> On Thu, 12 Jul 2001, Ted Winslow wrote:
>
>> I've also read Kant, Hegel and Marx on aesthetics. This is one reason I
>> find "gossip" inadequate -
>
> Much of what Proust records, in terms of conversations, is nothing but
> gossip, the empty chatter of the privileged whiling away their boredom.
> Jameson's point, which he states beautifully, is that this boredom and
> privilege, otherwise utterly repugnant for us, acquires a genuine
> use-value, has an authentically utopian function, as the anticipation of a
> society which genuinely fulfilled the needs of its members (Proust turns
> nothing into something). All this is implicit in the passages of Marx
> you've quoted, but isn't anything like a full-fledged theory of
> aesthetics. Marx's insight that:
>
>> The forming of the five senses is a labour of the entire history of the
>> world down to the present.
>
> remained an insight, a flash of Marxisms to come, because Marx
> concentrated on a theory of capital, not aesthetics. You seem to be
> suggesting (correct me if I'm wrong) that Marx solved all the problems and
> that we don't need to bother with aesthetics; if not, then you're going to
> have to show me exactly why Jameson is wrong, i.e. disprove his thesis,
> that the consumer culture is an integral part of the logic of late
> capitalism, requiring critique and resistance.
Hi Dennis.
"Becker's model" is not "a perfectly realistic and sensible view not only of this human world but of _all_ of them, going back to the earliest hominids."
"Gossip" as "the empty chatter of the privileged whiling away their boredom" doesn't "anticipate" "a society which genuinely fulfills the needs of its members".
The idea that it does is not implicit in the passages from Hegel and Marx I've quoted.
The "full-fledged aesthetic theory" of Kant and Hegel is explicitly contained in the passages from Marx.
One aspect of that theory is that "use-value" is not a good term for ethical and aesthetic value.
"Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it ‹ when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., ‹ in short, when it is used by us."
We are not limited to existing leisure cultures for "concrete images of what such a Utopia might be like".
We can use our imaginations.
By the way, I've elaborated at length the idea that "art" constitutes life in the "realm of freedom" and said nothing to suggest that Marx "solved all the problems".
I'm not "going to have to" do anything.
Ted -- Ted Winslow E-MAIL: WINSLOW at YORKU.CA Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York University FAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3