Pub Date : 2019-11-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-7725507
Sarah Hamblin
This essay argues that the conditions of contemporary finance capitalism have exhausted the revolutionary potential of political modernist aesthetics. The global ’68 conjuncture generated many of the fundamental concepts that continue to underscore how contemporary radical film practice is understood. As such, montage continues to occupy a central place in today’s radical aesthetic imagination, its model of active spectatorship still accepted as a vital expression of an autogestive oppositional politics. However, the economic and political landscape has changed significantly over the last fifty years such that the radical potential of political modernist aesthetics needs to be reevaluated. To this end, this essay examines how the shift from industrial to finance capitalism transforms montage and its concomitant investment in spectatorial autonomy into a conservative affirmation of the neoliberal subject. Now resembling the pattern hunters of speculative finance, the active spectator of political modernist cinema is today compromised by the new conditions of volatility, instability, hyperindividualism, and privatization that demand the same cognitive labor. In exploring how neoliberal ideology has absorbed and reframed the driving logics of 1968, this essay argues that montage’s radical political potential has been exhausted by the conditions of contemporary finance capitalism and instead calls for alternative modes of aesthetic engagement better equipped to at once express and oppose these new conditions of exploitation.
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Pub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-7515000
J. Armitage
Abstract:Paul Virilio, who passed away in 2018, was a significant figure in the study of cultural politics, as both pioneer and guide. This article prepares first-time readers for an encounter with Virilio’s critical thinking and essential writings and offers a personal remembrance by John Armitage of some of his principal theoretical and everyday convergences with and divergences from Virilio’s work from 1997 to the present day, including his three interviews with Virilio, the exchange of letters, a visit to the church of Saint Bernadette du Banlay, and Armitage’s own and others’ contributions to Virilio studies. In exploring Virilio’s influential ideas and their impact, the article maps out Virilio’s engagement with other important thinkers, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and concludes with a discussion of recent translations of key texts by Virilio.
{"title":"Remembering Paul Virilio","authors":"J. Armitage","doi":"10.1215/17432197-7515000","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-7515000","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Paul Virilio, who passed away in 2018, was a significant figure in the study of cultural politics, as both pioneer and guide. This article prepares first-time readers for an encounter with Virilio’s critical thinking and essential writings and offers a personal remembrance by John Armitage of some of his principal theoretical and everyday convergences with and divergences from Virilio’s work from 1997 to the present day, including his three interviews with Virilio, the exchange of letters, a visit to the church of Saint Bernadette du Banlay, and Armitage’s own and others’ contributions to Virilio studies. In exploring Virilio’s influential ideas and their impact, the article maps out Virilio’s engagement with other important thinkers, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and concludes with a discussion of recent translations of key texts by Virilio.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77753977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-7515014
Paul Virilio, Chris Turner
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Pub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-7515042
B. Diken
The article thematizes the actuality of despotism through a double reading of Xenophon’s Hiero and Dave Eggers’s Circle. A key text on despotism, Hiero is interesting to reconsider in a contemporary context because of its explicit focus on the economic element in the nexus of despotism, economy, and voluntary servitude. Discussing this nexus in an ancient context, the article turns to The Circle, a dystopic novel from 2013, which elaborates on how the attempt at creating a transparent society results in the perversion of democracy to the point where a despotism fueled by economization and voluntary servitude becomes immediately evident. Notwithstanding the significant differences between the two perceptions of despotism that proliferate in Hiero and The Circle, their shared focus on the nexus of despotism, economy, and voluntary servitude testifies to an interesting case of convergence in divergence. Offering an account of this continuity, the article ends with reflecting on this nexus itself, arguing that it should be rethought in a new way today. The concept of use is suggested as a key concept for such reconsideration.
