LECTURE WEEK 5 MMST 12016

Contemporary Culture, Postmodernism and Audio

I'm in love with Jacques Derrida
Read a page and I know I need to
Take apart my baby's heart
I'm in love.

Scritti Politti, "I'm in love with Jacques Derrida", Songs to Remember, EMI records 1982.

In 1982, people in the UK (and elsewhere) were dancing to Scritti Polliti's whimsical single (ostensibly) about Jacques Derrida, one of the most significant poststructuralist theorists. Since at least 1982, the ideas that we call "postmodern" have been infiltrating popular culture to a great and greater degree. In this lecture we will be exploring more significant links between postmodernism, audio and contemporary culture. In doing so we will be considering several ways in which the term "postmodern" may be defined and applied to popular uses of (digital) audio, such as popular music. For the majority of this lecture we will not be talking about audio at all, but about ideas. After introducing important aspects of Modernism, Postmodernism and Poststructuralism, the lecture will conclude with some examples taken from the field of popular music.

What is postmodernism?

As the Scritti Politti song quoted in the opening of this lecture suggests, "postmodernism" is concept that has passed from Academia into the popular domain. Postmodernism is a term broadly and loosely applied in popular commentary; "pomo" has become a fashionable term. While the popular use of "Postmodern" to describe any work that relies heavily on intertextual references or is politically aligned with minority groups is hardly accurate, one could argue that there is something postmodern in such very use of the term, as we shall see.

Postmodernism's importance lies both in the ideas and philosophies it represents, as well as those ideas it rejects. For this latter reason, and in order to gain an historical perspective on the movement, it is worth taking some time to consider postmodernism's precursor, Modernism.

Modernism and Postmodernism

Modernism was a dominant aesthetic and approach in art and literature for much of the Twentieth Century, in particular for the first half. Since there is no space in a single lecture to deal exhaustively with the various aspects of postmodernism, discussion of Modernism will be even briefer, and limited to several points that are illustrative of the change in thought and approach represented by Postmodernism. Some important qualities of Modernism are listed below.

• Modernist texts emphasized fracture and discontinuity, both in form and in the way they represented subjective experience. Modernism tended to bemoan the fracturing of the subject, which was seen as a consequence of modernization, particularly industrialization and industrial capitalism. In fact a utopian ethos ran through many strands of high modernism, and for some the movement aimed to point out what had been lost and argue for a future in which the subject could become unified once more.
• Modernism placed more emphasis on the representation of subjective experience than traditional modes of representation, such as realist narrative or realistic painting.
• Modernism had a problematic approach to definitions of "high" and "low" art. Modernist novels adopted popular and colloquial language that would have been deemed unworthy in the Victorian era. Modernist composers would often incorporate folk phraseology, or emulate sounds and situations from low culture. At the same time, technological advances allowed for new types of sounds, experimentation with electronically generated and recorded music, and experimental mixtures of new sounds ad older forms.
• While modernist texts, artworks and compositions often appropriated formal elements of low culture, the movement still privileged the artist as gifted auteur. Implicit in even the more fragmentary texts and artworks was the notion that the artist's intention was sublime, and integral to the work.
• Modernist works were often self-reflexive, drawing attention to their status as art pieces (as opposed to windows on truth or reality) and the processes through which they were produced.

Postmodernism refers to developments is several fields (for example literature, music and architecture) that developed some of the modernism's formal characteristics while rejected other more philosophical qualities of the movement. The emphases placed by Modernism on unified, autonomous subjective experience, the privileged position of the artist and the importance of authorial intention were replaced by ideas of indeterminacy and fragmentation of subjective experience. Self reflexivity remained important, but for different reasons. One major purpose of self-refexivity and self-reference in postmodern art is to overtly limit the scope of the work, and to call in to question its ability to refer to any truth or stake any position that is not contingent on the context in which the work was produced and exists. In addition, postmodern art and literature and the way in which it was interpreted by the critics rejected the division between high and low culture at more than a formal level.

