NEW SAVANNA

Sunday, August 21, 2011

flowers flowers flowers

Reading Latour 3: Groups and the Game of Graffiti

This reading Latour (Reassembling the Social) is tough. It’s not that the ideas are particularly tough; they’re not, at least not so far. It’s that I read a line or paragraph, and it sets me to thinking, and thinking, and thinking . . . so I put the Latour down and think and think some more. It takes time to run his stuff through (several decades of) my own accumulated thoughts, which include the graffiti thoughts I’ve been having for the past few years.

And it’s graffiti I really want to understand, not so much Latour. I’m reading him so I can better read graffiti.

Groups

On to groups. I talk of graffiti culture as though there is such a thing. There is graffiti itself, on the walls, in photos, in books and on the web. And there are the people who make the graffiti, take the photos, put them in books, and on the web. And others besides, those who look at the graffiti and the photos.

Sometimes when I talk of graffiti culture, I mean to indicate a group of people. And that, groups, is Latour’s first topic after the introduction. So, p. 29:

To sum up, whereas for sociologists the first problem seems to settle on one privileged grouping, our most common experience, if we are faithful to it, tells us that there are lots of contradictory group formations, group enrollment—activity to which social scientists are obviously crucial contributors. The choice is thus clear: either we follow social scientists and begin our travel by setting up at the start which kind of group and level of analysis we will focus on, or we follow the actors’ own ways and begin our travels by the traces left behind by their activity of forming and dismantling groups.

What’s interesting about graffiti is that the graffiti itself is a means through which and around which groups come into being. Considered as a group, or as an irritant or stimulus to group formation, the illegal nature of graffiti is crucial. Let’s follow it out.

Redefining

I’ve been going about this the wrong way—isn’t it always thus? The illegal nature of graffiti IS an issue, as is the FIDELITY of graffiti style to the NYC and Philly originals all over the world. And the two ARE linked. The question ISN’T so much: Why did graffiti persist despite its illegal nature.

Rather, the question IS more like: Under what circumstances will the illegal nature of an expressive practice tend to foster that practice? What does the existence and persistence of graffiti tell us about the world?

The fact that graffiti is illegal means that the state is going to impose costs on the activity. If graffiti is to persist in the face of those costs, then those costs to ‘the graffiti community’ must be lower than the benefits of graffiti, however those costs and benefits are counted up.

With these considerations in mind, let’s take another look. To begin with, we must note that graffiti started as the expressive practice of (mostly) minority young men, young men who were already somewhat alienated from mainstream America. Thus, the disapproval of mainstream America is not new to them and might even conceivably be rewarding to them if they settle on an Oppositional identity.

The Game of Graffiti

So, to define our game a bit: (1) The individual graffiti writer is one player in the graffiti game. (2) The state, as represented by the police and the justice system, is a third player. The state functions as a proxy for the whole of legitimate society. (3) Each writer ‘plays’ to what I believe sociologists call a ‘reference group’, the group of people which a given individual, such as a graffiti writer, considers to be his peers, his homies. This group will be fuzzy and fluid, but will include other graffiti writers, but also those among their immediate associates who may not themselves be writers. Considered as a collectivity, these reference groups are another player. Call it simply the graffiti community.

THAT’s the group whose existence we’re trying to understand, along with graffiti itself.

Orange Aid

Great Chain of Copy-Being

Reading Latour 2: The Social

The Question of Graffiti

Public discourse on graffiti tends to be dominated by one question: Is it art or vandalism? My first impulse, as you might imagine, is to note that we don’t have an either/or dichotomy here, that graffiti can easily both. I suspect that reaction is both too sophisticated and not sophisticated enough.

What I’m thinking, of course, is whether or not an image is art is logically independent of where it is and whether or not it is legally there. The people who pose the question obviously don’t think that way, otherwise they wouldn’t post just THAT question. Still, if you asked them, What is art? what would they say? I don’t know, but I can imagine that someone during the conversation at least some of them would say: I know it when I see it. And some might say: You know, it’s in museums and galleries and sells for lots of money.

