I recently read Walter Benjamin’s well-known essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” and, unsurprisingly got to thinking about a medium of “art” close to my heart – photography. Over the past few years I have seen my own interest in photography shift along with its technologies.
When digital photography first started to break into the mass market (in a major way) about five or so years ago, my thoughts were those of a Luddite – the technology would never be good enough, the images would always be inferior, film would stay prominent. I was mistaken. Surely, I had a lot invested in the success of film, I had an expensive film camera and, most of all, was very proud of the fact that I had learned to use a film SLR through trial and error. Digital brought the threat of watering down a whole art so that anyone could do it, it was the equivalent of revealing all of the great secrets of the Master’s – no, it was more like grafting a Master’s hand onto your arm.
With digital photography anyone can cheaply (well, relatively) learn how to capture great images through trial and error. Versatile and easily usable consumer SLRs and new generation point-and-shoot/professional control hybrid cameras combined with intelligent imaging software have made the ability to produce great images available to anyone with an interest. Some would argue that little skill is now necessary to produce a good image, yet these days, little equipment is actually needed to create a great image and to cultivate good picture taking skills.
So, what is the status of photographic art in the age of digital reproduction? How has the art shifted? Some thoughts:
(1) No copy necessary.
Reproduction of the image is now done on the computer screen. Not only no longer is there an original image with a mythical aura, there is neither an infinitely reproducible physical copy. There is only the visual trace of the image on the screen. The existence of the copy is reduced to the retransfigurable crystals of an LCD screen; it truly flits in and out of the present.
(2) Image sharing websites.
Sites such as Flickr, Picassa, Facebook, and the various crowd-source stock photo collections provide for hundreds of thousands or millions of images to be available for viewing at any given moment. Thousands of photos are uploaded every hour and devoured by people across the world in seconds. Spatial differentiation in artistic style is consequently reduced. As another photographer, my influences pour in from all over the world and I am unable to tell who or where these influences originate. Photographers hide behind monikers like “Moann” or “ind67,” names that say nothing of identity. Images can be flipped through as fast as they load. A favorite image could be purchased and printed, but the likelihood of this happening is slight, as the image could just as easily be bookmarked or set as computer wallpaper or shared with a friend through a link. Again, as Benjamin reflects on the removing of recorded choral work from the auditorium to the home for private listening, personalization of the consumption of the work has occurred. The photographic image no longer has an original context beyond the moment and place it was snapped. Its whole life has been embedded in digital code.
(3) Mass production/consumption and its influence on the aesthetic
The eye sees a scene, the lens captures the scene, the internet hosts the image for all to look at. Image sharing sites host comment and ratings sections to mediate the consumers’ roles as critics. Is the image original? Interesting? What does it say about skill or art form? The mass provides answers. As more and more similar images are uploaded onto the internet, and people are normalized into what is a “good” photo, new forms of photography also arise. The High Dynamic Range photo and the heavily manipulated surreal image which restradles the line between reality and painterly fantasy are examples of a new photography allowed for digital photo processing. As the software and hardware to produce these images becomes more and more common, they are no longer the works of exceptionally skilled professionals, but the works of especially advanced technology. Hence, the “skill,” the aura of the ability to transmit the secreted flits of reality, of the photographer is diminished.
Where does this leave the art of photography? Is it now dying as an art form, or simply mutating? As technologies have improved, the traditional photograph has, for the most part, become an antique that conveys an era and aesthetic of limited technology - imperfect in comparison to the infinite perfectibility of the digitally manageable image. So it would seem that the art of photography would be pushed to a new level by necessity of survival, a level that would blur the line between photography and something new. So if this is the case, then the traditional professional photographer, artist or commercial, and even the skilled amateur have lost ground and been diluted by the proliferation of cheap cameras, computer sharing, mass judgment, and the outsourcing of their skill by technology. A new type of photographer has also been bred, however, one that is less a photographer and more of a computer wizard with another sort of creative skill, dealing with a 2D digital canvas and a whole palette of digital tools.
I am still unsure how I will fit into the new photography. My current temptation is to go retrograde and abandon the demands of the digital photographer. Yet there is another factor I haven’t yet discussed, and won’t go to deep into - the dilution of the identity of the photographer, of both the knack and the eye. Whose eye is it that pinpoints the image to be snapped? My eye or the eye of the masses that deem the image worthwhile? An old wizened man in an exotic country will draw the snapshots of a dozen tourists in a few moments. A majestic mountain landscape or a beautifully eroding factory could similarly draw a large amount of camera interest. Perhaps this is nothing new, but as the means and discourse around the art form falls into the hands of the masses, then does it become subject to too much cultural refereeing? Losing its ability to affect?
