So, I’m a little frustrated - no, I’m a lot frustrated. Kipnis calls for a populist intervention to change popular culture. Maybe it’s just because I’m having a bit of a “glass half empty” kind of day, but I’m not really sure what to do with that. How the hell do we change popular culture? Writing on stop signs and cheering in Tory atrium are really neat and they might even make a few people stop for a split second and really think, but in the grand scheme of things, what are these brief moments of refunctioning or dissent really accomplishing? Oppositional antagonistic discourses are always provisional and temporary and partial (insert other postmodern tropes here), but there doesn’t seem to be much that is provisional or partial about mass culture. I know things change and there is uneven development and cracks and fissures etc. etc., but, as far as the big picture goes, I don’t see anything changing. And I don’t see Kipnis coming up with any concrete strategies to help with the whole changing thing.
Postmodernism loves to tear things down, but nothing every gets built back up in any productive way. How do we build anything while at the same time maintaining that everything is provisional? The point, I know, isn’t to build anything permanent, but this leaves me feeling like I’m trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun. I feel like I am running in circles chasing my own tail. I buy it. I get that everything is provisional and changing and temporary and there are only partial truths, but not many people like that idea. Truths are comforting, and, frankly, useful. Theory is really neat and Kipnis is admittedly very clever and maybe even right, but all she presents is the vague notion that we should act rather than just talk and deconstruct. Of course, she says this at the end of twenty-odd pages of deconstructing, in an impressively wordy and academic fashion.
I’m going to bed… maybe the glass will be half full tomorrow.
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1 comment:
I agree with your point that it is rather hypocritical of Kipnis to claim that we need start taking action instead of merely deconstructing after she has just spent an entire article doing just that. Postmodernism does seem to tear things down, leaving no indication of how to build them back up again. However, what I took away from the Kipnis article was that it was up to us to figure out what kind of action should be taken. And that all actions, even small ones like a group of girls feministeppin in Tory Breezeway are an action that can create a small change. In my mind, the "big picture" is like the blob that Tapley was talking about in class, and it is slow moving and slow changing. Maybe action is just to keep throwing little things at the blob in the hopes that it will eventually change, even if it is ever so slightly.
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