That first non-answer is what happens when you try to define art by its content and someone pushes you to the wall on it. When I say that the nature of art is independent of its legal status, that sort of thing is surely what I have in mind. And if you pressed me on it, well, seriously, if you REALLY DID press men on it, I wouldn’t say “I know it when I see it.” But I’d admit there is a problem. What about Duchamp’s urinal? What makes that urinal art, but not all the other urinals in the world?

Which brings me to that second answer: It hangs in galleries, etc. That, of course, is an institutional definition. And it’s a very sophisticated sense of what art is, more sophisticated than most people are on such matters. My imaginary interlocutor is not, in fact, offering such a definition. Rather, in desperation, they’re using museums and galleries as shorthand ways of pointing out thousands of examples of capital “A” Art. And so they point to the institutions that, in the institutional definition, constitute art.

And so we’re back at that question: Is it art or vandalism? If that question is taken as one, not about the images themselves, but about the authorizing institutions, then, YES, it is dichotomous. And the dichotomy is between institutionally authorized and, not merely unauthorized, but entirely outside legitimate society. What I think is that, as ordinarily asked and understood, the question is unclear, indefinite, ambiguous. It is not clearly and explicitly about institutions, but it implies them; nor is it NOT about imagistic content, for the question does implies it.

Social Calculations

The question is a messy one. As is the matter of ‘the social.’ And that brings us back to Latour. As I mentioned in my previous Latour post, he sets up his argument by countering his position against what he takes to be The Standard view. Here’s how he starts that (p. 3):

The first solution has been to post the existence of a specific sort of phenomenon variously called ‘society’, ‘social order’, ‘social practice’, ‘social dimension’, or ‘social structure’. For the last century during which social theories have been elaborated, it has been important to distinguish this domain of reality from other domains such as economics, geography, biology, psychology, law, science, and politics. A given trait was said to be ‘social’ or to ‘pertain to society’ when it could be defined as possessing specific properties, some negative—it must not be ‘purely’ biological, linguistic, economical, natural—and some positive—it must achieve, reinforce, express, maintain, reproduce, or subvert the social order.

Liberty Obscured

Critique

Cultural Construction: Much Ado About Fundamental Matters

Two days ago I posted on family values (from Merry Olde England to Fire Island), with an informal and semi-organized discussion about how Shakespeare began “reconstructing” the family. That, of course, is not what he thought he was doing. We don’t really know what he thought about much of anything, we just have his plays and poems. But one of his thoughts, no doubt, was “I gotta get paid.” So it’s only in long retrospect that we can see him reconstruct family values.

But what does that mean, reconstruct family values? Just what is being constructed, and how?

The literary Darwinists would have us believe that Shakespeare’s texts are just fancy costumes over ape behavior, behavior which is quite plastic and complex. And they ARE that. But their thinking is dominated by E.O. Wilson’s poverty-stricken view that culture is held in check by a “genetic leash,” a metaphor I find to be useless. If you really want to use THAT metaphor, then surely it’s the other way around, that culture holds the genes on a leash.

But I prefer a different metaphor, that of building blocks, or of a game, such as chess. Biology provides the basic pieces and the basic rules, but culture plays the game, or builds the structure. Given that the pieces and the basic rules are what they are, culture can’t build just any structure, or make just any sequence of moves. But culture does have quite a bit of freeplay.

Shakespeare Moves Biology's Game Pieces

And that’s what we see in Shakespeare, he’s making new moves. The fact that, for the most part, he’s retelling old tales let’s us see the newness in his moves. Without knowing what the basic pieces are, however, it’s hard for us to read the moves.