Monday, August 10, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Marcuse "A Note on Dialectic"
I updated a past post that was very bad. This explanation comes from a stronger base of understanding. 1/28/11
Marcuse turns to Hegelian dialectics in this essay in order to explain their philosophical strength against scientific rationalism and the tyranny of quantitatives. Marx drew from Hegel for this term and method, which Hegel in turn recovered not from thinkers such as Kant or Hume, but from the ancient Greeks. If you've ever read a dialectic from Plato or Socrates, you may know how it works. One speaker presents an argument, and another speaker (such as a Cynic or a Skeptic) refutes the argument. The dialogue between these two is a dialectic. By the end of the dialectic, the two opposing viewpoints should reconcile into some sort of hybrid argument. For Hegel this is thesis+antithesis=synthesis. Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind and Marx's historical dialectic approach the idea of dialectics in a different, but related way. For Hegel, one form of a thought reaches a threshold at which it negates itself, and then the original form and negation resolve into a synthesis, and the mind moves along through history while impacting the consciousness and material world. For Marx, the forms of material production,1 which are modulated through economics, have a dialectical impact on social formation and cultural production. As history progresses, materialism affects society and thought, which, in turn, affects materialism.
Marcuse notes that the scientific world has become immune to dialectical thinking, preferring the steady flows of postivism verses the give and take of negation and dialectics. Marcuse's argument is that Hegelian dialectics recognize that objective reality is only a realization and contingent on the subject. Progress in dialectical thinking is therefore very much different then the progress of science, which seldom questions its fundamental objective substance and operative foundations. Dialectics always calls these into question; it must as this is how negative thinking works. "Its function is to break down the self-assurance and self-contentment of common sense, to undermine the sinister confidence in the power and language of facts..." (The Essential Frankfurt Reader: 447). This process of thinking, Hegel's ideal of Reason (not to be confused with scientific reason) allows us to unchain our minds from the facts of reality and therefore free us to other objective possibilities. The world suddenly becomes undefined and capable of being constituted by anything else.
The crux of the argument is that Hegel's Reason was unchanging and absolute. Marx saw Hegel's Reason as reaching its own stage of historical negation, where forces oppressed by the established epistemologies of reason needed to move Reason forward by bringing it down to earth. By grounding thought in materialism, Reason can move into a new historical stage in which it may be used to subvert the repressive powers of reified power structures, just as it had, in the past, been used to subvert thought and discourse.
1 As Erich Fromm has explained in this introduction to Bottomore's "Selected Writings," for Marx materialism is not realism or naturalism, but is the field and conditions of actual production.
Marcuse turns to Hegelian dialectics in this essay in order to explain their philosophical strength against scientific rationalism and the tyranny of quantitatives. Marx drew from Hegel for this term and method, which Hegel in turn recovered not from thinkers such as Kant or Hume, but from the ancient Greeks. If you've ever read a dialectic from Plato or Socrates, you may know how it works. One speaker presents an argument, and another speaker (such as a Cynic or a Skeptic) refutes the argument. The dialogue between these two is a dialectic. By the end of the dialectic, the two opposing viewpoints should reconcile into some sort of hybrid argument. For Hegel this is thesis+antithesis=synthesis. Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind and Marx's historical dialectic approach the idea of dialectics in a different, but related way. For Hegel, one form of a thought reaches a threshold at which it negates itself, and then the original form and negation resolve into a synthesis, and the mind moves along through history while impacting the consciousness and material world. For Marx, the forms of material production,1 which are modulated through economics, have a dialectical impact on social formation and cultural production. As history progresses, materialism affects society and thought, which, in turn, affects materialism.
Marcuse notes that the scientific world has become immune to dialectical thinking, preferring the steady flows of postivism verses the give and take of negation and dialectics. Marcuse's argument is that Hegelian dialectics recognize that objective reality is only a realization and contingent on the subject. Progress in dialectical thinking is therefore very much different then the progress of science, which seldom questions its fundamental objective substance and operative foundations. Dialectics always calls these into question; it must as this is how negative thinking works. "Its function is to break down the self-assurance and self-contentment of common sense, to undermine the sinister confidence in the power and language of facts..." (The Essential Frankfurt Reader: 447). This process of thinking, Hegel's ideal of Reason (not to be confused with scientific reason) allows us to unchain our minds from the facts of reality and therefore free us to other objective possibilities. The world suddenly becomes undefined and capable of being constituted by anything else.
