Symbolic creativity and political economy

John Fiske and Paul Willis

Review: What is Ideology?

Karl Marx
Commodity Fetishism as the law of exchange value

Herbert Marcuse
Control Mechanism of the status quo Generating and maintaining happy consciousness

Jean Baudrillard
All-embracing hyperreality

Questions and Challenges

Pessimism? No changes without revolutionary subject (proletariat? radical youth? avant-gardist?) How to take account of ordinary people in their everyday life?

Cultural Populism

Two Origins of Cultural Populism

Critique of Marxist determinism

Human agency (use value) versus capitalist structure (exchange value) Could folk culture continue in modern times?

Organic community culture

Yes, but embodied in

artisan culture (E. P. Thompson) working class culture (Richard Hoggart)

Cultural Populist

Richard Hoggart (Working-class culture)

Raymond Williams (Common Culture)

Paul Willis (counter-culture and youth)

John Fiske (commodity and consumption)

Paul Willis and John Fiske

Paul Willis (1950-)

Born in Wolverhampton (UK) The early member of CCCC (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) Teaching at Princeton University now

John Fiske (1939-)

Studied in Britain

Taught in Australia and the US

Basic Assumption: Double Nature of Cultural Commodity

Double Nature
Cultural commodity and Non-cultural commodity
Industrial product and popular culture

Dual Hieroglyphs

Cultural and Non-cultural commodities (Willis)

Cultural Commodities

Non-Cultural Commodities

Use Value: Inviting a variety of uses and communication

Use Value: Stability of Sensuousness

Exchange Value

Repertoire ()
The possibilities of usage and communication
Example: Jean

Uses and Communication

Uses
Casual wear Ripped jean Tight jean Baggy jean

Communication

Individual freedom Ruggedness/ physicality naturalness Masculinity Sexiness

Industrial product and popular culture (Fiske)

Cultural industries:

A commodity is designed and produced by industrial system

Popular culture

It is consumed as cultural product

Cultural industries

They provide a repertoire of texts or cultural resources (meanings) for people to use or reject.

Popular culture

It is of peoples interest

It bears the interest of the people

It involves the active process of generating and circulating meanings and pleasures within a social system

Generating and circulating meanings

The possible meanings of Jean

Individual freedom--> repressing personality Ruggedness-->(male) working class identity Masculinity-->Tomboy

Dual Hieroglyphs
Designed cultural codes (encoding)
Users appropriation (decoding)

Fiske: Popular Culture

Willis: Symbolic Creativity

Everyday life and Symbolic Creativity

Everyday is full of activities which although not recognized as Art, share the same Symbolic Creativity as art practices.
EVERYDAY NECESSARY WORK SYMBOLIC CREATIVITY

SYMBOLIC CREATIVITY

The necessary part of human activity Integral part of necessary work

It has to be done everyday

It is not extra but essential of daily production and reproduction

English Radical Tradition

Art = Work/Pleasure
Work is Holy: The daily reproduction is Holy and the play of Symbolic Creativity in these things make them Holy (Example: Artisan)
Modern Industry destroyed the possibility of art by
Technical division of labor: fragmented task rather than art work Introduction of automatic machine: laborer rather than craftsman Hierarchy and management: Separating body from mind altogether out of workplace.

Symbolic work in modern everyday life

A humanly necessary work.
Application of human capacities to and through, on and with symbolic resources and raw materials.
(language, texts, songs, films, images and artifacts of all kind)
Grounded aesthetics (versus Marcuses high-arts aesthetics)

Basic elements
Language: the primary tool that allow us to assess our impact on others
and theirs to us. It allows us to see ourselves as others.

Active Body a site of knowledge and set of signs and symbols. It is the
source of productive and communicative activity. (corporeality)

Drama rules, rituals and performances that we produce with others

( dancing, singing, joke-making, story telling in dynamic settings and through performance).

Symbolic Creativity transforms what is provided and helps to produce

specific form of human identity and capacity.

Being human
To Be Creative
remarking the world for ourselves as we find our own place and identity.

Produce Individual Identity

Who and what I am and could become.

Place the Identities in larger wholes

Identities do not stand alone above or beyond history. They are related to time, place and things.

Develop our own vital capacities in the process

Informal Cultural Practices

Embedded Expressive Labour

Production Side
LP (labor input or wage ) Capital accumulation

Consumption Side
Expressive Labour (uses and communication) Capital accumulation

Some residual elements (resistance and evasion) spill over the capital circuits

Resistance / evasion

Cultural industries

Resistance / conformity evasion

consumption

Example: English Football

Labour Power (wage): Football fans contribute their money to their football club Expressive Labour: Football fans support the football players and look for the authenticity of their club (bodily investment: language, drama, ) Residual elements
Challenge to the official policy and management of their football club Re-fabricating local communities

Example: Adbuster
A Canadian anti-consumerist group
"a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age." Campaigns: Buy Nothing Day, Occupy Wall Street

Cultural Jamming: subvertisements (Spoof Ad)

Example: Spoof Ad in Hong Kong

A TV commercial of insurance company
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-0gkOYLs

A parody about the election of Chief Executive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8Ih96zSYI&f eature=channel_video_title

Concluding Remarks

Old Paradigms of Ideological Critique

Develop a general theory and critique of commodity culture
Imagining an overall strategy of revolution

New Paradigms of Ideological Critique

Looking for cultural practices
Looking for eruptions of the commodity cultural forms
refusals subversions

ironizations