Bass culture

[imomus]

In the comments section to yesterday's entry I quote an article in Monday's Guardian in which Julian Baggini and other philosophers examine imaginary scenarios designed to present typical modern problems and paradoxes. I particularly liked the first example, in which a "cosmopolitan" called Saskia is annoyed that a white waiter brings her poppadoms in an Indian restaurant, because she wants to be multicultural herself but prefers the wait staff in the "exotic" restaurants she visits to remain monocultural. "Saskia highlights one of the great inconsistencies of contemporary western liberalism," comments David Goodhart. "The Canadian scholar Eric Kaufmann calls it asymmetrical multiculturalism, meaning that minority groups should express their ethnicity while dominant ones should transcend theirs."

I usually refer to "asymmetrical multiculturalism" as the strange collusion between liberal internationalists and conservative nationalists. Marxy put it rather more bitchily in a debate we were having yesterday about the meaning of a swastika he saw on a Harakjuku fashion-punk: "I'm against right-wing politics, Momus is for, as long as they aren't Western peoples." (My counter-argument was that there's nothing inherently right wing about preserving national cultural differences: artists, museum curators and restauranteurs do it as well as right wing bigots. What's more, the punk in question was decontextualizing a foreign symbol; he was more like the non-Christian Japanese women who wear crosses around their necks than a rabid nationalist.)

To me, the Guardian piece is great journalism. It gives me an outline of a plausible situation, a familiar contradiction, one I've attempted clumsily to describe myself, and it gives me a handy term for it, one I can carry around in my pocket and produce at dinner parties. I'm free to google "asymmetrical multiculturalism" or order books by the Canadian academic who coined the term. It's exactly the kind of thing that didn't happen in the piece about blogging I participated in last week, broadcast by BBC Radio Ulster last night.

Radio Ulster blogging item (3.2MB mono mp3 7min 01secs)

Now, maybe my memory is as selective as any editor, but when I think back to what I said in answer to the intelligent questions producer Stephen O'Hagan was asking me over the satellite line last week, I think the two most important things I said were citations of other people's ideas. I mentioned Thomas de Zengotita's book Mediation and spoke about blogging as "self-mediation". That made it into the programme in highly edited form; the word "self-mediation" appeared, but not the reference to Zengotita or his book. I also explained how network theorist Clay Shirky had somewhat changed my mind about my aphorism "In the future everyone will be famous for 15 people" with his essay "Power Laws, Weblogs and Inequality".

Now, I understand that the show's producers thought that these academic references were too clunky for a seven minute piece on blogging on a local BBC network. I realize that editors have a layman listener in mind, a kind of internalized granny character who's never even heard of blogging and doesn't want her first meeting with the concept to be cluttered up with incomprehensible jargon. I realize that you can't put links in a radio broadcast, and that the books I mentioned probably aren't easily available in Belfast. I realize that to make the references useful I'd have had to spell "Zengotita" and "Shirky" on air. I realize that the producers had to condense ten minutes of Momus-on-blogging to about 90 seconds, so that they could fit in the highly relevant (and much more accessible and amusing) points being made by Rhodri Marsden (rhodri) and Neil Scott (neil_scott). But the result of all that "plain commonsense" and "professionalism" was that the bit in my spiel that did make it past the gatekeepers of the show was a reference to Hollywood and blogging as a star system. The piece got bookended with a Moby track and much talk of Moby-as-blogger. In fact, at the end of the item it was Moby's blog address that was given out instead of mine (although Rhodri and Neil got their blogs plugged). It was assumed that the putative granny who hadn't heard of blogging had heard of Moby. "Ah yes, that nice young Christian vegan with the bald head and the coffeetable techno records," says your putative granny.

What really irked me about the presentation was the attempted populism of it: the assumption that people want recognition rather than cognition, repetition rather than revelation. So the producer inserted something familiar, a track from Moby's "Play" album, left in a bit about Hollywood but took out the "ladders" I deliberately inserted, googlable references interested listeners could have used to climb from what they already know to things they don't yet. Zengotita and Shirky are both "ladders" to really important stuff completely relevant to the debate on blogging, stuff that might have been made accessible even if there was no time to discuss it on air. I wasn't there for the money (there was none) or even to get my blog plugged, but I do feel I was there to point to those "ladders", and I feel irritated that they were kicked away.

