AD603 Critical Theory

The Mosquera reading dealing with Eurocentricism in art caused a whole lot of churning of ideas in my mind, so I think I will focus on that one. There were many of very interesting points brought up, but one that I wanted to bring up (though I am sure it is being brought up by others) was the concept that the Eurocentric view point has a very specific set of expectations of non-Western artists, of which I think also accounts for many of the communication issues that exist between western and non-western cultures.

Mosquera states that the Eurocentric Western view point asks of non-Western artists, more specifically 3rd World artists, to “display their identity” and be fantastic. A higher price tag will then follow by adhering to such a request (more like demand). He states that this request doesn’t recognise that “they are living organisms which need to respond actively to the reality of their time”. He goes further to say that if we wish to fight the effects of post colonial Eurocentrism we can’t do it through nostalgia for “the mask and the pyramid” or work that is based on a traditional aesthetic that addressed a culture’s problem or concern that may no longer be relevant to that culture.

This struck me because it brought to mind a guest artist who had visited my undergraduate school a few years back. I very sadly do not recall his name, but his artists talk and work have stuck with me for quite some time. He was a young artist, probably early thirties, and he was a Native American who was raised on a reservation. He discussed how throughout his college studies and into his early teaching career so far, he always felt the pressure to be what most people consider a “traditional” Native American artist. So he was expected to do studies of he fellow tribesmen in “exotic” headdresses in mid ceremonial dance, or sitting atop a horse on a fast plain, or perhaps a piece addressing the dwindling population of buffalo. He stated that he couldn’t do such work because that was not something that he related to in his day-to-day cultural experience. Instead he created prints, for instance, depicting the canned food that was shipped from the us government to his reservation. It had a plain white label with bold flat letters stating what was supposed to be in it (I say supposed to because he said he later found out off the reservation what these foods taste like in a more natural form, and it was nothing like the processed flavorless goo he was fed). So he was addressing his cultural point of view through his contemporary experience, not nostalgia for what traditional aesthetics used to address.

He stated that with such work he often doesn’t sell near to the way more “traditional” Native American art does and he had to accept that or make work attempting to conform to such expectations from the Eurocentric art world. I suppose further making his point, when I tried to search for him tonight online I couldn’t find anything nearly resembling his work. When searched to see what were the most often bought copies of Native American art I wasn’t too surprised to see some of these…

Marianne Millar “Mon Shon”

Jack Sorenson “Winds of Change”

Now these might not be what many of us would consider contemporary fine art, but these two images apparently sell to the general public like hot cakes, and that makes me consider why people cling to such nostalgia and find that such a more enjoyable (or perhaps easier) art experience. The idea that the Eurocentric West prefers to have cultural groups adhere to what they see as their cultural ideal is certainly problematic in terms of addressing the current problems and concerns of any group of individuals and further distorts any possible understanding or communication between them.

Of the readings this week, Jameson’s “Postmodernism and Consumer Society” was of much interest and easy for me to get into. He laid down many compelling reasons for the Postmodernist break from Modernism, why it occurred at the time that it did and what differences become clear between the “groups”. The aspect of Postmodernist art that really captivated me and compelled further thought, was his claim that Postmodern artists have a sense that no new artistic styles or created worlds can be further invented since they all mostly have already been. He speaks of a sense that there are limited possible creative combinations and the most unique of them have already been thought of.

So, in a world where all unique innovations have already been claimed all that is left is to “imitate dead styles, to speak through the masks and with the voices of the styles in the imaginary museum”. Contemporary art will then be about art itself in a new way and its message is about the “necessary failure of art and the aesthetic, the failure of the new, the imprisonment of the past”.

This brings to mind a discussion I had with my best friend in my last semester of undergraduate studies. She has always been a champion of my work, her apartment walls having been decorated as though the place were a permanent exhibition of the collected works of Marianne Coyne. So the day that she said to me that, though she loves what I do and appreciates what art attempts to achieve, “It has all been done and we all know it; so what’s the point?”, I had no immediate stunningly brilliant answer. An all night discussion ensued (complete with multiple emptied bottles of wine).

We didn’t necessarily disagree with each other in all aspects of the discussion. It’s difficult to go through the gamut of art history courses, ranging in concepts from developments in creating form or expressing a window of the world aesthetic, all the way to completely dismantling form and questioning the window the world is seen through or the world itself; and not wonder what is left to explore (I do think there is more to be contemplated and expressed, but I won’t get into that part of the argument too much or this will be intensely long).

