Hello,
Thank you Brian for your latest post.
The issues you raise are certainly relevant these days; as they were in the
past. An unfortunate problem is that the ‘organised Left’, or its
half-organised versions, have used ‘culture’ and the voices of the ‘creative
class’ in mostly opportunistic ways. One might also say that many voices of the
creative class have used the Left opportunistically also. Perhaps these are
only my simple-minded observations and that more to the point is the way we
understand or envision “cultures of resistance”. On the one hand there is a
tendency to mystify forms of social consciousness that propel change and on the
other to place such consciousness in to the most dogmatic archaic categories…
What propels capitalism in all its variants, what seems to neutralise revolt,
is the propagation of various forms of false consciousness - the endless spam
of counter-intuitive logic that litters consumer societies. Ultimately, and via
various forms of negation, the pervasiveness of false consciousness seems to be
upended by a kind of re-awakening of a collective memory that shouts: “wait a
minute, there is another way.” We’ve seen that in the various movements that
have arisen since the most recent financial crisis but find countless examples
of this re-awakening throughout history. Now, to the point, what is disastrous
is to see processes of change simply in economic terms - as a revolt against
neoliberal values, social conditions - the shallow rhetoric of the Labour Party
in the UK is a great, pathetic, example of this. Cultures of resistance, voices
of change, a more expansive social horizon, do not appear, come into being, as
a product of some creative class but emanate from a more nuanced,
multi-dimensional social reality.
Just some brief comments on your post.
best
allan
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