PROLETARIAN ENJOYMENT
Sun. February 29, 2004Categories: Abstract Dynamics
That Lyotard quote (found my copy of LE underneath a pile of stuff):
‘Death is not an alternative to it, it is part of it, it attests to the fact that there is jouissance in it, the English unemployed did not become workers to survive, they – hang on tight and spit on me – enjoyed the hysterical, masochistic, whatever exhaustion it was of hanging on in the mines, in the foundries, in the factories, in hell, they enjoyed it, enjoyed the mad destruciton of their organic body which was indeed imposed upon them, they enjoyed the decomposition of their personal identity, the identity that the peasant tradition had constructed for them, enjoyed the dissolution of their familes and villages, and enjoyed the new monstrous anonymity of their suburbs and the pubs in the morning and evening.’
– Libidinal Economy, 111
No actual mention of sausages, however.
No, that was just wishful thinking….
haha i think lyotard is making the same point *i* was! (abt the drive to anonymity anyway)
in ref my poor behaviour last week, my kneejerk ahem marxist-simulacrum hackles i think went up w.the use throughout of “bourgeois” purely in the cultural (as opposed to the economic) sense, which unfortunately historically fits in w.classic brit-political obfuscation since forever – ie i wz at war (in my mind) w.foes from my past, not you guys so much: in economic terms, artisanal values (however grottily prole-esque) end up being reactionary blah blah, whereas mass-production standardisation “modernist” values (however fake-aspirational their apparent surface content) (translation: because therefore unrecuperable bohemian-style?) can only ever sharpen the contradictions yada yada
having written that out longhand, i’m fairly convinced i don’t actually believe in the basic polarity at work in it – not least cz i don’t believe in “recuperation” ho-hum
î (what passes 4 an apology in mark s-land heh)
(On the whole I like Lyotard, but everything bad abt him is summarised by the fact he *never* mentions sausages….)
Well, ‘nothing ever died of contradictions,’ as they say in Anti-Oedipus.
On Lyotard: it’s not really clear whose side he would take in the great caff wars, is it? But I think it does highlight the paradoxes of British proletarian ‘culture’ — essentially, Lyotard is suggesting, no culture at all.
Think what I object to in Pret et al is not so much their standardization as their pretence that what they are _not_ standardized –
i guess my line is that the punters are in no way fooled by their pretentions (viz: we queue in meek silence to buy the same identical thing day after day and only complain when they change stuff)!!