Old critical device = "X is dead! Long live X!" et cet. Useful, stupid, sometimes both? When appropriate, when not? Favorite and least favorite examples? Last FT issue, Tom did it with pop, I did it with musicals, Otis did it with rock. Otis also possibly answered my question. "What's more rock and roll than death?" he sez. I don't know. You tell me.
― Sterling Clover, Monday, 30 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
It's dud. It's a red herring. Plus, it's dead.
― duane, Monday, 30 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
I can frighten all by mentioning Derrida's
concept of "hauntology": which I understand
not a whit. Or indeed wight haha.
Ghosts are often granted more power than the
living.
― mark s, Monday, 30 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
The past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living, eh? Phaps this is culture-crits' small expression of Hegel's concept of the negation of the negation?
― Sterling Clover, Monday, 30 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
Is this really an 'old critical device' or is it something out of
Joseph Campbell?
― dave q, Monday, 30 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
It worked for the revival of Acadian 'national' identity.
Though me thinks it was just an excuse to speak bad french and have
the French president visit Memracook.
― zacko, Monday, 30 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)
one of the weirder aspects of the "[whatever] is dead" formula is
the confusion between "[that thing] is not a viable current mode
of [music making, say]" and "[it] is not [a valid thing to listen to]". i
mean, with (the yes, entirely classic, rock-defining variant) "rock
is dead" people sometimes seem not only mean that no one is
making great rock music at the moment, but that you should buy
some house cds instead.
the criteria have to be made out case by case, of course, as to
how something becomes 'effective'/live in any particular context,
as *music* (or whatever), but to try and make a point mostly by
suggestion: charlie patton and bill broonzy *live* in my house,
even if r.l. burnside were the only living inheritor of their spark.
and neither is rock dead, for me here, even though i hardly ever
get to see a good rock band where and when i live. (recorded
music: classic!)
without wanting to put this in too wordy a way, it might be noted
that the "cult of the new" business factors in here, and that
something that was not to my knowledge noted in that
discussion may be important - namely, the complicity between
the market and such ideas. (indeed, perhaps, to be still more
eliptical, rock lives for me in part because it is exactly *not* what i
am being sold at the moment.)
― jon, Tuesday, 31 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)