We know more about those basic pieces than we did, say, 40 or 50 years ago. We know, for example, that the system for infant-mother attachment is different from the system for sexual bonding between adults; and we know something of the neurophysiology. We also know that we regulate relationships and interactions according to distinctly different principles, egalitarianism and hierarchy; these, presumably, are neurally separate as well.

This may seem, well, commonsensical. The trouble with common sense is that it doesn’t explain anything. It’s just how we think and talk. What’s new is carefully gathered evidence, and the neural clues. It’s not just that we have different words for different behaviors, but that we now know there REALLY ARE different underlying systems.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

What'll they patent next? Air?

Reading Latour 1: Tracing

I finally decided that I’d have to bite the bullet and read Latour. Not Harman, who is an explicator of Latour, or Bryant, or Bogost, who gave us the Latour Litanizer, nor even Morton, who introduced me too OOO, and whom I’ve been reading in blog-sized form. Which counts for more than you might think, as not only have I been reading, but I’ve been commenting, and Tim’s commented back. And making my own OOOish posts, on which Tim’s commented. That dialog is worth, say, 5 thick books, merely read.

But all signs pointed to Latour, a sociologist by trade. Who likes flat ontologies. And whom, so I’ve read, sees things, mere physical things, as ineluctably part of the social.

That, it seems to me, is what I need, for my specific problem is that of the graffiti site, the wall on which the marks are made, time and again. As I’ve said time and again, the site is some kind of agent in the graffiti world. And the graffiti world, well graffiti world is just a phrase, a label. That I use the term should not be taken to imply that I understand it.

Further, object-oriented ontology is, well, it’s philosophy. And I’m not sure about philosophy. What does it mean to talk about capital “B” Being, and to do so with a straight face and without crossing your fingers? Heidegger? I’ve known about him for years. Never read him. Merleau-Ponty was my man back in the day. I’m not sure I how far I can go with thinking that regards Heidegger as a living influence. & Latour doesn’t even have Heidegger in his index—I’m talking about Assembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory, the book I bought.

No, I simply don’t know how to negotiate my way in philosophy, not anymore. And I’m not interested in reaching philosophical conclusions. My immediate task is to understand graffiti. Such understanding as I manage to scrape together will, I figure, be some kind of informal and discursive social science perhaps with a psychological twist. It’s not going to be philosophy.

No doubt whatever I do implies some philosophical stance. But I’ll let others worry about it, if, that is, there’s anything worth worrying about.

Latour.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Family Values: From Merry Olde England to Fire Island

An artist friend of mine spent a couple of days last week vacationing with one of her friends on Fire Island, a narrow island of summer homes off the southern coast of Long Island. She describes it as a very family sort of place—the part of the island, that is, that’s not a gay enclave. And therein lies the beef, such as it is.

For my artist friend is not a family person. She was once married, but that’s over. Didn’t have any kids, and glad of it. She has no desire to get married again and, in particular, NO KIDS. She’s skeptical about families. She finds them, one gathers, rather creepy.

And so she told a bunch of us, time and again, over a long Friday afternoon lunch. Frolicking in the sun and surf, communing with nature, all that was fine and refreshing. What a vacation’s for. But doing that in the presence of FAMILIES, mommies and daddies and their kids, why are these people oppressing me? And people DO oppress her over the fact that she’s a woman who HAS NO KIDS. Ewe! How unnatural, they beam at her. No! how sane, she protects herself, people, too many people, will be the death of the earth, and it’s families that cause people to multiply multiply multiply.

Why families? she wonders. Biology, comes the reply, from another friend, we’ve got these urges, and these urges produce families.

Well, yes, we do. And those urges do crank out families. But is THAT what families are about? Is that ALL they’re about? Perhaps there’s more to families than mere biology.

Could a commitment to one’s family be a way of committing oneself to something beyond oneself? If that is so, well, then things become very complicated. It’s not simply that self-transcending commitment can take many forms. But that there’s a world of difference between inflating oneself to fill the world under one guise or another, and committing to THAT, and committing oneself to something outside, other than, one self. The problem is that YOU who are at the center of this commitment may not be able to tell the difference.