As artists we are also constantly being compared to what has been done and how we are calling to mind those references (be it on purpose or not) and what that then does to the piece as an individually created work. The question then often arises of what is really mine. What have I actually created and does that even matter? This then also calls to mind another aspect of Postmodern art Jameson discusses, which is the loss of the belief in the individual (which some see as having existed and then lost recently, and some see the individual as having been a myth from the onset) and that all ties in into this whole package of contemplation about art creation that is very relevant in our age (though I would argue not completely unique to it).

These readings gave me a great amount to think about, building further onto concerns that remain unanswered in a clear way for me. I like to believe I offer something to the creative table and that uniqueness is not really the point, but the question of the unique quality of that something (and of course the ultimate purpose of it) often draws my revived attention and will most likely continue to do so for a long time to come.

The link below is to a blog discussion about Robert Riley’s XR-3 bio diesel three wheeled new fandango vehicle. What interested me was the posts of similar designs that others respond with, going back as far as into the 70’s with an aptly used reference to the saying “There is no such thing as a new idea”. I know this is more of a design-based example, but I thought it still spoke to what Jameson was talking about.

http://www.qbn.com/topics/565191/

I found Foucault’s ideas to be very powerful in his ability to engage one to consider how we delineate spaces and the purposes and effects of doing so. The ways in which our created “spaces” possibly reflect on our values as a culture and our perspectives on what is needed to support a “society” are quite fascinating concepts and easy to pull up individual examples of while reading about.

One particular discussion Foucault brought up that was of great interest to me was that of the cultural space of a cemetery. I spent nearly every day of this last summer walking and jogging in a cemetery very near my home. I have spent countless hours considering my feelings of and assumptions about that space. My attitude toward it changed over time as I grew accustomed to it’s surroundings and shed any discomfort that may have initially lingered when I first began spending time in the space. Foucault’s writing offered some new considerations about that initial discomfort.

Foucault brought up the cemetery as a unique heterotopia in that it’s purpose and the cultural view of it has changed very drastically in Western culture, he states, due to a cultural shift from a more spiritually or religiously based society to a more “atheistic” one. He proposes that when a society feels more certain of the immortality of the soul and that there is an afterlife, cemeteries tend to be placed in the heart of the city as an acceptable and comfortable space to be in proximity with on a daily basis. More recently, in times in which perhaps Western society isn’t as concrete in their belief in an afterlife, the cemeteries have been placed towards the outskirts of town. So, with the uncertainty of a life after death greater fear of death develops, leading to the “obsession with death as an illness”, as though a cemetery being near ones home would bring death along with it to threaten the neighborhood. The space of the cemetery is then kept separate as an “other city”, which many of us are bound to be an eventual part of.

This brings me back to my first few journeys through the cemetery. I would walk very carefully on the center of the path, not coming near to the edge and certainly not stepping on the actual grass were I may (gasp) step on ground of which one’s remains is deep below my feet. I liked to think that I was just fearful of being disrespectful of those who rest there, but upon consideration I think there was definite want to stay away from the remains as though to be near death would mean it was more able to claim me. Over time I got over this, often stepping on the grass to set a fallen bunch of plastic flowers back in their stone vase or pick up random litter that blew in from the highway (as far as I know I am not closer to death for it).

Another interesting aspect of my cemetery visits was that when I ran across a grave stone that had warn away with time so that the text was unreadable, or the stone had fallen to the ground and was now being enveloped by the foliage and I would be horribly saddened by that. I found the idea of this last mark of ones life being nearly lost to be more final than death itself. As though to not have any remaining claim to this world is the ultimate in devastating finality. This brings me to think of what Foucault said about the change in the societal values and the affect that has on heterotopian space. I personally can’t say that I don’t believe in any afterlife, but I often think that may just be due to fear that I can’t handle the idea of an end, so is this indeed an implication of the results of that belief or lack there of? If I truly thought that an amazing life (even way better than this one) was a definite (assuming I am a very good girl) wouldn’t I find these markers to be a positive announcement that this person has gone on to bigger and much better things? I find that to be a fairly plausible explanation and one of which expands the possibilities of how I have come to rationalize and feel about spaces.

