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

[larameau.livejournal.com]

every major city in the western world, that is (europe and the states).
and it's not that people are hanging about cause they're lazy. the problem is job precarity, which is just one of the myriad negative consequences of american-style globalization - workers in europe and in the us (but especially in europe) have become superfluous, disposable, because the perverse bottom line of capitalism - profit, more profit, and even more profit! - has led industries, and now also service companies, to employ people in non-western countries where the cost of labor is a fraction of what it is in europe.

[(Anonymous)]

We should remember, while we sit here and criticize America and the UK to death, that Momus's lifestyle has been supported this year with a gig as a columnist at an American magazine and as a performance artist at an American museum.

I would hazard a guess that many other Berlin "creatives" are functioning under similar conditions. In other words, these artistic enclaves are not self-sustaining but require the patronage of those awful soulless capitalists.

If I were myself a professional gallery patron like Momus, I would be writing love letters to the United States every day, thanking them for supporting my (historically absurd and unsustainable) lifestyle.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Nothing would more quickly get me fired from Wired or the Whitney than writing paens to Bush's America, I can tell you. But who says describing the US as an awesome empire isn't a secret love letter, between the lines?

What troubles me more than anything is your idea that being an essayist and an artist is "absurd and unsustainable". Not quite sure why that should be.

[(Anonymous)]

Anything is anything between the lines. 9/11 was a kiss on both cheeks if you hold it upside down in a mirror.

[larameau.livejournal.com]

"Nothing would more quickly get me fired from Wired or the Whitney than writing paens to Bush's America, I can tell you"

absolutely. look at this one, for instance: http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70980-0.html
at wired news they want critical minds. and self-criticism is what i particularly like about american culture

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

He/she might mean that your lifestyle is only sustainable if there is enough largesse to support it. The wealth and convenience that America has helped create (along with other industrial nations) allows people like you to be voluminous producers of what is essentially "non-progress" and not starve to death.

By "non-progress," I mean that nothing you do has a direct effect on extending life, curing illness, feeding millions of hungry people or cleaning pollution. You, as an artist, might make life entertaining for factory workers or scientists and therefore indirectly contribute, but there's no correlation between cobbled-together fashion and ensuring a clean water supply for an African village.

But I don't mean to imply that you're useless. As long as you pay taxes and consume (you seem to have a healthy appetite for air travel and expensive cafes/couture), you're contributing to the maintenance of the system you don't like even if you're not advancing it.

[(Anonymous)]

DING!

We have a winner.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Europe has the most coddled work force on the entire planet—of course companies go elsewhere. Many people are unemployed in Europe because the labor laws are so restrictive in many places that employers cannot hire new employees, since the laws make it nearly impossible to fire them if they don't do their jobs well. Europe can make itself into a big kindergarten, but that will only give rise to new problems, like unrealistically inflated expectations of their governments. In part, that's why able-bodied Parisians in their 20's were screaming in the streets earlier this year about reforms that would (gasp) actually make them accountable at the workplace. Why, they could be...FIRED for not doing their jobs well! Everywhere else on the planet, people are taking to the streets to get work, but only in France will they march for the right not to work. You don't have to be a jarhead Bushie neocon to find that pathetic—and perverse. Those Arab kids in the projects could have used those jobs now going to New Delhi. Too bad their government caved in to the infantile street tantrums—and too bad many young people in Paris no longer know how to work. The situation is a recipe for societal chaos followed by despotism: a coddled, overly dependent populace with a highly centralized, bureaucratic government; economic decay; rampant unemployment, etc. What could possibly go wrong, eh?

People are ill-suited to live in utopias for a simple reason: they're human. It doesn't have to take the form of corporate capitalism, but trade is an unavoidable part of the human condition. You may as well try to flee your own backside. Neither the extreme example of American social darwinism nor the European nanny state is the answer—but an open, sane, modest system of trade with a humane set of checks and balances. It keeps people busy and happy—and out of mischief. That's about as close to a utopia we're likely to get. Big ideas are toxic, because they work backwards from empty abstractions rather than just cobbling together what already works. Just my opinion, mind you. ;)

[larameau.livejournal.com]

"In part, that's why able-bodied Parisians in their 20's were screaming in the streets earlier this year about reforms that would (gasp) actually make them accountable at the workplace. Why, they could be...FIRED for not doing their jobs well! "

this is incorrect. actually they were protesting against a law that would have people under 26 fired anyway -"without just cause"-, no matter their performance at work, in their first two years of employment.
i can agree on making the european job market more flexible than it is, but this is by no means the same as sponging off BASIC workers rights, acquired in decades and decades of negotiations and union activism, especially when it comes to young people. young people are a nation's most valuable workforce, but they are also the ones who would have suffered the most under the CPE (contract de premier emploi) decree.
so in this case young people protested because it was their sacrosant right to do so.

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, Villepin's contract would have made it easier for companies to dismiss people under the age of 26 who have been employed for less than two years. The contract would have helped the 20% unemployment rate among the young by making it easier to hire because it would have been easier to fire. At present, job dismissals in France are very lengthy and costly for employers, which makes employers very hesitant about hiring. But according to what I've read, the change would have not been all that great from what already exists on the books elsewhere: Contracts of 18 months or less are already allowed for situations like seasonal employment, and even the lifetime employment contracts allow a trial period of six months. I still think far more would have benefitted from these reforms than would have suffered. Something has to give somewhere.