Architecture is one of the many fields in which Modernism was, and arguably still is very influential. The American International Style as an architectural movement embodies many of the more utopian and positivists elements of the Modernist movement (if you want to know a little more about the International Style, about.com has a succinct entry on the topic.) Nan Ellin has summarized the move from modernism to postmodernism in architecture in four major points. Although a specific field, architecture, is the focus of Ellin's points, they have much broader application, and signal some of the most important changes represented by postmodernism:

• Firstly, whereas modernism posited itself as representing a clean break with the past, and projected a utopian future, postmodernism stresses the historical specificity of any artwork or text. That is, a postmodern work may "quote" from any historical period, but its meaning remains contingent on the historical (social and political) context in which it exists.
• The modernist movement in architecture placed little emphasis on the context within which any one building was situated. Modernist buildings tended to reflect international architectural trends and designs, with few concessions to traditional or existing styles at any particular location. Postmodern architecture on the other hand places strong emphasis on local aesthetic conditions. More generally, postmodernism places much more importance on an idiomatic approach to design, and postmodern works in all fields tend to reflect or at least make concessions to the contexts in which they are found.
• Thirdly, whereas modernist architecture favored a rational, scientific, functional approach, making a strong connection between form and function. Postmodern architecture was more willing to make use of often witty, whimsical, or self-referential decoration. More generally, postmodernism often uses elements that do not serve any particular narrative or formal purposes.
• Finally, Ellin sees Modernist architecture as representing a somewhat grandiose rational/utopian vision. That is, that Modernist architecture was rational, based on sound scientific principles and would make the world of the built environment a better place. Postmodern architecture was more humble in its aims, seeking to produce buildings that were various tailored to local conditions and aesthetic. (Quoted in McGuigan 1999 18-19)

Postmodernism and Poststructuralism

There is often confusion between the terms "postmodernism" and "poststructuralism". While the two are related, they have distinctly different meanings. In the above recounting of Ellin's description of postmodern architecture, it is clear that the shift from modernism to postmodernism was not simply a change in form, but a change in the politics and philosophies that guided the forms through which modernism was expressed, For example, the third point marks a move from a rationalist, universalist philosophy of architecture to a philosophy that gives more weight to local conditions. What Ellin would call "totalizing rationalism" is one of the many philosophies that informs modernism which is called into question in postmodernism. While modernism as a movement encompasses a diverse array of art forms (literature, architecture, music), a modernist text such as James Joyce's Ulysses, is not an example of "totalizing rationalism" or any of the other "isms" that formed the philosophical backdrop of the movement.. In the same way, Poststructuralism is a set of philosophies and theoretical approaches that inform postmodernist texts and objects. In other words, poststructuralist ideas often provide the logic according to which postmodern artifacts are formed. This will become clearer later when we consider some concrete examples. First, I want to give a brief indication of what sort of ideas are represented by poststructuralism.

Mark Poster (1989) acknowledges that deciding which theorists are and are not poststructuralist is very problematic, but posits the following definition:

The term poststructuralist, local to certain intellectual circles in the United States, draws a line of affinity around several French theorists who are rarely so grouped in France and who in many cases would reject the definition. I am referring to thinkers such as Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze and Jean-François Lyotard. The validity of the use of the term poststructuralist derives from certain vicissitudes of intercontinental intellectual history of the past two decades. These thinkers were influenced by and rejected against the formalism of structural linguistics and against the figure of the epistemological subject implied or explicitly defended by its theorists. They also at some earlier time in their lives adhered in one manner or another to Marxist theory, later entertained doubts about it, and subsequently developed an opposition to it and the French Communist Party and its use of theory. (4)

While the theories put forward by these intellectuals differ substantially, they have some things in common, namely that they work to destabilize the understandings of subjectivity and epistemology that were inherent in Modernism. Before identifying some of the important ideas of these theorists, I want to spend a little time on these two terms: subjectivity and epistemology.

Epistimology is a philosophical term that means the study of and enquiry into the nature of knowledge. Epistemology deals with concepts such as knowledge, truth and the relationship between knowledge (what is known) and the subject (that which knows, usually he or she that knows). The adjectival form of subject is subjectivity, therefore "subjectivity" refers to the factors and qualities that constitute a subject. Subjectivity encompasses all the mechanisms through which the subject gains an understanding of the world around him or her, especially with respect to meaning and knowledge. For a psychologist, subjectivity may involve issues of consciousness and awareness, and a study of the biological processes that shape experience. For a philosopher, subjectivity involves more abstracted factors, and in different philosophical approaches to epistemology the factors that contribute to subjectivity will be different.

Poster's Big Six

There is not the scope in this lecture to present the arguments of the poststructuralist thinkers in any detail. The points I outline below represent some of the major claims made by the poststructuralists that either influence contemporary cultural production or are used often used by contemporary theorists when writing about the formations of contemporary culture. In all cases these thumbnail sketches represent selected aspects of the theorists' positions at a very basic level. In other courses within the BMMS you will have the opportunity to develop an understanding of the works of many of these theorists.

As you read these sketches, keep in mind the above points regarding the values implicit in Modernism, and the changes to these values represented by Postmodernism.

