Empires and dance

[imomus]

How do you define an empire? The question comes up in a New York Review of Books review of Harvard prof Charles Maier's new book Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors. Maier says that the US, post WW2, sought to be both a territorial and a post-territorial empire:

"The US compromise between traditional empire and a Kantian comity of democratic republics was to establish American "hegemony" over the "free world," backed by military commitments and military bases, and underpinned by nuclear weapons and Ford assembly-line technology. Maier distinguishes between the "empire of production" and the "empire of consumption." In the first phase, the American productive system was transferred to its allies through Marshall Aid and other aid packages; Phase II's "empire of consumption" was based on the dominance of the dollar, and culminated in the "twin deficits" of today—the budget deficit and the balance of payments deficit."

I'd like to advance a sociological definition of what Maier calls "post-territorial empire" (something, by the way, the US has yet to achieve: it still has military bases all over the world, and has recently started re-fighting -- and re-re-fighting, because they never quite seem to get won and done -- wars of imperial conquest). Okay, so here's my definition:

Post-territorial empire -- the empire of influence -- is the assumed convergence of diverse habitus towards the habitus of one specific culture, a culture which nevertheless presents its specificity as something universal.

Commentary on this post-territorial empire often hides the specificity of the imperial hub, refuses to admit that it's situated. Such commentary assumes that all difference to, all resistance to, the dominant habitus is temporary, frail and doomed.

I seem forever to be battling this specificity-hiding, convergence-assuming behaviour. Journalists, essayists, bloggers and cultural commentators are forever passing off the Anglo-American way of doing things as some kind of norm to which everyone is inevitably converging. All resistance to this norm, we learn time after time, is something frail, dwindling towards extinction, glimpsed momentarily in a process of tumbling or submitting to a Darwinian-style market -- a triumphant and unopposed Anglo-capitalist system all-crushing in its inevitability. America everywhere! (Just don't call it that...)

Specificity-hiding is itself hidden in innate assumptions and future projections. The word "increasingly" comes up a lot. Increasingly, we learn, Japanese women are becoming [something which more closely resembles American women, but don't call it that]. Increasingly, dirigiste technocracy is falling to market control. But, as Maier points out, "today's market model of globalization hides the role of US multinationals in spreading "imperial employment patterns" through offshore production." In other words, the universal habitus is actually a specific habitus, belonging to the corporations of a specific nation, and benefitting one specific nation.

There was an interesting section in the Modernism show I saw last week at the V&A headed "Americanism". It showed a vogue, in the early-to-mid 20th century, for the uncritical adoption of specifically American industrial processes, like Fordism. I found it fascinating because in our own time we don't talk about "Americanism" any more. We have euphemisms which mean pretty much the same thing. We talk about "markets", "freedom", "reform", "rock and roll", "human rights", "globalization", "democracy" and so on, but really we mean "the American system". Or perhaps "an idealized version of the American system". Because the reality of the specific American system is that it's financially shaky, increasingly dynastic, decreasingly democratic, ecologically toxic, and no great supporter of freedom or human rights. And as ideology gets more and more unmoored from observable reality, it gets increasingly visible as... mere ideology.

"To be sure," says Robert Skidelsky in his review of Maier's book, "there is a strong ideological element in the current US drive for empire, especially among neoconservatives in the academy and Washington think tanks. It is based on the belief that the West is best, and will only be secure if the Western way becomes the universal norm. Those who resist the embrace of the West are thought to be savages and must be persuaded, or forced, to recognize the error of their ways."

At the end of July a journalist will interview me about Berlin for a British newspaper. The article will ask how long the urban utopian idyll enjoyed by Berlin's artists, musicians and hipsters can last, and whether Berlin won't soon become a "free market", as expensive as London or New York.

The "inevitable convergence towards Anglo-market norms" theme hinted at here will not set the tone of my answers. I don't believe that's the case. It's Anglo-market norms which are in crisis, not the Berlin alternative to them. I plan to tell the paper that, far from being an endangered enclave or anomaly, Berlin is in fact a laboratory for future ways of doing things. This city is not just post-industrial, but post-imperial. It's a divergence machine.

I think, if you asked around, you'd find a surprising number of the artists here would agree with that view. The post-imperial future is what we're all brainstorming here. It's why we're not in New York or London. We're working on very specific questions, questions of habitus. What will music sound like after the empire? What will food taste like? How will people dress? How many hours a day will they work? What will their houses look like? How will they dance?

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Neomarxisme pulls up alongside today's theme with an entry entitled Pompous Particularism vs Pompous Universalism (http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/archives/000930.html). I can't seem to comment there for some reason, so I'm putting my response here.

every nation, not just the United States, considers itself exceptional to some extent.

