Symbolic creativity and political economy
John Fiske and Paul Willis
Review: What is Ideology?
Karl Marx
Commodity Fetishism as the law of exchange value
Herbert Marcuse
Control Mechanism of the status quo Generating and maintaining happy consciousness
Jean Baudrillard
All-embracing hyperreality
Questions and Challenges
Pessimism? No changes without revolutionary subject (proletariat? radical youth? avant-gardist?) How to take account of ordinary people in their everyday life?
Cultural Populism
Two Origins of Cultural Populism
Critique of Marxist determinism
Human agency (use value) versus capitalist structure (exchange value) Could folk culture continue in modern times?
Organic community culture
Yes, but embodied in
artisan culture (E. P. Thompson) working class culture (Richard Hoggart)
Cultural Populist
Richard Hoggart (Working-class culture)
Raymond Williams (Common Culture)
Paul Willis (counter-culture and youth)
John Fiske (commodity and consumption)
Paul Willis and John Fiske
Paul Willis (1950-)
Born in Wolverhampton (UK) The early member of CCCC (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) Teaching at Princeton University now
John Fiske (1939-)
Studied in Britain
Taught in Australia and the US
Basic Assumption: Double Nature of Cultural Commodity
Double Nature
Cultural commodity and Non-cultural commodity
Industrial product and popular culture
Dual Hieroglyphs
Cultural and Non-cultural commodities (Willis)
Cultural Commodities
Non-Cultural Commodities
Use Value: Inviting a variety of uses and communication
Use Value: Stability of Sensuousness
Exchange Value
Repertoire ()
The possibilities of usage and communication
Example: Jean
Uses and Communication
Uses
Casual wear Ripped jean Tight jean Baggy jean
Communication
Individual freedom Ruggedness/ physicality naturalness Masculinity Sexiness
Industrial product and popular culture (Fiske)
Cultural industries:
A commodity is designed and produced by industrial system
Popular culture
It is consumed as cultural product
Cultural industries
They provide a repertoire of texts or cultural resources (meanings) for people to use or reject.
Popular culture
It is of peoples interest
It bears the interest of the people
It involves the active process of generating and circulating meanings and pleasures within a social system
Generating and circulating meanings
The possible meanings of Jean
Individual freedom--> repressing personality Ruggedness-->(male) working class identity Masculinity-->Tomboy
Dual Hieroglyphs
Designed cultural codes (encoding)
Users appropriation (decoding)
Fiske: Popular Culture
Willis: Symbolic Creativity
Everyday life and Symbolic Creativity
Everyday is full of activities which although not recognized as Art, share the same Symbolic Creativity as art practices.
EVERYDAY NECESSARY WORK SYMBOLIC CREATIVITY
SYMBOLIC CREATIVITY
The necessary part of human activity Integral part of necessary work
It has to be done everyday
It is not extra but essential of daily production and reproduction
English Radical Tradition
Art = Work/Pleasure
Work is Holy: The daily reproduction is Holy and the play of Symbolic Creativity in these things make them Holy (Example: Artisan)
Modern Industry destroyed the possibility of art by
Technical division of labor: fragmented task rather than art work Introduction of automatic machine: laborer rather than craftsman Hierarchy and management: Separating body from mind altogether out of workplace.
Symbolic work in modern everyday life
A humanly necessary work.
Application of human capacities to and through, on and with symbolic resources and raw materials.
(language, texts, songs, films, images and artifacts of all kind)
Grounded aesthetics (versus Marcuses high-arts aesthetics)
Basic elements
Language: the primary tool that allow us to assess our impact on others
and theirs to us. It allows us to see ourselves as others.
Active Body a site of knowledge and set of signs and symbols. It is the
source of productive and communicative activity. (corporeality)
Drama rules, rituals and performances that we produce with others
( dancing, singing, joke-making, story telling in dynamic settings and through performance).
Symbolic Creativity transforms what is provided and helps to produce
specific form of human identity and capacity.
Being human
To Be Creative
remarking the world for ourselves as we find our own place and identity.
Produce Individual Identity
Who and what I am and could become.
Place the Identities in larger wholes
Identities do not stand alone above or beyond history. They are related to time, place and things.
Develop our own vital capacities in the process
Informal Cultural Practices
Embedded Expressive Labour
Production Side
LP (labor input or wage ) Capital accumulation
Consumption Side
Expressive Labour (uses and communication) Capital accumulation
Some residual elements (resistance and evasion) spill over the capital circuits
Resistance / evasion
Cultural industries
Resistance / conformity evasion
consumption
Example: English Football
Labour Power (wage): Football fans contribute their money to their football club Expressive Labour: Football fans support the football players and look for the authenticity of their club (bodily investment: language, drama, ) Residual elements
Challenge to the official policy and management of their football club Re-fabricating local communities
Example: Adbuster
A Canadian anti-consumerist group
"a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age." Campaigns: Buy Nothing Day, Occupy Wall Street
Cultural Jamming: subvertisements (Spoof Ad)
Example: Spoof Ad in Hong Kong
A TV commercial of insurance company
[Link]
A parody about the election of Chief Executive
[Link] eature=channel_video_title
Concluding Remarks
Old Paradigms of Ideological Critique
Develop a general theory and critique of commodity culture
Imagining an overall strategy of revolution
New Paradigms of Ideological Critique
Looking for cultural practices
Looking for eruptions of the commodity cultural forms
refusals subversions
ironizations