The crux of the argument is that Hegel's Reason was unchanging and absolute. Marx saw Hegel's Reason as reaching its own stage of historical negation, where forces oppressed by the established epistemologies of reason needed to move Reason forward by bringing it down to earth. By grounding thought in materialism, Reason can move into a new historical stage in which it may be used to subvert the repressive powers of reified power structures, just as it had, in the past, been used to subvert thought and discourse.
1 As Erich Fromm has explained in this introduction to Bottomore's "Selected Writings," for Marx materialism is not realism or naturalism, but is the field and conditions of actual production.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Spots
Just a thought on one of the polyvalences of place - the spot. Perhaps this has already been talked about by someone, but it came to me, as I walked home from the gym today, as new.
Between Weyburn Terrace and the edge of campus, there are three hilly blocks of residential housing that I walk to whenever I go to or from the gym. On one of these blocks, there is a section - a spot - in which some ground vines have grown over the sidewalk, limiting the possible passage of two people to just one. Over half the sidewalk path is choked out by these vines, and today, I had to wait for someone else to pass through these six or seven feet of vinewalk before I could continue home. Then I got to thinking, should they cut these vines back? No, I thought, this is a nice spot on my (quasi-)daily trek. Some of the spots I pass through are too close to loud frathouses, some smell strongly of noxious garbage, and others are blocked by cars parking on driveway entrances. There are good spots and bad spots on my daily trek.
In a restaurant, there may be certain tables or seats that are "bad spots" due to their location under a strong-blowing air-conditioning duct, near a door that opens to a cold street, or seating that leaves one susceptible to bumps from passersby.
The power of these spots lies within their ability to shift one's routine. If I frequently take a walk through an area, I might do it in order to enjoy a spot, such as a tree of blooming lilacs. On the other hand, I may avoid a path that contains troubling or troubled spots, such as a sidewalk temporarily disrupted by a repavement. After discovering late last week that the elevator in my apartment complex was unwilling to stop at my floor, I consistently attempted to use it, hoping it would give in and let me out. Eventually I remade my path to my apartment through the staircase, and today I discovered, almost by accident that the elevator had been repaired. A troubled spot made me remake my route.
Is "spot" really a different way of looking at a place. I thought perhaps it was due its seeming irrelevance, yet pervasive presence in the world. They are, for me, temporary points of the day, that may or may not be consistently reproducible in the future. Their tones can make a place pleasant or unpleasant, and their variance can subtlety shift a daily routine. They are too transitory to visit (a passing lilac tree, but not a garden) and too seemingly minor to really shift one's attitude towards a place (in a restaurant, one can move to a table that is more comfortable for whatever issue one may have); they are not the big game changers. Spots go largely unnoticed, but they color our lives.
Between Weyburn Terrace and the edge of campus, there are three hilly blocks of residential housing that I walk to whenever I go to or from the gym. On one of these blocks, there is a section - a spot - in which some ground vines have grown over the sidewalk, limiting the possible passage of two people to just one. Over half the sidewalk path is choked out by these vines, and today, I had to wait for someone else to pass through these six or seven feet of vinewalk before I could continue home. Then I got to thinking, should they cut these vines back? No, I thought, this is a nice spot on my (quasi-)daily trek. Some of the spots I pass through are too close to loud frathouses, some smell strongly of noxious garbage, and others are blocked by cars parking on driveway entrances. There are good spots and bad spots on my daily trek.
In a restaurant, there may be certain tables or seats that are "bad spots" due to their location under a strong-blowing air-conditioning duct, near a door that opens to a cold street, or seating that leaves one susceptible to bumps from passersby.
The power of these spots lies within their ability to shift one's routine. If I frequently take a walk through an area, I might do it in order to enjoy a spot, such as a tree of blooming lilacs. On the other hand, I may avoid a path that contains troubling or troubled spots, such as a sidewalk temporarily disrupted by a repavement. After discovering late last week that the elevator in my apartment complex was unwilling to stop at my floor, I consistently attempted to use it, hoping it would give in and let me out. Eventually I remade my path to my apartment through the staircase, and today I discovered, almost by accident that the elevator had been repaired. A troubled spot made me remake my route.
