Faded - Collapsing new people
Watch them collapsing
Jaded - Collapsing new people
Watch them collapsing
Stay awake all night
But never see the stars
And sleep all day
On a chainlink bed of nails
Fated - Collapsing new people
Watch them collapsing
Dated - Collapsing new people
Watch them collapsing
Steer clear of the sun
Pancake, sandpaper skin
They have no reflections
Drink blood but pierce no veins
Hated
Exagerrate the scar tissue
Wounds that never heal
Takes hours of preparation
To get that wasted look
Hated - Collapsing new people
Watch them collapsing
Wasted - Collapsing new people
Watch them collapsing
Fated - Collapsing new people
Watch them collapsing
Faded - Collapsing new people
Watch them collapsing
As evocative as I found the essay on hauntology and gentrification in the special issue of Perforations, I thought it tended to underestimate one important feature. While it may certainly be the case that urban decay is currently attaining a greater degree of representation in the public sphere owing to social ills such as poverty and racism, a decade ago Christopher Leo correctly noted how lack of civility was a causal factor in its own right: http://www.radicalurbantheory.com/misc/urbandecay.html
One can talk forever about how we are living in a new middle ages, with individuals retreating to their private fiefdoms [outside of work hours] for secular rituals based around consumption and genital sexuality. In a risk culture, post 9/11, Otherness can only [sic]be constituted as a threat. In my earlier essay, posted on this blog, "England's Barmy Army", I argued that a broader organising logic could be discerned: the problem of organising collective identity, forms of communal solidarity, in a world society subject to differentiation.
To ratify these points I made earlier, I can return to Britain specifically, inasmuch as to my mind there is compelling evidence of these trends really starting to take effect from the 1970s onwards. In these terms, the ascendancy of Thatcher marked the dissolution of an "organised modernity". What sort of challenges did individuals face in reconstituting their identities under the changed circumstances? Some general terms can be discerned in the global terms of the "world society" I referred to. Of specific interest is the difficulty of maintaining reflexivity, what could be referred to as "the flexible personality":
In these terms, cultural workers such as Joy Division's Ian Curtis, were in part reenacting Gehlen's dilemma of "cultural crystallisation". A cultural and personal crisis confronted those only able to identify with a dead signifying chain. In the interest of cross cultural comparison, when discussing possible responses to this perceived cultural exhaustion, I would want to add to k punk's character typologies of Curtis the neurotic and Mark E Smith the psychotic, the charismatic/mystical persona of The Church's Steve Kilbey (enacting an empty ritual given the absence of collective effervescence therefore guaranteeing the inaccessibility of both mystical experience and charismatic authority- hence in part the withdrawn persona). Kilbey's lyrics for "Shadow Cabinet" are filled with rich associations, evoking Weberian motifs of disenchantment, coupled to references to futile sacraments, "chemical nuptials", not least the privatised "shadow cabinet" itself, which it turns out is disappointing inso far as it transpires that it is a mere byproduct of mundane factory labour:
Now chased by the shapes of your vows
Look at the things she allows
Junction fever must have closed down the rail
The gluttunous wind keeps on nibbling the sails
Queueing in the ruins in the wake of the gale
it'sHarmony I say
Hear the difference between close and near
The way oaths and oafs interfere
Bliss comes first as a jangling flood
Pillow from the old country arrives with a thud
That night she drinks ceremony and mud
it'sHappening I say
Must be thirsty, drink, drink, sink, forget
Must be empty inside the shadow cabinet
She offered her chaos to me
Proffered herself languidly
The eldritch bitch must have muddled her spells
Tinges of Persia, Ihope that it sells
Chemical nuptials and ringing the bells
It's heavenly I say
Then one winter morning you walk through the trees
But they cut them all down for the factories
Made this pretty cabinet and gave you the keys
It's hardly used I think
If it is legitimate to discern anything distinctive about the cultural crystallisation England faced, it may have much to do with the sense of entropy associated with the breakup of colonial empire (as Jameson rightly points out in his commentary on Ballard in Archaeologies of the Future). Notwithstanding earlier qualifications, it would also be ill advised to lose sight of the potential for class anxiety following on from the proliferation of other forms of distinction in a world society: fantasies of urbicide, of empty cities, industrial ruins, have as much to do then with the fears of devious elites that "the masses" are getting out of hand, and consequently, some of us feel we woud be better off without them. What remains to be determined then from a Luhmannesque perspective, is which position of "the observer" artists such as Fad Gadget and Joy Division were adopting when they highlighted the issue of cultural crystallisation. Perhaps it follows that Fad Gadget was describing the situation where the old distinctions had started to collapse, (or at least were starting to be codified as undergoing some relativisation), and new forms of difference were attaining representation in the public sphere: those unable to keep pace were doomed to be "faded", lifeless, pale creatures comparable to Bram Stoker's anachronistic aristocrat, Count Dracula. Irrespective of the details of this individual case, the general point remains:any observation you make ultimately presupposes another observing your observations. For all the problems this can in principle entail, the source of hope is that while the monitoring of reflexive action is a means of discipline open to abuses of power, it is also the condition of possibility for the generation of forms of civility, and therefore the sustaining of utopia.
My concluding point is something of a critique then of how much of current discourse about "Ballardian" problems remains stuck at the starting points, forged in the crucible of the period I've discussed here, rather than thinking dialectically, or even in terms of difference along with Luhmann, of realms of possibility beyond the organisation of our society in terms of one code of differentiation alone: inclusion/exclusion. It hardly need be said that failure to collectively realise a utopian altenative could result in nothing less than the dystopia to end all dystopias, yet it is exactly this path that the neoliberalisation of all distinctions is leading us towards.
Where London Stood (well chosen; marvellously evocative images and resources here):
http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/71/38
The Tripods (surely a must have on dvd later this month):
http://www.gnelson.demon.co.uk/tripage/patv.html
http://theartofmemory.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
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