-Caveat Lector-
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Reflections on the politics of culture. by Michael Parenti
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the academic social sciences, students are taught to think of culture as
representing the customs and mores of a society, including its language, art,
laws, and religion. Such a definition has a nice neutral sound to it, but
culture is anything but neutral. Much of what is thought to be our common
culture is the selective transmission of class-dominated values. Antonio
Gramsci understood this when he spoke of class hegemony, noting that the state
is only the "outer ditch behind which there [stands] a powerful system of
fortresses and earthworks," a network of cultural values and institutions not
normally thought of aS political.(1) What we call "our culture" is largely
reflective of existing hegemonic arrangements within the social order,
strongly favoring some interests over others.
A society built upon slave labor, for instance, swiftly develops a racist
culture, replete with its own peculiar laws, science, and mythology, along
with mechanisms of repression directed against both slaves and the critics of
slavery. After slavery is abolished, racism continues to fortify the
inequitable social relations - which is what Engels meant when he said that
slavery leaves its "poisonous sting" long after it passes into history.
Culture, then, is not an abstract force that floats around in space and
settles upon us - though given the seemingly subliminal ways it influences us,
it can feel like a disembodied, ubiquitous entity. In fact, culture is
mediated through a social structure. We get our culture from a network of
social relations involving other people: primary groups such as family, peers,
and other informal associations within the community or, as is increasingly
the case, from more formally articulated and legally chartered institutions
such as schools, media, churches, government agencies, corporations, and the
military.
Linked by purchase and persuasion to dominant ruling-class interests, such
social institutions are regularly misrepresented as politically neutral,
especially by those who occupy command positions within them or are otherwise
advantaged by them. What Gramsci said about the military might apply to most
other institutions in capitalist society: their "so-called neutrality only
means support for the reactionary side."(2)
The Slippery Slope of Cultural Relativism
When culture is treated as nothing more than an innocent accretion of
solutions and practices, and each culture is seen as something inviolate, then
all cultures are accepted at face value and cultural relativism is the
suggested standard. So we hear that we should avoid ethnocentrism and respect
other cultures. To be sure, after centuries in which indigenous cultures have
been trampled underfoot by colonizers, we need to be acutely aware of the
baneful effects of cultural imperialism and of the oppressive intolerance
manifested toward diverse ethnic cultures within our own society.
But the struggle to preserve cultural diversity should not give carte
blanche to anyone in any society to violate basic human rights. Many
patriarchal cultures, for example, are replete with "sacrosanct customs" that,
on closer examination, promote the worst kinds of gender victimization,
including the mutilation of female children through clitorectomy and
infibulation, and the sale of young girls into sexual slavery. I once heard an
official from Saudi Arabia demand that Westerners show respect for his
culture: he was addressing critics who denounced the Saudi practice of stoning
women to death on charges of adultery. He failed to mention that there were
people within his own culture - including, of course, the female victims - who
were not enamored of such time-honored traditions.
For most of U.S. history, slaveholders and then segregationists insisted
that we respect the South's "way of life." In Nazi Germany, anti-Semitism was
an integral part of the ongoing political culture. Many evildoers might rally
under the banner of cultural relativism. The truth is, as we struggle for
human betterment, we must challenge the oppressive and destructive features of
all cultures, including our own.
In academic circles, postmodernist theorists offer their own variety of
cultural relativism. They reject the idea that human perceptions can transcend
culture. For them, all kinds of knowledge are little more than social
constructs. Evaluating any culture from a platform of fixed and final truths,
they say, is a dangerous project that often contains the seeds of more extreme
forms of domination. In response, I would argue that, even if there are no
absolute truths, this does not mean all consciousness is hopelessly
culture-bound. People from widely different societies and different periods in
history can still recognize forms of class, ethnic, and gender oppression in
various cultures across time and space. Though culture permeates all our
perceptions, it is not the totality of human experience.
At the heart of postmodernism's cultural relativism is an old-fashioned
anti-Marxism, an unswerving ideological acceptance of existing bourgeois
domination. Some postmodernists depict themselves as occupying "positions of
marginality," taking lonely and heroic stands against hoards of doctrinaire
hardliners who supposedly overpopulate the nation's campuses. So the
postmodernists are able to enjoy the appearance of independent critical
thought without ever saying anything that might jeopardize their academic
careers.
