Re: [microsound] the fetishist - WAS Re: [microsound] nuno cannavaro

[dave palmer <palmderski1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 12/2/00 8:32 PM, Joshua Maremont at thermal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> At 12:01 AM -0500 12/2/00, Drusca wrote:
>> God, "fetishization" is quite the hip term these days isn't it?
>> Personally, I'm really starting to grow tired or more exactly bored with
>> seeing this term thrown around so often. It just seems like a bunch of
>> intellectual cacamainy (spelling ?!). I bet it's a big topic in university
>> courses these days. I'm not even sure what it means.
>> Where does this whole concept of fetishization originate from anyway ?
>> Sorry, don't mean this as a personal attack Joshua.
> 
> Is it "hip?"  I have not been keeping up with the fashionable
> journals of syntax - most of my pet theorists having gone out of
> fashion - and I have used the term for years.  And actually I rarely
> read it here or elsewhere, so I am not sure where it can be
> encountered at such irritating frequency.  But the idea itself is a
> useful one, and perhaps I am making my own little variant from the
> older Freudian stream:  a person desires sex, but finding that socks
> are often removed in the course of preparing for such an activity the
> person comes to associate the sock itself with sex, until the desire
> removes itself entirely from the sexual act and attaches itself to
> the sock.  That is, the fetish - and, please, I make no authoritative
> claims here but only explain how I use the word and why I find it
> useful - is an object accidentally encountered on the way to an
> object of desire and becomes a terminus toward which the desire can
> be completely derailed; the sock fetishist needs only the sock to be
> happy.  It is also unavoidable for me to detect a Marxian undertone
> of commodity fetishism - an increasingly applicable concept in these
> days of corporate logo branding - in the current use of this word.
> So why am I using the term here?  Because at this strange time in our
> cultural history - and perhaps my view is distorted by the proximity
> of Silicon Valley - the machine in my view HAS been fetishized, has
> become an object of desire as well as an object of mysticism:  the
> geek is now sold as a stud (provided, of course, s/he has the stock
> options to back up the recontextualization - please excuse the use of
> another large word), and the programmer is portrayed in the media as
> holding the keys to the great mysteries within the CPU.  And I think
> it is no accident that at precisely this moment we find ourselves
> "listening to the music the machines make" (quoting John Foxx's
> lyrics for Ultravox over two decades ago) in the form of glitches,
> crackles, anomalies, and the like.  The machine is simply a tool on
> the way to a result - music, graphics, calculations, architecture,
> telephony, etc - yet our commercial culture has misfocused us on the
> tool itself, equating a fast processor or modem with a loud stereo or
> muscle car.  Even my relatives far from the computer business tell
> tales of their computers as if speaking of partners or housepets.
> And so I call the computer a fetish, and I suspect that its fetish
> status will be eroded once (1) the device itself becomes painfully
> commonplace and transparent in usage, (2) the tools of programming
> are automated and easily accessible, and (3) the technological sector
> of the stock market experiences a correction to bring it back into
> contact with real economics.  And then the fetish role in music will
> pass to another object.  Again, this is only my view and my own use
> or abuse of what I find a handy concept.  Others are free to push it
> under the couch with the rest of the disused cat toys.
> 
> np - Doves "Lost Souls"
well,fetishize it, laud it, hate it, contextualize it, ain't no different
than beating on a drum, the great drummer sounds good on any drum kit as
does/will the great musician always shine through the medium being used.
technology's just another drum to beat on, and all the love and worship of
the tools can't change that reality. to become simply focused on the
machines whether through a fetish of sorts or whatever, is to just be a
tech. techs, in my experience are usually just assisstants to an artist or
musician who may not know the gear quite as well, but has the vision needed
to create the artistic statement. the fewer assisstants you need the better
thus the need to learn how to use machinery better, but the proof is still
in the creation and not the method.
palmer