Is "spot" really a different way of looking at a place. I thought perhaps it was due its seeming irrelevance, yet pervasive presence in the world. They are, for me, temporary points of the day, that may or may not be consistently reproducible in the future. Their tones can make a place pleasant or unpleasant, and their variance can subtlety shift a daily routine. They are too transitory to visit (a passing lilac tree, but not a garden) and too seemingly minor to really shift one's attitude towards a place (in a restaurant, one can move to a table that is more comfortable for whatever issue one may have); they are not the big game changers. Spots go largely unnoticed, but they color our lives.
Friday, March 13, 2009
The East and the Orient
In a stressful mood I ventured down to the tobacco store (No!) to buy some classy cigarettes (to make my smoking an exclusive event). The guy at the cash register was a fat bullshitter type who ended asking me what I do. I told him I studied geography and he did the usual not-familiar-with-academic-geography thing - he started asking me capital trivia. What is the capital of South Africa? (FYI, this is trick question - multiple capitals) Australia? Canada? And then another geographical question: What are the furthest north, south, west, and east states? His answer for north, west and east was Alaska. "Alaska is where the East begins!"
On Ken Rockwell's (the photographer-reviewer-self-promoter) website he has an entry on "Oriental" cameras. He considers cameras made in East Asia "Oriental," as he argues that the term only applies to the eastern part of the continent - Russia is not part of it.
I thought about writing him some hatemail to persuade him to drop the terminology, but decided that he would probably disregard it in his narcissism. Maybe I still should, though...
So what is my beef with the tobacco store guy and Ken Rockwell? Conceptions of the "East" and "Oriental" are both grossly misapplied terms. The "The Myth of Continents," a book by Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen, goes in depth about the contradictory nature of metageographical terms. The two terms I have picked out for this blog entry have come to be almost empty terms in regards to actual places. They are, however, loaded with essentialist ideas. The following is an excerpt from a precis I wrote earlier this quarter about "The Myth of Continents." I highly recommend this book:
"Said’s 'Orientalism' is to be commended for its exposure of the West’s construction of an illusional Orient. From this deconstructionist viewpoint, we can see the varying borders of the historical Orient. The Orient began mostly as the Near East studied by philologists. It was later used for the Middle East and North Africa, sort of an indicator for Islamic lands. As more contact was made with South and East Asia, those lands came to typify the Orient. Hegel discussed four Oriental zones, and two of them Persia and Egypt were 'historical buffers,' points were purely Oriental ideas were diffused into more civilized forms (due to their proximity to Europe). Japan itself adopted the label of the East (an idea tied to the Orient) and saw itself as a special exception to its sluggish progress and as a leader to the region. Western culture has shifted its conceptual borders with the East constantly since the Middle Ages. At times, the West seems to be little more than Anglo-America. Events like the Great Schism divided Europe religiously, and this event has been used to compare the Cold War division of Western and Eastern Europe. Russia has always been on the cusp of continents, and Communism is often seen as an anti-Western doctrine. In the last fifty years, battles in the defense of Western freedom and democracy have been waged on these grounds (Huntington Thesis). Further, due to Central Europe’s role in the Second World War, how could places like Germany be truly Western? Something Asiatic is perceived in the uncivilized events of Nazi Germany and the war’s eastern front. In the globalized world, there is still a curious notion as Globalization as nothing more than Westernization. If this is true, labeling Japan as Eastern would be as hard as putting it in the West.
Since the Enlightenment, the East evolved as a place ever more stagnant and barbaric. The technological and colonial advance of Europe marked the Orient as a land of irrational and aesthetically minded peoples without humor or freedom. Rationality was seen as a uniquely Western ideal. Weber saw notions of salvation in Eastern religions as the cul-de-sac of contemplation – Asian people had simply given up on rational and progressive thinking. The West itself has never been fully rational. Technological advancement and capitalism are not unique to Europe. Many Enlightenment thinkers operated on Deist and teleological schemes, embracing a mystical framework to be rational within. Many theories that label the East as irrational are irrational themselves, such as Asiatic despotism and hydraulic despotism."
For all these reasons, I think the terms should be thrown out of our daily discourse!!
I thought about writing him some hatemail to persuade him to drop the terminology, but decided that he would probably disregard it in his narcissism. Maybe I still should, though...
