The four essays I’ve asked you to read for this week are classics in the history of cultural studies in the West, indispensable for a beginning understanding of how culture has been defined since Arnold’s landmark argument that under modernity his particular notion of culture must stand as a bulwark against the vulgarities of machinery, democratic reform, and what came to be called popular culture. You’ll see that Arnold wants to have it both ways—culture is conceived both as instrumental in terms of achieving social good and yet it transcends the social in its guise as a timeless and universal embodiment of perfection, sweetness, and light, “the best that has been thought and known in the world.” This contradiction infects the theoretical logic of his own work, for he wants to present culture in Culture and Anarchy as a fixed, transcendental, and distinterested category existing above the fray of social and political argument, yet his theory of culture is nothing if not an interested, calculated, politically instrumental intervention in the social upheaval of his own time.
Since our particular interest in this course is on the relationship between literature and technology, we’ll want to pay particular attention to how Arnold works out his theory of culture – and his arguments about its function – by posing culture as an antidote to machinery, the mechanical, and technology. Arnold’s position has been labeled “conservative” because his theory of culture develops as a response to liberal reform, but also because, like Eliot’s in the 20th-century, it evolves in the context of a critique of modernity. Arnold’s fear of modernity is tied up with his anxiety about mechanization, but also with his concern about the masses and about the evolution of what later critics like Horkheimer and Adorno will call mass culture (the link, of course, between "mechanization" and "massification" is that Arnold sees the behavior of the masses as itself mechanical).
Arnold’s fear about the fate of culture in an age of machinery and the development of mass culture is mirrored in the Frankfurt School criticism of Benjamin (pron. Ben-jah-mean), Horkheimer, and Adorno. Benjamin’s famous essay deals with the impact of mechanization on cultural production and distribution, and we can read it as an extension of Arnold’s earlier anxiety about how culture can survive in an age of increasing mechanization. Benjamin’s concept of the aura neatly meshes with the concept of culture we get in Arnold, characterized as it is by unique genius and originality, so we need to see the mechanical reproduction Benjamin writes about threatening the cultural object as Arnold conceived it. The world of mechanical reproduction Benjamin documents is a realization of Arnold’s worst fears; the demise of the aura would have Arnold turning in his grave.
While Benjamin is clearly intrigued by the possibilities of mechanical reproduction Horkheimer and Adorno are appalled by it. Although they write as Marxist critics, watch for how their essay can actually be read as an elaborate extension of Arnold’s argument (they're as disturbed as he was in the 19th-century by the forces of "liberalism" and the rise of mass culture in the 20th-century). They also defend a notion of the aesthetic that isn’t that far from Arnold’s, and their fears about mechanization in all its forms and the transformation of culture into an industry can be read as extensions of Arnold’s, but couched in Marxist language, Nietzschean aphorism, and a breathtaking cynicism about contemporary culture (circa 1944) and the ability of the consumer to wrest free of its grip. They might seem paranoid, but keep in mind they're writing having lived through Hitler's cultural and political regime.
Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Adorno were all associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory, a group of Marxist intellectuals who thrived in the years leading up to the hegemony of Hitler’s Third Reich. They dispersed with Hitler’s ascendancy, with Benjamin committing suicide as he tried to flee Germany and Adorno and Habermas ending up in California. For a quick overview of the Frankfurt School you can consult the Wikipedia entry and the online sources listed there. And of course, the library is full of work on this important movement.
Our interest in Raymond Williams’ entries will primarily be in tracing how they’re influenced by the Marxism of the Frankfurt School critics, and how his notion of culture as the “whole way of life of a people” stands as an absolute reversal of Arnold’s. Williams, a Marxist intellectual associated with the “New Left,” was instrumental in founding the Birmingham Centre for the study of contemporary culture, which we’ll read about in more detail when we get to Simon During’s book.
Please feel free to comment on this entry as a way to get discussion going for Tuesday night's discussion.
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5 comments:
I flew to my iBook this morning in a panic, sure to have missed a huge flurry of posts. Now I'm in a different bind: The first to comment? Terrifying. Here it goes anyhow:
This is a bit of a tangent, not having to do directly with tech/modernity. Paul writes: "You’ll see that Arnold wants to have it both ways—culture is conceived both as instrumental in terms of achieving social good and yet it transcends the social in its guise as a timeless and universal embodiment of perfection, sweetness, and light, “the best that has been thought and known in the world.” This contradiction infects the theoretical logic of his own work..." I think Arnold has structured it so that he can have it both ways, at least in this work. The reason culture is both temporal and timeless is that culture is rooted in the human person. In Arnold's conception, we are the kinds of creatures that are both of this world and of the next, made for both a light lunch with our mates and contemplation of the Beautiful. Since culture takes as it's goal the fulfillment and perfection of the whole person, it also gets to have one foot here and one foot beyond.
The gripe I had with Arnold was more with his vagueness. What exactly does it mean to grow in sweetness and light? His mash of Christianity and a sort of Plotinian kind of Platonism is downright awkward. This spells trouble, especially since his understanding of human nature (serious differences for a Christian and a Platonist) is so essential to his vision of culture.