After all of this reminiscing about my time in my neighborhood cemetery, I wanted to post pictures of that space, but I never thought to take pictures of it. I do indeed have pictures I took from back home in WI of a very well kept cemetery, which again is very far out from town. From my vantage point in these images I am clearly doing my best to keep a safe distance from death as well.

I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy reading Lacan this time around, in comparison to my previous attempts. Perhaps this was mainly due to the readings focusing on getting to know Lacan’s background and biography a bit and then, for the most part, focusing on just one of his main concepts, that of the “Mirror Stage”. My previous reading of his work perhaps took on too much of his ideas at once leaving me with little fully understood. Here having the opportunity to focus on one gave me a chance to really sink into the ideas behind it.

In my previous post-Freudian research I had often been mostly concerned with the way in which a person, more specifically a child, becomes aware of and begin to define and categorize others in there immediate surroundings, if not also the surroundings of the world beyond themselves. Beyond the establishing and understanding of the other, I had then been fascinated with the ways in which a child develops a concept of how to interact with others or the idea of relationships (which I then like to believe they practice these interactions through play and toys).

With my introduction to Lacan’s “Mirror Stage” I was faced with the question of how one first creates a concept of the self (and develops the ego) before or along with the concept of the other. The idea that we are a fragmented bundle of bits and pieces of ourselves until we are able to establish an illusion of wholeness or completeness through the whole reflected image of ones self is one that, as a very visually dependent individual, I feel I can get on board with quite easily.

I have a seemingly long visual memory going back to as far as a memory or two in which I can not yet talk. Mostly what I tend to remember is a visual sense of myself looking out of the window that are my eyes and feeling a bombardment of fragmented senses that don’t seem to make all that much sense being that I don’t recall having a sense of my entire body or how it related to outside stimuli and perhaps Lacan would argue of my entire self. Perhaps once I was faced with my mirror image I was given a larger scope of my physical being and therefore the oneness (even if it was an illusion) that would give me a sense of the conscious “I” that I seemed to have lacked in that faint memory.

Thinking about the impact of the mirror image, be it a literal mirror or reflective surface, or the mirror of others perception of ourselves (which one may argue we can never understand fully), it is also easy to think about different ways in which these images affect us not just from the ages of 6 to 18 months, but through out the rest of our lives. I am sure I am not alone in having literally compared myself in the mirror at about age 8 to the barrage of female images I was introduced to on a daily basis by some form of media, or within direct interaction, and wondering about the separation between what I saw before me and what I either wanted to see or imagined myself as being. The “self-image” is an idea that is just so loaded with implications and importance; I find it hard to even organize all that comes to mind in regards to it.

So, that all being said, I now look forward to more reading of Lacan instead of near terror at the effects (like spinning head syndrome) I had previously had from his work.

Here are some links to a few of the many videos one can find on the internet of children interacting with their mirror image for the first time. I watched quite a few and must say that I was surprised by how many where absolutely thrilled and pleased to see themselves. Most of them kiss themselves quite a few times and laugh uncontrollably:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7Box3Yp1Yk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_APBem23Fnc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elilm2iGzCs

In contrast (and perhaps for a bit of adorable entertainment) here is a kitten faced with himself in the mirror. He is far more aggressive and mistrusting of the creature he sees before him, oh and he is fabulously able to fit in a shoe quiet nicely, so that is just great. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FnUTQMJVXI

For the previous year or so I have been sifting (at time trudging) through some Post-Freudian psychoanalyst texts by theorists such as D.W. Winnicott, Melanie Klien and a bit of Jacques Lacan. I am strongly interested in their work due to my attempt to develop a content about the psychology behind (and perhaps within) play and toys in my own work. Having not focused directly on the basics of Freudian theory in a long while, revisiting the concepts that the Post-Freudians has used as a jumping point for their own research (be it in agreement with and expanding of or at times contrasting those theories, such as is found with Lacan) was probably a very good idea.

