I wouldn't rule out the agency of pop-songwriters / performers. People like Billy Bragg & (of course) the Sex Pistols, even, in a round about way, The Stooges, helped start me on the way to my own class consciousness, such as it is. For a contemporary example, see Clinton, "Disco Is the Halfway to a Full Discontent" & all.
Billy Childish might be an example of a pop(ulist) poet / prole writer.
Certain examples of the mimeo-revolution, so-called, as well. See *A Secret Location on the Lower East Side* if you haven't already. Patrick
----- Original Message ----- From: "John K. Taber" <jktaber at dhc.net> To: "'lbo_talk'" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Sunday, September 03, 2000 11:53 AM Subject: Questions on Writer in Bourgeois Society
> In the late 40s, Sartre wrote a scathing introduction for a publication
> of
> Baudelaire's _Journeaux Intimes_. An unpleasant neurotic, Baudelaire
> nevertheless
> encapsulates the difficult (impossible?) position of a poet in a
> bourgeois world.
>
> Here is the passage that causes me some questions that I hope this
> newsgroup
> will help me out with.
>
> ========================================================================
> =============
> [taken from Jean-Paul Sartre's introduction to the _Journeaux Intimes_
> of Baudelaire]
>
> In the XVIII Century the existence of an aristocracy by birth simplified
> everything
> [for a writer]: The professional writer, whatever his origins, be it
> bastard, son
> of a knife maker or court magistrate, had direct relations with the
> aristocracy,
> bypassing the bourgeoisie. Given a pension by the nobility, or flogged
> on its orders,
> he was under its immediate dependence and drew from the nobility his
> earnings as
> well as his social dignity. He was aristocratized, so to speak. The
> nobility
> communicated a little of its _mana_; the writer participated in its
> leisure, and
> the glory that he aimed at attaining was a reflection of the immorality
> [_sic_]
> that the title confers by heredity to a royal family.
>
> When the nobility collapsed, the writer was dumbfounded by the fall of
> his
> protectors. He had to seek new justifications. The business he undertook
> with
> the holy caste of priests and nobles had declassed him. That is, he was
> torn
> from the bourgeois class from which he emanated, cleaned of his origins,
> and
> nourished by the aristocracy without however being able to enter its
> bosom.
> Depending for his work and his material life on a superior and
> inaccessible
> society, leisured and parasitic itself, which rewarded his labors with
> capricious
> gifts of no relation that could be grasped with the work itself;
> meanwhile
> plunged by his family and daily life into the bosom of a bourgeoisie
> that had
> lost the power to justify him, he had become aware of being apart,
> rootless
> in the air, a Ganymede carried off by the talons of an eagle. He
> perpetually
> felt superior to his milieu.
>
> But after the Revolution the bourgeois class itself took power.
> Logically, it
> was the bourgeoisie that should confer a new dignity on the writer.
> Only, this
> operation is not possible unless the writer accepts entering the bosom
> of the
> bourgeoisie. That was out of the question. First two hundred years of
> royal
> favor had taught him to scorn the bourgeoisie, but above all, a parasite
> of a
> parasitic class, he had become used to considering himself like a clerk,
> cultivating pure thought, and art for art's sake. If he returned to his
> class,
> his function becomes radically modified. Indeed, the bourgeoisie, even
> if it
> is an oppressive class, is not parasitic. It despoils the worker, but
> works with
> him. The creation of a work of art within a bourgeois society becomes
> the
> provision of a service. The poet must offer his talent to his class,
> like an
> engineer or a lawyer. He must help his class take conscience of itself
> and
> contribute to the development of the myths that permit the oppression of
> the
> proletariat. In exchange, bourgeois society will consecrate him. But he
> loses
> in this change; he abdicates his independence and renounces his
> superiority.
> He is part of an elite, to be sure, but there is an elite of doctors, an
> elite
> of accountants. The hierarchy is constituted within the bosom of the
> class
> according to its social efficacy, and the body of artists takes a
> secondary
> place, a little above the university.
>
> That is what most writers could not accept. For an Emile Augier who
> correctly
> fulfilled his contract, how many others, on the contrary, were
> malcontents and
> in revolt? What to do? Nobody, we well understand, had the idea of
> asking the
> proletariat for his justification - which would have performed a
> declassing
> just as real but in a reverse sense. . The majority of writers tried to
> work
> out a symbolic declassing. ..
> ========================================================================
> ====
>
> First, it never occurred to me that the aristocracy was "parasitic". I
> thought that at least in its origins it was a warrior class, which I
> assumed could not be parasitic. So, is a warrior class parasitic? If
> not, did the aristocracy degenerate to parasitism?
>
> Second, what is parasitism? Note that clerks and priests in Sartre's
> passage are lumped with parasites. But since clerks and priests do
> necessary work (at least, necessary to somebody) in what sense are
> they parasites?
>
> I rather agree that the writer, at least the poet, has lost a meaningful
> function in bourgeois society. Poetry may be interesting, but it just
> isn't needed. Sartre says that there is nevertheless a bourgeois blessed
> use for writers (and poets). What would that be today? Journalist, like
> Safire or Molly Ivins, perhaps? Copywriter for an ad agency? Ghost
> writing like Buchanan? Technical writing for IBM?
>
> And finally, what could a proletariat writer be? Lyric writer for pop
> songs? Probably not because pop songs do nothing to let the proles
> obtain awareness of themselves as a class. Pop is more distraction
> than anything else. Movie script writer? Same objection, movies are
> distracting amusements for the worker. There are outstanding movies,
> to be sure, but if they are class based, it seems to me the class
> is bourgeois. I have difficulty imagining what a proletarian writer
> would write. Does anybody have any ideas?
>
> Thanks in advance. If not suitable for this list, I hope somebody
> will let me know.
>
> --
> John K. Taber
>