symbolic creativity

7/30/2019 Symbolic Creativity

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Symbolic creativity and

political economy

John Fiske and Paul Willis


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Review: What is Ideology?

Karl Marx

Commodity Fetishism as the law of exchange value

Herbert Marcuse

Control Mechanism of the status quo Generating and maintaining happy consciousness

Jean Baudrillard

All-embracing hyperreality


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Questions and

Challenges

Pessimism?

No changes without revolutionary subject (proletariat?

radical youth? avant-gardist?)How to take account of ordinary people in their

everyday life?


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Cultural Populism


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Two Origins of Cultural Populism

Critique of Marxist determinism

Human agency (use value) versus capitaliststructure (exchange value)

Organic community culture Could folk culture continue in modern times?

Yes, but embodied in

artisan culture (E. P. Thompson) working class culture (Richard Hoggart)


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Cultural Populist

Richard Hoggart (Working-class culture)

Raymond Williams (Common Culture)

Paul Willis (counter-culture and youth)

John Fiske (commodity and consumption)


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Paul Willis and John Fiske

Paul Willis (1950-)

Born in Wolverhampton (UK)

The early member of CCCC (Centre for

Contemporary Cultural Studies) Teaching at Princeton University now

John Fiske (1939-) Studied in Britain

Taught in Australia and the US


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Basic Assumption:Double Nature of Cultural Commodity


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Double Nature

Cultural commodity and Non-cultural commodity

Industrial product and popular culture

Dual Hieroglyphs


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Cultural and Non-culturalcommodities (Willis)

Cultural Commodities Non-Cultural Commodities

Use Value: Stability

of Sensuousness

Use Value: Inviting avariety of uses and

communication

Exchange Value


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Repertoire ()

The possibilities of usage and communication

Example: Jean


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Uses and Communication

Uses

Casual wear

Ripped jean

Tight jean

Baggy jean

Communication

Individual freedom Ruggedness/ physicality

naturalness Masculinity Sexiness


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Industrial product and

popular culture (Fiske) Cultural industries:

A commodity is designed andproduced by industrial system Popular culture

It is consumed as culturalproduct


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Cultural industries

They provide a repertoire of textsor cultural resources (meanings)

for people to use or reject.


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Popular culture

It is of peoples interest

It bears the interest of the people It involves the active process of

generating and circulating

meanings and pleasures within asocial system


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Generating and circulating

meanings The possible meanings of Jean

Individual freedom--> repressingpersonality Ruggedness-->(male) working

class identity

Masculinity-->Tomboy


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Dual Hieroglyphs

Designed cultural codes (encoding)

Users appropriation (decoding)


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Fiske: Popular Culture


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Willis: Symbolic Creativity


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Everyday life and SymbolicCreativity

Everyday is full of activities which although notrecognized asArt, share the same Symbolic

Creativity as art practices.

EVERYDAY

NECESSARY WORK

SYMBOLIC

CREATIVITY


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SYMBOLIC CREATIVITY

The necessary part of human activity

Integral part of necessary work

It has to be done everyday

It is not extra but essential of daily

production and reproduction


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English Radical Tradition

Art = Work/Pleasure

Work is Holy: The daily reproduction is Holy andthe play of Symbolic Creativity in these thingsmake them Holy (Example: Artisan)

Modern Industry destroyed the possibility ofart by Technical division of labor: fragmented task rather than art

work

Introduction of automatic machine: laborer rather than

craftsman Hierarchy and management: Separating body from mind

altogether out of workplace.

S b li k i d


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Symbolic work in moderneveryday life

A humanly necessary work.

Application of human capacities to and through, on andwith symbolic resources and raw materials.(language, texts, songs, films, images and artifacts of all kind)

Grounded aesthetics (versus Marcuses high-arts aesthetics)


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Basic elements

Language: the primary tool that allow us to assess our impact on othersand theirs to us. It allows us to see ourselves as others.

Active Body a site of knowledge and set of signs and symbols. It is thesource of productive and communicative activity. (corporeality)

Drama rules, rituals and performances that we produce with others( dancing, singing, joke-making, story telling in dynamic settings and throughperformance).

Symbolic Creativity transforms what is provided and helps to producespecific form of human identity and capacity.


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Being human

To Be Creative

remarking the world for ourselves as we find our own place and identity.

Produce Individual Identity

Who and what I am and could become.

Place the Identities in larger wholes

Identities do not stand alone above or beyond history. They are related totime, place and things.

Develop our own vital capacities in the process


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Informal Cultural Practices

E b dd d E i


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Embedded ExpressiveLabour

Production Side

LP (labor input or wage ) Capital accumulation

Consumption Side

Expressive Labour (uses and communication)Capital accumulation

Some residual elements (resistance and evasion)spill over the capital circuits


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Cultural

industries

consumption

conformity Resistance /evasion

Resistance /

evasion


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Example: English Football

Labour Power (wage): Football fans contributetheir money to their football club

Expressive Labour: Football fans support thefootball players and look for the authenticity oftheir club (bodily investment: language,drama, )

Residual elements

Challenge to the official policy and management oftheir football club

Re-fabricating local communities


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Example: Adbuster

A Canadian anti-consumerist group

"a global network of artists, activists, writers,pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurswho want to advance the new social activistmovement of the information age."

Campaigns: Buy Nothing Day, Occupy Wall Street

Cultural Jamming: subvertisements (Spoof Ad)

Example: Spoof Ad in Hong
http://www.adbusters.org/spoofadshttp://www.adbusters.org/spoofads


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Example: Spoof Ad in HongKong

A TV commercial of insurance company

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-0gkOYLs

A parody about the election of Chief Executive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8Ih96zSYI&feature=channel_video_title
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-0gkOYLshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8Ih96zSYI&feature=channel_video_titlehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8Ih96zSYI&feature=channel_video_titlehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8Ih96zSYI&feature=channel_video_titlehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8Ih96zSYI&feature=channel_video_titlehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-0gkOYLshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-0gkOYLshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-0gkOYLs


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Concluding Remarks

Old Paradigms of Ideological


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Old Paradigms of IdeologicalCritique

Develop a general theory and critique ofcommodity culture

Imagining an overall strategy of revolution

New Paradigms of


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New Paradigms ofIdeological Critique

Looking for cultural practices

Looking for eruptions of the commodity culturalforms

refusalssubversions

ironizations

symbolic creativity

Documents