State Values and Cultural Groups

North America is a society of democratic diversity, and a concomitant grappling with freedom, equality and respect. Within this society there are various types of people – blacks, latinos, bikers, hippies, queers, doctors, scientists, goths, emos, ravers or punks. These have been researched from the perspectives of identity politics, labour studies or the human rights movements.

 

                                                                    

     The Opera de Paris, 1857                                 People Icons

From the perspective of a Public-Intellectual, there are societal groups or formations which produce or act upon cultural forces – the arts, heritage, public events, or folk festivals. These cultural groups are broached here under the terms of Alternative Groups, Magazine & Event Types, Peoples & Tribes, and National Identities & Sub-identities. What they engender are cultural sensibilities within the context of a Neo-Romanticism, and what they allow is for individuals to examine a cultural community or to take part in a social circuit, to have a humanistic soiree.

Thus what is formed are processes of entertainment, or perhaps alternatively of political action or the resentamentality of traditions. These are aesthetic processes which indicate a preoccupation with republican humanism. Later I would like to examine a few such cultural communities, perhaps the punks or emos or indies, in an effort to understand their workings from a less macro perspective. Here I am merely outlining a type of frame-work of cultural analysis. For how is it possible to speak of humanistic sensibility within the context of the state apparatus, and of a potentially revolutionary social politics? Probably in terms of public rather than psychological processes of enactment. Although something does appear to be occurring to individuals as well, to their participation, involvement, rights, needs or desires.

Still these movements tend to build upwards, forming social groupings, identity formations. What modern post-industrial society appears to be witnessing is a shift in the nature of freedom, will and desire – in an attempt by individuals to access rights to these specific cultural communities or markers. These refigure social processes and what we gain is the right to be entertained by each other, to understand that our freedom is not won without a cost or investment, but rather through the revaluation of morality and public respectability.

Commentary on Politics and Dandyism

What does it mean to be a political person?

The term identity politics was popular in the 80's and 90's, and used to describe a type of confluence of personal markers. These could be race, ethnicity, gender, or class, for example. This remains a viable term I believe, to explore questions of marginalized self-hood and might be expanded to inlclude cultural communities; goths, punks or emos, indie culture, skins and celts or hip-hop and black-american. Is this a dandyism? It depends perhaps on its function within society. The Dandy I beleive constructs a form of culturality which is artistic. And that it is better to use Public-Intellectual to describe a politically motivated subjectivity, or grouping. But that these could intertwine when exploring notions of cultural heritage, of the arts but also of generations of people and of neighborhoods.


The space of culture is confronted alas with the space of nature. That culture is an exigence. There is a preoccupation here with naturalism, with the site of reflection, whether artistic or political, or let us say environmental. Because a making occurs, and as a dandy it provokes the notion of a site, a locus of melancholic betrayal. Yet there is adventure here, and though as well indie sustainablity. What I am reminded of then is resource use, and not quite those romantic forrays into the wilderness. This is because here my romance with nature is too arduous to conceive, though I still want to build, rat-like within this space. And to wonder about my environmentalism later. To deffer the isssues and to concoct or weave a techno-indie scenography.

Domestics and Civicness

The household is a production, a space within which we examine forms of ourselves. These correspond to a family, a home, bachelorhood. To having neighbors, to living in a particular community. We may develop a civic-minded sense of ourselves through such means.

These processes create regions within cities, buroughs or types of neighborhoods. From a political perspective domesticness involves the creation of civicness, of self-definition and family-definition, which governmental policies often circumscribe or deleniate. They sustain and inform family values, mores of social cohesion and decidability.








My home is also a personal space. Here I could explore issues of family-genealogy, the making of fashion-designs, or my spirituality. What does it mean to be Celtic, for example. How as well I might share notions of my own family lineage.

Later, I would like to address the theme of localization with you, which is a preoccupation with community participation. That this is developed through being implicated in the communities in which we live, and that this is a moral pursuit.

The Culture Industries and The Public

How do the Enternainment and Beauty Industries function within Society-at-large? There is as well the Hospitality & Tourism Industry to consider. And the function of a Public-Intellectual vis-a-vis these Culture Industries, as the official responsible for adjudicating these terms.

A talk-show host is an odd sort-of person in society; they interview actors and polticians mainly. The public is often asked in to participate in these processes, to add their opinions as memebers of particular interest groups. A debate may ensue, certainly controversy is often mediated, and we are intellectually within the the arena of cultural studies, mass-media, sterio-types, the sharing of public-opinion. Is this host/ess a public-intellectual, an educator with political motives, someone who is supposed to champion the rights of particular groups within the masses, and even partake in these struggles? There is at least something cultural occuring here.

Perhaps they interview a public-intellectual, someone like Angelina Jolie, or Sting, Madonna, Jane Fonda, or Pamela Anderson. People who are not just famous actors or musicians but also use their time and often their charity to uphold a worthy cause; a humanitarian or environmental organziation or group. They are Entertainers, aided by the Beauty Industries; by those trained to style their wise, to do their make-up, or hair, to adjust their wardrobe.

People partake in these processes, sometimes at festivals, cultural events, seminars or forums. These events are often supported by the Hospitality & Tourism Industry, which moderates the arrival of guests, foreigners, people from abroad. It houses them, provides them with directions, some sustenance and shelter, lodging for the night, or a few more, for events such as conferences, or long-weekend holidays. These hospitality-workers may help set up special events, those trained in logistics and event planning guide them. There is a sense of festivity, or of activities occuring with cultural importance.

