Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2001 00:05:54 +1000
From: shamass <aphayes-AT-cyberone.com.au>
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Prude Leftists: Apollo vs Dionysus


> In the same way, a materialist understanding
> of modern pop culture ought to be able to pick its
> positive from its neagtive aspects, to celebrate the
> positive and spurn the negative.
>
scott your invocation of "situationist/sub-marcusean" makes no sense. the situationists engaged in the
detournement of what you call pop culture in order to construct a *creative* critique of capitalist society.

i remember in my trot past being involved in surrealist activity (before discovering the situationist
critique of surrealism... oh, and militantism...), that it was almost impossible to tear comrades away from
the so-called "joys" of pop culture. hey, how about wandering around? writing poems? midnight stunts?
nakedness? doing something other than getting pissed and being anything other than joyful? sadly my comrades
found myself and other comrades espousing the creative refusal of pop culture as slightly weird &/or mad,
and most definetely making no sense in the face of "Poor old Joe and Josephine Bloggs and their 2.5
children." though i might add that the "2.5 children" may have dug our activities, particularly the last
half kid...

don't give us your anti-vanguard vanguardism re: the sits. one thing they weren't after were followers. you
see the thing is you have to do it yourself.

free your mind and your ass will follow.

anthony

Scott Hamilton wrote:

> Fully agree with Thomas' sentiments. The sad thing
> really is that, as soon as we begin to analyse the
> anti-fun attitudes of so much of the left, we slip
> into a discourse which is as cold as the marble
> pillars in Appollo's temple!
>
> I'd be wary of the Situationist/sub-Marcusean
> responses to this problem, because they lean for
> justification on the vanguardism rejected by almost
> everyone on this list. Why take the trouble to
> "reconstruct relations so that they are joyous and
> liberating" when there is plenty of joy and liberation
> in most lives outside the miltantist left - in what we
> might rather crudely label 'popular culture'?
>
> It seems to me that the lifestylist programmes
> advanced by the likes of SI involved a complete
> rejection of the lifestyles popular in Western
> society. Poor old Joe and Josephine Bloggs and their
> 2.5 children were seen as hopelessly enslaved by
> consumerism, and needed to be completely re-oriented.
> There are interesting parrallels between this attitude
> to pop culture and the attitude of the 'Proletcult'
> writers who wanted to create a completely original
> literature in post-revolution Russia, a group which
> argued that all pre-existing Rusian literature was
> reactionary and outmoded, and had to be replaced by
> styles and forms which would read like they had fallen
> from the sky.
>
> Proletcult did not, of course, consider culture as an
> evolving phenomenon, full of contradictions and
> complexity. A more materialist approach could see the
> framework for a post-revolutionary literature in the
> work of the very writers proletcult considered
> obsolete. In the same way, a materialist understanding
> of modern pop culture ought to be able to pick its
> positive from its neagtive aspects, to celebrate the
> positive and spurn the negative.
>
> See you all at the Houhora Tavern for the darts comp
> tonight :)
>
> Cheers
> Scott



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