Re: <nettime> "Critical strategies in art and media" gets it wrong

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

The radical right of radical rights of extreme self-interest could be
added to the list of pre-1968 influences.

And the aesthiticization of politics and culture was on the rise, again,
then getting a toehold, now a hegemon, primarily through the
supremacism of literature over the other arts, succinctly through the
vaunting of criticism -- alway text, blind to other types -- then, the
hypervaluation of critical theorism now, legal theory the undergirder
of privileged discourse.

The mutual admiration of critical theorists and lawyers and their
hegemonic declaration of "a nation of laws, not of men," nicely
comports the demand that literacy is must have to be a "responsible"
citizen, that is a believer in writ. It is not often noted that critical
theorists and lawyers are conjoined in the radical rights of extreme
self-interest, indolent and duplicitous.

Other hegemons pre-68 are the rise of publishing, including
publish or perish employment terrorism which produced agri-businesses
of printed matter of much bulk and low nourishment, volumes as
well as fattened bibliographies and resumes.

Perhaps most pertinent for this hangout is the rise of academies
of great bulk and low nourishment which herded youngsters into
forced feeding pens, still going on, under the rubric of necessity
of higher education or else marginalization and you bet, terrrifying
poverty. Those to whom this was done are compelled to repeat it.

Yes, there were subcultures of this in the arts and sciences, learning
from the success model of the BBA and MBA.

1968 was a peak aestheticization of politics without risk. That drug
of pretenstiousness is still widely consumed. Ponder May 68 in
France: its delirium remains insurpassable, while 68 elsewhere is
imginary nostalgia of the deadhead.

Pre-68 sex and rock and roll was mostly prophilactic braggardy,
when exposed to the post-68 actuality, STD, AIDS and overdose
cleansed the experimenters seduced by marketers, then
and now aided and abetted by aged addicts practicing critical
theorists peddling apologia for justice system incarceraters.

In 68 youthism became the superdrug, and still is the elitism of
choice for marketers of education in bulk via this very medium.


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