In this revisit and expansion of Freudian concepts, I found myself often considering the similarities to and differences between his work and that of the next generation of psychoanalysts that followed him (well, at least house that I am so far aware of). One obvious aspect of difference between them was that Freud felt that children couldn’t be psychoanalyzed, because their ego has yet to be fully developed. Klein (who worked nearly exclusively with children) felt there was much that could be learned from children which often paralleled that of which could be learned form adults and/or at times that which is inaccessible in psychoanalysis of adults. For instance she often saw similarities in the coping strategies found in children’s play (as a defense against paranoid and defensive anxiety) to that seen in psychotic symptoms that can develop as coping strategies in adulthood. She not only thought child psychoanalysis was as fruitful as adult psychoanalysis, she believed there where aspects of the human psyche that could be glimpsed into with children that could no longer been seen after the repressive defense of the Ego fully sets in.

“One of the many interesting and surprising experiences of the beginner in child analysis is to find in even very young children a capacity for insight which is often far greater than that of adults.” (Klien, The Psychoanalytic Play Technique: Its History and Significance, 1955)

Winnicott also worked with children, having first been a pediatrician and applying that experience toward building his theories. He developed further theories in regards to the relationship of a child specifically to his/her mother both in pre-oedipal and post-oedipal stages and her impact on the child’s development (idea of the “good enough mother”: there is no such thing as a good mother, only good enough) and the objects she allows him/her to replace her with (Melanie Klien championed a similar theory called “Object Relations” that Winnicott borrowed from). But, I am perhaps getting way too carried away here with talking about those who worked after Freud than Freud himself.

For me these readings are of interest because without his breakthroughs of the concepts of conscious, preconscious, unconscious and ego, superego, and id, etc. Post-Freudian theory wouldn’t exist as it does. Insight into the development of child to adult play and imagination, which directly affect the content of my work, needed the Freudian jumping point of which to expand upon and at times perhaps defy. That being said, the readings really just caused me to want to dive that much deeper into the Klien and Winnicott books (and perhaps a bit of Lacan, though he does cause my head to explode multiple times while reading) that are sitting ever so close to me across my desk right now (sort of like watching a prequel film, that may in itself be fairly good, but you know you love the next movie so you sorta just want to watch that instead).

I suppose since I have basically just talked about Klein and Winnicott I will post a short little video that very basically goes over some of Winnicott’s work with the Transitional Object theory and how he related that to art (realizing now that I didn’t talk about art at all, which is very important to Winnicott, but as it is, I seem to never be able to keep these posts sort, so here we go):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jxPiGr0h4E

Going into this weeks reading, my concept of the term spectacle had been that it was a thing or action that draws attention from others to itself either for the sake of attention alone, or by an unfortunate accident that would create embarrassment or ridicule. As we had been warned prior to reading, I had to somewhat stretch my idea of spectacle to absorb (or attempt to) Debord’s short, but loaded writing.

As I read it, Debord states that spectacle is like a film screen constantly in front of the masses displaying a false reality in which multiple layers of the commodity are portrayed as not just being a part of reality, but the reality (or at the least the desired reality). This spectacle, or smoke screen commodity based reality, is constructed and maintained to regulate the existence of “society’s entire sold labour (which) has become a total commodity” in itself. He goes further to describe spectacle as the expression of commodity as materialized illusion. Spectacle creates an upside-down world were money can only be looked at, instead of exchanged for needs-based commodities. Spectacle is a consciousness of desire and in such is “a pseudo use of life”.

So the proletariat, as working labor, is retained by being duped into the belief that exchange value commodity is a necessity (as opposed to use-value commodity) in the reality being falsely depicted. This then has the proletariat buying into the commodities that keep them under the thumb of the bourgeoisie and expanding their own poverty, of which is that much more difficult to then escape (since they are buying into this spectacle of desire).

After reading (and re-reading, if I am being completely honest) the text I have to say I may have taken more from this reading than the previous, so far. I found his bluntly (though not to say simply) composed statements to be failry direct and very easily applicable to my surrounding current “reality”. I found it therefore moving to hear this reality being claimed to be what it is and yet disheartening by how deeply intertwined our lives are within the spectacle of what many think is the necessary way to live.