So what is my beef with the tobacco store guy and Ken Rockwell? Conceptions of the "East" and "Oriental" are both grossly misapplied terms. The "The Myth of Continents," a book by Martin Lewis and Karen Wigen, goes in depth about the contradictory nature of metageographical terms. The two terms I have picked out for this blog entry have come to be almost empty terms in regards to actual places. They are, however, loaded with essentialist ideas. The following is an excerpt from a precis I wrote earlier this quarter about "The Myth of Continents." I highly recommend this book:
"Said’s 'Orientalism' is to be commended for its exposure of the West’s construction of an illusional Orient. From this deconstructionist viewpoint, we can see the varying borders of the historical Orient. The Orient began mostly as the Near East studied by philologists. It was later used for the Middle East and North Africa, sort of an indicator for Islamic lands. As more contact was made with South and East Asia, those lands came to typify the Orient. Hegel discussed four Oriental zones, and two of them Persia and Egypt were 'historical buffers,' points were purely Oriental ideas were diffused into more civilized forms (due to their proximity to Europe). Japan itself adopted the label of the East (an idea tied to the Orient) and saw itself as a special exception to its sluggish progress and as a leader to the region. Western culture has shifted its conceptual borders with the East constantly since the Middle Ages. At times, the West seems to be little more than Anglo-America. Events like the Great Schism divided Europe religiously, and this event has been used to compare the Cold War division of Western and Eastern Europe. Russia has always been on the cusp of continents, and Communism is often seen as an anti-Western doctrine. In the last fifty years, battles in the defense of Western freedom and democracy have been waged on these grounds (Huntington Thesis). Further, due to Central Europe’s role in the Second World War, how could places like Germany be truly Western? Something Asiatic is perceived in the uncivilized events of Nazi Germany and the war’s eastern front. In the globalized world, there is still a curious notion as Globalization as nothing more than Westernization. If this is true, labeling Japan as Eastern would be as hard as putting it in the West.
Since the Enlightenment, the East evolved as a place ever more stagnant and barbaric. The technological and colonial advance of Europe marked the Orient as a land of irrational and aesthetically minded peoples without humor or freedom. Rationality was seen as a uniquely Western ideal. Weber saw notions of salvation in Eastern religions as the cul-de-sac of contemplation – Asian people had simply given up on rational and progressive thinking. The West itself has never been fully rational. Technological advancement and capitalism are not unique to Europe. Many Enlightenment thinkers operated on Deist and teleological schemes, embracing a mystical framework to be rational within. Many theories that label the East as irrational are irrational themselves, such as Asiatic despotism and hydraulic despotism."
For all these reasons, I think the terms should be thrown out of our daily discourse!!
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Clifford Geertz and "Deep Play"
This is essay is oft-cited in the works of both sociologists and anthropologists. Geertz uses Jeremy Benthams concept of "deep play," or high stakes games, to examine why someone might engage in betting game where they are in over their heads. By the end of the essay, the Balinese cockfight comes across as a sociological reflection of status, kinship, inter-personal conflict, and affirmations, denials, and explorations of masculinity, animality, and the seedy underbelly of human existance. The "deeper" the play, the more engaged the Balinese are with the conflict, and the higher the stakes, the more meaning is attached to the fight. A "shallow" game arouses little interest and is explemplified by two out of towners pitting their cocks against eachother. The audience cares little about the outcome. When family is involved, the Balinese are much more engaged. Betting together on a cock seems to reaffirm ties, to resolve petty conflicts that have emerged outside, and to wage a symbolic war on another clan. The greatest fights are high-bet, well matched fights, and the winners get to revel in their symbolic triumph. Geertz stresses that there are not "real world" consequences to these fights. A poor cockfighter from far away can't come to the city and rise himself to wealth and riches by cockfight victories. The fight is a story the Balinese "tell themselves about themselves" and reflects more the emotions and desires of people and day-to-day realities of class.
I like this style of "thick description" that Geertz engages in. When I am reading anthropological texts, these are the kinds of works I favor. Bruce Kapferer's "Celebration of Demons" read along similar lines, but without the theoretical insight. The context of the fight and accompanying explanation of symbols and society make the text seem solid. Today, I can imagine that such texts are frowned upon within anthropology for the assumptions they make when connecting people and their actions so clearly to stated cultural "realities." Is the cock truly an extension of the man? This would seem a slam dunk, as the accompanying language (cock jokes) and fights (bloodthirsty spasms of violence) seem tenable evidence of the masculine. Is this too easy of an assumption, playing into categories defined by Western culture? Perhaps the whole recognizableness and understandability of the cockfight is simple misinterpretation of a culture specific event. I'm not so convinced.
In American society, is the sportscar no more than the Balinese cock? Or the boxing match no more than a cockfight? At a boxing match we see two men duking it out until one of them figuratively dies - a total knockout. People may win money this way, and some could gain fortunes, though many more are labelled "compulsive gamblers" (like the social outcasts in Geertz's analysis). These sports, in their advertising, their cast make-up, and their allusions, are all very masculine. One only has to look at American pro-sports to see how male-dominated these sorts of sports are.
