Saturday, 7 June 2008

I've probably missed an old 'internet phenomenon' here, but...

Why are other people more funny when they write about the things that I think are funny?
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3 comments:

Ernesto said...

I just don't get that blog. There is something profoundly annoying there.

I mean, I do "get" it, but at the same time I don't. What could be a critique of the middle class mentality is reduced to... don't know what...

9 June 2008 at 15:28
Joe said...

I don't know, Ernesto. While I felt like it was me who was being sent up half the time, I was amused by its precision in spearing a lot of the vacuous pieties you encounter in academic/ intellectual culture. One of the main impetuses behind beginning to blog again, as far as I was concerned, was my feeling that, when you participate in academic discussion, you end up holding back 30-40% of 'you' and replacing it with an equivalent amount of performance. There are so many middle class (and I use this very loaded term in the sense of 'liberal, wealthy, educated, metropolitan' rather than in its broader '2.4 children' sense) niceties to be observed in every single discussion that the important points- which might be political, and might be aesthetic- go missing. Does it make sense to compound the terms 'ethics' and 'etiquette'- a kind of 'ethiquette' which actually papers over political cracks? You linked to an article by K-Punk in the comments in your interview the other day and what was said there was, for me, exceptionally true in the iconoclastic way that is required in a time in which 'politics' has been reduced to a rather virulent manifestation of 'eco-awareness'. What is loosely understood as 'ethical' (cf. the Observer magazine yesterday) is arising in place of the political, with the result that the nuances of expected liberal behaviour- buying organic, keeping air miles down- are being observed in place of a real politics that might set out to address these problems at base.

So, in answer to your original comment, I can see why that site rubs people up the wrong way, but the prevalence of superstructural gestures in what is broadly perceived as 'left wing politics' in the UK at the moment is something I find incredibly frustrating.

PS- cheers for the Mike Nelson review on NN, I'll definitely get along and see that now. It sounds as good as I was expecting it to be.

9 June 2008 at 16:02
Ernesto said...

Yeah, Joe, I totally agree. I see what you mean. I also meant "middle class" in that sense. It's just that I find that blog too, er, "postmodern" and then I feel that the irony (if there is one) is (or can be) lost.

And I think you are going to love the Psycho Buildings exhibit. The Nelson is only one part of it. (But it's so fantastic, and so understated as well).

Sending a warm hug.

10 June 2008 at 10:38

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