Dissensus--c/d?

(haha xpost)

seriously, let's not do this.

started the same thread there, got no responses either

difficult to choose

Gareth have you heard/do you like Eclection?

who are eclection?

Indeed they are eager to please and maintain consensus, is this not ironic, insofar as they are called Dissensus, yet seeking consensus? This is indeed hypocrisy, and I sneer at them and walk swiftly from the room for such stupidity.

btw thats true jed...

By not talking about Lady Sovereign. Just kidding. It's a very nice alternative, nothing dud nor classic about it. Only a bit too intellectual for my liking but that's all my *fault* (low self-esteem/intellect). :-)

could also be the "hashing out" phase of a new discussion group.

Anyway I don't think you are a creepy racist or an extreme rightist nutbag. If I've implied that I apologize.

well that might be because i HAVE NEVER ONCE SAID that she is at the epicentre of anything or even that she believes that she is. stop trying being such a smartarse and read whay i'm saying. she has positioned herself, by virtue of the sources she uses alone and then by the imagery/lyrical references she employs, as a filter for dancehall, grime, favela funk etc. given the way critics (some of whom i'd have xpected better of) have jumped on this aspect of her, this is a bad thing and will work to the detriment of those artists who *are* actually working at the epicenters of said scenes. that and the fact that i just flat-out think that both the album and the mix have sounded shitty.

;) kidding!

thats not MIA's fault, that's the idiocy of mainstream editors thats to blame.

Whatever.

"Whatever You Want" really is the best song ever, isn't it? I fear I will play it at every party I am even slightly involved in from now until i die.

The irony of course about Stelfox's complaints is that they map onto a critique of rockism not popism. There's nothing about M.I.A. that makes her more likely to shift across the board; there's a million things that make her more interesting from a broadsheet angle - only, funnily enough it's not that far from the stuff that made dancehall interesting from a broadsheet angle in '04 - good beats + dodgy politics - and from the four or so articles I've seen not many in the media are likely to give her politics a free ride. The extent to which she'll fare better than dancehall in such articles boils down to the following:

1) the liberal media condemn homophobia universally and uncategorically, but approach country-specific civil warfare and insurrection on a case-by-case basis and with a great deal of handwringing
2) plus critics have been waiting for booty music to become more vaguely lefty political since Public Enemy's demise so they're primed to liked M.I.A. (Public Enemy had a lot of dodgy politics too, lest we forget, and have historically also been given more latitude for their attitudes than their less revolutionary rap peers).
3) As an individual, M.I.A. can't really be equated with the negative side of her politics (obv she is not behind the latest Tamil Tiger bombing etc.), whereas the dancehall scene's rootedness in its own geographical/social/cultural collective identity makes it harder to distinguish between the artistic and practical expression of their dodgy politics (or, obv, also makes the two easier to conflate).
4) The combination of the above means that it's a lot easier for people to mediate between their enjoyment of the music and their uncertainty wrt to the politics and find a compromise between the two; this is distinct from the radical disjuncture which is required for an educated liberal Western individual to enjoy most dancehall, where the dodgy politics form a sort of black hole in the enjoyment.

Whereas perhaps the "Dissensus Position" is the opposite of this: having spent so long acclimatizing to the dodgy politics of dancehall/grime/hip hop and working out "strategies for enjoyment", having accepted that enjoyment becomes difficult in this fashion, M.I.A.'s more palatable (to the liberal media) version of the same seems suspicious and cynically seductive. I've always had the same problem with my friends who automatically liked Public Enemy and automatically disliked all gangsta hip hop! But I recognise that my resentment doesn't stem from some objective flaw in Public Enemy's music itself.

I have some more thoughts on this but I'll have to come back.

Whatever.

Alex do you absolutely positively HAVE to have the last word in everything. I just said, let's quite it because it's boring. If you want to be a cock, then you can do it on your own. I'm not playing any more.

I'm not seeing any irony here at all, tim. i'mnot seeing this as a rockist v popist thing at all. It's just about liking and not liking a record and the reasons behind it. I think rockism and popism are pretty unhelpful red herrings in this context, anyway, especially given my feelings on the pop thread on dissensus.

Oh I didn't mean because you personally were attacking popism. Rather because Simon has framed that M.I.A. debate in those terms but yr particular elaboration of the anti-M.I.A. position (originally invoked on this thread as a sort of skeleton key for decoding his new take on the rockist/popist split) kinda contradicts him while agreeing with him, if you know what I mean. This is a fundamental root problem with Simon's assertion that popists or M.I.A. fans (whether or not you conflate the two) will adopt and discard any justification to protect their enjoyment: if you treat the anti-M.I.A. camp as having a "position" it too will look entirely contradictory and anti-theory.

" It's just about liking and not liking a record and the reasons behind it. I think rockism and popism are pretty unhelpful red herrings in this context."

I totally agree!

I find Dissensus' slowness frustrating, and I'm a little too scared of the people there (o man they have blogs I read, they know about stuff, they can drop philosophy/crittheory into their discussions...) to ever think of joining/posting, but I'm very glad it exists and I like reading it, except when I get annoyed at eg the lady sov thread.

...I'd be fascinated to hear it if he did though!

Who is borderpolice? they are indeed amazing on that pop thread. A while ago I tried to register and get into it but it wouldn't let me and now the thread has taken a direction which makes me kick myself that I didn't choose a more interesting degree and thus be able to contribute.

"i've said it before and i will say it again SHE IS NOT VERY GOOD. 1) she makes shit beats 2) she can't rap 3) she can't sing 4) i don't admire her intentions"

That is a valid argument. However that was not the way he chose to phrase his argument. He made it kind of creepy and a wee bit racist. I have not followed Dissensus so maybe he better articulated his position there but from his blog posts and the voice article it felt as if she had not "suffered enough" for her art.

He then went on to post the fact that he was in fact part Sri Lancan (see I can't be racist cause I am one too) and make a point to show that her politics (whatever they are: something about purple haze and galang alang alang) were flawed by pointing to articles about how bad the Tamil tigers are.

or maybe I just didnt read the work correctly...

http://www.woebot.com/2008/01/farewell.html

No more Woebot blog or posting, but dissensus continues.

as all that kind of stuff went, i rather liked woebot. haven't read anything he's written in about two years, mind.

He hasn't really written that much in two years actually, just a lot of record cover posting and the Woebot.tv thing.

oh, magic! i've missed sod all, then.

d

furthermore it's one of the most tortuously-written, indulgent crocks of shite I've ever struggled through

I'm saying nothing.

Hi everyone! I hope you are well? Dissensus is, I'm sure we can all agree, brilliant.

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Dissensus is, I'm sure we can all agree, brilliant.

I luv Woebot and all that but I never look at Dissensus anymore.

some lol posts from their 'hip hop references that fly over your head' thread

craner
Beast of Burden

Join Date: Oct 2004
Posts: 2,753
Posted 16-09-2009, 05:24 PM #72
Why did Prodigy go to jail? I thought he was a nice middle class chap.