In a new article on the American Prospect site Jeff Chang and Brian Komar argue that:
The Democrats are hurting in a big way after the 2010 mid term elections because they failed to grasp the importance of shaping the narratives through using artists the influence “culture.”
Democrats think that they can focus on policy to move hearts and minds.
“Culture is the space in our national consciousness filled by music, books, sports, movies, theater, visual arts, and media” and that “Cultural change is often the dress rehearsal for political change. Or put in another way, political change is the final manifestation of cultural shifts that have already occurred.”
“When artists tell new stories, they can shift the culture and make new politics possible — cultural strategy is about understanding that fact and empowering artists to do what they do best.”
I couldn’t put my finger on why I was troubled by this article. Talking with Rob helped me to clarify it over email.
Here is what I agree with:
Yes artists have a place in society.
Yes artists can help to create narratives that can help us see new possibilities. The most awesome presentation of “narrative” or a story that I have seen is Danny’s blog “The People’s District” where he goes around DC interviewing people and posting them on his blog. Narratives across race and across age and class, it is one of the freshest things I have seen in a while.
However, what troubles me about the article is that it assumes this kind of top down model of social movement change, instead of a circular one or one of push and pull.
In many ways I see that it is saying, The Democrats need more people, and those people are artists rather than the Democrat’s need to be engaged with basic relationship building and maintenance and doing the things that impact the conditions of the lives of their base (African Americans, Latino’s, LGBTQ folks, Progressive White folks, union folks etc.)
Rob pointed out that in many ways Jeff and Brian’s argument is both pragmatic and rather conservative. Pragmatic because it looks at using existing channels to advance the “Democrats need more people, artistic people” agenda, conservative because it is assimilationist in many ways.
Meaning Jeff and Brian also argue that culture changes first and then electoral politics change.
Whereas I contend that art informs electoral politics/ legal actions and electoral politics and legal actions inform art.
This is what The Culture Wars was about, right?
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We can even take it back to the Birth of a Nation. I would argue that the hearts and minds are where they are, and then the art comes out of that. The art captures where the hearts and minds of folks are first. This is a real Leroi Jones/Baraka reading of art production that I take from Blues People. The audience then shapes what the artist creates. Keep in mind that corporations/the free market also play big role in shaping what artists produce. Dave Chappelle walked away from $50 million, lets ask ourselves why? A question we should always ask is why are these the stories being presented to us?
Another example that we can take it back to rap music, and NWA specifically. NWA because it represented this moment where Black men, living in post-factory cities, who were swooped up in the crack game, were talking about THEIR day to day lives, their narrative, without the explicit intent on getting rich because back then rappers didn’t get “rich” in the way that some are known to be in Forbes magazine listed today.
I had NWA in mind when Rob asked “where is the counter culture that can push back on the main narrative” because “we used to have countercultures and counterpublic spheres that could operate outside the dictates of the market’s logic, everything is within the confines of capitalism now.”
I thought of rap music, skateboard culture and even some blogs. Where is the counter culture?
Art and music, film, books, television are ALL used to help us make sense of our lives.
But honestly, what good is a counter culture or books, art, film, television when half your hood is unemployed? You have a job but you STILL need foodstamps? The bus or subway is crazy expensive and you can’t get to work? You can’t pay your rent or mortgage. You have no money for Christmas presents.
And, what good is a counter culture or culture when, simultaneously the Democrats and Republicans are looking at giving bailouts/tax cuts/wealth redistribution to billionaires and millionaires and other members of the college educated elite when you are barely making the rent, or your child’s college tuition is due, or you need more post-op physical therapy but all your sessions have run out, or you are working but you don’t have enough money to pay back Sallie Mae for your school loans and they are calling you twenty times a day.
Perhaps what we need isn’t just “more artist’s” changing the narrative but the political will to invest in the food, clothing and sheltering, education, and health caring of human beings.
Do Democrats need more artists?
Why not focus on the fact that bailouts for everyday working people is what is needed?
How can Democrats use culture when the free market will take anything, repackage it and sell it right back to you? For example Ice Cube going from NWA to Disney.
Hey MM, I really appreciate your thoughtful response to our piece. I definitely agree that culture is a bottom-up process. That’s been a keynote of all more work. And it is important to note that we are talking here about culture in the largest possible sense–the ideas, images, and stories that make up the mainstream narrative.