I am, at times, guilty of a certain exhilaration at purchasing products and a feeling that I am lifted of restraints in some way when I am able to feel as though I can buy whatever I want (definitely want and not need… buying what you need is just boring right?), as though the ability to purchase useless but “valuable” things is the ultimate freedom. Just this past summer I went from having to pinch every penny just to eat decent food and pay the rent due to low summer funds and a near lack of income; but the moment I was comfortable again (definitely comfortable and not wealthy, so I could and will most likely return to the previous state again next summer) I found myself jumping at the chance to purchase entertainment and not so needs-based things even though I know I will most likely need those funds more desperately again. So even to a conscious extent I feed into this cycle.  Establishing that we live in a commodity driven reality is not a shocking statement, but the establishment of how such a reality is made and maintained was new to me and hopefully will help me (at least at an individual level) to further pull away from the draw of the spectacle that I had already suspected.

I hate to keep returning to youtube, but man are there some fascinating things to be found. The link I am posting is called “Poetry of the Spectacle” posted by user OttOmOlOtOv and it is a poem formed of the messages the spectacle is portraying to establish and maintain the commodity culture. (The poem actually ends at 1:47 and the rest is a visual representation of spectacle slowly dying “a dramatic death of Lettristic convulsions”, but I think the poem is point enough so feel free to stop at that point.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39D5ejn7C5w

Okay, this week, in particular, summarizing and keeping this short could oh so easily be a problem, so I am not going to go over every point of interest in the entirety of the readings.

My first reaction to the whole of Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media” is in regards to his way of declaring a concept and coming to a point within it. I felt it started fairly clear, describing the emergence of different means of reproducibility and those means that took over after the next (lithography, photo, film, sound film) and I was with him in stating the consideration of the effects that art reproduction and film (as the latest of the progression of technological reproduction) have on traditional art forms is important to explore.

From here on out, for me, his conclusions upon the concepts he begins to draw are often unclear and portions of the essay seem to be more of a stream of thoughts that don’t conclude clearly. It’s not so much that he contradicts himself as I am always waiting for the final punch line, so to speak.

He discusses that reproduction of art work meeting the audience half way, so it is accessible to a multitude of people that would otherwise not be able to interact with the art at all, which as a printmaker, has always been a large concern of mine. But he also states that the authority of the an art work and the “weight it derives from tradition” is put in peril by reproduction; which I read as a negative in his writing. I grasp that the original, in it’s place of originated intent and the “reality” of its media is only most “true” when observed in person… but the meeting “the recipient halfway” wins out for me in the sense that it can not be experienced in any means at all for a vast majority in it’s original form. This of course brings up questions of the artists original intent of it’s viewing and the diminishing of the quality of a piece when shifted in scale or color. To these questions I can’t give a blanketed good or bad to the whole idea of reproduction, and perhaps that is a bit of why Benjamin doesn’t seem to in the writing either (well at least, as I read it).

As a film lover (as it was the first “art form” to be introduced to me early on and often) I was more than a bit… let’s say surprised by some of the things Benjamin had to say about the act of creating a film and the role the actor plays in this art form. Such statements as “The Film is… the artwork most capable of improvement. And this capability is linked to it’s radical renunciation of eternal values.” gave me a whole lot to chew on. It’s true that once an ancient Greek sculpture was created, it didn’t necessarily lend well to adjustment or improvement, as a film can; but I suppose I always thought the fact that the Greeks continued to create more and more sculpture working further toward bettering their ability to depict their “eternal values” was in itself a form of improvement (even if not so changeable in one piece, there where shifts from one piece to the next). So, I didn’t find his example of contrast between film and Greek sculpture to be as clear as it was to him.

Introducing the idea of the actor as a parallel to the sportsman in that their performances were “test performances” was quite an interesting concept that I most certainly never came close to considering before. He lays out the idea that the actor is fighting to retain his humanity in front of the technological apparatus and the audience is there to observe his struggle. I am split in regards to considering this due to having acted (if you can call it that) in a few college films, as well as on stage. I can relate to the feeling of struggle with each take in front of a camera, in contrast to the absorption of what he calls the “aura” as one assumes a role for an entire tale from beginning to end in front of an audience (no chance for improvement until the next performance). But for me the struggle, in front of the camera, was more so to harness being in that “aura” on demand, off and on and yet returning to myself between those takes; which I found far more jarring than leaving the stage at end of a act to return later and re-assume the “aura” of the character. I understand what he is driving at, but I still want to buck against the idea that the film actor is less of an artist or part of creating an art, because the struggles inherent in the creation of a film are different from that of stage.