Jacques Lacan

Lacan originally trained as a Freudian Psychoanalyst. Freud himself was an important figure in the development of epistemolgical thought. His model of the subconscious was one of several important theories that challenged the idea of a rational, unified subject. Lacan developed a body of theory that extended Freudian concepts into the field of language. In his analysis, he stresses that the self is only recognized as such through language, and this self-recognition (for Lacan, misrecognition) marks our entry into the symbolic world of language and related forms of representation.

Michel Foucault

Foucault produced a number of studies of issues such as power, discipline, the prison, madness and sexuality. Foucault's works are not historical but genealogical studies, in which the historicity of contemporary "truths" are revealed by tracing the ways in which they have changed over time. Foucault considered that the self existed only in what was written and said about the self, and that power and truth were related and expressed not in cultural institutions such as the law, the prison, the mental institution, but in the myriad ways in which we are categorized and regulated on the small scale. Adams and Searle sum up some of Foucault's position on knowledge and power succinctly: "Knowledge is governed by power relations. What is allowed (knowledge) and what is not allowed (the "unthought") are generated in relation to systems of authority, rules, hierarchy, and discipline, the last term including the interesting combination of a body of knowledge and practice and the results of training, suppression, and repression. (137)

Jacques Derrida

Derrida is perhaps best known for the textual strategy of deconstruction. To deconstruct a "truth", statement or ideology is to demonstrate the way in which it has been constructed by reference to other "truths", (and the ideological stances they represent). These in turn have been constructed by reference to other claims, and so on ad nauseum. For Derrida, meanings come about through the repressive action of ideology, and are constructed via binary oppositions. For example to identify someone as "black" is to identify them as "not white". The qualities our culture ascribes to "blacks" are therefore the qualities that are not ascribed to "whites". In this formulation there are no qualities inherent to "blackness" or "whiteness", therefore any statements of "truth" about either group evaporate.

Jean Baudrillard

Whereas many of the poststructuralists have a strong focus on language, Baudrillard's focus is on the media and its representations. He considers that the relationship between culture and media, particularly the electronic media, has ushered in a new age of hyperreality, where "The whole definition of the real becomes: that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction" (146). For Baudrillard, the real is understood in terms of the images that we see, hear and read. Our understanding of "the family", for example, is modeled on the TV soap, rather than the TV soap dramatizing the "real" situations faced by families. Our experience of the world is limited to these "simulacra", and while Baudrillard does not suggest we ever have had access to the real, he suggests that in this age of hyperreality, the logic of media and culture does not even require the pretence of reference to the real.

Gilles Deleuze

(Two of Deleuze's most influential books (A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia and Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia) were written with Felix Guattari)

Deleuze argues that capitalism, the dominant force in the formation of culture, is schizophrenic. On the one hand, it needs to construct the category of the individual in order to function, since at the microscopic level capitalism requires obedient economic subjects. Hence, other groupings do not form part of the framework of capitalism (for instance the church, the team, the family) need to be effaced. At the same time, the capitalist system must permit smaller, culturally determined groups to exist, or it cannot function. Deleuze sees the production of culture as a combination of two seemingly opposing processes: atomizing individualization (deterritorialisation) and the formation and reformation of social groups and categories (reterritorialisation). Within this dynamic there is no place for the subject, only for desires, manifested in a myriad of ways, and "machines" for satisfying those desires. While capitalism attempts to connect these machines in its own image, Deleuze stresses that the power and agency in the face of the capitalist "machine" lies in the fact that these machines can be connected in ways oppositional to Capitalism's determinations.

Jean-François Lyotard

In 1978, Lyotard published the influential report The Postmodern Condition: A report on knowledge. In this report, Lyotard argues, among other things, that in contemporary culture the grand narratives, or metanarratives - the influential narratives from which culture takes its norms and from which claims to truth are legitimized - are no longer working. Whereas Modernists had belief in these metanarratives (such as boy meets girl, they marry and live happily ever after) Postmodernists do not, since the evidence in favour of the metanarrative is declining and the assumptions on which they rest have been undermined.

While the philosophies informing Modernism often represented the subject as fractured, that fracture was seen to be a product of historical, social, cultural, economic and political factors, not as something inherent in subjectivity per se. Poststructuralist thought more strongly rejects the idea of the unified subject. Poststructuralist thought rejects the possibility of a subjectivity that is unified and self-contained, considering that the division between the subject and those objects the subject observes, reads, listens to, watches and otherwise apprehends is blurred at best.

Postmodern qualities and popular examples.

