Date: Tue, 03 Feb 2004 09:15:23 +0000
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Discours Figure


Eric/all

I surmise then that we are in agreement that the Kantian turn has the 
unfortunate side effect of seeming to be unable to address the very 
areas of work, (esp popular culture) which are most engaged in the present.

In Discours, figure Lyotard proposes that "A good book would be one 
where linguistic time (the time of signification and of reading) would 
itself be deconstructed: that the reader could start wherever s/he 
wishes and in whatever order, a book for grazing..." (quoted in 
Rodowick).  This ideal book/object is not however a very  convincing 
concept,  if considered as an "artists book", it becomes immediately 
apparant that if a book is constructed in the modernist forms closest to 
the ideal - for example hypertext novels such as Hopscotch (cortazar) or 
Larva (rios) - then it is still as structured as any other book. As such 
then the idea of 'grazing' only works when it becomes a relationship of 
the reader with the book/object.

Can you see a way in which the later aesthetics can be used within our 
necessary engagement with all aspects of culture ? For example perhaps a 
theory should be able to deal with the growth of music television. The 
transition of  jazz from popular culture to high...

driving to work today - Schoernberg die jakobsleiter this morning...

regards
steve

Eric wrote:

>Steve, 
>
>I wasn't trying to limit art to high modernism. I agree Lyotard, despite
>the pomo tag, tended to be interested in serious modernism when it came
>to art.  
>
>I personally like pop music and jazz and ironically, despite Adorno,
>think that jazz now has a difficult time because it too tends to be
>regarded as serious stuff.  
>
>I just don't have a theory right now to explain why you like listening
>to a soul song as you drove to the supermarket, but suspect perhaps one
>common element is the shared tempo.  Perhaps the speed of the automobile
>demands a certain kind of music - Vivaldi in turn demands a different
>velocity. 
>
>eric
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>[mailto:owner-lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU] On Behalf Of
>steve.devos
>Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2004 1:41 PM
>To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>Subject: Re: Discours Figure
>
>Eric/All
>
>I have been considering the implications of the paragraph and the (cut 
>paragraphs ) since first reading them. The question that they raised is:
>
>what are the implications of Lyotard's aesthetics when thinking not 
>about Barnet Newman or Beckett but rather the soul song I was listening 
>to on the radio this afternoon as I drove to the supermarket.
>
>The danger in Eric's paragraph is the possibility of repeating Adorno's 
>error - where he compares 'autonomous art' and 'committed art' and is 
>prepared to claim that it is to autonomous works of art that the burden 
>of wordlessly saying what is barred from politics.  However whilst I 
>might agree that this was the case during the 50s and early 60s - it's 
>reasonably clear that to make such a statement now, does fail to address
>
>the history of committed art since the 60s onwards.  I suggest that 
>committed art has been 'wordlessly and with words' been saying more 
>about what has been barred from the social and political realms than 
>Adorno's rather wonderful autonomous art. Politics has now migrated from
>
>autonomous art back into committed art - not I suspect because the 
>people who construct the work imagine that they are going to change 
>things through artistic production but because anger and a demand for 
>change cannot be displayed or understood through reading in a tank 
>contaning a dead sheep.
>
>The second problem is that we could be in danger of repeating what I 
>think of as the 'Adorno problem' whose writings on (for example) Jazz 
>completely failed to notice that Ellington's work of the 30s was some of
>
>the greatest music written in the period.  Or to put the question more 
>formally - how does Lyotard's positions on 'art' work against  popular 
>cultural objects. Popular cultural work cannot in any  meaningful sense 
>be claimed to be 'sublime' or even to have a 'remainder'. In the case of
>
>the works of popular culture only those approaches prepared to work 
>within an ideological frame and be prepared to address the cultural 
>object within it's social context seem to have any possibility of 
>producing a meaningful piece of work. 
>
>(oops late off to the cinema...) (In relation to cinema - the most 
>interesting paper I heard of recently was one that was addressing "Major
>
>pieces of Hollywood Cinema through the products they advertise" )
>
>regards
>steve
>
>Eric wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I don't think he sees the "self-identity of the aesthetic as the last
>>preserve of non-ideological thought" because Lyotard doesn't seem to me
>>at least to believe in such purity. Look at how ruthless he is towards
>>    
>>
>a
>  
>
>>figure like Malraux.  Rather than being the "preserve of nonideological
>>thought and "revolutionary" subjectivity" I think art (and politics)
>>testify instead to a remainder that eludes this very subjectivity. It
>>bears witness to what has not been preserved because the vessel has
>>    
>>
>been
>  
>
>>broken.  
>>
>> 
>>
>> 
>>
>>    
>>
>
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