Well this has gone on too long and I didn’t even get into the whole concept that the audience is a “quasi-expert”, maybe we will talk about that in class and I can chime in then. The clip I want to add today is of a group of people attempting to orchestrate a film scene (unfortunately the clip has very little information of who was making it or what the film even is, so I have no real note of authorship other than the youtube user who posted it, Unclechikenguy). This clearly isn’t a major studio production, but I think one can only imagine how many more voices and “experts” would chime in from one scene to the next if it was. This relates to another parallel Benjamin draws between sports and film: “the intervention in a performance by a body of experts”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAsjE1mW3-w

I was pleasantly surprised to have enjoyed this weeks readings as much as I had. I suppose from the the beginning I was just glad to be discussing art so directly, but particularly the second reading on the culture industry had me contemplating things that we face in our everyday life so often that it was hard not to be interested and find my own examples of what he was discussing. But not to jump the gun, how about a bit of Aesthetic Theory first?

This reading I felt was a good introduction to Adorno’s perspective on art and his reactions to other theories in regards to art (specifically Kant and Freud). He assessed art as being both beyond and of this world. Claiming freedom from reality while being chained to it at the same time. He also claimed art to be a reflection of it’s time or reaction to and is more than an aesthetic creation. He argues the importance of the life of the art in that it can speak what nature and humans can’t, instead of the creation of the art being important. This last statement, in particular, I find to be very true. It is through art that I often try to communicate the things that I can’t put easily to words, if at all (partially why I at times find it difficult to discuss my work).

With these aspects of Adorno’s point of view in mind, I jumped pleasantly to the second reading. Very early on in this work I was interested in the subject. He introduces the term “culture industry” as having been created by Horkheimer and himself, as a means of describing what many may now refer to as pop cultural products, or standardized cultural products. Due to the heavily “pop culture” obsessed society I live in, I would find it difficult not to relate to and think of many examples of the culture industry products of which he spoke.

He wrote of the culture industry creating products for mass profit value, not as a value of content. It sells “sameness” in a new way. Culture industry technique differs from art technique in that art is concerned with the “inner logic” of the art object, where the culture industry is “one of distribution and mechanical reproduction”. It’s concern is mass distribution and consumption (with the result being capital profit) instead of concern for the content or result of the object created.

The culture industry products he described of his time all exist in some form (if not nearly the same form) today: “pocket novels, films off the rack, family television shows… advice to the love lorn and horoscope columns”. Perhaps making their distribution that much more potent is the easy accessibility of such materials today, particularly with the Internet. You can get access to any of these same products nearly instantly and in massive amounts at any time.

He argues that said products offer only a picture of a world with flat problems with uselessly uncomplicated solutions. The advice or wisdom offered by such products is “vacuous, banal or worse and the behavior patterns are shamelessly conformist”. He goes further to state that the public is indeed aware of the blandness, but begin to develop a sense of dread at the thought of how boring their lives would be without such products of which they have been prescribed to enjoy. This reminds me of how panicked I got when I first decided I couldn’t afford cable TV anymore. I had grown up with it all my life and after 22 years, I really thought I would go crazy without such “enjoyment” in my life, though I was aware of how much it sucked my time away uselessly (”desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them”).

Adorno concludes that the effects of the culture industry are to replace consciousness with conformity. Though I have to state that I do believe there are TV programs, films (especially films) and fiction novels that don’t fit this description; I can recall times I physically felt dumber from spending a full day with the tv or watching a Steven Seagal movie or reading Danielle Steel (okay I have never don’t the last one, but I imagine the effects to be the same), so that brings many questions to mind. Why in the world have I participated in the consumption of such products? I think for myself, I have participated in such to “relax” or not have to think for a time, but should that be a goal? Should I allow myself to “not think” and what effect does that have on me to do so? Is it just a conscious version of taking a nap, or does it rob us of more than sleeping would? I don’t claim to have answers, but I think the consideration is important and may have serious implications both on our society and our decisions as individuals.

