Repressive inclusiveness
Jun. 13th, 2005 10:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusYou just need to walk around a good ethnographic museum to see what a big and varied place the world used to be, how many fundamentally different styles used to co-exist quite oblivious—or even hostile—to each other. You leave with the feeling that there were more basic forms in the world than there are now, more different ways of doing things, and that each way of doing things integrated a distinct way of seeing things.
Repressive inclusiveness is a close cousin to something I've talked about often in these pages: pompous universalism. They're cousins because they're both sworn enemies of difference, diversity and particularity. The people most guilty of repressive inclusiveness are politicians and mass-producing manufacturers. You see it when centrist liberal democratic politicians, desperate to please all the people all the time, work hand-in-glove with commercial interests practicing "synergy", streamlining their operations by merging with rivals, getting bigger, simplifying their structures as well as their product ranges. Repressive inclusiveness is a feature of the age of synergy, which is the new name we've given monopoly capitalism.
Repressive inclusiveness poses as something progressive. All ages, 8 to 80! One size fits all! Fun for all the family! Guaranteed to please! The downside is obvious: when you claim that one size fits all, you're not looking at all the different shapes of people there are out there. When you say that everyone's sure to enjoy something, you're disregarding the fact that one man's meat might be another's poison. When you sell off-the-peg clothes, you put the tailor and his tape measure out of business. And when you "practice synergies", merge with rivals, cut corners, focus on core markets rather than niches and minorities, take over the market, your one-size-fits-all philosophy becomes a form of repression. The mountain no longer comes to Mohammed, Mohammed must come to the mountain. But hey, it doesn't matter who Mohammed is, you aren't looking at him at all, his race, colour or creed no longer interests you. Your one-size-fits-all philosophy is really a fear and hatred of difference, but it poses as inclusiveness and lack of discrimination. You concentrate on the mere opportunity of all to buy the single product you're proposing, rather than trying to build a complex variegated market (or political spectrum) which might represent different tastes and needs. Your failure to discriminate is not high-minded, it's an aspect of your insensitivity to the actually-existing diversity out there. Your corporate structure no longer allows you to make risky little products for pesky little markets. Suddenly necessities become luxuries the system can't afford, but we're compensated by the fact that the one thing we are offered is proposed, inevitably, as a luxury accessible to all.
Inclusive exclusivity. Our equality of opportunity (but don't get too excited, the opportunity is just to choose the one product on offer) explains the paradox that products are often presented as inclusive and exclusive at the same time. Sure, there's only one product being offered, but that's because it's the best, top of the range. But thanks to inclusive exclusivity, now everyone has a chance to taste the best. The same goes for political systems. Western democracy may be in crisis, but we want everyone all over the world to have the chance to try it because it's "the only game in town". And so we bomb people and impose it. Of course, if we were really interested in inclusive exclusivity we'd probably approve of the fake Chanel t-shirts and Louis Vuitton handbags being sold on the streets of China, but it seems we want China to police its intellectual property rights so that the money keeps flowing in to Chanel and Vuitton instead of poor people.
There are periods of hope when something comes along which represents "the other". I'm thinking of the early days of BBC 2, or the early days of Virgin Records. Suddenly the world is full of flying teapots: weird and wonderful bands like Gong and Faust, TV shows featuring intellectuals, pythons, and the tuareg. But repressive inclusiveness invariably returns within about five years, as market logic reasserts itself (even on public service TV) and the new channels start proposing "something for everyone" instead of something for, well, someone in particular. Someone more intelligent than average, or more curious than average.
Moronic irony: A clever (but cynical) manufacturer with only one product to offer encodes it so that it means different things in different markets. As Jonaton Yeah, the cynical editor of Sugar Ape magazine, put it: "Stupid people think it's cool, clever people think it's a joke... still cool." And so the universal, inclusive product is likely to cater to the lowest common denominator, but contain some hidden encoded wit for the smart. The "pompously universal" product is a prole product (jeans, say) with a smidgen of snob appeal (special stitching) for connoisseurs, or a child product with some witty asides for the parents (the Simpsons).