When you look at the general economic conditions, it's amazing anyone in Paris has a job outside of government: The current minimum wage is so high as to cancel out the benefits of hiring a new employee, further inhibiting new hiring. The red tape within the system requires that even small businesses devote a great deal of time and money to complex tax procedures. Compared to our "cruel" capitalist system, which will actually allow for some semblance of upward mobility for new immigrants in a generation or two, France's "humane" bureaucracy, with its endless gatekeepers and institutional impediments, currently allows for little to none. France's underclasses are more educated than their counterparts in the US, but overeducated and underemployed is still underemployed. Even those who are highly educated often must take part-time or menial jobs.

I still think the politicians have done the kids a great disservice by not dismantling an unsustainable system that the older generations have a death grip on, and who continue to suck dry at the next generation's expense. Either way, this only delays the inevitable; this system will not be there for the young. Best to wean them off the government teat now before they become as crippled by dependence as they are by unemployment.

What they could have done in conjunction with the new contracts would have been to give "youth dispensations" of some kind that would give them a ten year deferrment on paying any government taxes or fees on any businesses started by those under the age of 30 (no age limit or bureaucratic fees on whoever approves business loans, too). Streamlining the red tape involved with setting up a business would have helped as well. In other words, let the government step out of the way, and let the young people do what they do best: expend vitality and potential.

Beats burning cars.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

You seem to be comparing the ideals of free market America with the realities of dirigiste Europe. You say, for instance:

Compared to our "cruel" capitalist system, which will actually allow for some semblance of upward mobility for new immigrants in a generation or two, France's "humane" bureaucracy, with its endless gatekeepers and institutional impediments, currently allows for little to none.

This is simply not the case. Social mobility is now more difficult (http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/newsAndEvents/archives/2005/LSE_SuttonTrust_report.htm) in America (and the UK) than it is in continental Europe. It is precisely America, despite its ideology of opportunities for all, which is actually more dynastic and rigidly hierarchical than "the old country".

[lord-whimsy.livejournal.com]

Dynastic and rigidly hierarchical? Yeah, now that you mention it, the employees at the local family-owned grocery have been goose-stepping more often of late.

I recall this factoid in a previous post, and I still don't see those numbers at work around me, Nick. Even the places on the main street of my little out-of-the-way town are owned by immmigrants. Over the past ten years, it has all changed hands: the Turks now run the gas station and the local diner, the Koreans now run the dry cleaners, and there are now two small Mexican groceries and a Mexican restaurant is coming. Maybe the native population here can't get their act together, but the immigrants I know in Philly and New York always seem to do very well for themselves, and continue to do so.

Even if those numbers do bear out, I still don't think the odds of success are better in a place like suburban Paris, for the simple reason that you can work your way around private concerns to get yourself going, but there's no getting around the state if it decides to impede you. I've run my own business for nearly a decade, and whenever I have dealings with the state, it is a hellish quagmire; but when dealing with another business—usually another smallish concern—things tend to get done. And when things get done, it benefits both parties. When government gets something done, I usually get screwed, and I have no say in the matter. Most aspects of "free market America" aren't gargantuan in scale; in fact, most businesses in this country are quite modest. The same cannot be said of government bureaucracy, either here or in Europe.

All of this is moot anyway, since there doesn't seem to be any viable state-based solutions on the table for France's unemployment problem, and the idea of citizens coming up with possible solutions on their own seems to be almost beyond their imagining. Personally, I prefer to be a citizen rather than a ward of the state; I would find a life that circumscribed too disheartening to bear, but hey—good luck.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

As a transient, your opinion that America is rigidly class immobile is risible.


It is possible for me, a middle-class American half-breed son of a GI and a Jap, to become the CEO of a corporation or a millionaire inventor. It happens all the time.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It happens more in Europe now than in America, which has some of the world's worst levels of social mobility.

If you don't believe me, believe The Economist (http://www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3518560).

What allows people to rise socially, and earn more than their parents, is education. And education is more likely to be state-subsidised -- and therefore open to all -- in European countries than in the US.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

this is by no means the same as sponging off BASIC workers rights,acquired in decades and decades of negotiations and union activism,


We found out here in the States that unions exist solely to extort money from companies. Unionism, restrictive labor laws and strikes only serve to unnecessarily drive up the cost of doing bidness. It only makes sense that a company would want to maximize profit; you and I aren't even in the same universe if you think a corporation should do anything that would lessen its profit margin. Making a bunch of Europeans believe that their "I push one button over and over for 40 years" job is worth what the engineer who designed the machine is worth, PLUS early retirement AND full health care is a great way to ensure loyalty and shitty way to keep a government running in the black.

[cerulicante.livejournal.com]

This stunning display of incisive logic and fact is wholly unwelcome here. The correct thing to type would have been:

BUSH IS EVIL AMERICA IS NAZI GERMANY EUROPE IS ENLIGHTENED WE JUST NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE TERRORISTS AND THEY'LL LOVE US MARX WAS RIGHT MAO WAS A HERO