I haven’t watched family sitcoms in a long while, so my example of banal tv is a bit old. While reading this last article, episodes of “Full House” kept popping into my brain in which the kids would get into some shenanigans and it would all be wrapped up with Daddy Tanner telling them the most moot useless of reasons behind a kind of moral. I think even as a kid I felt my brain turning to squishy moosh as I watched and I recall hating it and yet watching probably every episode at least once. So here is a clip of from Full House, which was an ABC comedy that ran from 1987-1995 . Let’s find out why too much of anything is a bad thing and why we should be ourselves, que the sappy music…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZuVvpdTu1s

As I sad down to read the first weeks assigned texts, I will admit, sadly, that my understanding of Marxism was very limited and flat. Knowing mainly that Marx was against the inequities of Capitalism and for what he saw as the equality of Socialism, I had little knowledge of the details of the Marxist argument and of how deeply our society reflects that which he greatly detested.

Going into Rius’ text “Marx for Beginners”, I was quickly interested in much of the arguments and did appreciate the use of illustrations and reiterating comments along with sections of primary text to keep the ease of absorption and understanding high. Having worked half a decade in a large corporate office for a massive national company, I could only too easily relate to the position of the proletariat as the seller of its own labor force at best only keeping a float economically to survive, while the Boss-man (bourgeoisie) seems gleefully free from the 8 hours of grueling monotonous work and at the same token blessedly free from economic worry and floating effortlessly above water (perhaps on the backs of those struggling to breath?).

Rius goes on to lay out how the current Capitalist system has developed by discussing the history of modes of production (Primitive Community, Slave State, Feudal State, Capitalist  System) and by expanding on Communism as defined by Marx and Hegel and it’s goals; then explained why the Socialist System was to Marx the inevitable next historical step or mode of production. He claimed this change in the modes of production to be inevitable and men are in control of it and could only achieve it through unity and it must lead to socialism.  Such a statement as change toward social justice being inevitable struck me as being my first major disagreement. Too many historical occurrences that would and have stopped such change in exchange for furthering the woos of many make such positive change seem less than inevitable, but the second reading addresses such, so on to that.

Seeming to grasp a much better basic knowledge of what Marx was after, “Introduction to Critical Theory” by Held, greatly benefited from that base information. This reading established an introduction definition of Critical Theory as a method and a known group of theorists regarded as in the Critical Theory camp. These theorists held similar concerns and some similar conclusions to Marx’s views, but due to their contemporary context (post WWI era through WWII), they questioned some of Marx’s fundamentals, particularly that socialism was an inevitable next step in history. “In changing historical circumstances how could the revolutionary ideal be justified?” To answer, Held goes on to discuss the works of Lukacs and Korsh, of whom held that examination of the origins and context of Marx’s thought was needed to reconstruct Marxist theory, as was now needed. This method of examining and researching the context and influences of Marx was used by Critical theorist there after as a way of reconstructing Marxism to apply to contemporary situations. This need of consideration of a specific social context in regards to reconstructing a solution made much more sense to me than stating social change as inevitable and making the role of man seem secondary to the path of history.

Held goes on to further define Critical Theory by addressing misconceptions and the basis of their conception and reason for falsehood. One such criticism is that Critical Theory doesn’t offer solution to practical political questions. They in fact didn’t develop a set of clear political demands, because the “process of liberation entails a process of self-emancipation and self creation”. He reiterated that they felt the relationship of theory and practice is ever changing and will continue to do so due to being within the context of a world that is also always changing.

The last text was written by one of the Critical Theorists Held had mentioned, Max Horkheimer, entitled “Critical Theory”. In this text Horkheimer further clarifies the specific and important role of Critical Theory, in contrast with such approaches as specialized sciences. He states that Critical Theory aims to not only hypothesize through research, but to ultimately free modern man from his contemporary form of slavery. He states that only through dialectic thought can decisive action occur. He also explains why Critical Theory has been so dominantly concerned with economy (which I had questioned myself), since the current social condition is so driven and controlled by economy so must its solution be found within economic change.

In an attempt at a short conclusion, I took from the readings an understanding that Marx was important in defining a social situation and struggle in a means that would call to action a desire for change (though didn’t agree exactly with his conclusion of how change was to occur and perhaps what the change was), Critical Theory attempts to address Marx’s arguments in terms of his own social context to then reconstruct it to further understand the social needs of current masses, and the goal of the change Critical theory strives for the happiness of all men through the realization (through research and dialectic though) of their potential (both of good and bad).

Here is a link to the “The Communist Internationale”, which written in the late 19th century in France, and has often been used as an anthem for socialist and communist struggles globally in a multitude of different languages:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suVB3YGIUk0