anyway preclude subjective judgment, but assumes a built-in skepticism of any claims to universalism and forces all competing critical systems onto the same field of play. (The assumption being that, say, fascist or racist or nationalist aesthetics won't last long in head to head competition and will inevitably retreat in a flurry of angry anonymous message-board postings.) Its appeal is sort of fundamentally democratic.

I don't really follow the Badio TBH because of the maths stuff. What doesn't stem from his dream of a mathematical ontology seems like a pretty standard defence of the romantic-modernist-aesthetic (i.e. post-Kantian) tradition. In other words, art is linked to universal truth (against relativist and historicist positions in which art is judged in relation to a particular social or cultural background); authority is imperial in extending over all dimensions of the visible (including earlier artistic 'truths' I guess) and art resists authority by producing 'new' occurrences which draw attention to the imperial gesture (i.e. to subsume everything) by exceeding it. Some of the formulations I like: generic progress from impurity to purity (and exhaustion). But I'll stick with Adorno because what Badiou doesn't seem to raise is: the position from which we identify artistic 'truth' i.e. he assumes it is possible, whereas Adorno suggests we can't be sure of this, and therefore have to factor in the possibility that art / resistance is no longer possible. This connects to a formal politics of his own work, in which by refusing to pronounce whether or not art is possible, he forces the reader to make their own judgement (or to suspend it, in turn). i.e. Badiou sees 'art' vs 'empire'. Adorno sees the opposition, but refuses to identify an example of successful 'art' because to do so would immediately obliterate it by pulling it back inside empire. The difference is of course that Adorno identifies reason with empire, and has to find a way of working which admits his own position (as critic, philosopher) is within reason and therefore empire. Badiou wants to be outside, and has to identify 'pure' reason as somehow extrinsic to empire. (this is a hunch, since I find most Badiou rather dense: anywhere he gives a historical account of the contemporary philosophical situation he strikes me as just plain wrong, which doesn't inspire me to persevere with the maths, since I see all philosophy as philosophy of history).

Back to the original poster: as ever I agree with the dissensus position insofar as it takes the claims of 'art' seriously, but I dispute their ability to identify art (grime?) as opposed to non-art (pop?). The idea of an ethics of decision in regard to what they listen to is an interesting one. I'd want to pose a Kogan-esque question and ask whether the ideal exponents of this position are teenagers, where musical taste may primarily be tribal and their are exceedingly strict and painful decisions involved in liking one thing or another. If you want a more autonomous version of this, Mark Sinker's account of punk ethics also reads punk as Kantian in this sense: what matters is setting the law for oneself, not taking it from somewhere else.

Of course the pop-ist position under attack does not exist, and serves only to establish a rhetorical enemy against whom they can portray themselves as 'radical'.

As much as I can't claim to understand all of Badiou's theses, doesn't at least #14 and #15 speak directly to contemporary art but all forms of culture?

Drew - I am sorta annoyed by a few things in the Badiou, but not over the fact you posted it -- it's clearly relevant to the discussion at hand.

It's possible that I'm mixing together different complaints about the dilettante landscape, but hasn't Reynolds been taking this tack that he has because he too is profoundly interested in pleasure -- it's just that he wants to conserve pleasure, as the trying-to-like-everything poppist makes strong (aesthetic -- moral also) feeling impossible?

(By contrast, dilettanteeism, is essentially, even if only in aspiration rather than actuality, an aristocratic sensibility, a form of dandyism; those who dabble are those who can afford to).

But more to the point in re: poppism is that dilletantism supposes an openness to and even preference for a variety of voices, approaches, perspectives, etc. One that, OK, "dabbles" in a range of aesthetic systems and maybe sees and sets them in relation to each other but doesn't fully commit to any of them. The lack of commitment, I guess, is what Reynolds is deriding in his preference for true believers. But as both a personal preference and a moral response to the politics of the Bush/Bin Laden era, poppism's lack of insistence on true belief -- its assumed suspicion of true belief -- is one of the things I find most appealing.

A pretense at objectivity (whether provided by Adorno as per Watson, or by some other theoretical apparatus) is the most convenient way to entrench one's own subjective position, whereas I'm more interested in a fully admitted, partial subjectivity where we compare and debate the rightness of our reactions, and allow ourselves to be open to the prospect of seeing things differently and thus reacting to things differently.