At the moment it's a kind of thoughtcrime to imagine a world where repressive inclusiveness is replaced by its opposite, liberating exclusiveness. Imagine a world where politicians didn't say "We all have the same interests, let's look at what we have in common" but "They (Africans, Iraqis, whoever) have different interests from us, let's try to address those." The risk of admitting difference is conflict, but the risk of not admitting it is its silent erasure.
There are more people alive now than there have ever been, but fewer styles, fewer ways of being, fewer real differences. It makes you wonder what tomorrow's museums will contain. A pair of jeans, a car that looks a bit like a BMW, the layout of a parliament building... and a huge list of the languages, tribes and species we erased or merged into invisibility?
Repressive inclusiveness is a close cousin to something I've talked about often in these pages: pompous universalism. They're cousins because they're both sworn enemies of difference, diversity and particularity. The people most guilty of repressive inclusiveness are politicians and mass-producing manufacturers. You see it when centrist liberal democratic politicians, desperate to please all the people all the time, work hand-in-glove with commercial interests practicing "synergy", streamlining their operations by merging with rivals, getting bigger, simplifying their structures as well as their product ranges. Repressive inclusiveness is a feature of the age of synergy, which is the new name we've given monopoly capitalism.
Repressive inclusiveness poses as something progressive. All ages, 8 to 80! One size fits all! Fun for all the family! Guaranteed to please! The downside is obvious: when you claim that one size fits all, you're not looking at all the different shapes of people there are out there. When you say that everyone's sure to enjoy something, you're disregarding the fact that one man's meat might be another's poison. When you sell off-the-peg clothes, you put the tailor and his tape measure out of business. And when you "practice synergies", merge with rivals, cut corners, focus on core markets rather than niches and minorities, take over the market, your one-size-fits-all philosophy becomes a form of repression. The mountain no longer comes to Mohammed, Mohammed must come to the mountain. But hey, it doesn't matter who Mohammed is, you aren't looking at him at all, his race, colour or creed no longer interests you. Your one-size-fits-all philosophy is really a fear and hatred of difference, but it poses as inclusiveness and lack of discrimination. You concentrate on the mere opportunity of all to buy the single product you're proposing, rather than trying to build a complex variegated market (or political spectrum) which might represent different tastes and needs. Your failure to discriminate is not high-minded, it's an aspect of your insensitivity to the actually-existing diversity out there. Your corporate structure no longer allows you to make risky little products for pesky little markets. Suddenly necessities become luxuries the system can't afford, but we're compensated by the fact that the one thing we are offered is proposed, inevitably, as a luxury accessible to all.Inclusive exclusivity. Our equality of opportunity (but don't get too excited, the opportunity is just to choose the one product on offer) explains the paradox that products are often presented as inclusive and exclusive at the same time. Sure, there's only one product being offered, but that's because it's the best, top of the range. But thanks to inclusive exclusivity, now everyone has a chance to taste the best. The same goes for political systems. Western democracy may be in crisis, but we want everyone all over the world to have the chance to try it because it's "the only game in town". And so we bomb people and impose it. Of course, if we were really interested in inclusive exclusivity we'd probably approve of the fake Chanel t-shirts and Louis Vuitton handbags being sold on the streets of China, but it seems we want China to police its intellectual property rights so that the money keeps flowing in to Chanel and Vuitton instead of poor people.
There are periods of hope when something comes along which represents "the other". I'm thinking of the early days of BBC 2, or the early days of Virgin Records. Suddenly the world is full of flying teapots: weird and wonderful bands like Gong and Faust, TV shows featuring intellectuals, pythons, and the tuareg. But repressive inclusiveness invariably returns within about five years, as market logic reasserts itself (even on public service TV) and the new channels start proposing "something for everyone" instead of something for, well, someone in particular. Someone more intelligent than average, or more curious than average.
Moronic irony: A clever (but cynical) manufacturer with only one product to offer encodes it so that it means different things in different markets. As Jonaton Yeah, the cynical editor of Sugar Ape magazine, put it: "Stupid people think it's cool, clever people think it's a joke... still cool." And so the universal, inclusive product is likely to cater to the lowest common denominator, but contain some hidden encoded wit for the smart. The "pompously universal" product is a prole product (jeans, say) with a smidgen of snob appeal (special stitching) for connoisseurs, or a child product with some witty asides for the parents (the Simpsons).
