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On 2015-03-15 07:03, Brian Holmes wrote: > I think David is right that the Left should neither ignore the > "creative class," nor simply heap a now-conventionalized scorn upon > it. It is urgent to develop an intellectual/artistic culture and a > "structure of feeling" (as Raymond Williams used to say) that can > turn people away from narcississtic involvement in the > middle-management functions of affect manipulation, and toward the > new solidarities. .... > The creative classes have so much affective and intellectual agency > that they/we could change the world tomorrow - if only it were > possible to desire that change today. Hi Brian, I hear you, I'm totally with you, and a good deal of my work is spent on that. Cultural critique can be effective, in the best of all worlds, in the face of a hegemonic project, that is, as a way of deconstructing and undermining the cultural consensus that makes the current form of dominance effective through the manipulation of desire rather through to the use of repressive force. But, I increasingly have my doubts. Are the current forms of power still based on cultural hegemony, that is, on the control of desire through "soft power"? Sure enough, to a certain degree they are, and for everyone who has been watching how the German media are dealing with the Syriza government (in lock-step with the German government) can see good old "ideological state apparatuses" at work. It's impressive. And, if that fails, like yesterday in Frankfurt, there is enough repressive power around to deal with it. However, it seems to me, that power is increasingly functioning through non-hegemonic forms, that is, it is no longer seeking some measure of consensus from those who are governed. I think it was the Finnish prime minister to said something like "we don't chance policy based on elections" which is just a somewhat more blunt way of saying that there is no alternative, whether you like it or not. Behind this is that power has taken on the form of "network power" (a notion suggested by David Singh Grewal). It operates through setting the conditions of interaction, without specifying what interaction is to take place. Of course, the conditions are biased towards favoring certain outcomes, but the main thing is that once they are set and people/firms/governments are interacting within these conditions, there is no need to enforce them. Since the alternative to abiding to the rules would be to end the interaction. And this, from the point of view of a dynamic, flexible system, aka the world today, unthinkable. Once the conditions are set, the network protocols established, there is no need to generate consensus anymore, since the choice is between existence under terms created by others and non-existence. This is why nobody in their right mind, or with any empathy left, advocates that Greece exits the Euro. Or, on a smaller scale, why even people who hate Facebook and everything it stands for, are still using Facebook. This makes cultural critique somewhat futile, or, at least, it needs to shift towards another plane. All the best. Felix - -- ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| http://felix.openflows.com |OPEN PGP: 056C E7D3 9B25 CAE1 336D 6D2F 0BBB 5B95 0C9F F2AC -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVCsGWAAoJEAu7W5UMn/KsDPkH/i0iJMsHNIfv0T+FoeUTTR62 a62o0KHT+Mz+OXTO0IQAL30YPqu2htUQlmTiS1UjH/T6+q6n5OtMVNvCjRqJ/kMu y18bqSGFNI609M/puxqnsG0A4iU2fGdnjEWVceOe7Q/spyAdGQ5xRu6yu4avAUJv 2gr3jMJiXcmZktGy4cU4EValxzJqDYLVS8nkn5H9zMRgpWRRAygK9o5oSbnYnfig rQbzUm7k4anYZT++rqsBJ3qvDD58uuZL/gOH8UwO6SPfmKrR3H9bM0OAGX0AU2sn oUr6QskPCAF2gKat4GCXT7Vi+g2ilH8yr/NwWOXkU9OwOYLRjI6h5uMuxyOgDLE= =YrS9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org