The Limits of Culturalistic Explanations
Taught to think of culture as an age-old accretion of practice and
tradition, we mistakenly conclude that it is not easily modified. In fact, as
social conditions and interests change, much (but certainly not all) of
culture proves mutable. For almost four hundred years, the wealthy elites of
Central America were devoutly Roman Catholic, a religious affiliation that was
supposedly deeply ingrained in their culture. Then, in the late 1970s, after
many Catholic clergy proved friendly to liberation theology, these same elites
discarded their Catholicism and joined Protestant fundamentalist denominations
that espoused a more comfortably reactionary line. Their four centuries of
"deeply ingrained Catholic culture" were discarded within a few years once
they deemed their class interests to be at stake.
Generally, whenever anyone offers culturalistic explanations for social
phenomena, we should be skeptical. For one thing, culturalistic explanations
of third-world social conditions tend to be patronizing and ethnocentric. I
heard someone explain the poor performance of the Mexican army, in the storm
rescue operations in Acapulco in October 1997, as emblematic of a
lackadaisical Mexican way of handling things: It's in their culture, you see;
everything is manana manana with those people. In fact, poor rescue responses
have been repeatedly evidenced in the United States and numerous other
countries. And more to the point, the Mexican army, financed and advised by
the U.S. national security state, has performed brilliantly in Chiapas, doing
the thing it was trained to do, which is not rescuing people but intimidating
and killing them, waging low-intensity warfare, systematically occupying
lands, burning crops, destroying villages, executing suspected guerrilla
sympathizers, and tightening the noose around the Zapatista social base. To
say the Mexican army performed poorly in rescue operations is to presume that
the army is there to serve the people rather than to control them on behalf of
those who own Mexico. Culturalistic explanations divorced of
political-economic realities readily lend themselves to such obfuscation.
The Commodification of Culture
As the capitalist economy has grown in influence and power, much of our
culture has been expropriated and commodified. Its use value increasingly
takes second place to its exchange value. Nowadays we create less of our
culture and buy more of it, until it really is no longer our culture. We now
have a special term for segments of culture that remain rooted in popular
practice: we call it "folk culture," which includes folk music, folk dance,
folk medicine, and folk mythology. These are curious terms, when you think
about it, since by definition all culture should be folk culture. That is, all
culture arises from the social practices of us folks. But primary-group folk
creation has become so limited as to be accorded a distinctive label.
A far greater part of our culture is now aptly designated as "mass culture,"
"popular culture," and even "media culture," owned and operated mostly by
giant corporations whose major concern is to accumulate wealth and make the
world safe for their owners, the goal being exchange value rather than use
value, social control rather than social creativity. Much of mass culture is
organized to distract us from thinking too much about larger realities. The
fluff and puffery of entertainment culture crowds out more urgent and
nourishing things. By constantly appealing to the lowest common denominator, a
sensationalist popular culture lowers the common denominator still further.
Public tastes become still more attuned to cultural junk food, the big hype,
the trashy, flashy, wildly violent, instantly stimulating, and desperately
superficial offerings.
Such fare often has real ideological content. Even if supposedly apolitical
in its intent, entertainment culture (which is really the entertainment
industry) is political in its impact, propagating images and values that are
often downright sexist, racist, consumerist, authoritarian, militaristic, and
imperialist.(3)
With the ascendancy of mass culture we see a loss of people's culture. From
the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, a discernible
working-class culture existed, with its union halls, songs, poetry,
literature, theater, night schools, summer camps, and mutual assistance
societies, many of which were organized by anarchists, socialists, and
communists, and their various front groups. But not much of this culture could
survive the twin blows of McCarthyism and television, both of which came upon
us at about the same time.
