tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/postmodernism-10255/articles
Postmodernism – The Conversation
2023-05-26T16:22:07Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205355
2023-05-26T16:22:07Z
2023-05-26T16:22:07Z
Peter Howson: new retrospective reveals how Scots painter found redemption after Bosnian war
<p><a href="https://www.flowersgallery.com/artists/167-peter-howson/">Peter Howson’s</a> story is one of seeking dignity in human suffering and violence, and finding redemption; it is also uniquely Scottish. <a href="https://www.edinburghmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/when-apple-ripens-peter-howson-65">When The Apple Ripens</a>, Howson’s retrospective at Edinburgh City Arts Centre (27 May-1 October), is a timely showcase to celebrate his 65th year.</p>
<p>The exhibition covers three key stages of his life: the early works of portraiture and recording of the aftermath of <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22079683">Thatcherite Britain</a>; the impact of his <a href="http://www.hasta-standrews.com/features/2017/12/5/peter-howson-and-the-bosnian-war">experiences in Bosnia and Kosovo</a>; and finally, his therapeutic <a href="https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10023/21712/Froelich_Peter_Howson_and_The_Language_of_Salvation.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">conversion to Christianity</a> after years of battling with alcoholism and drugs.</p>
<p>Howson studied fine art at Glasgow School of Art (GSA) under the tutelage of head of painting and printmaking, <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/alexander-sandy-moffat">Sandy Moffat</a>, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Moffat was responsible for promoting Howson and his contemporaries <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/features/steven-campbell">Steven Campbell</a>, <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/adrian-wiszniewski">Adrian Wiszniewski</a> and <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/ken-currie">Ken Currie</a> – the “<a href="https://www.lyonandturnbull.com/news/article/bold-figures/">New Glasgow Boys</a>” – who all worked in the GSA classic style of figurative art. Each created narrative paintings based on detailed explorations of realistic characters, but often with exaggerated forms.</p>
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<h2>A Scottish sensibility</h2>
<p>An unmistakably Scottish feature of Howson’s work is the undertone of <a href="https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/sbet/19-2_195.pdf">Calvinism</a> with its God-fearing, joyless culture of toil and penitence.</p>
<p>His unique perspective on the world reflects his experiences of living in the east end of Glasgow. Most of his early work portrayed caricatures of rough, masculine men with exaggerated musculature. In the paintings of the marginalised homeless, such as <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/613">The Heroic Dosser</a> (1987), and others living and working in his neighbourhood, his subjects are imbued with a sense of nobility.</p>
<p>At the heart of his art practice, he explores the extremes of the human condition. He demonstrates empathy, acceptance and respect for worthy subjects, but he has also created works of satire, mockery and derision, attacking the evils of the world. </p>
<p>His artworks are often focused on the dark psyche of the masculine with its capacity to be brutal, violent and destructive, such as <a href="https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/saturday-night-at-glencorse-56566/search/keyword:peter-howson/page/3">Saturday Night at Glencorse</a> (1985). They contain a sense of escalating foreboding and menace. He reserves a particular anger for the inhumanity of the jingoistic far right as can be seen in Psycho Squad (1989) and <a href="https://peterhowson.co.uk/the-blind-leading-the-blind/patriots/">Patriots</a> (1991).</p>
<p>His work often has dark messages contained within, of impending doom, violence and thuggery, with brandished weapons and pitbull terriers. Howson hates bigotry and <a href="https://www.actiononsectarianism.info/children/about-sectarianism/what-is-sectarianism#:%7E:text=In%20Scotland%2C%20the%20word%20sectarianism,can%20lead%20to%20serious%20violence.">sectarianism</a> in all its forms and has sought to use his art to bring all faiths together.</p>
<p>The numerous drumming and dancing characters in his work resonate with the controversial <a href="https://www.theglasgowstory.com/image/?inum=TGSA05149">marching season</a> in Glasgow (and Norther Ireland). Protestants affiliated with the unionist and loyalist <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18769781">Orange Order</a> celebrate historical victories over Catholics in Ireland with marching band parades over the summer. </p>
<p>Howson has always opposed fascism and stands against the rise of the far right in Europe, believing it is one of his life’s works to highlight the effects that these beliefs have on people through his art. At a time when Margaret Thatcher was in power, he called out the right-wing extremists and portrayed the dispossessed with dignity.</p>
<h2>War and peace</h2>
<p>With an obsession around violence and warfare, Howson applied and was <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/1993/06/01/british-war-artist-peter-howson-sent-to-bosnia">commissioned by the Imperial War Museum</a> to record the <a href="https://www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/bosnia/the-bosnian-war/">Bosnian civil war</a> in 1993 as the official war artist. He was sent to capture its ugly destructive truth, and encountered death, brutality, annihilation of communities, ethnic cleansing and traumatised refugees, as can be seen in <a href="https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/cleansed-6059/search/keyword:peter-howson/page/3/view_as/grid">Cleansed</a> and <a href="https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/bosnian-harvest-46886">Bosnian Harvest</a> (both 1994), and Barrier Sunset (1995). </p>
<p>For Howson, life is about violence and confrontation, and in his words, encountering it makes him “feel alive”. But the war had a huge impact on Howson’s mental health and his personal relationships were damaged by his experiences.</p>
<p>On his return, after a period of convalescence, he produced 300 pieces of powerful, shocking and controversial works of art. Influenced by <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/francisco-de-goya">Goya</a>, <a href="https://www.moma.org/artists/1559">Otto Dix</a> and <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/paul-nash-1690">Paul Nash</a>, these works detailed the atrocities and landscapes of devastation he had witnessed. This cathartic output had a cleansing effect on his psyche, and he believed these artworks saved his artistic life.</p>
<p>In coping with his ongoing drug and alcohol addictions, Howson sought out religion as a refuge in therapy which helped give him new purpose. His more recent work has been set around the exploration of strong mythological, Christian and biblical themes.</p>
<p>He explores various aspects of Christ’s life and suffering, he imagines portraits of the apostles, scenes of the crucifixion, the stations of the cross and conjures images of old testament figures, such as Job (2011) and <a href="https://www.artnet.com/artists/peter-howson/terah-father-of-abraham-nw3Sy_5CSE15fq5Z1GswPQ2">Abraham</a>.</p>
<p>Themes of death are explored through Greek mythology, set around journeys through the rivers leading to the underworld, such as Phlegethon (2021). There are similarities (Prophecy, 2016) to the dark works of <a href="https://www.artnews.com/feature/hieronymus-bosch-life-early-works-best-paintings-1202685134/">Hieronymus Bosch</a> whose dreamscapes conjured hell and judgement day. Howson claimed in one interview that he aspires to produce works as sublime as those created by renaissance masters <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/durr/hd_durr.htm">Albrecht Dürer</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giovanni-Bellini-Italian-painter">Giovanni Bellini</a>.</p>
<p>Howson’s work is deeply informed by his experience of growing up in Scotland and all he was exposed to and witnessed in Glasgow. It is also characteristic of the painters who came out of the 1980s Scottish art scene, whose styles reflected an ambivalence about <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/postmodernism#:%7E:text=Postmodernism%20can%20be%20seen%20as,decades%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century.">postmodernism</a>.</p>
<p>Even though this was <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/post-painterly-abstraction#:%7E:text=Post%2Dpainterly%20abstraction%20is%20a,Tate">post-abstract expressionism</a> and well into the era of <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/conceptual-art">conceptual art</a>, many Scottish fine artists of that time, even though most trained at the prestigious GSA, seemed to be stuck in more traditional approaches to portraiture.</p>
<p>Howson’s work has a similar style to other contemporary Scottish artists such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-john-byrne-is-one-of-scotlands-greatest-artists-186961">John Byrne</a>, <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/john-bellany">John Bellany</a> and <a href="https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/artists/alasdair-gray">Alasdair Gray</a> in which he paints the human form often in cartoonish and caricaturic style. Many of the Scottish artists of the time painted with a modernist, illustrative style of storytelling. </p>
<p>Howson’s purpose and dedication to his craft and artisanship are evident, but it is his moving display of human suffering and his pursuit of redemption which mark him out as one of the greatest contemporary British artists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205355/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Blane Savage does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Painting with renewed purpose at 65, Peter Howson has overcome his demons to take his place as one of Britain’s leading contemporary artists.