NOTE: In this section I mention several examples from popular music. Due to copyright restrictions, we cannot reproduce the examples here. However, you can listen to samples by following this procedure:

1. Open a new browser window and go to www.cndnow.com
2. Search for the artist mentioned in the example.
3. In the listing CDNow provides, select the link to the album mentioned in the example.
4. Scroll down to the track listing, and click on the link to the sound sample for the track mentioned. You may need to have Windows Media Player and installed on your computer. If you need this and don't already have it, you can download it from www.windowsmedia.com

Now that we have looked at some of key poststructuralist ideas we have some context from which to look at some of the main qualities of postmodern cultural production. I am going to do this by referring to some examples taken from popular music.

Example 1:
Artist: Negativland
Album: These Guys are from England
Track: Copying is a Criminal Act

• Rejection of traditional narratives and forms. Postmodernism does not make use of metanarratives, or if it does, it is not in a totalizing manner, but in a playful, critical or parodic fashion.
• Problematic relation to narrative and representation. Postmodern work is unlikely to attempt to represent truth. Any "truths" that postmodern works represent are limited and meaningful within (usually) recognizable, specific contexts.
• Tolerance of ambiguity. Since postmodernism has no philosophical need to present a coherent narrative or view, ambiguity and contradiction are not only acceptable, but appropriate.
• Playfulness: Postmodern art has no great truth to impart, and is therefore free to play with signifiers and references, enjoying them as much for their own sake as for their meaning. Chion's "reduced listening" is an appropriate mode for listening to many postmodern audio texts.

The tracks on this, or almost any Negativland release, mix music, sound samples from TV and radio, archival sound, simulated TV and radio samples, samples from Negativland's long running radio show Over the Edge and even footage of their family member's conversation. The sample I have chosen for you to listen to is such an example, it represents all of the postmodern qualities listed above. While it contains music and voice, it is not a song. It represents a Deleuzian approach to media in that sense, as traditional pop music elements are present, but they have been configured in a way that stands outside of the definition of "popular music". Popular music being, as Foucault might point out, what can be thought of as music under the systems through which popular music is distributed and spoken about, and discipline under which we earn to consume it.

The track is a good example of ambiguity and playfulness. On the evidence of this track it would seem that Negativland are not taking the side of the record companies in any argument about pirated music. However, the repetitive juxtaposition of the sampled phrases "pirated music"/ "an easy target" does not provide any coherent position. There is a playful rather than an earnest approach to the issues involved represented in this recording.

Example 2:
Artist: Ween
Album: The Mollusk
Track: The Mollusk

• Self-conscious relationship to history. Modernism presented itself as a break from the past, and had a belief in the idea that we were progressing or at least had the potential to progress to a better future. Postmodernism rejects both of these stances, and sees the past as another set of signifiers ready for playful or pointed recontextualisation and/or juxtaposition.
• Excess. Not being guided by any metanarratives of taste, postmodern art often resorts to excess, sometimes as a form of homage, sometimes for ironic or satirical purposes, or sometimes just for the sake of it..

Ween are a very postmodern pop band who produce pastiche after pastiche of many popular music styles. "The Mollusk" is somewhere between a homage and a satirical take on 1960s/70s psychedelia and progressive rock. The CD cover parodies the genre of album covers that typified progressive rock in the 1970s. (use CDNOW to check for any 1970s CD by the British bad Yes for comparison). It contains many of the typical elements of a progressive rock cover, for instance, it is in the style of a highly realistic painting, the image's subject is at once unorthodox and a reference to the natural world, and there is a psychedelic cast to the colours and composition. However there is much more of a psychedelic cast than usual, and the image is odd to the point of being disturbing. While the elements of this cover clearly identify a period in the history of popular music, it would have been a very odd record cover I the period to which it refers.

The title track, "The Mollusk", picks up on the obtuse topics of 70s prog-rock songs, and even the propensity of the more pretentious of these bands to use non-standard spelling. These traits are also reflected in the lyrics of the song, but exaggerated to the point where they are weirdly amusing rather than pretentious. The conspicuous keyboard noises are another reference to the genre, and by extension the historical period from which it came.

Example 3: (self-conscious relationship to history)
Artist: Moby
CD: Play
Track: Honey

Many of the tracks on Moby's Play were based around archival recordings of American Blues and Gospel singers. In one way, this may be considered a postmodern approach to music, as it represents the contemporary dance genre borrowing from the history of pop music, and recontextualising the borrowings. Conversely, this recording could be seen as a very un-postmodern act of exploitation, as the music samples were from dead singers from a minority group.

This particular CD has passed into the realm of the hyperreal. Track after track from this CD were licensed by advertising and the CD has become part of the media soundscape of the turn of the century.

Example 4:
Artist: Frank Zappa
CD: The Yellow Shark
Track: The Girl in the Magnesium Dress.

