Re: [microsound] adorno essays

[Aaron Ximm <ghede@xxxxxxxx>]

> I never said that objects, aesthetic or otherwise were "primarily" or
> "exclusively" political.  But I would say that they are always already

Agreed.

In my haste I didn't make it clear that those comments weren't describing
inferences I was making about *your* beliefs...

....I was just trying to explain my previous haste, in misreading your use
of "everything."

> a "wariness" about Adorno's cultural criticism, then situate yourself.

I am concerned that the investment (to borrow an apt word) required to
erect (or embrace) a rigorous structure for analysis (from any vantage)
discourages the investor from remembering that such structures are tools,
and IMO tools must useful when used in parallel with contradictory ones.
Too much Benjamin at an early age?

If by situate yourself you mean show my flag (rather than as Delphian
injunction), my colors are those of House Curmudgeon with the bar sinister
for the lazy skeptic.

> wary about people who think they can have their aesthetic pleasures
> without recourse to social politics.  I always want to know what

Now that is a reframing I find more (personally) palatable: because it
situates the politics not in the object (sign, gesture, yadayada) but in
the person. (Footnote: I will agree however that in many instances it is a
useful shorthand to talk about objects as if they had auras, even agree
that short of some paradigmatic rupture it is impossible to see the object
through the aura ~ but insist, like a broken machine, that the objects are
not therefore their auras... I don't want to belabor this point, but it's
a fine example of the sort of qualification that I don't hear enough of.)

Re: aesthetes, I am not one of "those people," but I will defend the idea
that pleasure is not originally 'situated' in politics ~ and that many
pleasures, even for the most sophisticated among us, remain rooted in our
physiology.

This is not to claim that there are not pleasures which are totally
manufactured (to reach for the easiest word); or to dispute that we are
taught to assign ~ if only to some degree ~ sensations to constructed
categories, for reasons (to borrow your phrase) social political etc, in
the service of (to reach for the easiest villian) networks of power.

I agree with you that there is a political element (etc.) in pleasure,
just want to re-emphasize the banal point that that element is compounded
with others, and argue the controversial (perhaps) point that in some
cases it is an element of little significance.  I think it's the last that
we might genuinely disagree.

> well-incubated hatred of the rich--not to suggest that you are

If we're going to argue, it would best be about class & privelege I
suppose.  I know you're serious, but also throwing my locutions back at me
~ in either case, I don't think it'd be too worthwhile to take the bait.

But do step carefully, the rich are no more a real thing than the
apolitical pleasure...

> big difference between saying something is decidedly relevant and saying
> it's the only relevant deciding thing.

Yes. I accept the distinction, and will accept that that's what the
original use of 'exactly' was.

> Lexically, yes.  Metonymically--only if you're prone to catastrophic
> nightmares.

Nightmares, no ~ but occasionally emerging from my hole to snap my
ineffectual teeth at what (rightly or wrongly) is perceived as a passing
vanguard of a reductionist army, yes.

As Dagmar wrote elsewhere, American cum world politics at the moment has
set many armies in motion, and motivates many more. And on many fronts a
casualty is nuance and another is irony.

Off topic aside:

I mention irony as on Christmas my father told me a story about how in
Wisconsin, a passenger boarding an airplane made a joke as he stepped on
about how he hoped the pilot hadn't been drinking (footnote: two pilots
were recently fired in the US for preparing to(?) fly drunk...).

The response of the authorities was to evactuate the plane, give the
pilots breathalyzer tests, and imprison the guy who made the joke for a
few weeks.

I expressed my disbelief that there was that little tolerance for irony;
after all, Jay Leno had presumably been making jokes about the pilots. His
comment was that a clear sign that the truth is under assault is that
there is no tolerance for its utterance, even in jest.

Interesting times...

 aaron

  ghede@xxxxxxxx
  http://www.quietamerican.org

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