Blane Savage, Lecturer in Creative Media Practice and New Media Art, University of the West of Scotland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/106929
2018-11-19T22:58:55Z
2018-11-19T22:58:55Z
The trouble with saying ‘it’s okay to be white’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246294/original/file-20181119-76147-1um2aec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 'It's okay to be white' poster campaign, seen in the context of reacting to 'Black Lives Matter,' cannot be seen as benign.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently, posters were <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/hate-messages-university-manitoba-campus-1.4889084">discovered</a> on several walls at the University of Manitoba with the statement, “It’s okay to be white.” Other similar incidents were reported in <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/okay-to-be-white-halifax-1.4887174">Halifax</a>, <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/it-s-okay-to-be-white-poster-pops-up-at-u-of-r-security-investigating-1.4415514">Regina</a> and elsewhere around the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-01/its-okay-to-be-white-signs-appear-outside-mps-offices/10457140">world</a>. Most who saw the paper print-outs denounced them as hate propaganda from <a href="https://www.themanitoban.com/2018/11/decolonization-white-supremacy-and-its-okay-to-be-white/35889/">white nationalists</a>.</p>
<p>Following the incident, some media outlets, including the <a href="https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/police-searching-for-u-of-m-poster-suspects-499723481.html"><em>Winnipeg Free Press</em></a>, received an email from the alleged poster, who claimed he was a University of Manitoba student who papered the walls. </p>
<p>The student said the posters were a “protest of racially discriminatory ideology” taught at the university. He said “many professors explicitly teach in their courses that it is not okay to be white.” He added that he felt the over-reaction to the posters proves the presence of a “white-phobia” on campus.</p>
<p>One <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/metacanada/comments/9tbt1r/cbc_took_the_bait_with_the_its_okay_to_be_white/">Reddit post</a> argued that “CBC took the bait” when reporting on the posters. To people like those commenting on the Reddit thread, the poster campaign was a benign act meant to highlight liberal bias in mainstream media. But is saying “It’s okay to be white” benign? </p>
<h2>Making myths</h2>
<p>Meaning is never produced in a vacuum. Statements have historical and cultural contexts and ideology is embedded in the language we use. Written texts can produce meaning, using rhetorical devices, like metaphor and irony. </p>
<p>Things start getting complicated when we mix up the cultural meanings of things for the literal meanings. The French philosopher <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roland-Gerard-Barthes">Roland Barthes</a> said “myths” are created when we confuse cultural meanings for literal ones. We start to believe that culture is literal instead of made. This is known as denotation versus connotation. </p>
<p>When this happens, a statement that is filled with cultural, historical and contextual biases appears natural and ahistorical. </p>
<p>“It’s okay to be white,” appears to be a literal, or denotative, message, but when we read it in context — against the backdrop of institutionalized <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/the-equity-myth">Eurocentrism</a> and current anti-racist political movements like Black Lives Matter — we see that it is far from benign. </p>
<p>The poster believes that white identities are no longer accepted at the university. He believes a double standard exists in conversations of cultural diversity. This attitude is aligned with the alt-right, a U.S.-based white nationalist movement.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246288/original/file-20181119-76150-fqpfq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246288/original/file-20181119-76150-fqpfq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246288/original/file-20181119-76150-fqpfq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246288/original/file-20181119-76150-fqpfq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246288/original/file-20181119-76150-fqpfq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246288/original/file-20181119-76150-fqpfq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246288/original/file-20181119-76150-fqpfq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">It’s okay to be white poster photographed on the University of Toronto campus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://thevarsity.ca/2017/11/08/group-spotted-putting-up-its-okay-to-be-white-posters-on-campus/">Tom Yun/The Varsity</a></span>
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<h2>The culture wars</h2>
<p>I believe the self-proclaimed alt-right, an offshoot of conservatism that combines elements of racism, white nationalism and populism, is <a href="http://winnspace.uwinnipeg.ca/handle/10680/1465">a symptom of postmodern politics of transgression and subversion</a>. It is a symptom of the diffusion of rebellion into mainstream political rhetoric and discourse. My research looks into the ideologies of <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/postmodern-theory-and-blade-runner-9781501311796/">postmodern culture and the media</a> that includes examining debates about identity politics.</p>
<p><a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-politics/">Identity politics is political or social organizing “intimately connected to the idea that some social groups are oppressed.”</a> University identity politics challenged the modern, the dominant white male narratives, that helped to shape and normalize the culture of colonialism and patriarchy. This challenge has been called <em>postmodern</em>.</p>
<p>The far right as a whole is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfHacDV-oSo">critical</a> of postmodern identity politics, but they unknowingly identify with its practices of expression. What they demonstrate is not a new rise of conservatism, but rather, according to the <em>Washington Post</em>, “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2017/11/03/where-the-alt-right-wants-to-take-america-with-or-without-trump/?utm_term=.614c42690232">a co-opting of 1960s-style liberalism</a>.” </p>
<p><a href="http://www.zero-books.net/books/kill-all-normies">Angela Nagle</a> writes that the online alt-right world is not evidence of the return of conservatism but a turn away from “church-going, upstanding, button-down, family-values conservatism.” It is “the absolute hegemony of the culture of non-conformism, self-expression, transgression and irreverence for its own sake.” </p>
<h2>Consumer culture helps build rebels</h2>
<p>Postmodern identity politics have been incorporated into popular media through consumer culture. Identity is a big part of branding campaigns, diffusing the politics of new social movements into commercial demands for representation, inclusion, diversity and tolerance. </p>
<p>Consumerism also preaches an ethic of non-conformity. Non-conformists are never satisfied with the status quo, continually seeking new ways to subvert it. For the consumer society, a non-conformist creates demand for new commodities. </p>
<p>Therefore, to be a rebel, to transgress and subvert the perceived status quo, is the dominant popular mode of identity. </p>
<p>If postmodern identity politics means subverting the Eurocentric, patriarchal and capitalist ideologies, what results from the subversion of subversion? </p>
<h2>Co-opting the resistance</h2>
<p>This month’s <a href="https://regina.ctvnews.ca/maclean-s-cover-sparking-online-controversy-1.4169525">cover</a> of <em>Maclean’s</em> magazine features an image of Canadian conservative political leaders, including the premiers of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, along with the leader of the federal conservatives, Andrew Scheer, and the leader of the Alberta conservatives, Jason Kenney. The caption that appeared across these men read, “The resistance.”</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1060218161654628352"}"></div></p>
<p>When the left is positioned as the status quo, those opposing them appear as “resisting.” But resisting what? This “resistance” is the basis of the <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/2748-for-a-left-populism">populist moment</a> in politics.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.lacan.com/zizpopulism.htm">Populism is a conservative ideology</a> currently reigning contemporary political discourse. Its strategy is to draw attention away from the real problem and shift it onto a false enemy or intruder whose purging will bring renewed harmony. </p>
<p>In the process, the reigning power is depicted as the resistance, appearing sympathetic towards “the people” against an imagined elite. </p>
<p>In contrast, democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn, described as “left populists,” oppose the prevailing neoliberal capitalism. They assign blame to the contradictions <em>within</em> the system, rather than some enemy or intruder who disrupted the harmony of the system. “Left populism” is, therefore, a misnomer. </p>
<p>Populism is the strategy of the right in the Trump era. Whether it is the “fake media,” political correctness or migrant labour, Trumpian politics always locates some enemy or intruder. This is the populist strategy of reproducing dominance <em>in the guise of resistance</em>.</p>
<p>This is what is truly troubling about the “It’s okay to be white” campaign. It creates the confusing myth that the ruling ideology is the resistance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106929/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Flisfeder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Posters with the phrase “It’s okay to be white” were found around the campus of the University of Manitoba. What does it really mean?
Matthew Flisfeder, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Communications, University of Winnipeg
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/103207
2018-10-03T22:49:20Z
2018-10-03T22:49:20Z
The end of scientific, rational thinking: Donald Trump, Doug Ford and Jordan Peterson
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237853/original/file-20180925-85755-12et16t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Participants in the March for Science, marching on Constitution Ave. in Washington, D.C. in April 2017 after listening to speakers at Washington Monument on a rainy Saturday Earth Day.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This has been a terrible year for science and evidence-based decision making, which are the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/">newest casualties of the growing wave of populism in North America where “postmodern thought … is being used to undermine scientific truths.”</a> </p>
<p>In the United States, President Donald Trump has <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-year-of-trump-science-is-a-major-casualty-in-the-new-politics-of-disruption/">repeatedly made false claims such as those that led to the repeal of environmental protections</a>. </p>
<p>In Ontario, Premier Doug Ford, whose election win symbolized an overthrow of a left-leaning government, has already cancelled the “cap and trade” program for emissions control, moving Canada further away from Kyoto emissions targets accepted by the federal government.</p>
<p>Adding to this is bestselling author and University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson who accuses the liberal left in universities as well as liberal politicians of postmodern thinking. This unrelenting attack on postmodern thinking is the core argument that propelled Peterson to fame.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy">Postmodernism</a>
emerged with views that Western morality and universal truths — as outlined in the modern period of Enlightenment — should be deconstructed. This created a form of skepticism in which Western morality and later science came into question. </p>
<p>One of the erroneous impacts of this new skepticism is the erosion of public confidence in the conclusions of scientific studies. </p>
<h2>The science wars</h2>
<p>Peterson’s well established critique of postmodernism misses how this arena of postmodernism has become dangerous through the deconstruction of science and outright denial of scientific facts.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463968/">Marcel Kuntz argues that this version of postmodernism has led us toward an increasing dissolution of the notion of objective reality</a>. Social critic Noam Chomsky argues that a “turn away from postmodernism” is necessary. He says although <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2013/07/noam-chomsky-calls-postmodern-critiques-of-science-over-inflated-polysyllabic-truisms.html">“there are institutional factors determining how science proceeds that reflect power structures,” that does not mean we should “abuse scientific concepts”</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237851/original/file-20180925-85779-8pssc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237851/original/file-20180925-85779-8pssc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237851/original/file-20180925-85779-8pssc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237851/original/file-20180925-85779-8pssc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237851/original/file-20180925-85779-8pssc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237851/original/file-20180925-85779-8pssc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237851/original/file-20180925-85779-8pssc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Make America Think Again’ among many placards in the March for Science in Washington, D.C. on Earth Day 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What we see with Peterson, Trump and Ford is a new set of values in which science is just another factor in determining reality. Science has lost its primacy.</p>
<h2>Scientific relativism</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/canadian-scientists-open-about-how-their-government-silenced-science-180961942/">political right has embraced scientific relativism</a>. Scientific relativism is based on the idea that scientific observation and analysis are framed within unique cultural biases. </p>
<p>Former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper adopted a cautionary stance against science and <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/second-opinion-scientists-muzzled-1.4588913">muzzled his own federal researchers on climate change</a>. But even this was not the catastrophic rejection of science that has currently evolved. </p>
<p>Peterson refers to all forms of relativism as a form of cancer. But Peterson fails to <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/center-science-and-democracy/attacks-on-science#.W5rEy85KhQI">criticize Trump’s litany of relativistic transgressions when it comes to science</a>.</p>
<p>Even Peterson’s mentor, Bernard Schiff, has now said that <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/2018/05/25/i-was-jordan-petersons-strongest-supporter-now-i-think-hes-dangerous.html">Peterson might be more dangerous than those he attacks</a>. </p>
<p>It is paradoxical that both Trump and Ford are embracing postmodernism much more than the left, which they accuse of the same sin. But the left demand factual evidence for decisions. <a href="https://www.ieta.org/Three-Minute-Briefings/3891688">Cap and trade was selected because the only other alternative is a regulation that denies corporations financial incentives to participate</a>. </p>
<h2>Peterson should challenge science relativism</h2>
<p>One leaves a Peterson lecture with the sense that there is no coherency between ideas; the ground itself has been taken away. He mercilessly opposes unscientific thinking in his discussion of sexual and gender identity. <a href="https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2013/04/universal-knowledge-akashic-records-jung-and-the-unconscious-mind/">But he then jumps to unscientific ideas like Carl Jung’s transpersonal psychology and his mystical collective unconscious in the next breath.</a></p>
<p>Is he a Jungian mystic or the embryology guy who asserts that science confirms <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943">there are only two sexes?</a> Peterson has many followers and they participate in this sustained polemic attack on the left, claiming that moral relativism has left the world in disarray. </p>
<p>Peterson places all blame squarely in the hands of those who fight for social justice and who embrace progressive ideology. <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2003-00782-003">Resistance to change is associated with the political right</a> and he says this is where postmodernism truly dwells. </p>
<p>By focusing on the moral relativism of postmodern thinking and ignoring scientific relativism, Peterson further erodes our ability to think critically. Peterson says that his aim is to build critical thinking in his readers, but his method of analysis is combative and takes no note of the virtues of depolarizing facts.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237852/original/file-20180925-85767-1fdyv25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237852/original/file-20180925-85767-1fdyv25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237852/original/file-20180925-85767-1fdyv25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237852/original/file-20180925-85767-1fdyv25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237852/original/file-20180925-85767-1fdyv25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237852/original/file-20180925-85767-1fdyv25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237852/original/file-20180925-85767-1fdyv25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesters hold signs during Earth Day’s March for Science, April 22, 2017 in Santa Rosa, Calif.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Which Ford will we get today, the one who accepts climate change or the one who denies that regulating emissions is an antidote worthy of analysis? And which Trump will we get today, the one who sees Canada as a partner, or the one who demonizes our trade pacts? </p>
<p>Depolarizing facts are not what make Ford, Trump or Peterson fans tick. They argue for political effect, not to test their own hypothesis of the world. </p>
<p>One leaves both Peterson’s lectures or a Trump rally with a frightening sense of unreality, there is no place that is safe. Your own rationality is called into question. These voices remove safety and then quickly replace it with a new set of basic truths that now stabilize a weakened framework of the world. </p>
<h2>Science rejection</h2>
<p>There is new evidence that <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0259-2">science can neutralize polarizations</a>. This depolarization through independent science may be the antidote for a political sphere that seems about to shatter any form of debate. Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli historian says that although false narratives are nothing new, citing the dogmatic acceptance of religion as an example, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-why-some-fake-news-lasts-forever/">he cautions us to use science as a final arbiter</a>. </p>
<p>Stripped of basic rational coordinates we have no shelter, no starting point for making sense of the world. Similarly, leaving a Ford press conference or a Trump rally (they are interchangeable), one has the same disquieting sense that there is nothing left, all maps have been burned. There is only Ford’s truth, Trump’s declaration or Peterson’s harsh admonitions. They deny us any factual compass. </p>
<p>Instead we have a series of memes and parables, not the pressure gauges and coordinates by which to navigate the challenges that life provides. What has happened to belief in inquiry, and to refutation of that which has no evidence? It has, like a photograph long exposed to light, lost its hues. </p>
<p>Rationality is on the executioner’s block, and the results are predictable if Maoist China is any example. This is the ferment of totalitarianism and by vilifying the left, and ignoring the emotional ramblings of the right, there is little one can do in this intellectual vacuum that remains, but to suffocate. And like a kill on the savannas, suffocation is the pretext to being consumed by a predator.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103207/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Chandross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Rationality is the newest casualty of populist philosophy.