I'm disappointed with the BBC Radio Ulster piece because I'm actually a big fan of Lord Reith of Stonehaven, the BBC's stern, tall, somewhat Presbyterian leader who, from 1922 to 1938, propounded the network's public service ethic of informing and educating the audience. I don't think you have to be populist on an arts show on a publicly-funded network like the BBC, or use baby talk, or indulge in "repetition culture" (only tell 'em what they know already), or prioritize recognition over cognition, or play fucking Moby records to get people's attention. "John Reith maintained that broadcasting should be a public service which enriches the intellectual and cultural life of the nation." The 6'6" ghost of Lord Reith still stalks the BBC — he's hovering over Paganism in the Renaissance, for instance. But in some weird way I think Lord Reith now belongs to us bloggers more than he belongs to the BBC.

Comments

[kattullus.livejournal.com]

Saint Isidore of Sevilla is already the patron saint of the internet, but I like the idea of a patron ghost of blogging. And isn't that the kind of face that you'd want to represent you in the ethereal world? Bet he could kick St. Isidore's ass from here to the Pearly Gates and back.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

By the way, if I can just arrange a mini show trial and put myself and Marxy in the dock and accuse us both of "asymmetrical multiculturalism" ("minority groups should express their ethnicity while dominant ones should transcend theirs"), I think it shakes down that I'm let off with a reprimand for being a cosmopolitan and a cultural relativist who thinks that all groups should express their ethnicity, should be "situated" and "non-transcendent". In other words, I'm not "asymmetrical". (Though I do see the monoculturalism of others as a closing door through which I can slip in order to enjoy exotic holidays.)

Marxy (http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/), on the other hand, thinks that all groups should transcend their ethnicity (his condemnation of nihonjinron writers suggests that) but also seems all too often to want the beliefs of his own cultural bloc, the USA, to be the normative and prevalent ones. In other words, he still wants dominant groups to transcend, but the place he wants them to transcend to looks suspiciously "ethnic" to me (being somewhat anti-metaphysical I don't believe that anything really ever gets "transcended").

[encyclops.livejournal.com]

all groups should express their ethnicity

I've never all that enthused about my ethnicity (English/Scottish/Irish/German/Polish/Ukrainian). I suppose I express it in some ways (most of the music I listen to and the books I read are European) but not in others (I'm not Christian, I'm not into the folk culture), and I don't particularly enjoy most American folk traditions. Is there some ethnic situatedness you'd say I'm missing out on that I should learn to enjoy and appreciate more? Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by expressing one's ethnicity? Does it make a difference that I have to seek out these elements of monoculture, and don't come by them naturally?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Parekh is rather too gung ho about multiculti. He doesn't seem to have thought the issue through, or understood the paradox in the tale of Saskia. His statement that "multiculturalism is not ghettoisation but a form of universalism" ignores the danger that David Goodhart points out:

"As Ulf Hannerz once wrote, "There can be no cosmopolitans without locals." Even if somehow all of us could be cosmopolitans, a world in which no one comes from anywhere or has a distinct culture is a nightmare."

Parekh, in other words, ignores the dialectic of the "glocal", a constant and uneasy tussle between the global and the local.

it would be nice to see Japan increase its sophistication in the "multiculturalism" department

But when you read Parekh describe his multiculti ideal, don't you think it sounds remarkably like Japan? Certainly as far as Japan's pomo consumerscape goes, it's nothing but a range of foreign influences synthesized into a nouveau-schizo way to be Japanese:

"Multiculturalism is not about safeguarding self-contained ethnic and cultural boxes but rather about intercultural fusion in which a culture freely borrows bits of others and creatively transforms both itself and them. Far from implying that each individual should remain rooted in his or her own culture and flit between them, multiculturalism requires that they should open themselves up to the influence of others and engage in a reflective and sometimes life enhancing dialogue with others."