Looking back at the social symbolism and kin level cohesiveness that stem from the Balinese cockfight, I couldn't help but think of a Milwaukee Brewers baseball game. A Brewers game can be read in many different ways - through a child enjoying a sport with his family, through inattentive executives economically bonding over the distant game below, or, as it seems in Milwaukee, through drunken devotion to the home team. The latter resembles kinship bonding, it builds a sense of community. The enemy is the opposing team, and nearby rivals pose the most exciting foes. For Milwaukee, Chicago and Minnesota games are the most exciting, a sort of regional rivalry plays itself out. In standings, the divisions are regional, and being above the Cubs is a palpable goal. Outsider teams get less attention, and one can imagine that an Astros-Cubs game at Miller Park will draw little local enthusiasm. Well-matched games against rivals (the other local clan?) are the most exciting, and the ones that seem to foster the most local identity. What really defines blue-collar Brewers fans from Cubs fans? Probably not a whole lot, but these games serve as occasions to drum up some sort of hatred - conveyed through insults and possible fan altercations. Blood really starts to flow. The players on the teams are interchangeable. Though heroes may come and go, the teams persist through the decades, and though they get better or worse depending on the players and management, these facts are washed over with the power of the time-honored institution of Major League Baseball.
So how is this baseball game a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. First, it is that we are different from our Other, our rival. Insults based on stereotypical Chicagoans will surface, and laudable traits of Milwaukeeans will be created and reinforced during the game. Colors and symbols easily mark who is with you and who is not. Does the game say anything about social structure? In Geertz's ethnography, children, women, the disabled, and the outcast all engage in minor games at the periphery of the cockfight, engaging indirectly with the main festival of proud violence and social justification. At a baseball game we see elements of societal structure within the setup of the ballpark itself. The bleachers and nose-bleeders are the cheapest sections, followed by the upper deck, the lower deck, and finally, the skyboxes. For a geographer, this is interesting to ruminate on. The closer to the field the better, unless you have the chance of getting hit with a ball or you can't see anything. The further away you are the worse the seats, unless you are in a skybox. But those in skyboxes are hardly engaged in the play by play experience of the game anyway. For all, the game is probably a bonding experience of some sort. But those that would enjoy the game the most for its community-reinforcement and "deep play" are in the cheaper seats. Money is seldom at stake, but pride is, and like in Geertz's cockfights, when the game is said and done, nothing will actually change in social-economic structure of two major cities. Milwaukee won't be as important and respected as Chicago if they sweep the Cubs, but to some of the crowd, a symbolic victory will have been won, and pride will run deeper.
I like this style of "thick description" that Geertz engages in. When I am reading anthropological texts, these are the kinds of works I favor. Bruce Kapferer's "Celebration of Demons" read along similar lines, but without the theoretical insight. The context of the fight and accompanying explanation of symbols and society make the text seem solid. Today, I can imagine that such texts are frowned upon within anthropology for the assumptions they make when connecting people and their actions so clearly to stated cultural "realities." Is the cock truly an extension of the man? This would seem a slam dunk, as the accompanying language (cock jokes) and fights (bloodthirsty spasms of violence) seem tenable evidence of the masculine. Is this too easy of an assumption, playing into categories defined by Western culture? Perhaps the whole recognizableness and understandability of the cockfight is simple misinterpretation of a culture specific event. I'm not so convinced.
In American society, is the sportscar no more than the Balinese cock? Or the boxing match no more than a cockfight? At a boxing match we see two men duking it out until one of them figuratively dies - a total knockout. People may win money this way, and some could gain fortunes, though many more are labelled "compulsive gamblers" (like the social outcasts in Geertz's analysis). These sports, in their advertising, their cast make-up, and their allusions, are all very masculine. One only has to look at American pro-sports to see how male-dominated these sorts of sports are.