David Chandross, Program coordinator; researcher, Toronto Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/97108
2018-05-23T14:28:59Z
2018-05-23T14:28:59Z
Philip Roth was the best post-war American writer, no ifs or buts
<p>For so long an enfant terrible of the American literary world, by the end of his life Philip Roth had become one of its elder statesmen. In a career that spanned more than half a century, Roth’s work ran the gamut of literary modes and genres. </p>
<p>There’s the high seriousness of <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/20/reviews/roth-letting.html">Letting Go</a> (1962) and the low humour of <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11/specials/roth-great.html">The Great American Novel</a> (1973). There are the extravagant excesses of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/philip-roth-dies-portnoys-complaint-sexually-explicit-novel-masturbation-jewishness-lenny-bruce-a8364821.html">Portnoy’s Complaint</a> (1969), couched in the form of a psychoanalytical monologue, and the pared-down, elliptical exchanges of <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11/specials/roth-deception.html">Deception</a> (1990), a novel written entirely in dialogue. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220149/original/file-20180523-51141-1qp0mp7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220149/original/file-20180523-51141-1qp0mp7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220149/original/file-20180523-51141-1qp0mp7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220149/original/file-20180523-51141-1qp0mp7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220149/original/file-20180523-51141-1qp0mp7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220149/original/file-20180523-51141-1qp0mp7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220149/original/file-20180523-51141-1qp0mp7.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vintage</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Then think of the social realism of <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/20/reviews/roth-goodbye.html?_r=2">Goodbye, Columbus</a> (1959), that’s plot turns on the use of a birth control device in the period prior to the availability of the contraceptive pill, or the grotesque surrealism of <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11/specials/roth-breast.html?_r=1&oref=login">The Breast</a> (1972), the story of a professor of literature who metamorphoses overnight into a giant mammary gland. The versatility and variety of his work doesn’t end there. He also wrote an outrageous satire of an incumbent president in <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/11/specials/roth-gang.html?scp=10&sq=ireland%2520abortion&st=cse">Our Gang</a> (1971) and a dystopian tale of a fascist presidency in <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-frightening-lessons-of-philip-roths-the-plot-against-america">The Plot Against America</a> (2004). </p>
<p>Although the style and content of Roth’s fiction is extraordinarily diverse, there is always audible a distinctive voice: irreverent yet earnest, questioning yet authoritative, subtle and nuanced yet powerful and passionate. But above all, Roth is obsessive, compulsive, restless, driven. </p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2957/philip-roth-the-art-of-fiction-no-84-philip-roth">interview</a> with the Paris Review in 1984, Roth remarked of his 1983 novel <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/roth-anatomy.html">The Anatomy Lesson</a> that: “The book won’t leave you alone. Won’t let up.” This applies equally to all his work. Roth’s work grabs you and won’t let you go. At one point in <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-ghost-writer-by-philip-roth-book-of-a-lifetime-9289818.html">The Ghost Writer</a> (1979) Nathan Zuckerman – the author protagonist of many of Roth’s novels – is told by his mentor, E I Lonoff, that he has “the most compelling voice I’ve encountered in years”. </p>
<p>It is that compelling voice which bewitched me when I read the opening pages of Portnoy’s Complaint as a teenager. It is that voice which still held me in thrall as I read the final words of his final novel, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/03/philip-roth-nemesis-book-review">Nemesis</a> (2010), as a middle-aged professor.</p>
<p>I have been reading Roth for over 30 years and writing about him, on and off, for more than two decades, and as with any long-term relationship, mine with Roth has had its ups and downs. But I have never felt like walking out or giving up. Roth will be remembered – and deserves to be celebrated – for his fearlessness, his formal audacity and stylistic brilliance, and his ability to reinvent himself in unexpected and sometimes startling ways. </p>
<p>In terms of his critical reputation, you could divide Roth’s career into three phases. There are the early successes of Goodbye, Columbus and Portnoy’s Complaint in the late 1950s and 60s, respectively, followed by the relatively fallow years of the 1970s and 80s, and then the triumphant second coming in the 1990s and the 2000s. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220150/original/file-20180523-51135-1hu90pn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220150/original/file-20180523-51135-1hu90pn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220150/original/file-20180523-51135-1hu90pn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220150/original/file-20180523-51135-1hu90pn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220150/original/file-20180523-51135-1hu90pn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220150/original/file-20180523-51135-1hu90pn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220150/original/file-20180523-51135-1hu90pn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vintage</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Yet this narrative is too simplistic. The period of greatest critical hostility and indifference – a period in which, to quote <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KlCEaPfM1NkC&pg=PT130&lpg=PT130&dq=the+anatomy+lesson+philip+roth+any+longer+you%27ll+disappear+right+up+your+asshole&source=bl&ots=3FMIAV9iNl&sig=jhEIaWVp0_6uORIR4RzyRfKuVPY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjvpMjK_5vbAhXMKlAKHacYDRMQ6AEISzAG#v=onepage&q=the%20anatomy%20lesson%20philip%20roth%20any%20longer%20you'll%20disappear%20right%20up%20your%20asshole&f=false">Nathan Zuckerman</a> (pre-empting Roth’s critics, as ever), the author was widely accused of “disappear[ing] right up [his] own asshole” – was also a period of intensive experimentation, which revealed Roth’s refusal to rest on his laurels and determination to interrogate his own aesthetic and ethical beliefs with a rigour of which very few artists are capable. </p>
<p>Although the work produced in the 1970s and 80s was uneven, it paved the way for much of what was to follow and resulted in two masterpieces – The Ghost Writer (1979) and <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/v09/n05/julian-barnes/philip-roth-in-israel">The Counterlife</a> (1986). These novels stand alongside <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/10/books/sabbaths-theater.html">Sabbath’s Theater</a> (1994) and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/11/philip-roth-american-pastoral-sabbaths-theater">American Pastoral</a> (1997) as among the greatest post-war American novels. </p>
<p>Roth was a writer who polarised opinion, provoking strong reactions in many of his readers, but whether you loved him or hated him, his canonical status is beyond question. I believe he will come to be seen not merely as the preeminent post-war American novelist but as the most important American author of the 20th and early 21st centuries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97108/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Brauner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Whether you loved him or hated him, his canonical status is beyond question.
David Brauner, Professor of Contemporary Literature, University of Reading
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81285
2017-07-20T14:06:18Z
2017-07-20T14:06:18Z
I Love Dick: Amazon drama reveals how the male gaze has run out of steam
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179008/original/file-20170720-23992-1i120uw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C1140%2C628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kevin Bacon as the arrogant Dick in the Amazon drama based on Chris Kraus's 1997 novel of the same name.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&hl=en-GB&noj=1&tbm=isch&q=i+love+dick+film&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmws7_15fVAhVBJMAKHTrjDBEQhyYIKQ#imgrc=NqLeUVaUiiI1RM:">Amazon Studios</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For decades we’ve been told that <a href="https://thoughtcatalog.com/madison-moore/2013/02/7-mind-blowing-traits-of-postmodernism/">originality is dead</a>, courtesy of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy">postmodern</a> culture. We have been made to believe that everything these days is copied and recycled, and that we are forever confined to reading and watching the same stories and familiar ideas on a loop.</p>
<p>I believed this popular nonsense until two weeks ago when I first watched Amazon’s new TV series with a deliberately unpalatable title, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/may/11/i-love-dick-review-jill-soloway-transparent-kathryn-hahn-kevin-bacon">I Love Dick</a>. It is the story of an exhausted, failing female film director, Chris (Kathryn Hahn), who chases a famous academic and artist, Dick (Kevin Bacon), all double denim and cowboy boots on horseback.</p>
<p>Based on a <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/05/i-love-dick-amazon-kathryn-hahn-jill-soloway-chris-kraus">1997 novel by Chris Kraus</a>, the series was created by an almost exclusively female team of writers and directors led by showrunner Jill Soloway, creator of hit transgender drama <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/tv-review-transparent-is-damn-near-perfect.html">Transparent</a> for Amazon.</p>
<p>Chris and her husband, Sylvere (Griffin Dunne), first meet Dick in the privileged artists’ colony of <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/08/02/156980469/marfa-texas-an-unlikely-art-oasis-in-a-desert-town">Marfa</a>, Texas, where Sylvere, a Holocaust historian, takes up a position at an arts institute headed by Dick himself. At the first meet-and-greet, Chris is referred to dismissively as “the Holocaust wife”. </p>
<h2>A woman undone</h2>
<p>Despite being married, the female protagonist stalks her handsome, blue-eyed and mysterious cowboy by following him around, breaking into his house and writing him endless letters bursting with highly embarrassing, obsessive confessions and fantasies. </p>
<p>The very first episode was quite a shock, but not because of the abundance of sexual references, or nudity, or swear words – they have become so commonplace on screen that we have been pretty desensitised to them.</p>
<p>I have simply never seen a female character presented in such a candid way on screen before – so awkward, so clumsy, so raw. She has been divested of the mask of “prettiness” or “passivity” demanded by society and falls in love with someone off limits, declaring her feelings for him openly and publicly. At one point she prints out the letters and sticks them to every public building in town.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179013/original/file-20170720-23995-xy0kh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179013/original/file-20170720-23995-xy0kh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179013/original/file-20170720-23995-xy0kh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179013/original/file-20170720-23995-xy0kh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179013/original/file-20170720-23995-xy0kh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179013/original/file-20170720-23995-xy0kh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179013/original/file-20170720-23995-xy0kh2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Twenty years after it was published, I Love Dick is receiving the attention it is due, thanks to a TV adaption.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&hl=en-GB&tbm=isch&q=kathryn+hahn+i+love+dick&oq=&gs_l=#safe=off&hl=en-GB&tbm=isch&q=+i+love+dick&imgrc=qh10tkSSrUQ2fM:">Matthes & Seitz Berlin</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then I had an epiphany: most of the <a href="https://postmodernisminanutshell.wordpress.com/thinkers/">postmodern theorists</a> were male. It is easy to see why they concluded that every creative possibility had been exhausted. In their world, they have. There is nothing new left to say about the male protagonist off in search for life’s meaning.</p>
<p>Until fairly recently, we have viewed the world through the male gaze: men fighting enemies, men in love, men obsessed, men failing, men winning. Basically, this is men taking matters into their hands, arranging and reflecting the world the way they see it. They own the perspective, they own the “gaze”, as the feminist author Laura Mulvey argued back in 1975 in her seminal essay <a href="http://www.luxonline.org.uk/articles/visual_pleasure_and_narrative_cinema%28printversion%29.html">Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema</a>.</p>
<p>Men look and women accept the fact that they are being looked at, and try to be behave accordingly – as prey, as a treasure or as a victim. The woman is not a person, but an empty vessel, a mirror, an object. </p>
<h2>Reversing the male gaze</h2>
<p>A guru overseeing a small circle of people, Dick likes to control his followers by intimidating them with his inflated theories of art, creativity and life. Surrounded by passive admirers who nod as he explains his trite and boring ideas, he feels safe and in control. Chris is perfect for this kind of treatment – she already lacks confidence, and Dick singles her out for his devastating gaze. What Dick does not know, however, is that not only is Chris not a “victim” – she has enough creative force and agency to break him, to topple him from his pedestal. With Chris, Dick soon finds he is not in control.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179014/original/file-20170720-24011-97vxqt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179014/original/file-20170720-24011-97vxqt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179014/original/file-20170720-24011-97vxqt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179014/original/file-20170720-24011-97vxqt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179014/original/file-20170720-24011-97vxqt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179014/original/file-20170720-24011-97vxqt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179014/original/file-20170720-24011-97vxqt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kathryn Hahn as Chris, a woman whose sexual obsession fuels her creative energy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?safe=off&hl=en-GB&tbm=isch&q=kathryn+hahn+i+love+dick&oq=&gs_l=#imgrc=ywjY2p6oY8fvvM:">Leann Mueller/Amazon Studios</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In order to reverse the gaze, the female characters of I Love Dick have to be über-confident, to the extent of being arrogant. In a world in which the “looking woman”, the female agent as opposed to the female object, is still seen as something unnatural, arrogance seems to be the only way out. Chris turns the tables on Dick, and starts treating him as fantasy, as an object of her unstoppable, mad obsession – forcing her vision of Dick on to Dick the person. </p>