Zigackly.

A class war is being waged, but only one side is fighting. Choose your side. Choose your weapons.

lolol

http://www.teachmeteamwork.com/photos/uncategorized/agree.jpg

maybe if we asked nicely k-punk would weigh in on mondeo pop?

If "Nothing Ever Happens" ain't hauntology, then I dunno what is.

I keep meaning to copy some of it out but Grimey Simey's Blissed Out is pretty much a full on attack on Mondeo Pop. It's rather amusing in 2007 to read someone get incredibly angry about Danny Wilson but I can't help feeling the mentality GS was putting forward then was rather similar to what his punky mate is railing against now. Perhaps the reappraisal of the Wet Wet Wet cannon is the only way out for these guys.

i think they need a little time.

Popped In, Souled Out: Nu Theory and Nu Rockism, A Prolegomena

Where is Pat Kane these days? No, please don't answer that...

five eight eight, two three hundred!

EMPIRE!

http://theatrenomad.wordpress.com/2004/04/21/588-2300-empire

Academic offices: Rector of the University of Glasgow 1990—1993

Preceded by Winnie Mandela
Succeeded by Johnny Ball

Students R wankers

that k-punk article really rankled many at Fortress Poptimist

I don't read blogs that don't enable moderated comments

the poptimists fall out is linked on uh the noize board. circles within circles or something dude.

quitney stirring shit again

you know how i do

but who is gershy?

Me on The Pop Group (for younger readers: the kind of thing folk had to make do with before pop reached its glorious zenith with Paris Hilton and Backstreet Boys) in Fact.

man he sounds really bitter, which might even be OK if the people he thinks believe that about Paris and BBs actually existed.

i think he's ghost rider?

that k-punk article really rankled many at Fortress Poptimist

-- blueski

http://www.randomtuesday.com/pictures/drwho/dalekpush.gif

i have no idea what you're saying

epicharmus
2007-08-23 12:38 am UTC (link)

You know, I have to admit that when British people start talking about class, education and their attendant shames, my brain kinda turns off. I don't really know how else to put this, or if I'm making sense, but discussion about these subjects seem like a mere hobby -- sort of like putting ships in bottles or collecting Beanie Babies, only without their real-world relevance. They only get talked about because everyone knows they don't really matter.

What an utter cunt.

nah he's right

http://www.comedycentral.com/press/images/distraction/jimmy_carr_3.jpg

Is that is the biggest picture of Jimmy Carr you could find?

Is that a challenge?

This is still the most tedious 'debate' in the history of the internet. Especially with neither side bothering to engage with one another.

Could we pitch this idea at Channel 4, y'think? (xpost)

and also there not even really being sides xp

i need to make gif of toyko being crushed underfoot by giant strawzilla

it maybe tedious, but on the upside it isn't a flash-in-the-pan. been going on since honeys was earing sassoon.

kpunk should launch more scathing broadsides on livejournal communities. maybe in a couple of years he'll get onto facebook, man the shit 'll hit the fan then.

Bit late now that Facebook no longer requires you to be attending a university.

mark is right about some things, i think, especially frank's "paris is the new vietnam" column, which is disappointing in how rigorously illogical it is. what i think mark's wrong about is his base assumption that (quote-unquote) poptimism represents a tangible long-term worldview. i associate the phrase specifically with late 90s/early 00s and have always kind of thought of circulated throughout ilm (and larger crit circles) at the time. i have no idea if this is true or not but i've also always kind of assumed that the freaky trigger group's assumption of the phrase for events and things was kind of a tongue in cheek move, a catchy way to self-identify as being pro-pop and pro-fun, NOT a flag-waving call to arms against any (ghost-unghost) enemies.

i've never met mark but sometimes he strikes me as being almost fatally serious, often to the extent that others' capacity for being flip and tongue-in-cheek might elude him entirely. i think that's what might have happened with his interpretation of "paris hilton is the new vietnam" (the headline, not the body) and certainly with "poptimism".