Looking back at the social symbolism and kin level cohesiveness that stem from the Balinese cockfight, I couldn't help but think of a Milwaukee Brewers baseball game. A Brewers game can be read in many different ways - through a child enjoying a sport with his family, through inattentive executives economically bonding over the distant game below, or, as it seems in Milwaukee, through drunken devotion to the home team. The latter resembles kinship bonding, it builds a sense of community. The enemy is the opposing team, and nearby rivals pose the most exciting foes. For Milwaukee, Chicago and Minnesota games are the most exciting, a sort of regional rivalry plays itself out. In standings, the divisions are regional, and being above the Cubs is a palpable goal. Outsider teams get less attention, and one can imagine that an Astros-Cubs game at Miller Park will draw little local enthusiasm. Well-matched games against rivals (the other local clan?) are the most exciting, and the ones that seem to foster the most local identity. What really defines blue-collar Brewers fans from Cubs fans? Probably not a whole lot, but these games serve as occasions to drum up some sort of hatred - conveyed through insults and possible fan altercations. Blood really starts to flow. The players on the teams are interchangeable. Though heroes may come and go, the teams persist through the decades, and though they get better or worse depending on the players and management, these facts are washed over with the power of the time-honored institution of Major League Baseball.
So how is this baseball game a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. First, it is that we are different from our Other, our rival. Insults based on stereotypical Chicagoans will surface, and laudable traits of Milwaukeeans will be created and reinforced during the game. Colors and symbols easily mark who is with you and who is not. Does the game say anything about social structure? In Geertz's ethnography, children, women, the disabled, and the outcast all engage in minor games at the periphery of the cockfight, engaging indirectly with the main festival of proud violence and social justification. At a baseball game we see elements of societal structure within the setup of the ballpark itself. The bleachers and nose-bleeders are the cheapest sections, followed by the upper deck, the lower deck, and finally, the skyboxes. For a geographer, this is interesting to ruminate on. The closer to the field the better, unless you have the chance of getting hit with a ball or you can't see anything. The further away you are the worse the seats, unless you are in a skybox. But those in skyboxes are hardly engaged in the play by play experience of the game anyway. For all, the game is probably a bonding experience of some sort. But those that would enjoy the game the most for its community-reinforcement and "deep play" are in the cheaper seats. Money is seldom at stake, but pride is, and like in Geertz's cockfights, when the game is said and done, nothing will actually change in social-economic structure of two major cities. Milwaukee won't be as important and respected as Chicago if they sweep the Cubs, but to some of the crowd, a symbolic victory will have been won, and pride will run deeper.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Schopenhauer and Love
Looking at The Metaphysics of Love today, it is easy to cast it aside as out-of-date ruminations from a bygone era. Schopenhauer claims the will to live and the will of the species are linked to biological instincts that instill in us a compulsion to mate. Love is reduced to the biological tendency to find a mate. A man (who is Schopenhauer's subject) and a woman will come together to reform the Platonic Ideal of the human species. Passionate love is more or less humans flouting their individual selves and taking on the heroic role of species-first reproduction. A man will run climb the tallest mountain, dodge bullets and endure cultural ostracism to fulfill his passionate desire to meld with the object of his desire (and compulsion). In popular literature of the times, such a man was honorable in his sacrifices for obtaining this love. Honor is a value that exists for the greater good of the species; the child that results from the strenuous courtship is the ultimate goal.
"The will of a man of this kind has become engulfed in that of the species, or the will of the species has obtained so great an ascendency over the will of the individual that if such a man cannot be effective in the manifestation of the first, he disdains to be so in the last. The individual in this case is too weak a vessel to bear the infinite longing of the will of the species concentrated upon a definite object. When this is the case suicide is the result, and
sometimes suicide of the two lovers; unless nature, to prevent this, causes insanity, which then enshrouds with its veil the consciousness of so hopeless a condition..."
Romeo and Juliet are but weak vessels for the continuity of the species, losing sight of the species in their extreme passion.
All of the talk of will of species and our inherent desire for biological satisfaction really seems to cheapen love, but maintaining its mystery is not Schopenhauer's goal. He does not discuss homosexual love and only mentions pedastry in passing and as a simple deprivation. One must wonder if love can exist outside of reproduction, Schopenhauer doesn't seem to allow it. Even marriage - the ultimate symbol of enduring love seems a bit of a sham.The most successful marriages come out of arrangement or friendship - passionate lovers are doomed to misery and hatred for each other.
Schopenhauer's laws of attraction seem quite absurd. That those who deviate from the Ideal (most of us) mate with our bodily and dispositional opposite in order to reform the Ideal. Two fat people are doomed to have fat children, while a fat person and a boney person are likely to have normal child. A bit too simple, isn't it?
How does Schopenhauer's argument hold up in our increasingly post-modern society?