At the moment it's a kind of thoughtcrime to imagine a world where repressive inclusiveness is replaced by its opposite, liberating exclusiveness. Imagine a world where politicians didn't say "We all have the same interests, let's look at what we have in common" but "They (Africans, Iraqis, whoever) have different interests from us, let's try to address those." The risk of admitting difference is conflict, but the risk of not admitting it is its silent erasure.
There are more people alive now than there have ever been, but fewer styles, fewer ways of being, fewer real differences. It makes you wonder what tomorrow's museums will contain. A pair of jeans, a car that looks a bit like a BMW, the layout of a parliament building... and a huge list of the languages, tribes and species we erased or merged into invisibility?
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 09:10 am (UTC)At least in the past, the movement of once exclusive items into inclusivity was the root of the fashion cycle. Everyone buys something promised to be "exclusive" and then looks around and notices that everyone else owns it. But at that point, the clever companies are poised to present a new "exclusive" product, even better than the last one. And so on and so on... The idea is that the capitalists make money on selling the idea of exclusivity to an inclusive market. Same with Bush: everyone is the same and I give you all these special tax-cuts!
As for the moronic irony, companies make a lot more money making large-scale mass projects than a huge product line of special, diverse items, so they are going to naturally congregate towards one "semi-ironic lowest common denominator" product than a bunch of individually catered ones. This new "mass customization" idea is intriguing, but no matter the size, color, material, or size, you are still buying a pair of Levi's. My favorite fashion "brand" in Tokyo is my custom tailor.
Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 09:16 am (UTC)Obviously globalisation is going to lead to a certain cultural harmonisation, the extinction of languages etc., etc. That's well under way - when did Gaelic stop being the most commonly used language in Ireland? 1840s or something? When did the last native Cornish speaker die?
On the other hand, that globalised culture is coming increasingly "nichified". Gone are the days when 25 million people in the UK could all be watching Morecambe & Wise at the same time. Similarly the Internet is creating all sorts of different media niches, including this blog. Culture has become globalised, but that globalised culture is far less monolithic than the old cultural formats. And yes, trawl an anthropology museum and you'll find that there were 700 different languages in Australia before the arrival of the British or whatever. There was "extra-cultural" variation, but very little "intra-cultural" variation, with extremely tight belief systems, social systems, art, clothing, diet etc. We have as much or more diversity than we ever had, only it's happening within a culture rather than between them.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 01:02 pm (UTC)The fact is that in the 1920s you could select from a handful of schmaltzy piano songbooks/sheet musics. Now there are 8,000 albums coming out a year and I can listen to Britney, Momus, Christian Rock, or Indian Gamelan. There are 90 more cable channels than there were 10 years ago. None of this is pointing to some supposed homogenization.
I understand why someone would fear that the spread of capitalism and democracy would lead to the distillation of native cultures. After all, it would probably lead to an end of primitively-clothed natives in huts with straw thatch roofs who have to use the toilet in a ditch in between their house and their neighbor's. To make sure that these people maintain that way of life is a noble cause, indeed.
But in all seriousness, capitalism is the great hope to end war and conflict. A country is less likely to attack a neighboring country if they're trading with each other and it would mean a great loss of wealth. The only hostile countries in the world are the ones with closed borders.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 02:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 04:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 10:34 pm (UTC)Y'know, when
Your excuse (or rather explanation, there being no real excuse), on the other hand, is that you're what Dr. Gene Ray would call "educated stupid" (if he applied that phrase to the Ayn-Rand-said-it-I-believe-it-that-settles-it crowd rather than to those who doubt Nature's Simultaneous 4-Day Rotation Time Cube Harmonic).
dead-on....
Date: 2005-06-13 01:57 pm (UTC)Did you hear about the comments Howard Dean made last week on the Today Show? He started pointing out differences, albeit in a bit of a crude and generalizing manner and BAM! conflict. People were up at arms over it.
The big lie I was taught in secondary school is that America is no longer a melting pot. It is a garden salad...a medley of flavors which when together make something delicious. Besides being one of the lamest metaphors I've heard to this day, it is a complete untruth. Everything you've pointed out in your article is obvious in the States as well...especially the "one size fits all" which (becauase of living in WI which is the obesity capital of the U S of A) has a lot of people walking around in moo moos.