Working Paper on Heart of Darkness

A PDF of my all my posts on Heart of Darkness is now available on my SSRN page and at Academia.edu.

Introduction: Qualitative and Quantitative Methods

That’s not what I set out to do when I undertook these notes. The idea was simply to do for Heart of Darkness what I’d just done with Apocalypse Now, or had done last year with Sita Sings the Blues: provide miscellaneous commentary on a rich text. Miscellaneous implies that I have no particular goal in mind. I start wherever and stop when I feel that, well, when I feel that I’ve said enough. The only thing that’s sure is that along the way I’ll do some fairly detailed descriptive work and that I’ll devote some attention to the form of the word.

And that’s what I did for the first six posts. Then, WHAM! Well, not WHAM, not right off the bat. More like, hmmm, I wonder… I got curious. I’d noticed that the nexus sentence, which I’d examined in posts five and six, seemed to be the longest in the text. I was considering remarking on this while writing the fifth post. But I decided, no, I better not. I better check it, not that anything much depends on getting that assertion right, but still, it’s safer to check. If rather tedious.

And so I counted the number of words in each paragraph, displayed the counts on a graph and all of a sudden found myself engaged in the quantitative analysis of a text. I knew, of course, that such analysis had been done, I just didn’t figure that I’d wander into such work by surprise, as it were. But I did, and now it’s done, and I’m left having to make sense of it.

But not immediately. The immediate task is to situate that analytic work among the more qualitative work and to look at, and appraise, it all. What’s up?

Scales of Description

In looking over these posts (and, I might add, those on Apocalypse Now) I see that my miscellaneous approach isn’t so miscellaneous. There is a method there; there is an objective. The objective is to examine the work on a variety of scales and to see how phenomena at those various scales interact with one another. The method, loosely conceived, is to choose analytic and descriptive techniques that allow me to do that.

Thus the Latour Litany (3 & 4)—My Intended, my ivory, my station, my river, my. . . —is itself a small-scale feature of the text, though its implicational scope is large. It first appears, however, in that nexus paragraph (5 & 6), which is structurally central (5). Structural centrality, of course, is a function of the entire text. It is about the mutual interaction of parts in the whole.

Similarly, what I’ve called Marlow’s calculation (11), that section at the end of the nexus (6) where Marlow weighs the life of his helmsman against that of Kurtz. The passage itself is a small-scale feature, but the ‘evidence’ on the two ‘sides’ of the scale is provided in mid-scale features: Kurtz’s story as given in the nexus and in the story of the battle that straddles the nexus. The method of balancing (10), if you will—Marlow’s bond with the helmsman vs. Kurtz’s deeds on behalf of European civilization—colors the whole story.

The two quantitative posts, on paragraph length (7) and on periodicity (9) are about the large scale organization of small scale features, paragraph length and the appearance of Kurtz’s name. While there’s much that I haven’t examined, just this much, given the multiple scales of analysis, suggests that Heart of Darkness is an organic whole, an ancient term of critical description if ever there was one.

Beyond Form, Beyond the Text

Finally, I’d like to say a word about the either post: Is Chinua Achebe to Joseph Conrad as Ike Turner is to Sam Phillips? One might think of it as an homage to deconstruction in that it hinges around the limitations of language, a theme that is central to the deconstructive art. In the large, texts do somehow point beyond themselves into the larger social and cultural world. In that context they are but devices we use someone to negotiate our relations with one another. A critical practice that would be rich and full must at least acknowledge that.

Handbook Discipline

I conclude with a long post in which I outline a handbook for Heart of Darkness that would contain consensus-level information about the text. I imagine that the activity of actually creating such a handbook would be a means of sorting through all the work that’s been done on the text and identifying what we know and can agree on. At the same time it would identify new avenues for investigation.

The Posts