I couldn't help but agree with some his ideas about the stereotypically most attractive mates. If anything, this shows how little our culture has changed from that of the early 19th century in some regards. Men are to be kind of heart and muscular. Their intelligence is not the most important aspect for women, who are drawn mainly to strength and courage. Indeed, in contemporary American media, the courageous and heavily armed warrior still wins out over the scrawny book learner, no matter how astute he is (much to the dismay of budding scholars such as I). For women, the mainstream ideal seems to be witty and sexy woman. Driving through Los Angeles I can't help but be bombarded with billboards of buxom women every time I go out. Advertisements for breast augmentations and plastic surgery abound. Schopenhauer's take on attraction and the physical characteristics of the female still holds in today's culture, the "upward or downward turn of the nose" can still make or break a female in Hollywood.
For Schopenhauer, men look for in women "a certain plumpness, in other words, a superabundance of the vegetative function, plasticity," adding "excessive thinness strikingly repels us." At first this seems to be a break with the times: in an age of mega-obesity - thin is in. But on further thought, a peculiar breed of fashion models are striking for their attenuated limbs, sunken cheeks, and jarringly inhuman features. In recent years there has been a public outcry to ban bone-thin models for their own health and out of fear that they may spur others to anorexia and bulimia in emulation of their supposedly glamorous identities.
So it would seem to me that the door isn't shut on all of Schopenhauer's musings. Though many today eschew any sort of intrinsic biological desire for species perpetuation in explanations for human behavior, it does not seem completely absurd to me. This work (like most of its era) is limited by restricting most of love's agency to the heterosexual man and by scientifically obsolete ideas about heredity, biology and sex.
"The will of a man of this kind has become engulfed in that of the species, or the will of the species has obtained so great an ascendency over the will of the individual that if such a man cannot be effective in the manifestation of the first, he disdains to be so in the last. The individual in this case is too weak a vessel to bear the infinite longing of the will of the species concentrated upon a definite object. When this is the case suicide is the result, and
sometimes suicide of the two lovers; unless nature, to prevent this, causes insanity, which then enshrouds with its veil the consciousness of so hopeless a condition..."
Romeo and Juliet are but weak vessels for the continuity of the species, losing sight of the species in their extreme passion.
All of the talk of will of species and our inherent desire for biological satisfaction really seems to cheapen love, but maintaining its mystery is not Schopenhauer's goal. He does not discuss homosexual love and only mentions pedastry in passing and as a simple deprivation. One must wonder if love can exist outside of reproduction, Schopenhauer doesn't seem to allow it. Even marriage - the ultimate symbol of enduring love seems a bit of a sham.The most successful marriages come out of arrangement or friendship - passionate lovers are doomed to misery and hatred for each other.
Schopenhauer's laws of attraction seem quite absurd. That those who deviate from the Ideal (most of us) mate with our bodily and dispositional opposite in order to reform the Ideal. Two fat people are doomed to have fat children, while a fat person and a boney person are likely to have normal child. A bit too simple, isn't it?
How does Schopenhauer's argument hold up in our increasingly post-modern society?
I couldn't help but agree with some his ideas about the stereotypically most attractive mates. If anything, this shows how little our culture has changed from that of the early 19th century in some regards. Men are to be kind of heart and muscular. Their intelligence is not the most important aspect for women, who are drawn mainly to strength and courage. Indeed, in contemporary American media, the courageous and heavily armed warrior still wins out over the scrawny book learner, no matter how astute he is (much to the dismay of budding scholars such as I). For women, the mainstream ideal seems to be witty and sexy woman. Driving through Los Angeles I can't help but be bombarded with billboards of buxom women every time I go out. Advertisements for breast augmentations and plastic surgery abound. Schopenhauer's take on attraction and the physical characteristics of the female still holds in today's culture, the "upward or downward turn of the nose" can still make or break a female in Hollywood.
For Schopenhauer, men look for in women "a certain plumpness, in other words, a superabundance of the vegetative function, plasticity," adding "excessive thinness strikingly repels us." At first this seems to be a break with the times: in an age of mega-obesity - thin is in. But on further thought, a peculiar breed of fashion models are striking for their attenuated limbs, sunken cheeks, and jarringly inhuman features. In recent years there has been a public outcry to ban bone-thin models for their own health and out of fear that they may spur others to anorexia and bulimia in emulation of their supposedly glamorous identities.
So it would seem to me that the door isn't shut on all of Schopenhauer's musings. Though many today eschew any sort of intrinsic biological desire for species perpetuation in explanations for human behavior, it does not seem completely absurd to me. This work (like most of its era) is limited by restricting most of love's agency to the heterosexual man and by scientifically obsolete ideas about heredity, biology and sex.
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