argh, browser ate my post. again:

mark is right about some things, i think, especially frank's "paris is the new vietnam" column, which is disappointing in how rigorously illogical it is. what i think mark's wrong about is his base assumption that (quote-unquote) poptimism represents a tangible long-term worldview. i associate that phrase specifically with the late 90s/early 00s and have always kind of thought of it to refer more to an ideological corrective that circulated throughout ilm (and larger crit circles) at the time rather than as a proscribed way of seeing. i have no idea if this is true or not but i've also always kind of assumed that the freaky trigger group's assumption of the phrase for events and things was kind of a tongue in cheek move, a catchy way to self-identify as being pro-pop and pro-fun, NOT a flag-waving call to arms against any (ghost-unghost) enemies.

i've never met mark but sometimes he strikes me as being almost fatally serious, often to the extent that others' capacity for being flip and tongue-in-cheek might elude him entirely. i think that's what might have happened with his interpretation of "paris hilton is the new vietnam" (the headline, not the body) and certainly with "poptimism".

the common ground between kplunk and poptimists is chocolate bars of the 80s that you don't see in the shops any more.

Greil Marcus apart, I’ve never really tuned into much American pop criticism at all, which in my no doubt far too hasty judgement has seemed to be bogged down in a hyper-stylized faux-naif gonzoid mode that has never really appealed to me.)

Gosh, Mark K-punk is so intellectual. Hah.

But, in 2007, Nathan’s hoary old belief that only groups who write their own songs can be valid has been refuted so many times that it is rather like someone mounting a defence of slavery today

RATHER.

I mean for Christ's sake

Where do you hang out where people regularly mount defences of slavery, John?

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=41

oh jesus.

Or is John making a grammatical critique of the use of the word "rather." I still hear some 13 year-old kids (friends of my son) and older folks criticize American Idols and other pop singers because they allegedly do not write their own songs. I guess I do not travel in the same circles as K-Punk.

"But in 2007, Ethan's hoary old belief that Li'l Eazy is not bumpin has been refuted so many times that it is rather like someone arguing on behalf of the genocide in Darfur"

i associate that phrase specifically with the late 90s/early 00s and have always kind of thought of it to refer more to an ideological corrective that circulated throughout ilm (and larger crit circles) at the time rather than as a proscribed way of seeing.

This post is basically OTM, but the term 'Poptimism' was only invented in about 2005 because Tom needed something catchy to call the new Freaky Trigger club night. He then named the LJ community after it in order to cross-promote the club. This is why loads of these attempts to argue against 'Poptimism' as a movement or critical school of thought seem doomed to failure.

But yeah, that slavery thing OTM as well. I think my problem with this debate is that the critical reception of Paris album is of minimal significance to everyone in the world other than 14 internet scribes taking potshots at one another.

ummmmm correct me if i'm wrong but i think what john might be saying is that it's a little fucking rich to invoke slavery as a means of supporting a silly rockist persecution complex? jesus people.

xpost

you're all obsessed with the anointed one

and also Jesus

ummmmm correct me if i'm wrong but i think what john might be saying is that it's a little fucking rich to invoke slavery as a means of supporting a silly rockist persecution complex? jesus people.

yes that's correct, I would think obviously so, not to say blindingly glaringly obviously so

I feel that the people who did not immediately take my meaning are morally comparable to the owners of slave ships, I'm sure everyone will agree that's an apt analogy

(Argh my post was appalling phrased, I meant the reaction to the slavery line was OTM, not the line itself).

(xpost)

http://www.allaboardtoys.com/assets/product_imagesm/BN-1058.jpg

Perhaps go with this first, move to reading arguments later?

xp

"Reward stickers" for understanding the difference between "most people agree that this is a dumb argument, like another famous dumb argument" and "LIKING POP MUSIC IS EXACTLY THE SAME AS BEATING KUNTE KINTE WITH STICKS"

"Engaging activities"

i'm serious as cancer when i say -isms are a dancercancer

wouldn't it be "hobbling kunte kinte"?

matt that's what i meant upthread, sorry. that 'poptimism' was at first a corrective and much later a handy catchphrase, but never an ideology.