I was in Seattle a week and a half ago for a big conference and one of the things they were talking about was Erasmus Mundus. Are you familiar with this? If not, briefly, it is a new postgraduate program designed for exceptionally bright or diligent students whereby they earn a master's degree by taking their courses in a minimum of two European countries. It sounds great in theory. Different cultures adding to the student's experience of their subject matter, dealing with different modes of pedagogy. But the downside is, in order to attract students and make them feel secure about studying for a degree in two or three distinctly different countries, concessions (or what I consider concessions) had to be made. English will be the language of instruction for these programs. The faculty at universities are slowly or in some cases quickly, switching the language of instruction over to English all together as they see it as the inevitable end of the path the EU and Bologna Accord lead to.
Your theories are already infiltrating educational systems across Europe. The US is already a cemetary of dead languages, I hope the same doesn't happen in Europe.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 02:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 02:41 pm (UTC)Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 03:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 03:59 pm (UTC)As for your assertion that "Nothing fails (to subvert) like success, does it?"... what does that even mean? Because The Simpsons wasn't cancelled like Ren and Stimpy, it's just not subversive enough for you? Considering that you haven't really seen this show enough to have a decent of what it is (and what it isn't), you seem pretty quick to condemn it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 04:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 04:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 04:36 pm (UTC)Marxy
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 04:56 pm (UTC)I do find myself wondering why people think The Simpsons is "subversive", though. Really, what did it subvert? What traps didn't you fall into that you would otherwise have done, thanks to an episode of The Simpsons? Did you look with deeper disgust at the commercials that punctuate the show? Did you fall into some sort of self-hating reverie and eat cake? Did you look in the mirror, swig on a Bud, and say "D'oh!"
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 05:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 05:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 06:09 pm (UTC)Regarding The Simpsons, I don't think the show is a work of "godlike genius". However, I think it is a show that has retained a large popular audience while gleefully mocking the values and beliefs of (what I imagine must be) a decent chunk of that audience. In other words, it's well executed satire... and while that may not be enough to get everyone to rise up and smash the state, I still don't think it's unreasonable to refer to it as subversive.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 06:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-15 06:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-15 06:27 am (UTC)I would certainly agree with this... if I had ever heard of anyone actually doing the things you speak of due to watching Ren and Stimpy. However, since I do not know of any incidents of beard talking/public urination by viewers of the show, I can't say that your contention carries much weight with me.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-15 07:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 07:00 pm (UTC)It is definitely not including children in its target demographic any longer.
Honestly, I think Murdoch isn't watching or he'd have canned it years ago. The show has a definite to-the-left viewpoint.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 09:01 pm (UTC)And having a character turn to the camera at the end of a really stupid episode and say "Wasn't this episode stupid?" isn't all that clever, nor does it make it any less stupid.
I think maybe the cleverest thing The Simpsons has done is convince people that it's subversive.
Ren & Stimpy
Date: 2005-06-14 05:13 pm (UTC)So how is Ren & Stimpy successfully subversive? Of course, you
wouldn't see yourself as Stimpy, so I doubt you're boosting your
immune system by occasional culling your booger collection for
nutritional purposes, but the show was more self-contained and
formulaic than the Simpsons. Smaller cast, smaller focus, and
-ultimately- smaller stories, and Ren ultimately is not capable
of inflicting his rage with sufficient goddam *edge* for it to
hurt. Ren & Stimpy's clearest win is in never succumbing to the
seasonal special or the clip show.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-14 03:50 am (UTC)Bravo, sir, bravo.
*THIS ONE'S FOR YOU, ABERRANTEYES!
animated
Date: 2005-06-14 05:16 pm (UTC)you want to call in all the manga/anime addicts for their tuppence-worth?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 04:31 pm (UTC)EU as repressive inclusiveness.
Date: 2005-06-13 04:51 pm (UTC)my favorite schpiel by John Cage is how maybe human's greatest ability is the ability to change their own minds....for the mind to turn it's tables on its self.
If you are re-evaluating your feelings on those votes, bravo for you.
Justin
Re: EU as repressive inclusiveness.