<p>Another notable story is that of Paula (Lily Mojekwu), Dick’s assistant at his art gallery. Paula has a fresh vision for the place and wants to inject a variety of diverse contemporary artists, but her ideas are constantly rejected by Dick as unworthy; everything he ends up displaying reflect entirely his own minimalist tastes. And as a black woman, traditionally subjugated by the white male gaze, her position is doubly precarious. </p>
<p>Constantly undermined, Paula nevertheless tolerates Dick’s oppressive behaviour until she can no longer live with it. When she announces her resignation, Dick (by now worn out by Chris’s obsession) tells her that he is leaving, and the gallery is hers. At last, she can fully realise her vision unbound.</p>
<h2>Taking back control</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179012/original/file-20170720-23995-emb8v9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179012/original/file-20170720-23995-emb8v9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179012/original/file-20170720-23995-emb8v9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179012/original/file-20170720-23995-emb8v9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=616&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179012/original/file-20170720-23995-emb8v9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179012/original/file-20170720-23995-emb8v9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179012/original/file-20170720-23995-emb8v9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=774&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick is delighted with the TV adaption of her book which has a led a whole new generation of women to her writing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Chris+Kraus&safe=off&tbm=isch&tbs=rimg:CQBJOlEB0PBxIjgZP6yaU7HV-GDn8vd3BY2GmjJXGA1QJdJ49Kdw2pSgmpebKMC-DERtLnM59p6MGbvw6aUjw6LQMSoSCRk_1rJpTsdX4ETd6L1yyvp8IKhIJYOfy93cFjYYRLxjj3JeNlA4qEgmaMlcYDVAl0hHiCRScZV8zTioSCXj0p3DalKCaES3aqI39wuAWKhIJl5sowL4MRG0Rnn1_1PCaA-H4qEgkuczn2nowZuxHFq5ifVzP62ioSCfDppSPDotAxESxybTwnWiAr&imgrc=-x-NxkoGwUH8nM:&ei=ro1wWb3SFYnQgAa0iIfABA&emsg=NCSR&noj=1#imgrc=ePSncNqUoJqkiM:">Christian Werner</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Women insisting on their right to exist outside the male gaze, to have their own vision – be it awkward (like Chris’s films), scandalous (like Chris’s letters), or brilliant (like Paula’s taste in artwork) – and make it a reality, is still a rare subject on screen. Only a handful of shows deal with it: Netflix’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/03/netflix-orange-is-the-new-black-accurate-prison">Orange is the New Black</a>, BBC’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/aug/05/fleabag-a-hilarious-sitcom-about-terrible-people-and-broken-lives">Fleabag</a> and HBO’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/feb/04/how-lena-dunham-show-girls-turned-tv-upside-down">Girls</a>. </p>
<p>Importantly, I Love Dick has a positive message for men, too: the female gaze is not scary, monstrous or threatening. On the contrary, it can improve male creativity. Collectively, Chris, Paula and and the other women in their orbit drag Dick and Sylvere out of their creative and spiritual stagnation, challenge their perspective and make them think and live again. </p>
<p>Ultimately, I Love Dick is a rallying call for a reset of the female-male dynamic: looking at each other can be an equal exchange and a dialogue rather than a just a one-sided power play. But most of all, it underscores how badly we need to tell stories from new and different perspectives in TV and film.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81285/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helena Bassil-Morozow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The relevance of the female gaze is brought sharply into focus in this funny, shocking and groundbreaking drama
Helena Bassil-Morozow, Lecturer in Media and Journalism, Glasgow Caledonian University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74937
2017-04-10T12:35:08Z
2017-04-10T12:35:08Z
Post-truth could herald the real end of history – we must ensure it doesn’t
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164677/original/image-20170410-8834-7608w9.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">© Richard Mosse: still frame from Incoming, showing at the Barbican Centre's Curve gallery.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Now showing at the London Barbican’s Curve gallery, <a href="https://www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery/event-detail.asp?ID=19949">Incoming</a> is an exhibition by photographer Richard Mosse. It uses military imaging equipment to depict migrants seeking entrance to Europe and the “incoming” fire aimed at the regions they have migrated from. </p>
<p>In stately style, <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/arts/richard-mosse-incoming-exhibition-review-a-stunning-shaming-spellbinding-show-a3469061.html">Mosse’s work</a> removes both migrants and military personnel from the constant churn of mediocre journalism and calls out for people to come together on the level of our common humanity, where universal truth is also to be found. </p>
<p>This makes Incoming the best possible antidote to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08bb6rd">feuds</a> over <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/post-truth-isn-t-a-good-word-of-the-year-to-tell-you-the-truth-1.2872309">“post truth”</a> which have dominated <a href="http://www.thebookseller.com/news/evan-davis-joins-post-truth-publishing-deluge-514691">in the media</a> during the past few months. In the aftermath of last year’s electoral upsets in Britain and the US, there was a tit-for-tat spat which <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-surprising-origins-of-post-truth-and-how-it-was-spawned-by-the-liberal-left-68929">I and many others</a> entered into vigorously.</p>
<p>In one corner, were the disappointed Remainers and Hillary Clinton supporters who claimed that millions of Leave/Trump voters were <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/campaign/311829-budowsky-2016-the-year-sanders-soared-clinton-sunk-trump-won">living under the influence</a> of “fake news”, in a “post-truth” world that was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/15/post-truth-named-word-of-the-year-by-oxford-dictionaries">impervious to the facts</a>. </p>
<p>In the other, Brexiteers, Trumpeters and some such as myself who supported neither Brexit nor Trump but who argued that it is the political elite which has failed, rather than ordinary people’s powers of discrimination, and that terms such as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/02/why-fake-news-targeted-trump-supporters/515433/">“fake news”</a> and “post-truth” have been bandied about in order to displace the elite’s inadequacy onto the masses.</p>
<h2>Birth of the Millennials</h2>
<p>I have not changed my position, but I am also aware that complaining of “elitism” does not constitute a sufficient response to the current situation. It is a situation that has crystallised in the Brexit vote and the election of President Trump, but these events are the outcome of a lengthy process which dates as far back as the birth of the Millennials. </p>
<p>During the time it has taken the Millennial Generation to more-or-less mature, so much has changed that traditional position-mongering is bound to be found wanting. The Millennials’ formative experience has been <a href="https://ps321.community.uaf.edu/files/2012/10/Fukuyama-End-of-history-article.pdf">“the end of history”</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164679/original/image-20170410-8846-1j3j0vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164679/original/image-20170410-8846-1j3j0vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164679/original/image-20170410-8846-1j3j0vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164679/original/image-20170410-8846-1j3j0vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164679/original/image-20170410-8846-1j3j0vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164679/original/image-20170410-8846-1j3j0vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164679/original/image-20170410-8846-1j3j0vo.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">©Richard Mosse. Still frame from Incoming, showing at The Barbican’s Curve gallery.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Strictly speaking, this declaration, issued by Washington insider <a href="https://fukuyama.stanford.edu/">Francis Fukuyama</a> after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, was far from accurate; rather, history unfroze when <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/">Cold War</a> <a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/%7Eafilreis/50s/anticom-network.html">anti-communism</a> ceased to be the organising principle of an American-led status quo. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the concept of “the end of history” is still valuable if we see it as an abbreviated turn of phrase which really refers to the demise of historical thinking; an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/j/jacoby-utopia.html">end to the era</a> in which most people thought of themselves as makers of history, with the capacity to shape the world anew according to their understanding of the common good.</p>
<p>Similarly, “post-truth”. Used as an underhand attack on “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/sep/10/hillary-clinton-half-of-trumps-supporters-go-into-the-basket-of-deplorables-video">the deplorables</a>”, post-truth is itself deplorable. But the term becomes useful if we read it as shorthand for life after the pursuit of truth – that is, a way of life in which there is apparently no way to separate fact from fiction. </p>
<h2>Fact or fiction?</h2>
<p>Seen in this light, post-truth emerges as the corollary of the end of history; together these terms define an era in which pursuing the truth hardly seems pertinent because however hard you look, and even if you find it, you cannot expect to change anything, anyhow. </p>
<p>Given the collective fact-checking nous of the internet, the proportion of the populace which really cannot distinguish reality from fantasy, is likely to remain limited. But even if the vast majority has not lost its common sense, it is becoming less clear how much we all have in common. </p>
<p>Would-be unifying projects, from <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html">the “war on terror”</a> to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/20/the-big-society-civil-exchange-audit-shows-coalition-contempt-and-hypocrisy">the Big Society</a>, are regarded with suspicion, along with the very <a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/p-2696-fleeing-the-universal.aspx">idea of the universal</a>. More readily credible are the opposite but complementary trends towards hyper-localism (stay put and shut out the rest of the world), and hyper-globalism (travel the world but without touching down long enough to feel any friction). </p>
<p>These trends are identified as the “somewheres” and “anywheres” in David Goodhart’s newly published <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/22/the-road-to-somewhere-david-goodhart-populist-revolt-future-politics">The Road To Somewhere</a>. In different ways, both trends reflect the “postmodern” hostility towards <a href="http://doras.dcu.ie/4684/2/grand_narratives_HS98_doras.pdf">grand narratives</a>, and both were oft-praised when largely confined to the middle classes and their immediate clientele. But now that the “plebs” are in on the first of these, as journalist Melanie McDonagh points out, it is casually <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/books/the-road-to-somewhere-the-populist-revolt-and-the-future-of-politics-by-david-goodhart-review-a3497871.html">condemned</a> as parochial.</p>
<h2>A new ‘hunger for wholeness’</h2>
<p>Thankfully, the narrow horizons of post-historical thinking are partly offset by a wide-eyed “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/75/1/151/127683/Weimar-Culture-The-Outsider-as-Insider-By-Peter?redirectedFrom=PDF">hunger for wholeness</a>” – historian Peter Gay’s pithy description of alienation and the complementary yearning for fulfilment in the service of something greater.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164680/original/image-20170410-8873-79qwxb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164680/original/image-20170410-8873-79qwxb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164680/original/image-20170410-8873-79qwxb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164680/original/image-20170410-8873-79qwxb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164680/original/image-20170410-8873-79qwxb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164680/original/image-20170410-8873-79qwxb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164680/original/image-20170410-8873-79qwxb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">©Richard Mosse. Still frame from Incoming, showing at The Barbican’s Curve gallery.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A “Hunger for wholeness” is evident today in the vast numbers of people constantly uploading their everyday life onto social media, in a forlorn attempt to lift it above the level of banality. </p>
<p>It was present in the popular response to <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Mega-event-Cities-Urban-Legacies-of-Global-Sports-Events/Viehoff-Poynter/p/book/9781472440174">the London Olympics and Paralympics</a>, when the mass of spectators transfigured a relatively small number of elite athletes into the representation of all humanity (at our very best). It may be discernible in today’s “populist” revolt against elites, which, for all its celebration of local particulars, has already become so widespread that it cannot but point towards the universal.</p>
<p>In such circumstances, perhaps there is a need new kinds of popular culture capable of capturing the defining characteristics of particular news stories and bringing these to the level of abstraction where our common humanity is to be found. So art, journalism and perhaps something in between, might help to reconstitute the general public.</p>
<p>The point is to ensure that “the end of history” and the age of “post-truth” become the bookends of a brief hiatus in the long sweep of human history-making – not the twin towers of a corrosively <a href="https://www.abdn.ac.uk/idav/documents/Lyotard_-_Postmodern_Condition.pdf">postmodern condition</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Calcutt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It needn’t end this way.
