Bourgeois : classic or dud

someone on ILX said it is ironically a self referential remark. that, they are unknowingly calling themselves out.

But this is obviously different from Marx's Bourgeoisie, right? He uses the term to describe the elite class that owns means of production.

Especially as it fits into his dialectical analysis of history in which the capitalist bourgeoisie was appropriating power formerly in the hands of a land-owning nobility. As a cultural epithet, it's broader and more prejudicial.

It's not really so elite nowadays, is it?

I think of the Courtauld Institute as a typically prissy institution crammed with people who went to university and did Art History. Many of them have double-barrelled names and are vaguely related to royalty.

As to being bourgeois, I think it's fine as long as the class doesn't abandon its duty to the transnational avant garde. This might include researching into pleasure. After all, the pleasures of the upper classes today become the pleasures of the lower tomorrow, assuming general wealth continues to grow, leisure time increase, and so on. If the future is (in consumer societies, anyway) somewhat more feminine than the present, it's also somewhat more bourgeois. We hope.

Art is bohemian, art history is bourgeois.

I was accused of being bourgeois the other day by a caricature drunken Irish philosopher-poet. It's because I was wearing cufflinks. He was right.

Of course, that's why all working-class people go out hunting these days.

I think in modern UK, "bourgeois" isn't a useful term to describe a class. I think it could encompass attributes visible in all classes, such as nouveau-ism.

the pleasures of the upper classes today become the pleasures of the lower tomorrow, assuming general wealth continues to grow

This is pretty close to the trickle-down effect theory, which attempts to justify capitalism on the grounds that eventually the people on the bottom gain an advantage from being underneath increasingly wealthy people, significant enough for it not to matter to them that they're on the bottom. I didn't expect to hear that from you, Momus ;)

Ha! That sounds vaguely nineteenth-century.

For me, libertinism is a precursor of rock hedonism, which then influences consumer society. I think fox hunting is a deliberately obtuse example in which the ethics angle, and the legislation angle, occlude the general tendency, which is that the leisured classes have, of course, always had more time on their hands than working people, and have therefore been able to brainstorm all sorts of pastimes, from croquet to backgammon, which can eventually be enjoyed by anyone and everyone. The Marquis de Sade also invented all sorts of buggery and violation games which pass the time if you're, for instance, stuck in prison for a few years.

Now, what I'm proposing is the exact opposite of this Republican strategy: a policy "royalist in its rhetoric but workerist in its economic effects".

I think that bohemianism is the R&D wing of the bourgeoisie. Bohemianism is a place where the high and low can intermingle in unpredictable ways, often in states of advanced intoxication, with sexual motives. "Bohemia" is a place where the high can embrace low pleasures and the low high ones. Rock -- at least in its prime -- was a bohemian form, a Dionysian form, a kind of R&D space for society. I don't say that that directly causes living standards to rise, but it's fun... and also a slap in the face to people like Bush who try to stir up class resentment against elites while, simultaneously, serving them.

And to think that last week I was Nietzsche!

1.) Working class culture resents the pleasures it cannot afford. This doesn't amount to much more than resentment.
2.) I have no intention of letting the accident of my birth nor the struggles of my forebears determine, censure, or compel the content of my culture. Democracy may be the best solution for political stability but only a libertarian attitude toward esthetics will do for me.
3.) Working class solidarity often seems to be an economic life sentence or requires one to remain culturally retarded or become an inverse snob to be accepted by one's childhood peers.
4.) We have been taught egalitarian values to the point where we do not question any of them any more. The rich are not like most people. They are far more adept at accumulating capital and more inclined to than most people. For society's sake we may limit their power and the reach of their money but to say that all people should be able to sing or paint or design buildings equally well does not serve the interests of society as much. Who wants to live in world devoid of grandeur or whimsy?
5.) A cautionary tale: During the French revolution, the de facto lifting of poaching laws led to a wholesale slaughter of previously protected animals on royal and noble game preserves. It may be understandable but that's no reason to defend it. The man-of-the-people shtick dear to the Bushes may allay the common man's distaste for the 'elite' but it doesn't change the fact that his economic class and political ideology pwns the little guys. However, by tailoring his appearance to their desires, he concedes some iconic power to them which makes them feel important and powerful.
6.) The supercilious fop may sneer and the lowbrow may scoff but they are both equally guilty of failing to treat the other as fully human. When we objectify people based on their 'class', we treat them as means and not as ends, which is one of the starting points of all evils. To defend or condemn the one and not the other is mere partisan hypocrisy.
7.) Art, culture, pleasure may come from many sources both rich and poor. To take only what is socially acceptable to one's class is to deprive oneself of many opportunities. This is a form of behavior more appropriate to Calvinists and their fun-fearing ilk.

The argument isn't about the merits of working class culture vs avant-garde art, it's about the reception of same, or the way that, before the '50s, *only* the products of elite culture -- or rather, the art-products which appealed to the elite -- were "taken seriously" *as* culture, whereas all the things we like, pop music, movies, etc, were treated as automatically inferior. In the context of this thread the argument is about how far elite notions of 'art' contributed to the "ideology of rock" (c) Simon Frith.

Found a great book excerpt quoted in a NYTimes stub article from 1989. It's from a book of essays called "Mazes" by Hugh Kenner:

When you said ''bourgeois'' in the nineteenth century, you were letting irritation show. It was the word for people you disliked, who were inferior to you but not inferior enough. So ''bourgeois'' came to mean all that Matthew Arnold meant by ''philistine,'' and more. It became an all-purpose slur.

Like the tree toad and the swamp adder, the ''bourgeois'' is named for his habitat, the ''bourg''; he's an urban irritant, like the traffic jam. Whether affluent or threadbare, hearty or pale, he institutionalizes mediocrity. The satisfactions he craves, erotic or aesthetic, will be above all undemanding, reassuring. He's inseparable from his high collar, and his life is the reverse of free and easy. Constipation clogs his mind; also his shoes pinch, and (Gustave Flaubert observed) his consummation is a hat so little distinct from ten thousand other hats it might get swapped at the office had he not thought to write his name inside it.

are you bourgeois?

The rich are not like most people. They are far more adept at accumulating capital and more inclined to than most people.

The ability to accumulate capital is greatly enhanced by the possession of capital. Those who are adept at accumulating capital often hire themselves out to those among the rich who have no such ability, because this arrangement works well for both parties.

Claiming special talents for the rich as a class is nonsensical. Such generalizations may have a grain of truth, but are subject to such massive exceptions and qualifications IRL that they are not supportable.

Was the bourgeoisie the 19th century equivalent of "hipsters"?

also, is it racist for a white person to call various things "bougie"? My brother had a phase where he did this a lot and it made me feel very uncomfortable.

Was the bourgeoisie the 19th century equivalent of "hipsters"?

― Moodles, Thursday, October 31, 2013 2:04 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, I would say this is a gross misunderstanding of the term "bourgeois"

or, perhaps, a facetious question...

Claiming special talents for the rich as a class is nonsensical. Such generalizations may have a grain of truth, but are subject to such massive exceptions and qualifications IRL that they are not supportable.

― Aimless, Thursday, October 31, 2013 2:03 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would guess that there's some correlation, but people get rich for so many reasons other than some inborn or learned talent for accumulating capital (not least of which, being born into a rich family) that it's certainly silly to make that kind of generalization.