If Rem Koolhaas is right that shopping is the last arena of public life, this is going on in Japanese public life all the time. But I'd say that "safeguarding" (in the form of various kinds of curation and cultural protectionism) is necessary and desireable too. Fund the arts, and don't be afraid to encourage the Japaneseness of Japanese arts!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I was having a debate with someone last week who told me that postmodernism had always existed. I feel rather the same way about your idea that multiculturalism has always existed. This is, if I may say so, a very modern idea, and somewhat PC. Sure, cultures have always mingled, but it wasn't "multiculturalism". It was brutal and self-interested. It was imperialist land-grabbing, military conquests and trade routes. Nobody was celebrating diverstiy for its own sake. Did the American settlers "celebrate the diversity" of the Native Americans? Did the Mongols "celebrate the diversity" of the nations they conquered? Did even British government try to keep Gaelic alive in Hebridean schools? Not until very, very recently has this idea of celebrating diversity become a fashionable policy. I'd say it's a postmodern idea.

The "multiculture of multicultures" idea gets dangerously close to the situation Terry Eagleton mocks when he says "Culture has descended from the macro to the micro -- from whole societies to a range of interest groups within them. It is more about Hell's Angels than Hellenic Greece. This naturally raises the question of how micro you can get. Do the two teachers in the village school constitute a culture? What about Posh and Becks?"

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I'm a micro-culture.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

South Asia and SE Asia are examples. Buddhist tolerance may have something to do with it, or it may be that animism and polytheism are more respectful of different ways of doing things than monotheism.

Well, to use your own techniques against you, how can you stereotype South and SE Asian cultures as being Buddhist, animist and polytheist and tell me they're consequently respectful of difference? Isn't that a huge generalisation that ignores the (monotheistic) Islamic influence in Indonesia? So unrespectful of difference was Islam in Java that it forced the puppeteers there to stop representing the human form in their shows, leading them to create the shadow play! Javanese culture as we know it now is certainly a result of contact with others, but not tolerant ones, and not people who could ever be described as "diversity-celebrating multiculturalists"!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I don't think we have to single Islam out; almost no cultural contact before the age of mass tourism and postcolonial guilt has been about "celebrating diversity".

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[jbmurray.livejournal.com]

I agree. imomus would seem again to be a victim of his own presentism.

Of course, the various heady cultural mixtures that have characterized history are usually pretty complex, falling somewhere between the current liberal ideal of "tolerance" (which is no less self-interested, let me say) and the ruthless "brutality" of a war of all against all. Pragmatism has usually been the order of the day.

[(Anonymous)]

The "celebration of diversity" (yuk!) is now a given, yes. Ironic then that while our governments, media and thinkers extol and promote it, we are actually shown up by historical precedents. What to cite? There are many examples to chose from. From antiquity one of the most important examples of cultural interplay was the cross-fertilization over a long period of Indian and Greek thought (not to ignore their influence on other cultures, or other cultures' influence on them).

You mention the Mongols, but they assumed the refined culture of those they conquered in India and the Middle East very soon after brutalizing them, turning their backs on the shamanistic nomadism that inspired their marauding.

The Muslim empires were exemplars of multiculturalism.

Finally, I would like to say that the descendants of the American settlers are destroying diversity with the same exuberance (a little less grossly perhaps, but equally nefariously) as their forebears. One of the first things the Americans did in Iraq was to ensure the populace had access to the joy and knowledge in American TV. MTV in Africa anyone? I would be willing to bet that many of the places that Western ethnomusicologists visited in the first fifty, sixty, even seventy years of this century would now yield recordings with nothing like the richness and "otherness" they once had.

We may give lip service to the idea of multiculturalism, but this century will surely see difference in all it's beauty watered down. Very sad indeed.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

No-one likes being edited, or their views distorted. I suggest that you're not necessarily annoyed about an opportunity squandered to educate the middle-classes of Belfast, rather that it irks you that you didn't quite come across as you would have liked. Plenty of things that I said were more incisive and less laden with stuttering than the ones that were used; Neil also said some interesting stuff that ended up on the modern equivalent of the cutting room floor.