Andrew Calcutt, Principal Lecturer in Journalism, Humanities and Creative Industries, University of East London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68929
2016-11-18T07:31:48Z
2016-11-18T07:31:48Z
The surprising origins of ‘post-truth’ – and how it was spawned by the liberal left
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146406/original/image-20161117-18108-16xjrp7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Not much of that about...</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Post-truth” has been announced as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/15/post-truth-named-word-of-the-year-by-oxford-dictionaries">Oxford Dictionaries’ international word of the year</a>. It is widely associated with US president-elect <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/opinion/campaign-stops/the-age-of-post-truth-politics.html">Donald Trump’s extravagantly untruthful assertions</a> and the working-class people who voted for him nonetheless. But responsibility for the “post-truth” era lies with the middle-class professionals who prepared the runway for its recent take-off. Those responsible include academics, journalists, “creatives” and financial traders; even the centre-left politicians who have now been hit hard by the rise of the anti-factual.</p>
<p>On November 16, 2016 Oxford Dictionaries announced that “post-truth” had been selected as the word which, more than any other, reflects “the passing year in language”. It <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/post-truth">defines “post-truth”</a> as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. </p>
<p>The word itself can be traced back as far as 1992, but documented usage increased by <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37995600">2,000% in 2016 compared to 2015</a>. As Oxford Dictionaries’ Casper Grathwohl explained:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We first saw the frequency really spike this year in June with buzz over the Brexit vote and again in July when Donald Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination.</p>
<p>Given that usage of the term hasn’t shown any signs of slowing down, I wouldn’t be surprised if post-truth becomes one of the defining words of our time.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Punditry on the “post-truth era” is often accompanied by a picture either of Donald Trump (for example, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37995600">BBC News Online</a> or <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/15/post-truth-named-word-of-the-year-by-oxford-dictionaries">The Guardian</a>) or of his supporters (<a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/11/post-truth-politics-dont-be-so-patronising/">The Spectator</a>). Although The Spectator article was a rare exception, the connotations embedded in “post-truth” commentary are normally as follows: “post-truth” is the product of populism; it is the bastard child of common-touch charlatans and a rabble ripe for arousal; it is often in blatant disregard of the <em>actualité</em>.</p>
<h2>The truth about post-truth</h2>
<p>But this interpretation blatantly disregards the actual origins of “post-truth”. These lie neither with those deemed under-educated nor with their new-found champions. Instead, the groundbreaking work on “post-truth” was performed by academics, with further contributions from an extensive roster of middle-class professionals. Left-leaning, self-confessed liberals, they sought freedom from state-sponsored truth; instead they built a new form of cognitive confinement – “post-truth”.</p>
<p>More than 30 years ago, academics started to discredit “truth” as one of the “grand narratives” which clever people could no longer bring themselves to believe in. Instead of “the truth”, which was to be rejected as naïve and/or repressive, a new intellectual orthodoxy permitted only “truths” – always plural, frequently personalised, inevitably relativised. </p>
<p>Under the terms of this outlook, all claims on truth are relative to the particular person making them; there is no position outside our own particulars from which to establish universal truth. This was one of the key tenets of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/postmodernism-philosophy">postmodernism</a>, a concept which first caught on in the 1980s after publication of Jean-Francois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition: A Report On Knowledge in 1979. In this respect, for as long as we have been postmodern, we have been setting the scene for a “post-truth” era.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146407/original/image-20161117-18134-17v752g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146407/original/image-20161117-18134-17v752g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146407/original/image-20161117-18134-17v752g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146407/original/image-20161117-18134-17v752g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146407/original/image-20161117-18134-17v752g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146407/original/image-20161117-18134-17v752g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146407/original/image-20161117-18134-17v752g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A new economy: no truth here.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-447476002/stock-photo-modern-city-diorama-and-wireless-sensor-network-sensor-node-and-connecting-line-information-communication-technology-internet-of-things-abstract-image-visual.html?src=SIjy5SHF_szTlLFFrdaqgg-1-7">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>And these attitudes soon spread across wider society. By the mid-1990s, <a href="http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2032138,00.html">journalists were following academics in rejecting “objectivity”</a> as nothing more than a professional ritual. Old-school hacks who continued to adhere to objectivity as their organising principle were scolded for cheating the public and deceiving themselves in equal measure. </p>
<p>Nor was this shift confined to the minority who embraced war reporter Martin Bell’s infamous “<a href="https://thatspikesnotsharp.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/journalism-of-attachment/">journalism of attachment</a>”, which supported the idea that journalists should respond personally to events. Under the flag of pragmatism, the professional consensus allowed for a lower-case version of truth, broadly equivalent to academic relativism – which nonetheless dissociated professional journalism from the allegedly anachronistic quest for the one true truth, as in Ivor Gaber’s <a href="theendofjournalism.wdfiles.com/local--files/ivorgaber/Ivor%20Gaber.doc">Three Cheers For Subjectivity: Or The Crumbling Of The Seven Pillars Of Journalistic Wisdom</a>. But this shift meant that journalists were already moving towards a “post-truth” age.</p>
<h2>Meanwhile, in the ‘creative’ economy …</h2>
<p>In the second half of the 1990s, branding comprised the core business of the newly categorised “<a href="http://www.heartfield.org/Creativity_Gap.pdf">creative industries</a>”. Bright young things generated fast-growing revenues by creating a magical system of mythical thinking known in shorthand as “the brand”. </p>
<p>Branding came to be seen as far more important than the mundane activity of product design, development and manufacture. In Britain, <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/culture/2013/01/meeting-our-makers-britain%E2%80%99s-long-industrial-decline">as the latter went into decline</a>, the simultaneous expansion of City-type activities meant that the national economy was reconfigured around whatever the next person was prepared to believe in, which is as close as financial markets ever get to the truth. In Western economies, this system of managed perceptions and permanent PR – promotional culture as a whole way of life – has now largely replaced the incontrovertible facts of large-scale manufacturing. </p>
<p>Throughout the second half of the 1990s and into the new century, there was optimistic talk of a “<a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/neweconomy.asp">new economy</a>”, driven by the expansion of technology and the internet. It was seemingly based on a whole generation of “symbolic analysts” – Robert Reich’s term for “<a href="http://prospect.org/article/importance-symbolic-analysts-working-america">the workers who make up the creative and knowledge economies</a>” – happily <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/feb/01/livingonthinair.extract">living on thin air</a>. </p>
<p>Even then, there were concerns that the associated media sector was a living example of the Emperor’s New Clothes, as illustrated by television’s “self-facilitating media node”, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/feb/10/nathan-barley-charlie-brooker-east-london-comedy">Nathan Barley</a>. But it is now clear that in moving inexorably towards free-floating, barely verifiable “intangibles” (a buzzword of the time), the millennial hybrid of creative and financial services was also a stepping stone to “post-truth”.</p>
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<h2>Political post-truth</h2>
<p>But the political realm experienced parallel developments, too, and they were similarly aligned to the trend towards “post-truth”. In the US, Bill Clinton initiated the transformation of politics into “showbiz for uglies” – a show of inclusivity performed in a series of shared national experiences. In the UK this was exemplified in Tony Blair’s role at the forefront of public reaction to the death of Princess Diana. The extent to which such phenomena are best understood as myth rather than reality, has been well illustrated in the recent film <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-hypernormalisation">HyperNormalisation</a> by Adam Curtis. </p>
<p>By the turn of the century, government was already less about the “truth” than about how “truths” could be spun. So-called <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/alastair-campbell-spin-iraq-recurring-nightmare-about-tony-blair-gordon-brow-a6952921.html">“spin doctors”</a> took centre stage; it was government by PR – and the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/chilcot-report-inquiry-tony-blair-iraq-war-spin-unspun-a7123741.html">Iraq War was a prime example</a>. Facts, apparently, took a back seat. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146409/original/image-20161117-18128-1f3l6vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146409/original/image-20161117-18128-1f3l6vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146409/original/image-20161117-18128-1f3l6vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146409/original/image-20161117-18128-1f3l6vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146409/original/image-20161117-18128-1f3l6vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146409/original/image-20161117-18128-1f3l6vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146409/original/image-20161117-18128-1f3l6vg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Let me spin you a yarn…</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-447476002/stock-photo-modern-city-diorama-and-wireless-sensor-network-sensor-node-and-connecting-line-information-communication-technology-internet-of-things-abstract-image-visual.html?src=SIjy5SHF_szTlLFFrdaqgg-1-7">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Meanwhile, the art of government was also being dumbed down into “evidence-based” managerialism – the largely exclusive process with which “Washington insider” Hillary Clinton has been unfavourably associated. </p>
<p>As further practised by Tony Blair, during his stint as UK prime minister, outgoing US president, Barack Obama, and their respective administrations, the subdivision of politics into (a) cultural experience and (b) management, has made a dual contribution to the social construction of “post-truth”. </p>
<p>As the protagonists neared the role of a priest or pop star in their near-mythical performances, so the Clinton-Blair-Obama triad has moved politics further away from truth and closer to the realm of the imagination. Meanwhile, in the hands of managerialists what was left of the truth – “the evidence base” – was soon recognised by the wider population as a tool for use in social engineering, and largely discredited as a result – hence the mounting hostility towards experts, on which Brexiteer <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/10/michael-goves-guide-to-britains-greatest-enemy-the-experts/">Michael Gove</a> sought to capitalise in the run-up to the EU referendum. </p>
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<p>On both counts, prominent representatives of the centre-left prepared the ground for the post-politics of “post-truth”. The irony is that some of their closest relatives have been the first casualties of its further realisation.</p>
<p>“Post-truth” is the latest step in a logic long established in the history of ideas, and previously expressed in the cultural turn led by middle-class professionals. Instead of blaming populism for enacting what we set in motion, it would be better to acknowledge our own shameful part in it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68929/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Calcutt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Brexit and Trump aren’t to blame. The rise of ‘post-truth’ is rooted in the middle-classes, not the masses.
