“In Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture” by Frederick Jameson Essay

It is true that use theory sometimes finds a special manoeuvre in its scheme for those ancient cultural objects which disregard be said to obtain overt governmental and social content thus, 60s protest songs, The Salt of the Egraphicsh, Clancey Segals novels or Sol Yuricks, chi e blindh-closeto murals, and the San Francisco Mime Troop. This is non the place to leaven the complicated problem of governmental art today, turf out to say that our business as culture critics requires us to raise it, and to rethink what ar still fundamentally 30s categories in some new and more cheering coetaneous way. (Jameson 139)I initially read this quote as a praise of semipolitical art as so worthy an object of study that its complexities could not be fully addressed inside the setting of Jamesons work. In other words, Jameson was humbly admitting that political art is deserving of its own lengthy analysis. Why, though, is Jameson incapable of addressing political art (and implicitly co unter culture) for more than a page in his nineteen page essay describing in advance(p) culture?As I read the quote, I began to hear a dismissive impression in the words special place and grand.How rargon is overt political and social content? How r atomic number 18 are 60s protest songs? While the historicity of the category 60s give notice be appreciated, and indeed Jamesons use of it appears to be grounded in skepticism towards the authenticity of political art emerging outside of bodied life, it seems as if Jameson is using it to mark off a threat to his argument. The threat, that is, that overt political art and action have been present and overt since forward the 1960s, and continue to persist now. I feel that, to a significant extent, his position as academic shields him from and allows him to think away a counterculture that has been very much resilient and struggling. Or, as Hakim Bey opens his TAZ The short-lived Autonomous Z unitary, ontological Anarchy, Poe tic Terrorism, CHAOS NEVER DIED.The production or assumption of a limited full stop of the 60s tends to continue a nostalgic distance from a catamenia of political art, counterculture, and resistance that never really finish (or began). In many ways the 60s have clasp an eye on to resemble a safe countercultural commodity. One can easily find coffee table books on the collective rebellious phase of the baby boomers youth, or one can watch the Wonder eld or Fo ataraxis Gump and recall a period before choosing to turn off, tune out, drop in.If these experiences are too lonely, one can visit my home(a) town of Cleveland, Ohio with family and peruse the Rock and Roll third house of Fame to study Beatlesartifacts or Jimi Hendrix guitars behind glass for a $10 fee. All of these commodities appear to recuperate political art and counterculture except for that they only do so in retrospect, and in a fashion that uses animal(prenominal)/spatial distance to construct a consciousnes s of historical distance that mustinessiness be allow forfully believed. Just a few blocks away museum visitors, were they to preferably choose to visit the Tower City core at public square on a Sunday, would likely encounter pump class kids and homeless person people dissolving cultural boundaries at Cleveland nourishment Not Bombs. I dont propose, in response, a overhasty rejection of some mythically totalitarian historical metanarrative, simply quite a I propose a more virtuoso(a) and honest history that dissolves the nostalgic distance in the midst of political art then and recuperated art now. unluckily for Jameson, who has chosen to ignore the reality of such a history for the sake of a commentary on his own constructed meta-society, many post-60s examples easily come to mind. The lubber rock movement, certainly with a strong collective character, produced material easily accessible to mass culture. The awaken Pistols Anarchy in the U.K. was released in 1976, a nd Crass was let go of agitating songs like Do They Owe Us A Living?, Punk is Dead, and Fight state of war Not Wars in 1978.Rage Against the Machine, arguably one of the more important alternative bands of the 1990s, initiated a innate Axis of Justice with administration of a nap and donated all of its proceeds from a tour with U2 to organizations as overtly resistant as EZLN. Any middle class adolescent who frequented Ozzfest or other surface festivals in the 1990s and 2000s is likely aware of System of a Downs Steal This Album, or the lyrics to their politically charged Prison Song. Someone interested in informed hop enough to scratch the surface will likely encounter KRS-1s Sound of da constabulary released in 1993. And Radiohead, now international superstars, have moreover released their latest album essentially for free, bypassing the music pains entirely. Jameson might respond to me with a question like, yes, but why havent they worked?, expecting an answer affirmin g their status as commodities which could be subject to his ideology/utopia dialectic.My answer to such a question would be only my historical excite its in the works. Jameson cannot escape his own position within consumer capitalism in that it is his choice to perceive a large body of political art as contained within a diluted dialectic that imposes itself upon consumers. by chance a radically engaged and tactical exertion can be counterpoised against the image of the nonoperational consumer. And besides, this is not to mention the countless DIY zines circulating round Infoshops, in radical circles, and across the hipster-radical bridge in trendy coffee shops. A nice theme of post-60s anarchist praxis can be ground in criminologist Jeff Ferrells snap Down the Streets Adventures in urban Anarchy, where he discusses his own experiences with collective activities as obverse as pirate radio, graf aspecti, and biking in critical masses. But are these practices rare? by chance only to those who continue to ignore, dismiss, and keep a distance from them. Are they exclusive? Well, this is not the place to raise the complicated problem of countercultural elitism and exclusion.For the rest of the items on Jamesons list, it appears as if he has chosen examples that fit his argument of rarity. When I searched for Clancey Segal on Google, for example, the only duplicate result I could find was Jamesons article Perhaps my own ignorance is to blame for my unfamiliarity with the rest of the items on Jamesons list. If this is the case, how is it that I was able to come up with several(prenominal) examples of my own? Are they simply inauthentic, easily recuperated, or not overt enough? Am I a crazy radical detached from the revolutionary potentiality of mass culture? Or are my examples invalidated and recuperated precisely at the moment that Jamesons position of disengagement and struggle for theoretical security warehousing them inside of some abstract near-omni present nightmare?Indeed, it practically seems, provided one accepts the omnipresent nightmare situation, that any incredulity or skepticism towards such a humans is analogous to falling back into the Matrix and be reintegrated into the nave consumerist masses.But does the myth of the rarity of echt and overt political art- and resistance in general- honestly acknowledge a totalizing or nearly totalizing pin down like Guy Debords spectacle or Lewis Mumfords megamachine, or does it further reveal its proponents inability or refusal to engage with political art and action of their contemporary milieu? To what extent does a fear of recuperation reproduce precisely the distance required for recuperation? The ideological persona of Jamesons writing comes to bear in his own words to rethink what are still essentially 30s categories in some new and more satisfactory contemporary way.I think Jameson redeems himself when his ideology/utopia dialectic of consumerism is pointed at crit icism itself. Just as capital must re-create and recuperate autopian component in its commodities, Jameson and his perceived brotherhood of culture critics must re-think a rare and fetishized collection of genuine political art and acts to continue to theorize a hegemonic modern culture. If we directly engage in overt political art or action, however, the University can only have us, as rare historical events, in retrospect.Bey, Hakim. TAZ The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Autonomedia. 2003. Brooklyn, vernal York.Ferrell, Jeff. Tearing Down The Streets Adventures in Urban Anarchy. Palgrave. New York, New York. 2001.Song release dates gathered from www.allmusic.com