Date: 2005-06-13 06:25 pm (UTC)Re: EU as repressive inclusiveness.
Date: 2005-06-15 06:35 am (UTC)Subnational Diversity
Date: 2005-06-13 09:27 pm (UTC)http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-ireland-eu-gaelic,1,2212593.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines.
So while Spain has a genuine identity problem with the Basques (and Catalonians, and Andalucians, and Gallegos), the problem becomes much less severe when you, in effect, decontextualize the local identities and allow them to define their own terms of existence as communities. This may seem destructive but it actually is potentially very freeing; it's why Jews, Christians, and Moslems were at each other's throats considerably less when the Ottoman Empire had control of what's now Palestine and Israel. As long as you speak enough turkish to fill out your tax return, who cares what language you're praying in?
Can a similar case be made for economic monopoly?
I would say economic hegemony at least creates communities of discontent--that is, by monopolizing discourse it, in effect, forces the creation of opposing discourses within itself (as the poster above has remarked). Smaller, more numerous communities, on the other hand, have little room for opposing discourses and thus represent diversity between, but not within, themselves.
-B
Re: Subnational Diversity
Date: 2005-06-14 04:51 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-14 03:19 am (UTC)Your words, "centrist liberal democratic politicians, desperate to please all the people all the time" helping to create a "one-size-fits-all" culture reminded me strongly of Fahrenheit 451 (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0345342968/ref=pd_sxp_f/002-1633309-4746438?v=glance&s=books) by Ray Bradbury (http://www.raybradbury.com/about.html), the dystopia of which is premised on the idea of respect for minorities being pushed to an extreme form, where, ironically, difference from the norm is punished as potentially threatening and books, being chocka with contradiction and sometimes spleen-ridden diversity of opinion (imagine reading Tertullian (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/info/tertullian-wace.html)'s Treatise on the Soul (http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/tertullian10.html) and Nietzsche (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/)'s The Gay Science (http://www.publicappeal.org/library/nietzsche/Nietzsche_the_gay_science/the_gay_science.htm) back-to-back!), are burnt: a sort of "political correctness gone mad" idea, but rather more polished and interesting than what you would find in the Daily Moron (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=315533&in_page_id=1770) or other such 'paper (I bet you never thought there'd be a link to that particular rag on this site). I wonder whether you share Bradbury's analysis of our current (incipient?) cultural malaise - though presumably from a somewhat less Republican standpoint than that he seems to write from in that book.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-14 03:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-14 03:57 am (UTC)I was in Germany for a year way back when, and my closest friend was a true believer in 100% communism, and gave his whole life over to it. He dressed like a weirdo too. He was part and parcel a freak.... except he wasn't. Everyone around him every where took his fashion and belief structure as just another possibility amongst the many many.
Coming from the American South, it was surprising, and oddly offensive. Here was this guy saying the system needed to be razed to the ground, and the establishment was just patting him on the back. His every difference was instantly subsumed into the machine. He couldnt make an "other" of himself if he tried.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-14 08:41 pm (UTC)Because slave laborers have the capital to manufacture t-shirts and handbags??
a child product with some witty asides for the parents
This would be a better description of Bullwinkle than of The Simpsons. Though one could argue Bullwinkle was an adult program cleverly disguised as a children's cartoon.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-15 12:43 am (UTC)basically, my point is i dont think it's "innate" subversiveness, if it really has any, has any relevance whatsoever. but perhaps the subversiveness people see in it is actually in its ability to defy the standards of entertainment by creating something that does not do any pigeon holing of demographics whatsoever, it rather provides a totally unstructured and very unusually friendly experience. it is probably one of the least offensive tv shows i know of, and i think it is that friendliness that may be considered "subversive" in this land of truly exploitive entertinment. you just don't feel "used" when you are watching the Simpsons, which I think put the creators in a very precarious position and yet somehow they were able to get popular enough and therefore lucrative enough before the network's marketting section could find a multiplicity of reasons why this show couldn't make as much as show X and cut it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-15 06:24 am (UTC)I agree with Momus that thrifting is a good idea and with Marxy that having a tailor is a good idea. Being tall and thin, I usually have to thrift and visit the tailor.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-24 09:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-02-24 03:55 pm (UTC)