by Ben Spatz
From part I:
It is in contrast to nonwestern nonwhite nonmale culture that "high" culture is tyrannical, not in contrast to western white male kitsch and capitalistic commercial "art."
Is it enough to be NOT ARROGANT? I don't know if this distinction holds water. I just heard Mark Taylor speak about the "implosion" of the University. Certainly all this elitist scholarly business is dying. I think this is basically one aspect of the death of phallocratic, logocentric patriarchy, which has been going on ever since Nietzsche announced that God was dead.
At this moment it seems as if patriarch is under attack from two separate forces. On the one hand, there are the radical identity politics of all marginal groups: Feminism, postcolonialism, complex race activism/theory, queer activism/theory, etc. My general feeling about this is that it's GREAT. Finally the beautiful swarming rhizome of patchwork culture will triumph over the Western project of unifying everything under one hegemonic system.
On the other hand, there is the triumph of capitalism and the hegemonic system of the dollar, which does act to destroy the old world humanism of patriarchy. If patriarchy is the King, and later the powerful Government, then it's obvious that the swarming power of the Market is destroying the old god. My reaction to this is much less positive.
In the first case, I imagine replacing the dead white male canon with a funky canon involving interesting artists & philosophers from all walks of life. In the second case, I imagine replacing Parisian cafes with Starbucks, and rich boy clubs with McDonalds.
I'm not going to say that these two forces are the same, but I do think they are deeply related. Taylor convinced me that both of these forces are related to RADICAL DEMOCRATIZATION. Don't we want education and art to be available to the masses? YES! But is there a way to maintain real human values if the community is 5 billion strong? I don't know. It may be that elitism allows such values to survive by making the pool very small. Extrapolating from phenomena like the internet, we have to realize that the white male canon WORKED so well for so long because it IGNORED 90% of the world. Is it possible to have a real culture (not a factory-produced one) that actually includes everyone?
I almost think that we should welcome some fragmentation, split off into
different groups again and stop the world from shrinking. Does this make me a
Luddite?