The commodification of culture can be seen quite starkly in the decline of
children's culture. In my youth, I and my companions were out on the streets
of New York playing games of childhood's creation without adult supervision:
ringalevio, kick-the-can, hide-and-seek, tag, Johnny-on-the-pony, stickball,
stoopball, handball, and boxball. Today, one sees little evidence of
children's culture in most U.S. communities. The same seems to have happened
in other countries. Martin Large notes that in England, in the parks and
streets that once were "bubbling with children playing," few youngsters are
now to be seen participating in the old games. Where have they all gone? The
television "has taken many of our children away" from their hobbies and street
games.(4)
This process, whereby a profit-driven mass culture preempts people's
culture, is extending all over the world, as third-world critics of cultural
imperialism repeatedly remind us.
Limited Accommodations
There are two myths I would like to put to rest: first, the notion that
culture is to be treated as mutually exclusive of, and even competitive with,
political economy. A friend of mine who edits a socialist journal once
commented to me: "You emphasize economics. I deal more with culture." I
thought this an odd dichotomization since my work on the news media, the
entertainment industry, social institutions, and political mythology has been
deeply involved with both culture and economics. In fact, I doubt one can talk
intelligently about culture if one does not at some point also introduce the
dynamics of political economy. This is why, when I refer to the "politics of
culture," I mean something more than just the latest controversy regarding
federal funding of the arts.
The other myth is that our social institutions are autonomous entities, not
linked to each other. In fact, they are interlocked by corporate law, public
and private funding, and overlapping corporate elites who serve on the
governing boards of universities, colleges, private schools, museums, symphony
orchestras, the music industry, libraries, churches, newspapers, magazines,
radio and TV networks, publishing houses, and charitable foundations.
New cultural formations arise from time to time, usually within a limited
framework that does not challenge dominant class arrangements. So we have
struggles around feminism, ethnic equality, gay rights, family values, and the
like - all of which can involve important, life-and-death issues. And if
pursued as purely lifestyle issues, they can win occasional exposure in the
mainstream media. Generally, however, the higher circles instinctively resist
any pressure toward social equalization, even in the realm of "identity
politics." Furthermore, they use lifestyle issues such as gay rights and
abortion rights, among others, as convenient targets against which to
misdirect otherwise legitimate mass grievances.
The victories won by "identity politics" usually are limited to changes in
procedure and personnel, leaving institutional class interests largely intact.
For instance, feminists have challenged patriarchal militarism, but the
resulting concession is not an end to militarism but women in the armed
forces.
Eventually we get female political leaders, but of what stripe? We get Lynn
Cheney, Elizabeth Dole, Margaret Thatcher and - just when some of us were
recovering from Jeane Kirkpatrick - Madeleine Albright. It is no accident that
this type of woman is most likely to reach the top of the present
politico-economic structure. While indifferent or even hostile to the feminist
movement, conservative females reap some of its benefits.
Professions offer another example of the false autonomy of cultural
practices. Whether composed of anthropologists, political scientists,
physicists, doctors, lawyers, or librarians, professional associations
emphasize their commitment to independent expertise, and deny that they are
wedded to the dominant politico-economic social structure. In fact, many of
their most important activities are directly regulated by corporate interests
or take place in a social context that is less and less of their own making,
as doctors and nurses are discovering in their dealings with HMOs.
Supply Creates Demand
We are taught that the "free market of ideas and images," as it exists in
mass culture today, is a response to popular tastes. Media culture gives the
people what they want. Demand creates supply. This is a very
democratic-sounding notion. But quite often it is the other way around: supply
creates demand. Thus, the supply system to a library can be heavily prefigured
by all sorts of things other than readers' preferences. Discussions of
censorship usually focus on limited controversies, as when some people agitate
to have this or that "offensive" book removed from the shelves. Such incidents
leave the impression that the library is struggling to maintain itself as a
free and open system. Overlooked is the prestructured selectivity, the
censorship that occurs even before anyone gets a chance to see what books are
on the shelves, a censorship imposed by a book market dominated by six or
seven conglomerates. There is a difference between incidental censorship and
systemic censorship. Mainstream pundits sedulously avoid discussion of the
latter.