So says the New York Times in the article (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/magazine/02wwln_lede.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) which has triggered this entry. Yes, but... As my blog entry today points out, the post WW2 period has seen an American imperium in which military might and cultural influence have combined to make the American Way a particular which aspires to be -- and to an extent has become -- a universal, and to hide its particularity. In the early to mid-20th century much of the world admired and emulated "Americanism". Later, though, we stopped talking about "Americanism" and simply talked about modernization, globalization, markets, reforms and so on. The fact that these meant more or less the same thing as Americanism was elided. The United States became, as Jean-Luc Godard once said, "the only country without the name of a country". A place which was no place and all places at once.

I think this period has now ended. I've said before that I think the current Bush regime has done the opposite of what the first Bush regime did. Whereas Bush pere tried to create a "New World Order" with America at its invisible, omnipresent centre, Bush fils has situated (http://imomus.livejournal.com/61236.html) the US. (This year's Whitney Biennial was widely touted as the "post-American biennial" for exactly this reason: America, as an ideal, is over; what now remains in people's minds is America as a military threat, as the Pew Research Center (http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10B14F638550C778DDDAF0894DE404482&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fOrganizations%2fP%2fPew%20Research%20Center) found recently.)

The gloves are off, then. But empires cannot be sustained under these conditions. Far from being the height of the American Empire, this new attitude signals its rapid decline. Show the gun, ditch the charm, and it's all over. As soon as you turn your back, somebody will jump you. We are entering a world of particularism, of every man for himself. The true end of the Cold War, with its "blocs" and "umbrellas". Japanese particularism is more benign than its US counterpart, because it doesn't combine it with war. They've been "special" longer, they've had more practise. But also, Japan has never presented its particularism as a model for others to emulate. "The Japanese Way", Japonism, Japanize -- these are things only artists talk about. If they work, they work by charm. You can't call this particularism "pompous". It has no ambition, no authority.

But it's nice to think that, just as Japan pioneered the iPod by inventing the Walkman 20 years before it, so it's pioneered American unilateral particularism by being closed all those years. Last time I went to the US I saw a sign from the Homeland Security Bureau boasting about how it was keeping "America open for business". Somehow, it managed to suggest the opposite, to conjur a picture of a closed America. Impossible to conceive of 100 years ago -- bring me your huddled masses, said Liberty! -- but all too easy now. And just think how "particular" that closed America would become, and how provincial its news broadcasts would be.

There's a little flavour of it in today's Guardian (http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,,1811066,00.html), which sees the media as the only force opposing the current regime in the US, or rather, sees the New York Times as that. And sees Bush asking "Who will rid me of this meddlesome press?"

[(Anonymous)]

I fixed my comment page. (Security has gotten tighter in the neverending War on Spam.)

Just one point: obviously Fordism is "American" in origin, but is the efficiency gained in production also "American"? Cultural behavior is one thing, but a lot of "American" inventions have had objective results that make the cultural element less apparent to the adopters. American firms adopted a lot of Japanese total quality management in the 80s, which was of course originally an "American" idea. (Some would even argue that Ford's innovation clearly went against the honest and decent old ways of American craftsmanship.)

Sounds a bit Scientology-like to call Fordism "technology" but a lot of grey area enters when you talk about the culture of scientific/economic practice. Not to say there aren't cultural products of industrial processes, but they my be results inherent in the process - not the birthing culture.

Marxy

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm not really convinced that "pure efficiency" can be distinguished from a localized "how we do things around here". Efficiency for whom, for what, and for why? By whose definition, and by which ideology? Towards what Utopia? These questions can only have cultural -- and local -- answers.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not convinced that modernization, globalization, markets etc. are "Americanism" in disguise. Sure, they're some of the means by which America has accumulated power, but they were around a long time before America became a superpower, and they also powered the development of all the European empires (the British one in particular), as well as Europe's post-war economic renaissance. The American empire has many particularities, but global capitalism is hardly one of them.

[(Anonymous)]

What if we say "productivity" instead of "efficiency." Then:

Productivity = Output of worker / Worker hours

This is not culturally defined. Fordism greatly increased this over the prior methods.

Whether efficiency is more important than equality is the cultural question.

Marxy

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

You always have hints of Marxists hope, optimism, and utopia in your writings, but in none as much as in this post.

I doubt your optimism, however.

Throughout post-agrarian history, there have always been Empires and their culture is the culture that was dominate throughout their world. (Look at Ancient Rome, look at the Ottomans, look at the Ayyubid Dynasty, look at Tang and Song period China, look at the Ancient Greeks, look at the Mayans, look at the 17th. c. Dutch.) All had their influence spread in all aspects of life: ideas, culture, fiscal and military power, religion, even everyday life.

Perhaps you're right. Perhaps we are nearing a post-Empire world. Perhaps it might change tomorrow.

But if history is any sort of guide, the U.S. Empire will simply be eclipsed by a new Empire (China looks possible) and the U.S. will slowly fade into obsolescence or be destroyed.

If history is any guide, then the next Empire will fill in the gaps and the following generation will be frolicking in the cultural byproducts of the new Empire.

Then again, I hope you're right.

I just doubt it.

Doesn't mean we can't keep fighting for a better future, and hoping that our dreams can match reality.