I had an epiphany the other day - at a birthday feast for my mother. My sister gave her a book that have recieved a lot of mediacoverage lately (it has both eroticism and S/M!!) and I've seen it laid out in the front displays of the bookshops. She had also bought it for herself, and we were all giggling about the naughty read of the close future. At the same time in my head, I had the epiphany. I realized that this is the main difference, this is why I always feel like the outsider. It has to do with my approach to the simple fact that if everyone talks about something, if the book in question is everywhere then my reaction is to NOT read it, I don't like when things are too hyped - it's as if the shared experience overshadows my individual experience. Their reaction is to read it.
Now - isn't this the most anti-elite of times? To dig into the subtleties..it seems that the rewarded attitude supports this sort of accepting oneself as one in a mass, but not only accepting, revelling. Like a collective high - no, the high of feeling part of something bigger, larger, something that in itself is high.
- Breivik, pedophiles, terrorism, smokers, Bashar al Assad, the ethiopian regime and leftist activists"
And I can't help but again connecting this to what Chantal Mouffe talks about in "On the political". So - she discusses the liberal system adopted by the Western capitalist democracies as a system (of thought) that claims to be all-inclusive. A group of consuming individuals, rather than a "we" construed from the oppostion against "them". She doesn't agree - and points out that also this system is based on drawing a line between us and them, but since this division is denied within the political discourse, the differentiation is explained through moral rather than politics). And I've found it! Heureka! (Basically, from this perspective I can understand why I always end up as the outsider..;-)) but also how the "we" is constructed, where is this line drawn, at what junctures can we discern the rituals of inclusion and exclusion. For a contemporary list of basic rites see the post-it notes (oh, and I add cookingliterature/televisionshows/magazines on the embracing list).
"...embracing - Fifty shades of Gray, Facebook, Twitter, democracy, Schibbye & Persson, Anna Lind, non-smoking and Thai-..."
Also, as I touch on in the final one (purple), lately it has struck me in the times posterior to great tragedies (for example the Colorado killings 2012, or Utoya 2011) how the collective rituals of compassion and grief to seem...well (dangerous territory I know) well exploited. It is as if we cant get enough. In a project text about some art I am doing I wrote:
"....attempts to deconstruct, and put in perspective, the idea of griefing - placing the recent public manifestations of grief in the more problematic realm of entertainment and culture-consumtion. As the western society slowly adapts itself to the values of liberal democacracy and capitalism, the pressures on the artinstitutions to entertain a larger public becomes more noticeable. Provocative artworks find a new, more accepting scene (in the name of liberalism), but their claims, and those of the institutions, to create a wider discussion seem to reep little return. We need to question the role of provocation in a media environment that feeds of emotional expressiveness, as we need to question the thesis that information inevitably leads to change. There seems to be an acceleration, as if, the more spectacle we get, the more we desire."
And I think one of the functions is the spectacle, the kick of chock and horror, and I think another is that it offers a sense of collectivity, the kick of togetherness (against the morally deprived Breivik, terrorist or..) that is equally addictive..
By participating in grand emotional rites/ events (what else brings us together and is so
non-polemic - pure..."
Stockholm
12-09-17
Goodnight