• No pretense to authenticity. Since poststructuralist theory suggests that the idea of authenticity is quite suspect, postmodernist work is unlikely to make any claims to authenticity.

This track, while actually performed live by the Ensemble Moderne, was one of many pieces Zappa wrote on the Synclavier, a 1980s sampler/synthesizer. Zappa used the Synclavier to produce simulations of orchestral music that was physically impossible to play. Nevertheless, by using more than one musician on the one instrument, the Ensemble Moderne managed to play this piece live.

Example 5:
Artist: Negativland
CD: Helter Stupid

• Self-reflexivity. Postmodern works are often self-reflexive. That is, they reflect on their place in the setting in which they are found, or the relationship of the art piece or artist to the process of production..
• Media references/complicity. The self-reflexivity mentioned above is particularly important in the relationship between the contemporary cultural product and the media. Postmodern art recognizes the hyperreality of contemporary culture, and much contemporary art incorporates diverse media element and reflects on the nature of the media and its relationship to the dominant meanings and ideologies
• Subversive tendencies / contradictory or problematic politics. For several reasons the insights the poststructuralist theorists mentioned above problematise the idea of a coherent, fixed political approach, seeing this approach as inherently oppressive (Derrida for example argues that meanings are fixed by repressive, ideological means.)

The politics of representation and issues of privacy involved in Negativland's Helter Stupid make an interesting, if disturbing, reading. A brief account can be found in this Addicted to Noise article.

A message from Negativland's Mark Hosler detailing his response to the issues involved can be found here.

There are many issues at stake here. Firstly, Baudrillard's take on the relationship between media and the real seems to apply here to an unsettling degree, at least according to Hosler's message. Secondly, the politics and ethics are quite confusing. Reading Hosler's message, one would assume that the band did have a political motivation in launching the Helter Stupid CD, a desire to make a statement about the way the media stereotyped youth and popular music. At the same time, the media event that surrounded the incident had a very negative effect on a particular group.

Popular music and postmodernity: Britney Spears.

There is another, more general way in which postmodernism can be seen to affect popular music. Popular music is mediated by radio, television, youth magazines, the Internet and many other forms of media. Artists such as Negativland who address issues consonant with the concerns of poststructuralist theory gain scant attention from the media nexus that supports the popular music industry. Artists such as Britney Spears, on the other hand, receive great attention. While Negativland explore postmodern ideas and situations in the content and form of their music, and Ween play with the back catalogue of popular musical styles, attitudes and stances, there is little challenging or intellectually stimulating about Britney Spears' music. Yet Britney Spears is a fine example of a Baudrillardian simulacra. Britney has become a brand, a point of reference, a fashion symbol. The degree to which the Britney Spears persona is or is not a good role model is discussed seriously in the media and on the web. Regardless of what Britney sings about (and often, she sings about the Britney simulacrum), she is a postmodern phenomenon, serving the capitalist machine as much as a franchise as a singer.

In discussing such issues we are still in the realm of the postmodern, but we are dealing with the way in which popular audio as a cultural artifact circulates in a postmodern culture. Rather than considering Britney Spears to be a postmodernist, we are considering the way she works as a signifier within a postmodern culture. We are talking about the general postmodernity of contemporary popular culture rather than about a postmodernist cultural producer (as we would consider Negativland). It is important to be able to make this distinction when discussing postmodernism.

Conclusion

This week's lecture has been quite dense, and has been more strongly focused on theoretical issues than most other weeks in this course. Such an approach should give you a good understanding of what Postmodernism is, but necessarily reduces the space available to exemplify the variety of ways in which postmodernism is expressed (or conversely, the variety of cultural issues that we deem postmodern). Of particular importance is the relationship between audio, technology and the postmodern. The relationship between digital technology and audio is taken up at length in next week's reading, and you should keep the issues discussed in this week's lecture in mind as you work through next week's material. The relationship will be further explored in Week 8: Audio in the Mix.

In conclusion I am going to direct you to a reading by Ian Buchanan, which applies Deleuzian concepts to a reading of popular music. Read this article. There is a question in Tutoral Three that relates to this reading.

Buchanan: Deleuze and pop Music

Works Cited

Ian Buchanan, "Deleuze and Pop Music", Australian Humanities Review, August 1997, http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-August-1997/buchanan.html

Jean Baudrillard, Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e) 1983.

Jim McGuigan, Modernity and Postmodern Culture, Buckingham: Open University Press.

Hazard Adams ad Leroy Searle, Michel Foucault:1926-1984, in Adams, H. and Searle, L., Critical Theory since 1965, University presses of Florida, 1990, p.137-8.