Andrew Calcutt, Principal Lecturer in Journalism, Humanities and Creative Industries, University of East London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/66881
2016-10-14T06:19:24Z
2016-10-14T06:19:24Z
My smartphone, myself: digital separation anxiety in the postmodern world
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141271/original/image-20161011-11998-177mi4v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Are we living in a postmodern screen dream?</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Has this ever happened to you: you accidentally leave your cell phone at home, and it feels like your soul has stayed there with it? Your nerves crackle, you feel short of breath – in short, you panic. The specific reaction to a forgotten device depends on the individual, but in the end it’s basically separation anxiety: you find yourself far from something that’s really important to you. </p>
<p>In today’s technology-driven reality, we are seeing the emergence of this new symptom – what I call “anxiety of the disconnected”. It may sound trite, but the phenomenon is real enough to have been studied.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.gabinete.mx">Gabinete de Comunicación Estratégica</a> in Mexico confirmed in a 2016 study that 25% of the country’s population has felt sad or anxious upon not receiving a “like” on their Facebook status, or when they lose internet connection. </p>
<p>In the United States, psychological studies on the <a href="http://www.psychguides.com/guides/computerinternet-addiction-symptoms-causes-and-effects/esides">relationship between internet connectivity and anxiety</a> have shown that additional symptoms include headache, disturbances in sleep and strained vision.</p>
<p>Teachers see it all the time. Just recently, at the <a href="http://www.imced.edu.mx/portal/index.php">Instituto Michoacano de Ciencias de la Educación</a>, the teachers’ college where I work, one of my students started yelling, “S**t! S**t!”, surprising his peers with his profane outburst. “I forgot my …” He rifled through his backpack, taking out books, papers, emptying out everything. But to no avail: the smartphone wasn’t there. I could see the anxiety on his face, as if he’d lost a piece of himself. </p>
<h2>I tweet, therefore I am</h2>
<p>What is the source of the anxious feeling? Is it really related to the forgotten object? A postmodern analysis suggests otherwise. </p>
<p>Here’s a quick refresher on postmodernism as a concept. According to French philosopher <a href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/idav/documents/Lyotard_-_Postmodern_Condition.pdf">Jean-François Lyotard</a>, the postmodern world can be understand as a modern life distinguished by the losses of the “big references”: myth, religion and philosophy. This represents a void experience, which we try to fill through consumerism. </p>
<p>That’s when the disconnection happens, because buying doesn’t satisfy us. But in fact the disconnection has already happened anyway: we are born disconnected, lost in the virtual reality that is our lives. Or at least that’s what many people feel, including children, who now engage in <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/the-socially-anxious-generation/384458/">less social play</a> due to digital attachments. </p>
<p>For the postmodernist, then, the real cause of anxiety upon forgetting a cell phone is not the disconnection from the digital world per se, because it has never filled the void left by the loss of big references. Rather, it’s that the subject is suddenly left undefended against the terrible reality of confrontation with others.</p>
<p>Without a screen that lets me disappear into the realm of the imaginary, I must confront the other, face to face – necessitating conversation, discussion, perhaps sometimes even a fight. </p>
<h2>Adding friends and erasing them</h2>
<p>Polish sociologist <a href="cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2015/12/30/babelia/1451504427_675885.html">Zygmun Bauman</a> has said, “what social networks create is a substitute … you can add friends or erase them, control the people with whom you interact.” </p>
<p>It’s true – in real life, how do you erase someone? How can you block them, or unfriend them? </p>
<p>You can’t. That’s why people increasingly <a href="http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/278620/people-prefer-social-media-to-face-to-face-communi.html">prefer social networks</a> and the life they facilitate. And if there’s no virtual contact or connection, the normal psychological response is to feel anxiety, of course – not due to our distance from the virtual world, however, but because when we are disconnected, we cease to be the subjects of our own reality and are subjected to reality itself. </p>
<p>But even when we in tune with our digital social networks, we know from the testimony of psychoanalysis patients that over-reliance on technological relationships can dangerously shrink our worlds. Loneliness becomes desolation, connectivity becomes mechanicity; the subject, neglected, contracts, a condition that can <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477910/">increase the risk of suicide</a>. </p>
<p>Even if we enjoy the richness of excellent digital connectivity, it comes at the cost of poor social relations. These are, in the end, a critical part of human existence. </p>
<p>So based on the psychoanalytical literature and philosophical truth, we know that the anxiety of the disconnected isn’t because one feels separated from humanity. No, the anxiety comes from the opposite direction: from feeling too close to humanity, too near to the other.</p>
<h2>Digital Narcissus</h2>
<p>If the subject is disconnected, they have no choice but to face their spouse, their children, their father, whomever else. It is a hard thing to confront one another using words, to dialogue, make agreements, find peace. </p>
<p><a href="http://sms.sagepub.com/content/1/2/2056305115606750.full">Conflict management on Facebook</a> differs from that required in real life, as numerous <a href="http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/06/chapter-5-conflict-friendships-and-technology/">studies</a> have shown.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141276/original/image-20161011-12005-1o14q47.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141276/original/image-20161011-12005-1o14q47.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141276/original/image-20161011-12005-1o14q47.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141276/original/image-20161011-12005-1o14q47.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141276/original/image-20161011-12005-1o14q47.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141276/original/image-20161011-12005-1o14q47.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/141276/original/image-20161011-12005-1o14q47.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>That anxiety you feel when you realise you’ve left behind your smart phone? It isn’t about the object you forgot so much as what it represents: a social function that you must now perform in person.</p>
<p>No screen to sink into, like <a href="http://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/narcissus-myth-echo/">Narcissus</a> drowning in his own image. No, the smartphone-less subject must engage, reposition themselves vis-a-vis the other – a real, living, breathing human being that dreams, desires and conspires, and whom she cannot erase nor often even choose. </p>
<p>And that, indeed, is an anxiety-producing fact.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66881/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Abraham Martínez González does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Angst when you forget your smartphone is not only a real psychological phenomenon–it also highlights a quintessentially postmodern problem: what the author calls the “anxiety of the disconnected”.
Abraham Martínez González, Professor of Psychology, Instituto Michoacano de Ciencias de la Educación
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/46350
2015-12-11T13:19:00Z
2015-12-11T13:19:00Z
Star Wars: escapist fantasy or dream of the future?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104688/original/image-20151207-3108-xiju7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=423%2C3%2C1241%2C855&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2015 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Right Reserved.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In certain corners of the internet a modern myth celebrates the idea that Ben Rich, the former CEO of Lockheed Martin “<a href="http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk/us/aeronautics/skunkworks.html">Skunk Works</a>” – the legendary and highly secretive wing of Lockheed Martin concerned with aircraft development – concluded a 1993 presentation at UCLA with the blockbuster line: “We now have the technology to take E.T. home.” </p>
<p>How we engage with scientific and technological progress has long been influenced by science fiction. Science fiction provides a testing ground for <a href="https://theconversation.com/past-visions-of-future-cities-were-monstrous-but-now-we-imagine-a-brighter-tomorrow-29188">future visions</a> informed by areas as diverse as biological and mechanical engineering through to political, social and ethical concerns. Such visions often combine the optimistic with the pessimistic. They draw upon the genres of utopian and dystopian storytelling that date back to Plato’s vision of Atlantis.</p>
<p>When the first Star Wars film was released in 1977 it was embraced as an <a href="http://example.com/">escapist fantasy</a> – a “space opera” offering “pure entertainment”, as <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/herocomplex/la-et-hc-flashback-george-lucas-making-star-wars-20151206-story.html">George Lucas intended</a>. But when, finally, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/star-wars">The Force Awakens</a> next week it will reach a very different generation, <a href="http://buzzaldrin.com/space-vision/generation-mars/">referred</a> to by Buzz Aldrin as #GenerationMars; a generation who are used to interactive objects speaking back at them. We are now adapting to a world where what was once considered science fiction often blurs into science fact. The alternate reality visualised in Star Wars is now potentially much closer to home.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104691/original/image-20151207-3139-1i2l8sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104691/original/image-20151207-3139-1i2l8sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104691/original/image-20151207-3139-1i2l8sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104691/original/image-20151207-3139-1i2l8sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104691/original/image-20151207-3139-1i2l8sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104691/original/image-20151207-3139-1i2l8sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104691/original/image-20151207-3139-1i2l8sn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Fact or fiction?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2015 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved</span></span>
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<p>A lot has changed since the original Star Wars film in 1977; even since the last release in 2005. So when The Force Awakens presents the powerful ongoing saga of good versus evil, always hinting at a tantalising utopian future, it speaks very differently to a 21st-century audience. And as such, the film may help cement a revitalised faith in modernism for the 21st century.</p>
<h2>Grand narratives</h2>
<p>In the early 20th century, modernism embraced science and technology as a driving force for social and cultural development. Coupled with this vision was belief in a “grand narrative” of progress: we knew what we were doing and science and technology were part of building towards utopian-inspired goals. Western culture was fuelled by a deep-set faith in science and technology to drive the human race forward. The popular visual language of sci-fi, which sees technology and science as helping to design dreamworlds (or construct self-inflicted nightmares), was also largely put in place under modernism.</p>
<p>But around the middle of the century, following the discovery and use of the atom bomb, that belief in overarching progress began to waver. And culturally, modernism gave way to postmodernism and the suggestion that the human race has no idea where we are headed. </p>
<p>The worlds visualised by influential postmodern authors such as J G Ballard, William Burroughs, Philip K Dick, and William Gibson, to name a few, are contradictory and complex. Futuristic films such as Bladerunner (1982), The Matrix (1999), District 9 (2009), Equilibrium (2002) and the Mad Max franchise (from 1979 onwards) depict post-apocalyptic or damaged societies where existence has been reduced to survival. Perhaps the most haunting of these future visions is Cormac McCarthy’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/nov/04/featuresreviews.guardianreview4">The Road</a> (2006), made into a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0898367/">film</a> in 2009, with its bleak and naturalistic depiction of a familiar yet ruined world in the early 21st century.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sGbxmsDFVnE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But The Force Awakens arrives at a time when a cultural belief in “grand narrative”, driven by design innovation, appears to be re-emerging. While a secure and sustainable future for planet Earth and the human race is <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/paris-2015">far from guaranteed</a>, certain hopeful visions of the future formulated in the early 20th century are now an increasingly familiar part of the science and technology that surrounds us.</p>
<p>Ongoing advances in engineering and computing provide us with embedded technologies, wireless global communication, architectural marvels and skylines that look like scenes from a sci-fi movie. We have seen phenomenal developments in robotics and tentative moves towards <a href="https://theconversation.com/your-questions-answered-on-artificial-intelligence-49645">artificial intelligence</a>. Biological and medical science continues to map genetic materials and has moved so far that we now debate whether certain <a href="https://theconversation.com/bionic-power-trousers-could-help-us-get-up-the-stairs-38115">“bionic” capabilities</a> could and should exceed natural human limits.</p>
<p>The recent discovery of <a href="https://theconversation.com/exoplanet-kepler-452b-offers-a-glimpse-into-the-future-fate-of-our-earth-45144">Kepler 452b</a>, nicknamed “Earth 2.0”, is just one story in an ongoing stream of futuristic media reports. We’re talking about space travel as <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-space-tourism-travelling-faster-than-space-law-43586">tourism</a>; <a href="https://theconversation.com/mars-is-the-next-step-for-humanity-we-must-take-it-36688">independent wealth</a> being thrown at finding “extra-terrestrial” life and exploring space; renewed political will for national and international space programmes; discussions and reports about <a href="https://theconversation.com/nasa-streaks-of-salt-on-mars-mean-flowing-water-and-raise-new-hopes-of-finding-life-48182">life on other planets</a> and human <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-close-are-we-to-actually-becoming-martians-48074">migration</a> to the stars. All of this is compounded by amazing <a href="https://theconversation.com/hubble-in-pictures-astronomers-top-picks-40435">photographic</a> and scientific data being collated about our galaxy and what might lie beyond.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104690/original/image-20151207-3131-lqyn6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/104690/original/image-20151207-3131-lqyn6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104690/original/image-20151207-3131-lqyn6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104690/original/image-20151207-3131-lqyn6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104690/original/image-20151207-3131-lqyn6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104690/original/image-20151207-3131-lqyn6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/104690/original/image-20151207-3131-lqyn6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">C-3PO isn’t such a fantastical idea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2015 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Right Reserved</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hopeful futures</h2>
