Tom says:
The anxiety isn't over pleasure and sensuality per se, but over the
commodification of pleasure and sensuality -- a process that is no doubt so
far advanced that it becomes hard to conceive of pleasure and sensuality in
any other terms.
Non-commodified pleasure and sensuality under
-Original Message-
From: Yoshie Furuhashi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 26 February 2002 08:48
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PEN-L:23239] Re: Dallas Smythe student
Tom says:
The anxiety isn't over pleasure and sensuality per se, but over the
commodification of pleasure
Hey! What is this Yoshie? Theory of inevitable progress? Let me assure
Yoshie and Daniel that I am not a woozy pre-capitalist romantic. But I will
continue to wonder why such assurances are necessary at all. Look at my
primitive tools, youse guys: notebook computers, scanners, printers,
Tom Walker wrote:
Hey! What is this Yoshie? Theory of inevitable progress? Let me assure
Yoshie and Daniel that I am not a woozy pre-capitalist romantic.
This thread had (mostly) developed in terms of characterizations of
either the participants in the thread or of leftists-in-general.
Let's simplify this discussion:
undialectical critique of capitalism: bad
undialectical apology for capitalism: bad
dialectical critique of capitalism: good
dialectical apology for capitalism: intellectually dishonest
The latter proceeds by mistaking a dialectical critique for an undialectical
Yoshie wrote,
Tom, we can't focus on the individual's role when discussing
solutions to the planet's problems (as Shawna Richer says Sut Jhally
does) such as the individual's consumer choices. That's not a
dialectical critique of capitalism. That's more like a program of
Global Exchange,
Tom Walker wrote:
This kind of hijacking selected words out of context and insinuating that
they mean something else is pointless. I would say juvenile, but would be
insulting to children. The context was the role of advertising in the media
and culture. The point is about advertisers promising
One can attack consumerism without calling for the donning of hairshirts.
The consumption described by Mandel -- who was following Marx closely in
this regard -- was not consumerism, but using material means to elevate
oneself. Virtually nothing that you can see advertised on television
would
I am way behind in e-mail messages, but would recommend Smythe's book,
called Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and
Canada to everyone. Smythe had been a visiting prof at Temple the two
years before I started there, and it seemed like everyone was reading
him when I
The consumption described by Mandel -- who was following Marx closely in
this regard -- was not consumerism, but using material means to elevate
oneself. Virtually nothing that you can see advertised on television would
meet that standard.
not even Prozac or Viagra?
Jim Devine [EMAIL
Doug,
From reading your position on consumption over some
time, and Mandel below, I believe Mandel is not with you, nor you with
him. Mandel opens with
>6. The genuine extension of the needs (living standards) of the
>wage-earner, which represents a raising of his level of culture and
Not being a mind reader, I haven't the slightest idea what Doug's a lot of
this critique refers to. Sut Jhally? The Media Education Foundation? Dallas
Smythe? The critique of consumerism in general? (and here we could branch
off into other specifics, Marcuse's repressive sublimation? the
Doug Henwood wrote:
a lot of this critique is a rather
undigested rehash of a lot of Puritan hair-shirt crap.
A lot of X is Y. This is the sort of thing that gets an English 101
theme marked down for pure sloppiness.
Carrol
Re: Tran Vanh Dinh. Listed here in Edwin Moise biblio. Moise
is a big source in Gabriel Kolko book from mid 90's on Vietnam
War, specifically on North Vietnamese land reform that has been
for decades subject to alot of debate esp. from Trotskyists and
others I'm familiar with.
Michael
Forstater, Mathew wrote:
Tom writes:
The anxiety isn't over pleasure and sensuality per se, but over the
commodification of pleasure and sensuality
this is Smythe's view, in my understanding.
Mine too. But in all the analyses of this genre I've seen - and along
with Jhally, I'm thinking of
Hey, I got my hair streaked gold last week! It doesn 't show up much on
white though. And the stylist assured me it would wash out, which it
did. But I still don't understand why ANY criticism of consumption
makes the critic a hair-shirter.
Gene Coyle
Doug Henwood wrote:
Forstater, Mathew
Slanderous lies. PEN-L has a strict fashion code, and my makeup is
impecable.
Doug Henwood wrote:
I'll bet a
lot of PEN-Lers don't approve of makeup or stylish clothes either.
Doug
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
Re: Tran Vanh Dinh. Listed here in Edwin Moise biblio. Moise
is a big source in Gabriel Kolko book from mid 90's on Vietnam
War, specifically on North Vietnamese land reform that has been
for decades subject to alot of debate esp. from Trotskyists and
others I'm familiar with.
Michael
Doug Henwood wrote:
I'll bet a
lot of PEN-Lers don't approve of makeup or stylish clothes either.
Michael Perelman writes:
Slanderous lies. PEN-L has a strict fashion code, and my makeup is
impecable.
me too. I'm sure that most of you want to know that when I sit at the
computer
Michael wrote:
Slanderous lies. PEN-L has a strict fashion code,
and my makeup is impecable.
Hey,
I know a business professor here at UC Berkeley who recently dyed
his hair purple. Should we invite him to this list? He is quite a
nice and extremely clever fellow from Israel who is opposed
Carrol,
Do you see what I mean?
economists receiving Nobel Price since he ...
You have serious spelling problems with this language and you
better do something about it. Moreover, what is this calling what
everybody else calls football soccer, what everybody else calls
wrestling football and
What I see that I object to is not so much asceticism as good old fashioned
oppositional smugness. I object to it, though, with some humility. There's a
long tradition of smugness alternating between politically correct
asceticism and bohemian hedonism. For chrissake think of the sixties maoists
On Monday, February 25, 2002 at 11:33:33 (-0500) Doug Henwood writes:
Tom Walker wrote:
This kind of hijacking selected words out of context and insinuating that
they mean something else is pointless. I would say juvenile, but would be
insulting to children. The context was the role of
Sabri Oncu wrote:
Carrol,
Do you see what I mean?
economists receiving Nobel Price since he ...
You have serious spelling problems with this language and you
better do something about it. Moreover, what is this calling what
everybody else calls football soccer, what everybody
Sut Jhally sounds like my kind of fellow alumnus. Unfortunately his lecture
is on a Friday afternoon, one of my most congested. I'll see what I can do.
I disagree with one claim in the article. Dallas Smythe wasn't the first to
look at media as economic institutions. I wouldn't claim Walter
Eugene Coyle quoted:
Designer Kenneth Cole's latest glossy multipage
spread in magazines and on billboards offers pithy
advice on how to live from Sept. 12 on: Buy some
shoes, Jhally says wryly. Really, after a while,
it
This kind of hijacking selected words out of context and insinuating that
they mean something else is pointless. I would say juvenile, but would be
insulting to children. The context was the role of advertising in the media
and culture. The point is about advertisers promising people things they
From the article Gene sent:
When intellectuals talk among themselves, they
talk in a way that is impossible for a general
audience to understand, he says. They may be
talking about great things, but they're in an
intellectual alley. Unless we talk to that kid,
we're just hanging out with
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