Sometimes we are confronted by an entertainer of a different sort such as a stripper, or burlesque dancer. Someone whose function is associated with the sex-trade industry, or with night-clubs, or Spa's. There are massage therapists, aromatherapists, sound & lighting technicians, security-guards and stage-managers, those at the fringes of the culture industries.

The event should go well; people should be entertained, they judge with their applause, with ticket sales, or numbers in attendance. It is a strange function to entertain another, to provide them with pleasure. Perhaps this function works its way into our post-modern lives somewhat differently than before. There are so many reality-shows these days, we want to see live-processes, we want to connect with fashion designers, with those making the clothes we wear. Is this the production of a Gay-science, as Nietzsche would say, or are we in the days when Being will meet Time, which is Heidegger's thesis. That we live our biographies together, that we share how we are important with another in a more overt way. But this also requires a re-investment in ourselves, and in our capacities to connect and entertain the fictions, the challenges and embodied appearances of each other.

The Nature of Political-Research

It would seem that Poltical-Research can be subdivided into two categories; Social-Justice, which deals with human-type political issues, and Environment. These might repectively be further subdivided. Social-Justice consisting of Human-Rights, Community Development, and International Development. Then Environment might consist of Habitat & Species Conservation, Climate Change & Pollution, and Natural Disasters. To these we could add Charters and Covenants, and then personally; Suggestions for Canada.

Thus issues such as the turmoil in the Middle-East, Native Land-claims, and the political and economic unrest in Haiti, would be classified under Human-Rights. Sustainable Communities and Community Health under Community Development. Mining-rights Claims, Population control and distribution, and Foreign Aid and Protection, under International Development.

The situation of the Colobus monkeys, or the devestated biome of the Canadian Praries, with Habitat & Species Conservation; the hurricanes in the Southern States, or the typhoons in Burma, with Natural Disasters; and the recycling of styrofoam, with Climate Change and Pollution.

To what extent such research is volunteer, is paid, or part of a membership, is theoretical, or practical, become terms worthy of consideration. There is also the relationship between Political-Research and Humanitarianism, and Environmental Issues and Environmentalism which could be elaborated. Then an important issue about what constitutes civicness, or is perhaps better broached through Domestic-poltics, rather than let us say Secular-politics. Why this is has something I believe to do with the effect that things like construction projects, or transportation issues, composting programs, or community and safety and crime have on our homes and the locales in which we reside. Perhaps because we take these to make a civic person of ourselves. Rather than lets say a Humanitarian, or Environmentalist.

As we take on poltical-issues, causes, we make ourselves into poltical people. Or we help champion them which is the role of an Educator. An activist may engage in acts of civil disobediance, an academic often less so. These roles are also risks as we navigate towards not merely forms of poltical will, the manifestation of our values, but also in the wake of the pull-back of institutional formations and humanitarian causes. Even these seem somehow chosen, or rather they mobilize forms of possiblity differently. The investments seem different, to partake is also to learn about social change, or the manifestation of a lived will, the actions of communities in forming themselves and of people, their motives, and surroundings.

Why this development of Cultural Theory?

There does appear to be a type of school-of-thought here. Much like the School of Cultural Studies in London (now defunct, or reassigned) has an interdisciplinary confluence of specific interersts. These lend themselves towards public-criticism, or public-opinion. Or I am leading them in this direction. There is the credibility of academic practices or disciplines, and the credibility as well of intellectuals.

Thus this school of "Cultural Critique", might be similar in tenor, an effort to establish a field-of-study or perspective on cultural practices and ideoogical thematics. Somehow I join in this examination of the effects of popular-culture, from an intellectual perspective. I would like to see a more generative cultural melthodology develop, not merely to simply examine cultural processes or (de)institutional formations but as well to develop specific perspectives, perhaps from methodological concerns, towards an understanding of the effects that such themes have on ideological processes, and likely as group or inderdisciplinary concerns or subject-areas, if at first. Demographic groups within the population, academics, the public, interested audiences; situational places such as towns or cities; these social thematics or disciplines; and methods-of-analysis - might more properly constitute the thematic components of this inquiry.

Eventually through series of entries to a more commom consesnus of cultural-criticism, and a type of school-of-thought. Will these various disciplinary boundaries remain? Who knows some may be annexed, others ammended or added. Because I suspect that the Public-Intellectual does serve a kind of function within society, though this remains in a sense to be adjudicated or developed into a cultural function. Thus there is yet also a truer entreaty of post-modern and post-industrial processes.

Educator with political motives.

The issues we face as intellectuals could be leading us into a new cultural terrain. One in which we are reconfiguring our sense of the poltical, the artistic, of domestic space. This possibly changes cultures' motives, our own - what might be undertook as a kind of critique of culture. Those of us who engage with politics, do often appear as intellectuals, sometimes as artists, singers, fashion-designers, film-makers. These create a nexus of interesting formulations which need in my estimation to be understood beyond an appreciation of interdisciplinarity.

Let us take the category of the cultural-critic. Later I will play such a critic. There is the humanitarian and what they are up to, or the environmentalist. If they form a type of person, what is this type; do they function as an intellectual, or politician, or artist? How do we share and develop these roles within a more rigorous or even righteous context?

Thus I will take on such roles, exchange such nuances, maybe develop a moral will. Please feel free to share your opinions with me, because I would like to know more about your opinions regarding these nebulous roles in our post-modern society; the streets, galleries, shopping-malls, houses.