i guess it kind of annoys me when someone talks about the place i'm from and reduces it to a simplistic formulation like that. that holding - for gawd's sake - domesticated farm animals so they can get their, what?, "natural" vaccines?, puts someone in touch with the "real" world. there's this bizarre incredulousness on your part, that somehow it's crazy not to be into your own particular theory as to what counts as political enlightenment, and to disagree is a sign that your interlocutor is, well, goshes: alienated. You: enlightened; Them: not so much. WTF kind of bullshit is that?
it's theory AND praxis, man.
my own experience organizing in a small town, working in a couple of different social movements, is that people from small towns *love* to talk. in fact, I remember this series of public forums we held in which the local t.v. station brought people from all walks of life together. the guy moderating had people read all kinds of stuff, including articles from academic journals. I remember thinking, "oh shit man. these people are working people. they don't have time for this." We're talking about what to do about the latest plant closing and how to fight a radioactive waste dump siting. WTF is this guy thinking?"
Well, he was right to do what he did. These people fucking loved getting together to talk about statistics, data, theory, ideas. They worked through the readings and connected them to what was happening around them. They begged us to find the resources to keep it going. They were hungry for the words that would help them articulate what they'd been thinking and living.
It was a beautiful thing man, to watch the dance of theory *and* praxis unfold.
the funny thing was, when I talked with these folks later, what became clear was that, while they loved this opportunity to get away from the constant demand to *act* mindlessly, to do anything at all just to do something, they were also insistent on distancing themselves from the conflict that was bound to emerge as they formulated different positions. The conflict produced a lot of anxiety, fear that differences would be too powerful to get beyond. And so, they kept talking about how what they loved was the time to "chat." They liked the idea that it was all a lot like sitting on the front porch on a warm summer evening, chewing the cud: talkin'. Nothing serious going on here, just chatting, just talking. Uncle Al spouting off and Aunt Caroline is gettin' fired up. But it's all nothing to worry about: just talkin'. Just watching fireflies in July, shootin' the breeze.
So, the butcher, the preacher, the welfare mom, the teacher, the secretary, the payroll clerk, the accountant, the real estate agent, the foreman, the factory worker, the mechanic... for all their access to experiences that supposedly make them more capable of grasping the Good, the True, the Beautiful - well, they liked everything to be just talk, too. They had their own way of avoiding unavoidably agonistic character of political praxis.
Finally, as others have pointed out: srsly? I have to like the music you pointed to since I you can't fit me into that shoebox you're carrying around to fuck my skeleton? Because I'm ostensibly from a certain place, because I'm not some academic constantly typing away at this list, I'm ona da peepul?
fuckmedead man. fuckmedead.
IOW, the really annoying thing is: just about everyone who's taken issue with you is 1. from the country or, at least, some pretty deindustrialized parts of the u.s. 2. not at all inclined to reject music, art, whatever because it's, ostensibly, not refined.
You don't know jack about the people against whom you've made several accusations (about not getting away from the computer and that sort of shit), and yet you've made these brash assumptions. And worse, you've insisted that you can speak for everyone from that sort of background and life, incredibly certain that, because of that experience, they would, natchilly, agree with you.
big stinky load of horse hockey.
At 11:38 AM 7/6/2011, lbo83235 wrote:
>I haven't had time to respond at any length to this thread. I haven't seen
>much point in weighing in on a lot of it, and rather doubt that my lack of
>contribution will have been lamented.
>
>The country-city thing kind of blew up on us there for a bit. Martin was
>correct that Dennis C's "heavy handed" comment struck a nerve - it felt
>like criticising the flower arrangements at a funeral - but I'd note in
>passing that I didn't call anybody anything, let alone a "city boy." I
>invoked a little narrative - provocatively, to be sure, but with a purpose
>(poorly executed). Sometimes one wants to chuck a little Mythos into the
>roiling cauldron of Logos that is LBO Talk, and see what happens. I did it
>poorly, so the experiment, so to speak, was inconclusive.
>
>It might be worth reflecting on the fact that the absence of the city
>predates the city. I think that means the first articulation of the
>*distinction* between city and country originated from within the city. At
>least inceptually, the city was the innovation; "city people" "knew" that
>they (or theirs) had come *to* the city "from without". Inceptually, those
>*not* in the city didn't necessarily know they were missing out on
>anything - at least not until an at least latent urban identity had been
>conceptualised, articulated and disseminated. (As in, "Hey, cuz - you
>gotta come see this shit!")
>
>I've never met a country person (which I don't mean as synonymous with an
>industrial farm worker) who worried much about whether their access to
>"nature" was "mediated" or not. Neither word has much use on the farm.
>Maybe alienation - from "nature," not from the products of one's labour -
>is like an infection that spreads outward from the libraries - a kind of
>hidden cost of consciousness. Off the books. ;-}
>
>You can't get milk out of the idea of a cow - and it's damn hard to get
>milk out of an *actual* one while you're reading. Put that book down, son.
>Step away from the computer. Go outside play with your friends. Or with
>yourself. You may be pleasantly surprised.
>
>I'll give the last word to Brother Fanon:
>
>---
>
>Now it so happens that during the struggle for liberation, at the moment
>that the native intellectual comes into touch again with his people, this
>artificial sentinel is turned into dust. All the Mediterranean values —
>the triumph of the human individual, of clarity, and of beauty — become
>lifeless, colorless knick-knacks. All those speeches seem like collections
>of dead words; those values which seemed to uplift the soul are revealed
>as worthless, simply because they have nothing to do with the concrete
>conflict in which the people is engaged.
>
>Individualism is the first to disappear. The native intellectual had
>learnt from his masters that the individual ought to express himself
>fully. The colonialist bourgeoisie had hammered into the native's mind the
>idea of a society of individuals where each person shuts himself up in his
>own subjectivity, and whose only wealth is individual thought. Now the
>native who has the opportunity to return to the people during the struggle
>for freedom will discover the falseness of this theory. The very forms of
>organization of the struggle will suggest to him a different vocabulary.
>Brother, sister, friend — these are words outlawed by the colonialist
>bourgeoisie, because for them my brother is my purse, my friend is part of
>my scheme for getting on.
>
>The native intellectual takes part, in a sort of auto-da-fe, in the
>destruction of all his idols: egoism, recrimination that springs from
>pride, and the childish stupidity of those who always want to have the
>last word. Such a colonized intellectual, dusted over by colonial culture,
>will in the same way discover the substance of village assemblies, the
>cohesion of people's committees, and the extraordinary fruitfulness of
>local meetings and groupments. Henceforward, the interests of one will be
>the interests of all, for in concrete fact everyone will be discovered by
>the troops, everyone will be massacred — or everyone will be saved. The
>motto "look out for yourself," the atheist's method of salvation, is in
>this context forbidden.
>
>
>- from *Wretched of the Earth*
>
>
>
>___________________________________
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