Surely you give radio interviews, knowing that certain things you said will never be heard. It wasn't Newsnight Review, it was a short piece on an arts programme on a local (albeit national) radio station, for chrissakes. Probably listened to by a good number of people who might not know what a blog is (lucky them), let alone sat at a computer, ready to absorb "googlable references", and then google them with gay abandon. Most people don't even have a pen to hand when they're idly listening to the radio.

Stephen had to sling together a piece, and yes, he probably had to tick some "accessability boxes". But it wasn't Radio 1, with a breathless presenter talking to us as if we I were 5 years old. And at least you weren't actually misquoted. That's the prerogative of print journalists - equally loathsome characters, I'm sure you'll agree.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ed's notes:

Para 1: I think you're projecting your own feelings here, Rhodri.

Para 2: Cut this para, Momus already covered this in the para with all the "I realize..." sentences.

Para 3: Good point that it wasn't Radio 1, let's go with that bit, maybe Library can send up a Moby track and lay it in under your point.

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

1. No, I was happy with it.
2. No, I was pointing out that maybe Stephen's didn't feel able to include references that the listeners would then have to follow up for "homework". I mean, I don't know. I just think it's an over-reaction to label a young chap's early attempt at putting together a radio feature to be an undermining of Reithian values.
3. Oh, yes, good point about "Good point that it wasn't Radio 1."

In my eternally clumsy way, I'm trying to say that you're not a typical radio listener - particularly because you were on the programme. I enjoy reading your journal, but often I skip chunks of it because, frankly, I can't be arsed. It's not because I'm stupid, or don't have an urge to learn, or expand my horizons, it's because sometimes the information is presented in an impenetrable or intimidating fashion. Maybe those are the same issues that Stephen had to deal with when editing the programme together. As I say, I don't know.

Although none of that excuses the Moby track, obviously.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's not that I'm against accessibility, it's just that what passes for accessibility often seems odd to me. The assumption, for instance, that your granny who's never heard of blogging has heard of Moby. The assumption that people prefer to hear about Hollywood being interested in a blogger than to hear about what the term "self-mediation" actually means. I mean, there are no Hollywood stars living in Belfast, but there are a lot of selves there who might well want to self-mediate, so I'd think that would be a ladder you'd want to give them.

If your granny has heard of Moby but not blogging, it's because of "repetition-recognition culture", the idea that you should just keep feeding people redundant information, stuff they already know.

It seems to me that Britain is a place where people are capable of putting an enormous amount of work into memorising trivia for pub quizzes and so on, but would never, ever let you cite the name of an academic. Radio is full of phone-numbers being read out for competitions in which they're giving away a balloon and a signed bottle of Ribena, but try to slip a short and simple explanation of the concept of "power laws" in there and they'll tell you it's confusing jargon. Well, how is that more of a waste of air time than "Call 0800 288 29383 for your signed bottle of Ribena, and we'll be repeating that number at the end of the programme"?

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

Well, how is that more of a waste of air time...

You're right, of course, and the majority of television and radio makes me want to cut my arms off with a teaspoon – but at the same time I recognise that I'm not the average viewer / listener either.

So I suppose my defence of Stephen's piece is "well, come on, it could have been a whole lot worse", a stance which I would find pretty difficult to defend. As ever.

But I do take issue, again, with your lazy dismissal of everything British... Clearly there are a few million Brits who would not sneer if you cited an academic in a conversation. Yes, possibly not as many in percentage terms as in Germany, or Japan, but I, uh, don't have the figures to hand right now.

[reggie-c-king.livejournal.com]

Just a few notes so that you know:

Nick's contention is really with the editing of the piece, which I was not wholly responsible for. I edited the interviews of as many ums and ahs and
pregnant pauses as possible and cut out some indulgences, but
certainly left some five minutes of him and a good three minutes each
of yourself and Neil. Then it was up to the producer to stick it
together, for the reason that it's her show and I was in a field in
Leitrim. She certainly edited exactly as it should have been for the purposes of the show as it is. It is perhaps not how Nick, Rhodri or myself would have edited it.