Anyhow, not exactly germane. I'll retreat to my oatmeal.
Just to get a "civilized" argument going...
As Julia and Paul note, there seems to be a contradiction in Arnold (though they differ on where they see the contradiction). However, the foundation of the contradiction lies in "wanting to have it both ways" whether it is a dispute between the timely and the transcendent or the Christian and the Platonic. I also see a contradiction of this sort--wanting the theoretical cake and literally eating one too--running through the Marxist critics. Adorno, Horkheimer, and Benjamin seem to gripe about the fact that art/culture excludes the proletariat/working class while simultaneously griping that art is now degraded because everyone can experience it. The concept of the aura, to me, smacks of elitism--only "special" people should be able to see a work of art, or only certain kinds of art (i.e. the conventional kinds of art--painting, sculpture etc.) warrant an aura--but who these special people are A&H, and Benjamin never make clear. Proletariats? Themselves? Aura-seekers? A&H contend that leisure activities reinforce the cultural hegemony that keeps the working class down and that it is "inherent in the system not to leave the customer alone, not for a moment to allow him any suspicion that resistance is possible" (14). I find this to be presumptious because it assumes that the working class is dumb and that it's up to A&H to "free" them, even as they contend that escape is not possible. So what is their solution?
Benjamin sounds even more elitist with statements like "The simultaneous contemplation of paintings by a large public...is an early symptom of the crisis of painting, a crisis which was by no means occasioned exclusively by photography but rather in a relatively independent manner by the masses" (11-12). So, the masses (i.e. the working class) shouldn't be "allowed" to go to the museum because it degrades the work of art in some way? And affordable art, like film, is less authentic because the masses can afford to go see it? According to these Marxists, the working class can never improve their lot due to the capitalist hegemony, and they are ruining art for those of us lucky enough not to be in the working class. Am I missing something?
Blog post - E424
This post comes a little late in the game, considering we’ll be in class in about three hours, but perhaps I’ll be able to solidify my thoughts if nothing else. Thanks Julia for being the first to jump in this week and Natalie for your cogent thoughts. Julia’s idea about Arnold having “one foot here and one foot beyond” made me think about how Arnold’s view of culture is quite narrow and also how pervasive (and militant) he was about how culture and mankind should live. Natalie’s idea about elitism also informs my thoughts here. I happened across a passage in the preface to C&A that might be helpful for us. His main purpose is quite lofty.
“The whole scope of this essay is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically. This, and this alone, is the scope of the following essay” (viii).
Arnold here uses culture in a sense to mean “intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development” (first usage from Williams’ modern uses of culture). In the following quotation from the preface, it seems that Arnold also conceives of culture as “the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity – music, literature, painting and sculpture, theater and film” (Williams’ third modern use of culture):
“If a man without books or reading, or reading nothing but his letters and the newspapers, gets nevertheless a fresh and free play of the best thoughts upon his stock notions and habits, he has got culture” (ix).
Arnold is hard to digest because even his definitions of the word in his thesis are equivocal. With that said, maybe you all can let me know if the following conceptions about Benjamin and Adorno/Horkheimer seem correct.
Benjamin’s notion of culture, though not overtly stated, follows William’s third modern use of culture as being “the works and practices of intellectual and especially artistic activity” but with a sense that this culture isn’t necessarily morally suspect.
Adorno and Horkheimer use the same meaning of the word as Benjamin, but they put a distinctly negative spin on it...culture has become an industry.
At any rate, my thoughts are a bit clearer. I’m sorry if my long-windedness wasn’t helpful for you. If only I’d been up at 6:45 this morning, I may have been able to respond to Julia a little earlier. Julia, are you a morning person? (I’m thinking Natalie and I aren't.)
Now that I've posted, I realize that the times next to our posts are California time. Oops, maybe Julia isn't such an early bird.
These are all very thoughtful posts, and thanks to Julia, Natalie, and Scott for kicking the discussion off. I like Julia's suggesting that perhaps Arnold is justified in having it both ways-that culture is in fact both temporal and timeles. We can certainly pursue this. And I agree that Arnold's vagueness on many matters is vexing. I think we can get at this by discussing some of his key terms and concepts and thinking about how his approach to the aesthetic is fundamentally Platonic, imbued with the kind of essentialism or foundationalism poststructuralist theory critiques. I think Natalie gets into this with her critical discussion of the "aura" in Benjamin, and she raises an important question about the attitude he, and H&A, take toward the aesthetic object as defined by Arnold. If Arnold wants to have some things both ways and foregrounds contradiction, this probably goes for the Marxist critics as well, who seem nostalgic for the kind of aesthetic object Arnold embraces while critiquing the bourgeois culture that produced it. Benjamin seems to want to embrace art produced through mechanical reproduction, whereas H&A seem to find it abhorent (but then, what DO they like?). Anyway, I share some of the criticism Natalie has posted.
Thanks to Scott for the supplementary quotes form Arnold, and for taking a shot at aligning the positions on "culture" we get in these essays with Williams' definition. This is something we'll want to pursue more in class.
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