<p>Some of the future technology seen in films such as Spielberg’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/">Minority Report</a>, based upon a Philip K Dick short story from 1956, already exists (interactive glass screens and display panels). The physics represented in sci-fi fantasies, such as Christopher Nolan’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/interstellar-gives-a-spectacular-view-of-hard-science-33991">Interstellar</a> and Alfonso Cuarón’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-gravity-does-not-deserve-the-best-picture-oscar-23625">Gravity</a>, potentially make these films suitable as inspirational teaching tools.</p>
<p>Not many actually expect to find a socialised universe of alien beings, space federations and intergalactic war zones. Despite this, Star Wars: The Force Awakens epitomises the excitement and ambition associated with the growing potential for future space travel. The next Star Wars is going to be watched by a generation for whom space ships and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-build-a-real-lightsaber-51000">lightsabers</a> aren’t beyond imagination. Star Wars therefore feeds into a cultural narrative about life amongst the stars and faith in human technological progress. It’s no longer simply an escapist fantasy, a dream.</p>
<p>But there is the dark side to consider.</p>
<p>Offering sweeping cultural statements about the resurgence of a modernist belief in progress is a glib observation in the face of very real contemporary threats. Widespread economic and social hardships, the threat of global warming and destructive geo-political situations currently define the early 21st century. So while a grand narrative of progress may be reasserting itself within western culture, it’s possible that this renewed hopeful vision of the future is born out of pessimism rather than optimism.</p>
<p>Perhaps we need this resurgent grand narrative of future survival among the stars because of a collective fear that we are destroying the planet we already have.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46350/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The alternate reality visualised in Star Wars is now potentially much closer to home.
Kevin Hunt, Senior Lecturer in Design, Culture and Context, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/38887
2015-03-25T10:00:53Z
2015-03-25T10:00:53Z
Michael Graves sought to create joy through superior design
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75839/original/image-20150324-17675-1iewkqj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Architect and designer Michael Graves in a 1962 photograph. Graves passed away earlier this month.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.wttw.com/img/graves/timeline/1962-2.jpg">PBS</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Visit the <a href="http://michaelgraves.com">website</a> of designer Michael Graves, and you’ll be greeted with the words Humanistic Design = Transformative Results. The mantra can double as Graves’ philosophy. For Graves – who passed away at 80 earlier this month – paid no heed to architectural trends, social movements or the words of his critics. Instead, it was the everyday human being – the individual – who inspired and informed his work.</p>
<p>During a career that spanned over 50 years, Graves held firm to the belief that design could effect tremendous change in people’s day-to-day lives. From small-scale kitchen products to immense buildings, a thread runs throughout his products: accessible, aesthetic forms that possess a sense of warmth and appeal.</p>
<p>Early in his career, Graves was identified as one of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/11/books/architecture-view-a-little-book-that-led-five-men-to-fame.html">New York Five</a>, a group of influential architects who whole-heartedly embraced <a href="http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2008/may-june/what-is-modernism.html">Modernism</a>, the architectural movement that subscribed to the use of simple, clean lines, forms devoid of embellishments and modern materials such as steel and glass.</p>
<p>However, Graves is best described as a Post-Modernist. He eschewed the austerity of Modernism and its belief that “less is more,” instead embracing history and references to the past. He rejected the notion that decoration, or ornament, was a “crime” (as Austrian architect Adolf Loos <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=-SxEbXFg7ZEC&q=adolf+loos+ornament+and+crime&dq=adolf+loos+ornament+and+crime&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PRIPVfjwG8yaNqKMgLgI&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA">wrote</a> in 1908); rather, he viewed it as a way for his architecture to convey meaning. </p>
<p>As the noted architectural historian Spiro Kostof explains in his book <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-history-of-architecture-9780195083798?cc=us&lang=en&">A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals</a>, “Post Modernists turn to historical memory…to ornament, as a way of enriching the language of architecture.” </p>
<p>Kostof continues by postulating that this form is attractive to the general public because its qualities – such as the use of vibrant colors – are visually appealing. To appreciate the structures, viewers don’t need to be well-read or understand the “true meaning” of the architectural gestures used. </p>
<p>Along these lines, Graves loathed the idea of intellectualizing his structures. Instead, he sought to make them accessible, understandable and poignant to all passersby. In buildings like Disney’s Michael D. Eisner Building and the St. Coletta School in Washington, DC, we see how he operated. Rather than using graceful <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/gr/c/caryatid_from_the_erechtheion.aspx">caryatids</a> to support the roof, Graves has the Seven Dwarfs of Snow White happily supporting the triangular pediment of the structure.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75832/original/image-20150324-17716-1vkqxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75832/original/image-20150324-17716-1vkqxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75832/original/image-20150324-17716-1vkqxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75832/original/image-20150324-17716-1vkqxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75832/original/image-20150324-17716-1vkqxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75832/original/image-20150324-17716-1vkqxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75832/original/image-20150324-17716-1vkqxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75832/original/image-20150324-17716-1vkqxif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Seven Dwarfs appear to literally hold up the roof of the Michael D. Eisner Building.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Teamdisneyburbankbuilding.jpg">Coolcaesar/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the St. Coletta School, Graves employed vibrant colors, various roof lines and striking shapes to create a total of five different and distinct “houses” for the building. But it all serves a purpose: to help the building’s students – children with severe mental disabilities – easily navigate and identify the various sections of the school.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75833/original/image-20150324-17716-2ud4gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75833/original/image-20150324-17716-2ud4gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75833/original/image-20150324-17716-2ud4gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75833/original/image-20150324-17716-2ud4gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75833/original/image-20150324-17716-2ud4gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75833/original/image-20150324-17716-2ud4gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75833/original/image-20150324-17716-2ud4gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75833/original/image-20150324-17716-2ud4gd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Graves divided the St. Coletta School into five ‘houses,’ each with its own unique elements.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ncindc/2940368983/in/photolist-5tQafX-kgQRt-p2wgV2-82xYmH-82xYe6-82B7wU-82xYh4-82xYgp-82xYeP-82xYnX-82B7EU-82xYhD-82xYfH-82B7Db-82B7E5-82B7FY-82xYix">NCinDC/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In addition to designing buildings, Graves embarked upon a long and highly successful partnership with the Italian kitchenware company <a href="http://www.alessi.com/en">Alessi</a>, which made sleek household items such as bowls and metallic coffee pots. Graves’ most famous Alessi design is his iconic teakettle (formally known as the 9093 kettle), which had a cheerful red whistling bird and sky-blue handle. On sale since 1985, the best-selling product is still in production today.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75834/original/image-20150324-17680-z99irc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75834/original/image-20150324-17680-z99irc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75834/original/image-20150324-17680-z99irc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75834/original/image-20150324-17680-z99irc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75834/original/image-20150324-17680-z99irc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75834/original/image-20150324-17680-z99irc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75834/original/image-20150324-17680-z99irc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75834/original/image-20150324-17680-z99irc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Graves’ iconic 9093 kettle for Alessi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/dinnerseries/10139775603/in/photolist-gs212i-nCJFh4-gs1sve">Didriks/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1999, Minneapolis-based discount retail giant Target approached Graves with an offer to design a line of kitchen products, ranging from toasters to spatulas.</p>
<p>While some might have shied away from having their work associated with a mega-corporation like Target, Graves wholly embraced the project. To him, the end result was all that mattered: he believed that producing affordable, well designed everyday items would make people happy. And Target would simply give him a platform to accomplish this. </p>
<p>In all, Graves collaboration with Target would last 13 years; during this time, the designer would become a household name, with millions of units of his products appearing in American homes.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75837/original/image-20150324-17699-jn6b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75837/original/image-20150324-17699-jn6b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75837/original/image-20150324-17699-jn6b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75837/original/image-20150324-17699-jn6b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=725&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75837/original/image-20150324-17699-jn6b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75837/original/image-20150324-17699-jn6b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75837/original/image-20150324-17699-jn6b6k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=911&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Michael Graves’ toaster for Target: unique, affordable and visually pleasing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/15348347944/in/photolist-GaBW-dMyDzt-pohi7G-4pnKmE-B64wf">Wally Gobetz/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Many of Graves’ designs for Target – his spatula, can opener and ice cream scoop – had chunky, sky-blue handles. Other appliances that were white (such as his toaster and electric hand mixer) were sprinkled with touches of color – a bit of yellow or red or blue to make the appliances pop out. Black and beige had no place in Graves’ palette.</p>
<p>The option to select a better-looking product with a slightly higher price versus the same article but with a less expensive, nondescript appearance is now the norm for most consumers: good design (and function) are part and parcel of the customer experience (nowhere is this more evident than in Apple’s rise to dizzying heights as arguably one of the world’s <a href="http://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/">most valuable brands</a>). </p>
<p>It’s an idea that’s democratic in nature, and thinking about design through this lens led Graves to create thoughtful, appealing and affordable products for the masses. Other designers, most notably Charles and Ray Eames – with their iconic mid-century <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/search/eames%20plywood%20chair">molded plywood chairs</a> – also subscribed to this mindset. (“We wanted to make the best for the most for the least,” the husband and wife duo <a href="http://www.eamesoffice.com/the-work/the-best-for-the-most-for-the-least/">once said</a>.)</p>
<p>As Graves’ popularity rose, his critics leveled blistering commentaries about what they deemed a precipitous fall from grace – from a “trend beyond compare” to a “stale trend,” as architecture critic Herbert Muschamp <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/14/garden/graves-s-progress-from-paper-visions-to-giant-teakettles.html">noted</a> in a 1999 New York Times article. The notion that he had commodified design – and had somehow “cheapened” it – drew the disdain of those who once lauded his works. </p>
<p>Yet Graves remained true to his beliefs even into the last phase of his life. In 2003, after an illness left him paralyzed below the waist, he realized that the design of hospitals and equipment used by patients, doctors and nurses could be redesigned and made more functional, comfortable and visually appealing. He then went on to improve ubiquitous devices such as <a href="michaelgraves.com/portfolio/stryker-prime-tc-transport-chair/">wheelchairs</a> and <a href="michaelgraves.com/portfolio/kimberly-clark/">walking canes</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75835/original/image-20150324-17693-6rrh61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75835/original/image-20150324-17693-6rrh61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75835/original/image-20150324-17693-6rrh61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75835/original/image-20150324-17693-6rrh61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75835/original/image-20150324-17693-6rrh61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75835/original/image-20150324-17693-6rrh61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75835/original/image-20150324-17693-6rrh61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/75835/original/image-20150324-17693-6rrh61.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Towards the end of his life, Graves was inspired to improve upon existing products for the physically impaired, like walking canes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wallyg/15350990283/in/photolist-kgQRt-7BPHK1-8YeWgw-34xLgd-qk6QXz-7BPJgN-povQAg-pohi3o-qkgxdv-fDdjz2-Kckxb-amHEWZ-5rEsFR-4U7WRa-5SLKsV-4KmrJA-4KmrKu-83PheS-4KhaDg-3nSGEW-qkdbvG-qkdbro-an8yoj-34Ydj3-4KhaMc-yba8B-q3HBjG-78Pvv5-pohi7G-8HoLve-XXKFK-hzB1t-5HLmt9-6GE6JJ-b6CBup-5srrqp-6bHpq7-zoA7k-6yXNSV-Kcky1-nTwQj3-8U1oNh-pT4Hi2-pSUJzQ-pSUJGU-ahvcri-qaqyph-amHx9c-amLgkf-amLyNs">Wally Gobetz/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Consumers may not have ever known his architecture or what the critics thought of his work (or even realized they were buying one of his products). Graves didn’t seem to mind. His goal was to provide well-designed items for everyday use rather than impress his detractors.</p>
<p>As he <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/03/13/392845757/michael-graves-renowned-architect-who-designed-products-for-target-dies">told</a> NPR in 2002, “It’s the kind of thing where you pick something up or use it with a little bit of joy…it puts a smile on your face.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
From his line of Target homeware to his one-of-a-kind buildings, Michael Graves was inspired by the basic needs of everyday people.
