Wojtek writes:
> Some theorists of art (I believe Husserl and some of his
disciples, if memory serves) argued that every work of art
or literature is actively recreated each time it is perceived
by the audience, so there should be no such a thing as
passive reception.
It was Dewey and his work ART AS EXPERIENCE (my choice for the most important work on aesthetics of the 20th century). His goal was to "recover the continuity of esthetic experience with normal processes of living." Deleuze and Shusterman carried on this important work in their writings.
> But that was before mass media whose contents leaves
very little to be re-created and re-interpreted by the audience.
But you must be careful not to confuse mass media with art. Mass media is merely a delivery system that provides art product. The work of art is the art experience that arises when the individual interacts with the art product. A decline in works of art comes from the elitist notions that art is only to be found in museums, theaters, galleries, etc. This notion of "fine art" (so beloved by analytic and Continental thought) is what Dewey so deftly skewers.
> So while the transformative power of art participation - either
in the form of active creating art or re-creating works of art
created by others - can be treated as given
No it cannot. There is no transformative power inherent in any art product. There is the possibility that the art experience that arises may point to transformation, but that is dependent on re-linking aesthetic experience with everyday life.
> the real question is to what degree the dumbing down of
the art by mass media
It is more a case of the elitist appropriation of the aesthetic experience, and its subsequent entombent in museums, academic studies, art galleries, etc. that drained the possibilities from the art experience.
> desensitizing and switching off people's attention and cognitive
abilities.
The desensitizing is demanded both by capitalists and elitists: capitalists so the art product is confused with the work of art (allowing for commodification and profit), and elitists so that hierarchies of taste can be established over which they maintain vigilance and control so as to promote themselves, their writings and their careers.
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister
Wojtek *
Tolstoi sees the shouting of such things at the right time
> by some soldier as the turning point in great battles. Such things can
> make slight changes in the preformed attitudes of the singers, chanters
> themselves. I saw it happen to some of the people in an Ann Arbor bar
> with me at the 1968 Peace&Freedom national convention: we got to singing
> variations on "We'll hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree, and by the
> end of the evening it was "We'll hang the capitalist system to a sour
> apple tree." But note, we were all left activists who took the trouble
> to drive or fly to Ann Arbor for the convention. So the change was
> merely a change of emphasis.
>
> AND, I'm not sure but what you call didadactic art (e.g., Brecht) often
> operates, if it operates at all, as such marching music. I think that is
> in part how both you and I use To Those Born Later; it reminds us where
> we are and why we are there.
>
> > or a political cartoon.
>
> A political cartoon _may_ operate as agitation -- that is, reaching out
> to an audience and urging them to take cognizance of a position.
>
> > Or Dylan's own "Masters
> > of War." Didactic art, like most of Brechts, has a
> > point to make, but there's more to it than just the
> > point. Brecht's ThreePenny Opera expresses lots of
> > sides of bourgeois (and other) relations and emotions
> > as well as exposing the essential parallelism of the
> > criminal organization and the capitalist state. And
> > then then art like Tolstoi or Beethoven, which embody
> > political tendencies but mostly don't teach them --
> > when Tolstoi goes preachy you see the artist turn off.
> > When he _shows_ you the randomness of war, he's much
> > more effective at undercutting the myth of the Great
> > Man.
>
> Now you are getting to what I sometimes call the _indexing_ power of
> reasonably good literature. And here the artist doesn't even have to be
> remotely on the right side. An epic is among other things an enormous
> index to cultural positions, questions, etc., and the index is powerful
> even when the reader takes a contrary attitude to the writer's
> attitudes.
>
> > Now, are people persuaded by art? W, you have
> > practically the entire weight of Western though
> > against you -- high and low. That's why Plato wanted
> > to ban the poets,
>
> So far as I know, Plato had no desire to ban the poets _from Athens_,
> the world in which he actually lived, but only from his 'ideal'
> Republic. And I think what he feared was what I call the indexing power
> of literature. It raises possibilities.
>
> But while all this is both interesting and important, it really doesn't
> touch on the issue I have raised over and over again: how do you write
> agitational material for an audience that doesn't know you exist;
> doesn't even know that the publications you work for exist. What
> replaces the leaflet at the factory gate?
>
> Carrol
>
> P.S. Max's "nasty joke" may well constitute a really powerful
> agitational "work of art." Jan discovered today at work that asking
> where the Louisiana National Guard was really evoked interest among
> those not usually interested. But again, it works mostly in
> word-of-mouth situations.
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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Message: 5 Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2005 10:41:37 -0400 From: "Charles Brown" <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> Subject: [lbo-talk] lbo, a den of right-wingers? To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Message-ID: <B0035672429 at mail3.infoquesthosting.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Creativity and thuggishness are not "contradictories" , are they ? The fascists were in the "great" tradition of Alexander. Capitalism is essentially creative thuggishness, creative destruction. Hitler was an artist. Reagan was an artist.
Charles
^^^^^^
andie nachgeborenen: Unfortunately for the creative fascists, the thug ones stole the name. Many people think the same thing happened with the Communists.
There were a handful of genuine fascists (Nazi variety) of the thug variety, the mentioned Ernst Junger aside (well worth reading!), who were really creative by the highest standard. Heidegger. Carl Schmitt. Leni Riefenstahl, unless you believe her Sergeant Schulz story. (That she wasn't an ideologue.) Then there was Celine, but I don't know whether he was a real fascist or just a total misanthrope. He doesn't seem to have hated the Jews especially, at least not more than he hated everyone else.
> Chris Doss wrote
> Actually the Fascists (with a capital "F") were
> associated with
> experimentalism, dynamism, and futurism, and had
> genuine, and I add
> extremely innovative, artists -- Pound, D'Annunuzio,
> Junger. We need a
> different word for the people you're talking about
> (maybe Thuggist).
>
>
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Message: 6 Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2005 10:50:02 -0400 From: Mark Rickling <mrickling at gmail.com> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Free Doug Henwood To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Message-ID: <72af83305090107505ae0eb6e at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
On 8/27/05, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> I agree - I'm just afraid that a professional publicist would push
> things too far in the wrong direction.
Well, it looks like the professional publicists are out:
Powerful liberal advocacy groups such as MoveOn.org are taking a less active role in Cindy Sheehan's anti-war activities in the wake of criticism that they may have muddied her message.
[ . . . ]
"The vigil started as a very grass-roots thing and then grew because groups like MoveOn were drawn to what Cindy was doing and wanted to offer their support," said Wade Fletcher of Mintwood Media Collective, a Washington-based public-relations group advising the Sheehan demonstrators. "Now we're kind of bringing it back to the original grass roots," he added. For example, the protesters will no longer receive strategic and political advice from Fenton Communications, a large, left-wing public-relations firm. That role reverts to Mintwood, a small operation that helped Mrs. Sheehan early on.
[ . . . ]
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050830-103725-7803r.htm
Chuck0 and I both know Adam Eidinger, one of the founders of Mintwood, from his work in the global justice movement in DC. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: ../attachments/20050901/e043fddb/attachment-0001.html
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Message: 7 Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 09:54:02 -0500 From: Chuck0 <chuck at mutualaid.org> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] 2/3rds want creationism taught To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Message-ID: <4317160A.6080000 at mutualaid.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
lbo at inkworkswell.com wrote:
> 42 percent of the population believes in creationism. Two thirds of the
> population want it given
> equal time in schools.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/31/national/31religion.html
Time to roll up our sleeves and reverse all of this religious ignorance.
Chuck
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