I would have much prefered a more intelleigent piece that allowed for
the sort of references that Nick was making - I went to the extent of
looking them up myself - but such would have required a documentary
rather than the slot allocated to me (which went some two minutes
over, as it was).

The Moby I cannot apologies for more. I had left in a copy of 'Ping
Pong' and was under the impression that it would be used, or possibly
that both would be used at appropriate moments. O well.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the explanations, Stephen, and I do apologize for rolling the mummified corpse of Lord Reith out of the cupboard on this occasion. I'd be happy to come along and talk about, well, anything really, on Arts Extra anytime you want.

[reggie-c-king.livejournal.com]

All's well that end's well.

I'll make some breakfast now, I think.

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

The swastika thing reminds me of one of my favourite 'misappropriations' of culture. I don't know if it's apocryphal, but apparently, in the fifties there was something (last years of American occupation?) somewhere on Ginza, there was a shop window display that rather outraged the Americans then resident in Japan. It featured Father Christmas (or Santa Claus, I suppose)... nailed to a cross.

I hope it's true.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Those silly Japanese, didn't anyone tell them that Santa is just an anagram of Satan?

[joecrow.livejournal.com]

What's more, the punk in question was decontextualizing a foreign symbol; he was more like the non-Christian Japanese women who wear crosses around their necks than a rabid nationalist.)

For that matter, he may not have percieved it as a foreign symbol. The sunwheel's frikkin' everywhere, including Japan. It's much older than Nazism. Does Japanese Nationalism even use the sunwheel?

Did the Mongols "celebrate the diversity" of the nations they conquered?

As long as they paid their taxes, yes. Chinghis and his heirs never gave a rat's ass what the conquered nations did, so long as they didn't interfere with trade and paid the imperial tax. Otherwise, most of the world would be speaking Mongolian.

[mcgazz.livejournal.com]

> As long as they paid their taxes, yes.
That sounds about right, and presumably that attitude fed down to the Russian Tsars, who had a similar relationship with Tatars and other far flung subjects.

Compare the Russian advance east during the 19th Century, and the mingling of cultures that took place on route, with the American advance west during the same period, and the annihilation of cultures that took place en route. Maybe it’s something to do with the less individualistic nature of Eastern cultures that they can handle difference better?

[joecrow.livejournal.com]

I dunno about that. Different motivations for the imperial expansion, different targets as well. The Mongols were conquering cultures that weren't appreciably lower-tech than them, and weren't significantly smaller populations already decimated by disease. The American imperial expansion was also primarily for territory to colonise, where the Mongols were looking for new subjects to tax.

I've read that Chinghis and co gave serious consideration to just burning all the civilized areas they conquered down and killing all the farmers so they'd have more pasture for their herds. They decided they liked a continuous flow of loot better and went with tribute-based empire instead. That woulda been a whole different scene.

If the US advance had been met with cultures not quite as far behind the tech wheel and not as depopulated, the extermination model wouldn't have really been a viable option.

[neil-scott.livejournal.com]

Many thanks for posting the mp3.

Despite being on it, I rather enjoyed the show.

As to accessibility, well, the British intolerance to theory may belong in a dictionary of received ideas but I think there's a definite benefit to (serendipitously) finding/thinking things out for yourself.

I doubt this is original to you: "In the future everyone will be famous for 15 people" but the fact you thought it through yourself rather than reading it in a book of quotations probably/possibly made it more valuable when you came to change your mind.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ha, that's an appealingly contrarian idea! So we hide everything intellectual from the audience, right, and then they get to make it all up from scratch! It's "intellectually challenging" them, isn't it? Can we call this "standing on the shoulder of dwarves syndrome"?

[neil-scott.livejournal.com]

I'm suggesting a hierarchy of knowledge-value for theory (starting from most valuable):
1) Thinking something through yourself.
2) Syncretizing from the things you read.
3) Parroting what other people say.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I doubt this is original to you: "In the future everyone will be famous for 15 people" but the fact you thought it through yourself rather than reading it in a book of quotations probably/possibly made it more valuable when you came to change your mind.