Catherine Anderson, Assistant Professor of Interior Architecture and Design, George Washington University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24534
2014-05-12T04:09:20Z
2014-05-12T04:09:20Z
Explainer: what is modernism?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47845/original/dhz6wsjh-1399343353.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Modernism is typified by a commitment to exploratory experimentation. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe by Edouard Manet (1862-63), Wikimedia Commons </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I first came across modernism through the lens of postmodernism in the early 1980s. At that time postmodernism – <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-postmodernism-20791">explained here</a> – was washing through the academy, promising to transform everything by placing art, the most sophisticated theory, rock music, and television on the same continuum of analysis. </p>
<p>One problem I soon noticed was that aspects characterised as “postmodern” in visual arts could often be identified in modernism.</p>
<p>For instance, postmodernism typically tells us that modernism sets up a rift between high and low culture. Yet modernism’s challenge initially stemmed from breaking down barriers between high and low culture. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48018/original/bqwkp58z-1399511462.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48018/original/bqwkp58z-1399511462.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48018/original/bqwkp58z-1399511462.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48018/original/bqwkp58z-1399511462.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48018/original/bqwkp58z-1399511462.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48018/original/bqwkp58z-1399511462.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1323&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48018/original/bqwkp58z-1399511462.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1323&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48018/original/bqwkp58z-1399511462.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1323&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Bottle of Anís del Mono, 1914, Queen Sofia Museum, Madrid, Spain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, those making <a href="https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/glossary#avant-garde">avant-garde</a> art departed from classical allegories, history painting and heroic portraiture in order to portray the immediate, everyday life in front of them. In Cubist works by artists such as Braque, Picasso and Gris, you won’t find nymphs in the glen, but café tables, music sheets, product packaging, newspapers, wine glasses and bowls of fruit. </p>
<p>Modernist art consciously engages with everyday life. The difference is that it focuses on processes of representation. Manet, in his infamous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Edouard_Manet_-_Luncheon_on_the_Grass_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe</a> (main image), treats conventions of the nude as a form of pastiche, parodying its convention of conjoining various sources to evoke a perfection never attained in any one mortal. </p>
<p>Particularly after the first world war, one of the main aims was to make the latest aesthetic offerings available to all social classes. This is true of early modernist design and architecture. Many innovations drew from proletarian sources such as theatre by German playwright Bertolt Brecht or industrial production.</p>
<p>The modernist tactic of flattening perspective and techniques for rendering realistic representations are formal innovations that appear to make art more simplified and less skillful.</p>
<p>Modernism is typified by a general commitment to exploratory experimentation. Yet it also comprises a wider process that elevates challenge, critical autonomy and creative innovation. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47847/original/f2f8x43c-1399345037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47847/original/f2f8x43c-1399345037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/47847/original/f2f8x43c-1399345037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47847/original/f2f8x43c-1399345037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47847/original/f2f8x43c-1399345037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47847/original/f2f8x43c-1399345037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47847/original/f2f8x43c-1399345037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/47847/original/f2f8x43c-1399345037.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Igor Stravinsky as drawn by Pablo Picasso.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bibliothèque nationale de France</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This questioning mode sets it apart from traditional cultural imperatives, accepted conventions, or academic rules that ensured some form of recognisable cultural standards. </p>
<p>Implicit in modernism’s challenge is the idea that predetermined rules, cherished precedents or even shared parameters of understanding need not necessarily govern or guide future cultural expression. This is a new cultural horizon.</p>
<p>The most immediate impact of such transformed cultural expectations is that innovative modernist art is not always well understood or recognised when first produced. Famous examples include the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/feb/12/rite-of-spring-stravinsky">bellicose initial reaction</a> to Russian composer Stravinsky’s ballet score for The Rite of Spring in 1913, now considered a 20th-century modernist classic.</p>
<h2>Ramifications</h2>
<p>There are other consequences that are not so readily obvious, but they help to explain the wider cultural ramifications of modernity.</p>
<p>First, modernism does not mean that the past is simply forgotten or eliminated.</p>
<p>Instead, works of the past are all treated as a type of archive of possibilities to be freely adopted, re-evaluated, or even ignored, as changing historical and social circumstances permit.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Visitors look at a projection of a self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh in Tel Aviv, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/ Oliver Weiken</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Second, if culture is historical, then it can also be transformed. The dictum “make it new!”, <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/06/09/080609crbo_books_menand">issued</a> by American poet Erza Pound in 1934, is not only a cry for innovation as a core artistic goal, but also implicitly upholds the proposition that a culture can be remade and reworked according to changing circumstances.</p>
<p>Third, modernism is part of a wider inquiry of self-reflexive scrutiny of one’s practices and knowledge claims. </p>
<p>In science, <a href="http://www.princeton.edu/%7Eachaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Falsifiability.html">falsification</a> becomes pivotal. In the arts, modernism accentuates alertness to art’s own historical and stylistic conditions of possibility, and even questions what art is.</p>
<p>In the wake of modernism, it has become a commonplace assumption that art will test established ways of perceiving things or even the establishment itself. But that does not mean that such challenge is always welcomed. For more than 100 years, someone or other has complained that constant challenge risks tearing the social fabric apart, or <a href="https://theconversation.com/luca-belgiorno-nettis-should-just-buy-a-yacht-24355">artists have gone too far</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/dramaticworksofg01haup">The Weavers</a> (<em>Die Weber</em>) written by German playwright Gerhart Hauptmann in 1892 is a telling example of testing the boundaries of convention and socio-political acceptability. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 1897 poster for a performance of Die Weber by Emil Orlik.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Prussian authorities imposed a ban on the play because it sympathetically portrayed the Silesian weavers’ revolt of 1848. The Weavers became a popular success because it was able to reach broader audiences in the then emerging alternative, working-class theatre venues. In fact, the play’s major innovation was to feature the workers’ revolt as its central “character”. </p>
<p>There was also a utopian dimension to modernism that harboured grand ambitions of resolving all social-cultural tension and achieving a higher resolution in art as well as at the social level. </p>
<p>You can see this in Russian composer Alexander Scriabin’s score for Mysterium which he started writing in 1903 – he envisioned it to be a <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-synesthesia/">synesthetic</a> experience performed over a week in the Himalayas. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mSWuUuySFyU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Alexander Nemtin’s realisation of Scriabin’s incomplete magnum opus.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The work culminates in the revelation of the final mystery in which humanity dissolves and wondrously transforms into a higher life form. The score remained incomplete at the time of Scriabin’s death in 1915.</p>
<h2>Is modernism over?</h2>
<p>Well, it is certainly an old term. But the term “contemporary” has been around for a long time too. Postmodernism seems to have been and gone. Yet, the focus on “creative innovation” is championed more than ever, but on a broader level that has extended well beyond the arts.</p>
<p>Modernist artists working nearly a century ago seem more optimistic in retrospect, but their hope was tinged with concern. In the wake of the first world war, there was widespread consternation in Europe that nothing so disastrous could happen again. </p>
<p>If the mood was more “utopian”, it often sprung from a perceived need to reinvigorate thinking and life in the aftermath of decayed aristocratic systems. </p>
<p>Of course, worse could and did happen.</p>
<p>But have we seen a complete cultural paradigm shift in recent decades? One difficulty is that the general modernist propositions of challenge, self-scrutiny, and dissent are difficult to overturn or exceed because critique necessarily confirms a commitment to them.</p>
<p>One definite change is that art today is more concerned with investigating society’s failures, or exploring often-unacknowledged tensions, particularly at the periphery of society – <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-2014-adelaide-biennial-contemporary-art-as-it-was-meant-to-be-23033">seen recently in Dark Heart</a> at the 2014 Adelaide Biennial.</p>
<p>This exploration may signal that one aspect of the modernist drive remains undiminished — its critical side — while the utopian side has waned.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24534/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew McNamara does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
I first came across modernism through the lens of postmodernism in the early 1980s. At that time postmodernism – explained here – was washing through the academy, promising to transform everything by placing…
Andrew McNamara, Professor, Head of Visual Arts, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.