Re: To Snob or Not to Snob

[Ralph Dumain <rdumain@xxxxxxx>]

There are some points I understand, and others that are a distant buzz in
my ears.  What I do understand I'm skeptical about; what I don't, I'm
helpless in the face of.

At 02:26 PM 6/1/99 PDT, ken wrote:
>It seems to me that the points scored against European
>snobbery in the Frankfurt School comes at the expense of the
>theoretical insight which quite openly prohibits such
>snobbery.

In theory (smile).

>The real target of criticism in Horkheimer and
>Adorno is brutal economic efficiency, in the form of a return to
>nature (as myth).

If you say so.

>In this respect, H/A are quite aware that
>epistemological limitation is the positive condition of radical
>contingency.

This sentence flies right over my head.

>What is more important for a critical analysis of
>culture then, in this respect, is the way in which culture is
>reproduced in accord with some Law-like structure (knowledge
>for the sake of knowledge alone, progress for the sake of
>progress, profit for the sake of profit).

I don't believe culture is reproduced solely in this way at all.  I do
think most of the contemporary Cultural Studies infatuation with the
"resistance" and "utopian" characteristics of popular culture is BS, esp.
since opposition has itself been sublated into the dominant culture
industry over the past quarter century.  "Commodify your dissent!" as THE
BAFFLER says.  However, a large part of my historical argument is to deny
the most extreme implications of this allegedly law-like reproduction.

>This rather Kantian
>imperative (You can because you must!) is, in Freudian terms,
>a manifestation of the death drive -  the attempt by cultural
>forms, institutions, and subjective ego formations, to realize
>themselves through an Other (nature, myth, nation).  The
>identification with the Law then, as an fidelity unto death
>(mimesis unto death) is a forfeit of subjectivity and a betrayal
>of the idealist insights regarding freedom since subjectivity
>itself is 'handed over' and placed in the service, as an
>instrument, of otherness.

I don't know what the hell you are talking about, and I don't believe it
either.  Now if you were talking in plausible terms about the absoluteness
of the ideological contours of certain mass media products and the
repression of critical thinking, I would understand you.  I've been
watching soap operas lately, and the repression of "subjectivity" they
enforce is damn absolute.  But the Freudian death-instinct?  I think that's
bogus, man.

>What H/A are attempting to accomplish then, is a
>kind of critical reistance to well greased economic machinery.
>Their thoughts on culture only make sense in this light - as
>the attempt to think the imperatives of culture against
>themselves.

Why am I so skeptical of such a perspective?

>Theoretically, what is forbidden in H/A then is
>precisely the snobbery that is being discussed - a prohibition
>of "going all the way."

Meaning what?  I want to know if my suspicions are on target or not.

>In other words - what, in theory, a
>critical theory seeks to negate is the affirmative moment of
>culture (a fidelity to the law).

Affirmative culture?  Do I have this buried with my Marcuse books?  Again,
why am I so skeptical of this mandatory negation of affirmative culture?
Apparently, culture itself would have to obey an imperative of negativity,
or it would automatically be part of the system to be opposed.  I don't
believe this.  In reference to music, I think it's utterly ridiculous.  One
would have to be at a complete dead-end to resort to this, and at that
point, why not just slit your wrists instead?

>So relying on 'old-world'
>sensibilities, which was often the case, is inconsistent with
>their theoretical intention.

Excellent point!