Comments on: Spectacular Time http://www.stumplane.us/blog/2009/11/19/spectacular-time/ in the dirt since history began Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:14:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Montag http://www.stumplane.us/blog/2009/11/19/spectacular-time/comment-page-1/#comment-7328 Montag Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:28:06 +0000 http://www.stumplane.us/blog/?p=1816#comment-7328 TWO hours a day for eight hours pay! but four is a start. ;) TWO hours a day for eight hours pay! but four is a start. ;)

]]> By: JRB http://www.stumplane.us/blog/2009/11/19/spectacular-time/comment-page-1/#comment-7327 JRB Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:22:14 +0000 http://www.stumplane.us/blog/?p=1816#comment-7327 Also, with regard to the reclamation of time, you would probably find sympathy with the <a href="http://www.iww.org/en/node/758" rel="nofollow">Wobbly ideal of a 4-hour day</a> for 8-hours pay. Also, with regard to the reclamation of time, you would probably find sympathy with the Wobbly ideal of a 4-hour day for 8-hours pay.

]]> By: JRB http://www.stumplane.us/blog/2009/11/19/spectacular-time/comment-page-1/#comment-5807 JRB Sun, 29 Nov 2009 06:12:43 +0000 http://www.stumplane.us/blog/?p=1816#comment-5807 "One might say...that there are two intellectual streams that emerged from the period of May '68 in France that are still alive in the US and English-speaking world: the pre-1968 revolutionary strain, kept alive in zines, anarchist infoshops, and the Internet; and the post-1968 strain, largely despairing of the possibility of a mass-based, organized revolution, kept alive in graduate seminars, academic conferences, and scholarly journals. The first tends to recognize capitalism as an all-encompassing symbolic system that creates extreme forms of human alienation, but sees it as possible to rebel against it in the name of pleasure, desire, and the potential autonomy of the human subject. The second tends to see the system (whether it is now labeled capitalism, power, discourse, etc.) as so all-encompassing that it is constitutive of the desiring subject him- or herself, rendering any critique of alienation, or possibility of a revolution against the system itself, effectively impossible. At the risk of editorializing...the situation is full of endless ironies. The Situationists argued that the system renders us passive consumers, but issued a call to actively resist. The current radical academic orthodoxy seems to reject either the first part or the second: that is, either it argues there is no system imposed on consumers, or that resistance is impossible. The first has long been most popular: since the early 1980's...anyone who makes a Situationist-style argument in an academic forum can expect to be condemned as puritanical and elitist for suggesting consumers are allowing themselves to be passively manipulated. Rather, consumers are creatively reinterpreting consumer styles, fashions, and products in all sorts of subversive ways. In other words, ordinary folks are already practicing detournment. The great irony here is that this emerging orthodoxy, which quickly became the mainstay of cultural studies (and, later, anthropology), was strictly confined to the academy. Cultural studies tracts were rarely, if ever, read by the 'ordinary folk' in question, while Situationist literature, which by these standards was the most elitist position possible, actually does have a certain popular audience. <em>The Revolution of Everday Life</em> (Vaneigem, 1967), for example, is almost never assigned in courses or cited in academic texts, but it's just as regularly read by college-age radicals now as it was thirty years ago. It all rather confirms that, as my friend Eric Laursen once suggested to me, the reason Situationism can't be integrated in the academy is simply because 'it cannot be read as anything but a call to action.'" -- David Graeber, <em><a href="http://www.akpress.org/2009/items/directactionakpress" rel="nofollow">Direct Action</a></em> “One might say…that there are two intellectual streams that emerged from the period of May ‘68 in France that are still alive in the US and English-speaking world: the pre-1968 revolutionary strain, kept alive in zines, anarchist infoshops, and the Internet; and the post-1968 strain, largely despairing of the possibility of a mass-based, organized revolution, kept alive in graduate seminars, academic conferences, and scholarly journals. The first tends to recognize capitalism as an all-encompassing symbolic system that creates extreme forms of human alienation, but sees it as possible to rebel against it in the name of pleasure, desire, and the potential autonomy of the human subject. The second tends to see the system (whether it is now labeled capitalism, power, discourse, etc.) as so all-encompassing that it is constitutive of the desiring subject him- or herself, rendering any critique of alienation, or possibility of a revolution against the system itself, effectively impossible. At the risk of editorializing…the situation is full of endless ironies. The Situationists argued that the system renders us passive consumers, but issued a call to actively resist. The current radical academic orthodoxy seems to reject either the first part or the second: that is, either it argues there is no system imposed on consumers, or that resistance is impossible. The first has long been most popular: since the early 1980’s…anyone who makes a Situationist-style argument in an academic forum can expect to be condemned as puritanical and elitist for suggesting consumers are allowing themselves to be passively manipulated. Rather, consumers are creatively reinterpreting consumer styles, fashions, and products in all sorts of subversive ways. In other words, ordinary folks are already practicing detournment.

The great irony here is that this emerging orthodoxy, which quickly became the mainstay of cultural studies (and, later, anthropology), was strictly confined to the academy. Cultural studies tracts were rarely, if ever, read by the ‘ordinary folk’ in question, while Situationist literature, which by these standards was the most elitist position possible, actually does have a certain popular audience. The Revolution of Everday Life (Vaneigem, 1967), for example, is almost never assigned in courses or cited in academic texts, but it’s just as regularly read by college-age radicals now as it was thirty years ago. It all rather confirms that, as my friend Eric Laursen once suggested to me, the reason Situationism can’t be integrated in the academy is simply because ‘it cannot be read as anything but a call to action.’” — David Graeber, Direct Action

]]> By: Montag http://www.stumplane.us/blog/2009/11/19/spectacular-time/comment-page-1/#comment-5541 Montag Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:25:37 +0000 http://www.stumplane.us/blog/?p=1816#comment-5541 hopefully it’s vacation/feast preparation keeping you away for the tubes and not, you know, toil. hopefully it’s vacation/feast preparation keeping you away for the tubes and not, you know, toil.

]]> By: JRB http://www.stumplane.us/blog/2009/11/19/spectacular-time/comment-page-1/#comment-5468 JRB Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:34:27 +0000 http://www.stumplane.us/blog/?p=1816#comment-5468 Thank you, sir. When time permits I will return to the internets and have much more to say. Thank you, sir. When time permits I will return to the internets and have much more to say.

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