Our piece is an intervention directed at the progressive movement, such as it is–at those who are Democrats and those who are not–to recognize that change happens first in the culture.
(I personally couldn’t give a damn about Dems, specifically and generally. I want to reach folks who believe in progressive and radical change.)
Culture sets the parameters for change; it is where the possible is imagined. Think of what happens in the Beltway or in your city council as the very narrowed set of options already the result of cultural shifts.
Brian and I argue that few in the progressive movement think of culture the way that conservatives do. The culture wars–which continue today, eg Wojnarowicz and Chagoya–are the result of conservative cultural strategy.
This strategy creates political will to shut down expression, just as it creates the political will to make shitty tax cut deals. And progressives fold when they bring it. For the past four decades, culture is also where progressive ideas have been rendered “impossible”.
For a lot of reasons, lefties refuse to allow themselves to think of culture in the same kind of way. So it becomes something that is “after-hours”, that we indulge in, that we reward ourselves with. Culture is much more important to people’s daily lives than that. In fact, politics and policy is where some of the people are at some of the time, culture is where most people are at most of the the time.
This is not to argue that cultural shifts always predetermine political change. Much of the frustration we are feeling could be described by citing the gap between what has happened post-hip-hop with the culture and what has not happened in politics. That’s the meta-context of the piece.
So our piece is meant as a corrective. It does come in the immediate context of an election, but we do ask in this instance that you and Rob not to mistake the context of the piece for the content of the piece.
Jeff,
I want to give you props on your piece and your above response. I agree with you that the left more broadly and progressives more specifically need to think more specifically about how cultural spaces have the political to create more the types of movements, ideas, and leaders that could ultimately result in more socially just public policy.
A couple of things.
-when I think of the history of the cultural left in the 20th century, I think of specific locations come to mind: union halls, the black church, the Negro Leagues, the Highlander Folk School, Woodstock, Wattstax, The Castro, anyghettoUSA after ’68. When working people, people of color and other folks marked by their oppression were denied access to the full palette of state rights, they built their own institutions and within those institutions developed radical forms of cultural production that helped sustain their struggles.
I think one of the key things that happens in the postwar period is that these folks started scoring victories. (Some of)The industrial working class became middle-class; black folks could move into the burbs and attend integrated schools; women gained a whole host of new protections under the law; the workplace became less Sterling Cooper and more Dunder-Mifflin.
So when you say, “lefties refuse to allow themselves to think of culture in the same kind of way. So it becomes something that is “after-hours”, that we indulge in, that we reward ourselves with”, I’m not sure if it’s that we don’t take culture seriously (though I suspect you may be right), so much as we have eliminated a large number of the counterpublic spaces where marginalized groups could develop sizable, and most importantly, visible cultural movements.
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for taking the time to comment.
I have a few comments and questions.
Brian and I argue that few in the progressive movement think of culture the way that conservatives do. The culture wars–which continue today, eg Wojnarowicz and Chagoya–are the result of conservative cultural strategy.
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How can the Progressive’s and radicals use the mainstream culture to talk about whats possible in a Democracy, when then mainstream culture is premised on EVERYTHING being for sale.
Culture sets the parameters for change; it is where the possible is imagined.
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I would disagree. It happens both here and in our day to day lives, in how we make meaning of all the janky and awesome things that happen to us on a day to day basis.
In fact, politics and policy is where some of the people are at some of the time, culture is where most people are at most of the the time.
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I hear you, but this still rubs me the wrong way. I think its what I see as the arbitrary distinction between policy + art. I read you as saying that politics/policy is out there (I hold my hand out) whereas culture is right here (I tap on the table.)
However, Policy isn’t some abstract thing if you need to get an abortion and your state has outlawd it.
Policy isn’t some abstract thing if you just paid your rent, you have no money left for food but your income is a smidge too high to qualify for stamps. <<
Hey Renina and Rob,
Thanks for engaging this dope convo!
Rob, we agree with you on your point about the dearth of what you’re calling counterpublic spaces.
We’d point the blame at the right more than the left in terms of eliminating such spaces. If you take what is happening now with the right’s threats post-Juan Williams NPR, for instance, that’s actually the tip of a very long history that goes back a century–with Joseph McCarthy, HUAC, the culture wars, the NEA defunding being some of the lowlights.