Systemic repression exists in other areas of cultural endeavor. Consider the
censorship controversies in regard to art. These focus on whether a particular
painting or photograph, sporting some naughty, thing like frontal nudity,
should be publicly funded and shown to consenting adults. But there is a
systemic suppression as well. The image we have of the artist as an
independent purveyor of creative culture can be as misleading as the image we
have of other professionals. What is referred to as the "art world" is not a
thing apart from the art market; the latter has long been heavily influenced
by a small number of moneyed persons like Huntington Hartford, John Paul
Getty, Nelson Rockefeller, and Joseph Hirschorn, who have treated works of art
not as part of our common treasure but, in true capitalist style, as objects
of pecuniary investment and private acquisition. They have financed the
museums and major galleries, art books, art magazines, art critics, university
endowments, and various art schools and centers - reaping considerable tax
write-offs in so doing.
As trustees, publishers, patrons, and speculators, they and their associates
exercise influence over the means of artistic production and distribution,
setting ideological limits to artistic expression. Artists who move beyond
acceptable boundaries run the risk of not being shown. Art that contains
radical political content is labeled "propaganda" by those who control the art
market. Art and politics do not mix, we are told - which would be news to such
greats as Goya, Degas, Picasso, and Rivera. While professing to keep art free
of politics ("art for art's sake"), the gatekeepers impose their own
politically motivated definition of what is and is not art. The art they buy,
show, and have reviewed is devoid of critical social content even when
realistic in form. What is preferred is Abstract Expressionism and other forms
of Nonobjective Art that are sufficiently ambiguous to stimulate a broad range
of aesthetic interpretations, having an iconoclastic and experimental
appearance while remaining politically safe.
The same is true of the distribution of films and their redistribution as
videos. Some are mass-marketed while others quickly drop from sight.
Capitalism will sell you the camera to make a movie and the computer to write
a book. But then there is the problem of distribution. Will a film get mass
exposure in a thousand theaters across the nation, or will the producer spend
the next five years of his or her life toting it around to college campuses,
union halls, and special one-day matinee showings at local art theaters (if
that)?
So it is with publications. Books from one of the big publishing
conglomerates are likely to get more prominent distribution and more library
adoptions than books by Monthly Review Press, Verso, Pathfinder, or
International Publishers. Libraries and bookstores (not to mention newsstands
and drugstores) are more likely to stock Time and Newsweek than Monthly
Review, Covert Action Quarterly, or other such publications. A small branch
library will have no room or funds to acquire leftist titles but will procure
seven copies of Colin Powell's autobiography or some other media-hyped
potboiler.
It is not just that supply is responding to demand. Where did the demand to
read about Colin Powell come from? The media blitz that legitimized the Gulf
War also catapulted its top military commando: into the national limelight and
made him an overnight superstar. It was supply creating demand.
Imperfect Socialization
One hopeful thought remains: socialization into the dominant culture does
not operate with perfect effect. In the face of all monopolistic ideological
manipulation, many people develop a skepticism or outright disaffection based
on the sometimes evident disparity between social actuality and official
ideology. There is a limit to how many lies people will swallow about the
reality they are experiencing. If this were not so, if we were all perfectly
socialized into the ongoing social order and thoroughly indoctrinated into the
dominant culture, then I would not have been able to record these thoughts and
you could not have understood them.
Years ago, William James observed how custom can operate as a sedative while
novelty (including dissidence) is rejected as an irritant.(5) Yet I would
argue that after awhile sedatives can become suffocating and irritants can
enliven. People sometimes hunger for the uncomfortable critical perspective
that gives them a more meaningful explanation of things. By becoming aware of
this, we have a better chance of moving against the tide. It is not a matter
of becoming the faithful instrument of any particular persuasion but of
resisting the misrepresentations of a thoroughly ideologized bourgeois
culture. In class struggle, culture is a key battleground. The capitalist
rulers know this - and so should we.
NOTES
1. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York:
International Publishers, 1971), p. 238.
2. Ibid, p. 212.
3. See my Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1992). chapter 1 and passim.
4. Martin Large, Who's Bringing Them Up? (Gloucester, England: M.H.C. Large,
1980), p. 35.
5. William James, "The Sentiment of Rationality" in his Essays in Pragmatism
(New York: Hafner. 1948), p. 13.
Michael Parenti's two most recent books are Blackshirts and Reds: Rational
Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism and America Beseiged, both published by
City Lights.
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