{"title":"The Despotic Imperative","authors":"B. Diken","doi":"10.1215/17432197-7515042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-7515042","url":null,"abstract":"The article thematizes the actuality of despotism through a double reading of Xenophon’s Hiero and Dave Eggers’s Circle. A key text on despotism, Hiero is interesting to reconsider in a contemporary context because of its explicit focus on the economic element in the nexus of despotism, economy, and voluntary servitude. Discussing this nexus in an ancient context, the article turns to The Circle, a dystopic novel from 2013, which elaborates on how the attempt at creating a transparent society results in the perversion of democracy to the point where a despotism fueled by economization and voluntary servitude becomes immediately evident. Notwithstanding the significant differences between the two perceptions of despotism that proliferate in Hiero and The Circle, their shared focus on the nexus of despotism, economy, and voluntary servitude testifies to an interesting case of convergence in divergence. Offering an account of this continuity, the article ends with reflecting on this nexus itself, arguing that it should be rethought in a new way today. The concept of use is suggested as a key concept for such reconsideration.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83811844","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-7515211
Maria-Alina Asavei
{"title":"Modern Dictatorships and Their Art Worlds","authors":"Maria-Alina Asavei","doi":"10.1215/17432197-7515211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-7515211","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78093783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-7515183
Kim Allen
{"title":"Dangerous Fictions: The Cultural Politics of Neoliberal Meritocracy","authors":"Kim Allen","doi":"10.1215/17432197-7515183","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-7515183","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87060127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-7515028
Eric Drott
Abstract:This article interrogates music’s role in the work of social reproduction by bringing into dialogue two seemingly antithetical approaches to thinking music’s relation to the social. One is historical materialism; the other is work informed by the “practice turn” in music sociology, exemplified by Tia DeNora’s studies of music as a “technology of the self.” By taking seriously the proposition that under certain conditions music may itself function as a technology, and by reframing this proposition along materialist lines, this article aims to shed light on the changing functions music has come to assume in late neoliberalism. In particular, new modalities of digital distribution like streaming, by simultaneously driving down the cost of music and normalizing its therapeutic, prosthetic, and self-regulatory uses, increasingly cast it as a cheap resource that can be harnessed to replenish the cognitive, affective, and/or communicative energies strained by the current crisis of social reproduction.
{"title":"Music in the Work of Social Reproduction","authors":"Eric Drott","doi":"10.1215/17432197-7515028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-7515028","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article interrogates music’s role in the work of social reproduction by bringing into dialogue two seemingly antithetical approaches to thinking music’s relation to the social. One is historical materialism; the other is work informed by the “practice turn” in music sociology, exemplified by Tia DeNora’s studies of music as a “technology of the self.” By taking seriously the proposition that under certain conditions music may itself function as a technology, and by reframing this proposition along materialist lines, this article aims to shed light on the changing functions music has come to assume in late neoliberalism. In particular, new modalities of digital distribution like streaming, by simultaneously driving down the cost of music and normalizing its therapeutic, prosthetic, and self-regulatory uses, increasingly cast it as a cheap resource that can be harnessed to replenish the cognitive, affective, and/or communicative energies strained by the current crisis of social reproduction.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80724262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-7537515
Deena Varner
Beginning in the late 1960s a series of reforms saw the emergence of vast numbers of bureaucratic instruments meant to standardize the care, custody, and control of inmates. Grievance and disciplinary procedures were largely homogenized to ensure inmates’ protection from the abuses that were prevalent especially in the southern plantation model of incarceration. These same procedures, however, resulted in the increasing removal of prisoners from the sphere of legal, judicial, and, more broadly, public discourse and oversight. This article analyzes how the failure to prosecute crimes committed inside the prison functions to diminish the legal and political standing of both criminal and victim. In handling crime as an extrajudicial matter, adjudicated exclusively by disciplinary boards, the prisoner-criminal and prisoner-victim are positioned as quasi-legal subjects, bearing neither the rights nor responsibilities of citizenship. The prison, therefore, is a model institution for downsizing citizenship, and its disciplinary procedures are an ideal model for the neoliberalization of public institutions.
{"title":"Quasi","authors":"Deena Varner","doi":"10.1215/17432197-7537515","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-7537515","url":null,"abstract":"Beginning in the late 1960s a series of reforms saw the emergence of vast numbers of bureaucratic instruments meant to standardize the care, custody, and control of inmates. Grievance and disciplinary procedures were largely homogenized to ensure inmates’ protection from the abuses that were prevalent especially in the southern plantation model of incarceration. These same procedures, however, resulted in the increasing removal of prisoners from the sphere of legal, judicial, and, more broadly, public discourse and oversight. This article analyzes how the failure to prosecute crimes committed inside the prison functions to diminish the legal and political standing of both criminal and victim. In handling crime as an extrajudicial matter, adjudicated exclusively by disciplinary boards, the prisoner-criminal and prisoner-victim are positioned as quasi-legal subjects, bearing neither the rights nor responsibilities of citizenship. The prison, therefore, is a model institution for downsizing citizenship, and its disciplinary procedures are an ideal model for the neoliberalization of public institutions.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73913498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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