this debate in a nutshell: on one side we have someone cheaply invoking the slave trade in an effort to grok public support for a war that nobody but he is fighting; on the other is someone who is so can't-see-the-forest-from-the-trees about pop music that he deems a dubious parallel between his 14-year old insights about vietnam and his 53-year old insights about paris hilton as valuable of his readers' time.

xposts

"i have my feet up on a slave as a type this"

The slave is doing the typing, surely.

i wouldn't let my slave touch my computer

I can't be alone in seeing parallels between Rihanna's Umbrella being toppled from its marathon stint atop the UK charts and the British army's decision to pull out of Basra.

we should put kogan and k-punk in the same house and make a reality tv show out of it

http://quizfarm.com/images/1109109207slave.jpg

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/15988.jpg

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000001FU6.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/b/bc/Slavetothewagecover.jpg

http://www.derjonas.com/Niederknien.jpg

that's very astute, dom. all those pictures reference slaves in some way. good stuff.

stylus' death was not in vain

we should put kogan and k-punk in the same house and make a reality tv show out of it

Very, very good.

Matt DC otm, really anybody who disagrees with Matt DC is big-upping the Soviet gulag system

Dom there's a li'l somethin' about Prince and Grace Jones that you may not have noticed

Yeah, the 80s was a mad time.

Look, I'm pretty sure that Kogan's happy someone's having a go at him without accusing him of cradle-robbing, let's just leave it at that.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/060503/060503_predator_hmed_4p%20.hmedium.jpg

Paris Is Our Hansen?

No, Alan is

I'm distressed that this thread still bears my name.

is that paul reiser?? he looks like shit!

Alex T as usual said everything that needed to be said much earlier on:

"Back to the original poster: as ever I agree with the dissensus position insofar as it takes the claims of 'art' seriously, but I dispute their ability to identify art (grime?) as opposed to non-art (pop?). The idea of an ethics of decision in regard to what they listen to is an interesting one. I'd want to pose a Kogan-esque question and ask whether the ideal exponents of this position are teenagers, where musical taste may primarily be tribal and their are exceedingly strict and painful decisions involved in liking one thing or another. If you want a more autonomous version of this, Mark Sinker's account of punk ethics also reads punk as Kantian in this sense: what matters is setting the law for oneself, not taking it from somewhere else."

Alex's description of the "Kogan-esque question" strikes me as precisely what Kogan *is* trying to do in pieces like the one Mark K-Punk is talking about, and as such it has already moved beyond the conflict of pleasure vs the decision to see how the two things actually create eachother.

This was basically the point of my quote which starts the thread, which gets elaborated in the linked dissensus thread: that it's not a choice between censorship and pleasure - censorship is a component of the pleasure, and the pleasure is produced by censorship. The notion of Mark, say, rejecting a pop song he would otherwise like in an act of censorship in the name of a higher cause is precisely *not* how his brand of political pop critique works, because the kind of pop he likes will always have already somehow magically landed on the "right" side of the line - hence Rihanna's "Umbrella" is somehow justified and justifable. Likewise when Simon R linked to Mark's piece on Timbaland or Timberlake he described it as "refreshing the parts that 1001 pop(tim)ists can't reach", but in fact the article was precisely pop(tim)ist (although more auteurist than a post on poptimism would be probably). It made me wonder what Simon thought a pop(tim)ist take on timberlake/timbaland would look like such that mark's take was necessarily superior.

The differences only really emerge w/r/t what is hated - and perhaps when all is said and done nu-rockism is simply about asserting the freedom to despise Paris Hilton and M.I.A. I can almost appreciate why this is felt to be necessary, or at least w/r/t Paris and contra Frank - if only because (as always) he asks questions which are difficult to answer and (in the case of Paris) in an unusally hyperbolic (dare I say lexian) manner.

"Those Paris-shirt -wearin' DisLexians"

not quite what kant had in mind...

I think the bigger problem is the lack of engagement though: in all the big dissensus threads on these topics mark and simon (if not always the echo chamber posters) would ultimately come around to a much more reasonable position. It's only when they're left to stew to themselves that their tendential distrust of e.g. pro-paris criticism hardens and sclerotizes. Of course the reverse is also true - Tom made a good point on Poptimism that a lot of the posters there would be all "lol emo" if there weren't actual emo fans around to school them on it.

I started this thread? WTF?