It's not original to me in the sense that a lot of other people have now said it without knowing I said it. But I do stake the claim to being the first to say it, back in 1991 (http://www.imomus.com/index499.html). It then had quite a career as a meme.

Granny doesn't read the NME

[jasongtokyo.livejournal.com]

Even back then you were talking about grannies not knowing who the pop stars of the day were -- even better, it was in reference to my main man Mozzer... now it's just in reference to M0by.

If you had named a track after that quote, it would be yours today.

To its credit, it forsaw the position most bloggers now hold (okay, maybe for you it's 17 people).

[(Anonymous)]

Young men and women of intellectual calibre once considered 'Shall I join MI5? Shall I take a diplomatic post? No, I think I'll try broadcasting.' Now it's sneakers-on-the-table 'urban', dreams of being presenters but having 'to do some journalism' first.

I agree that Saskia isn't multiculturalist; a pan-Pacific Rim brasserie run by Australians and Belgians could be more her thing if she was. She's mono curiously admiring the molar completeness of another mono. Anyway, her pen-friend Jagruti might balk at a British bar in Mumbai because the doorman isn't a pasty chav with a mastiff called Nelson. I mean, where's the sense of impending lasciviousness?

Reith still stalks the bbc

[(Anonymous)]

But only in parts. I'm going to talk about classical music because that's what I know. Radio 3 and 4 still manage to maintain a pretty high standard of dialogue - Michael Kennedy and Miranda Richardson on Private Passions this week managed a wonderful, engaging discussion (and her selections were ace). The Beethoven downloads (800,000 of the symphonies in a week! Take that, Crazy Frog) shows that Rhodri's apologia for 'the average listener' is misplaced. The average listener is invoked by those who work in broadcasting and fear thought, originality, wit and enthusiasm. Look at the comments posted after Charles Hazelwood's series on Mozart: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/classicaltv/mozart/themusic/comments.shtml]
It's amazing what inspiration and serious programme-making can do. Viewers are never average; they are rendered average by the crappy programmes foisted upon them.
opensauce@mac.com

Re: Reith still stalks the bbc

[rhodri.livejournal.com]

The word "average" has its own connotations; I didn't mean to use it. First time around I said "typical". Surely there is such a thing as a typical listener – an imaginary human being whose preferences mirror what the listenership wants from its broadcasting. God knows the BBC do enough research to find out what people supposedly want, and adjust their output accordingly. And bearing in mind that most people are culturally ignorant, it's a surprise that an arts programme even exists on a local radio programme.

Your surprise at the number of Beethoven symphony downloads doesn't suddenly mean that there isn't such a thing as a typical listener, presumably it means that a proportion of that typical listener is interested in the work of Beethoven. Obviously I'm not saying that we shouldn't be surprised and challenged by radio and television, merely that we shouldn't be surprised when certain broadcasts are tailored to appeal to larger numbers of people. I don't work in broadcasting.

[(Anonymous)]

you talk to much.....

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Naturally, my fellow Bloomsburian Thomas de Zengotita deserves much more airtime than myself: I can see his ideas better suited to a full-hour discussion on the notion of mediation, a la Charlie Rose or some such thing. His book is quite engaging.

In any case: my thanks to all concerned.

W

[ddf.livejournal.com]

Well, I rather enjoyed the articles about blogging that you linked to.

[thebestweapon.livejournal.com]

I don't think you have to be populist on an arts show on a publicly-funded network like the BBC, or use baby talk, or indulge in "repetition culture" (only tell 'em what they know already), or prioritize recognition over cognition, or play fucking Moby records to get people's attention.

You could easily be talking about NPR here. What a shame.

[(Anonymous)]

I am reminded of your recent comment about US restaurants employing Mexican workers and thus making the food Mexican. This is a contradiction that Saskia would have a problem with. In the US this is a kind of symmetrical pyramid where the middle classes sit at the apex and where minority ethnic groups are essentially a service industry at the bottom.The American dream no longer affords a social transcendence:

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2005/08/02/PM200508024.html

Richard

[charleshatcher.livejournal.com]

Yes, but is Lord Reith of Stonehaven just one of Count Olaf's myriad disguises?