What the left has not done, especially since the mid-70s, is to engage, let alone support cultural spaces in the way the right does. (The semantic and ideological separation of culture and politics has deeper roots and impacts here too…but that’s a longer convo.) So that’s the focus of our piece…
More soon, Renina…
Renina,
You write, “(Culture) happens both here and in our day to day lives, in how we make meaning of all the janky and awesome things that happen to us on a day to day basis.”
We think prior question is what is important: Why do people have the sentiments they have? What shapes that? You are accounting for the Where in your statement, but not the Why or the What.
Our argument is that culture (maybe we should use a big C) is driven by a dominant narrative–this goes to your question re: the mainstream (again the where, not the what). The dominant narrative right now happens to be about individualism, “exceptionalism”. It has been for all of our lives.
But history helps here again. The dominant American narrative from the 30s through the late 60s highlighted inclusion and aid. That’s what made the New Deal not just possible–but able to survive upheavals (and then its transformation into the New Frontier and the War On Poverty).
That narrative has its roots in progressive and radical movements at the turn of the millennium. In turn it was advanced by the New Deal through the WPA, where artists created a mainstream that helped Americans imagine overcoming struggle through cooperation and reciprocity. It was the very art that came to define the so-called “American Century”.
Yes, culture actually did that.
Our point about culture and politics and policy is not to rank one or the other. We think it’s clear in our writing that we believe that the both of them work together dialectically.
It’s to say that in this 21st century environment, people are much more engaged in the culture than they are in politics and policy. It’s just a fact. Most of us go to movies, listen to music, play in social media all day everyday. Only some of us are organizing workers, launching campaigns, writing legislation, or rounding up votes.
Again both are really crucial. All we are arguing is that progressives tend to think about the latter when making change, and not the former. We think that’s not just short-sighted, it reveals a poor understanding of how change really happens in society.
Last point to make is that we don’t mean to sound in that last post like we’re tools either.
We can go through every historical moment we listed through the lens of race and argue the counter–that the radicalism of the late 19th and early 20th century also brought the Chinese Exclusion Act, racist violence, the return of the KKK; that the New Deal housing policy catalyzed redlining, racial covenants, and white flight–the beginnings of the new segregation; etc., etc.
We don’t believe culture is a silver bullet. We don’t believe every piece of art is or should be conceived of as revolutionary. We just think culture is a very important front in the struggle and that radicals and progressives need to join that front.
Hi Rob and Jeff,
First, I am thinking of putting these comments on their own wikip page…largely because I think they may be useful to other people who look at the relationship between art+democracy or art + liberation.
Your consent is requested.
That I will address in two seperate posts.
Rob says….
I’m not sure if it’s that we don’t take culture seriously (though I suspect you may be right), so much as we have eliminated a large number of the counterpublic spaces where marginalized groups could develop sizable, and most importantly, visible cultural movements.
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What are these counter public spaces you speak of?
Are there examples of them today? What were they historically. Do you mean Barbershops, salons and church’s? Things like that?
So to build on a point Jeff made, there was a point in our history before the 1950s Red Scare where the radical left in America had specific physical spaces like like union halls or the Highlander folk school where folks could come together discuss ideas and build on exactly what they needed to reimagine a more progressive world. In addition, the state was interested in protecting these spaces and traditions and during the New Deal the WPA was preserving artists and institutions that put progressive ideas into our broader culture.
This led to solidification of some pretty solid discursive spaces as well so a robust cultural front of communists, socialists and folks who were not ideologues but simply fellow travelers could take political ideas and press them into the music, visual and performance art.
For black and brown folks you can think of barbershops, salons and churches, but we should also be thinking of print media, organizations like SNCC, CORE, and the panthers, as well as places like a Howard that could foster an intellectual and cultural vanguard.
I think the idea of a vanguard has been more or less lost when we look at our current progressive culture. In the past, when you are part of an oppressed group or decide to take part in a cultural underground, there were usually rules to learn, terminology to master and certain standards you had to maintain. There was a sense that something was at stake if you succeeded (or that something could be lost if you failed).
I do appreciate that to a degree, our various cultural spaces (blogs, hip-hop, college student groups) are more democratic now and move with a little bit less pretentiousness. At the same time, when groups are less serious about self-policing, there is a sense that the movement becomes more informal; that it becomes a bit more watered down.
I think this feeds into Jeff’s point how nowadays, folks on the left treat culture as an indulgence or something we do after hours.
When De La Soul was talking about “Stakes is High”, they were on to something…