Modern & Im/material Things

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So what happened to rave utopia? This isn’t a simple case of decline, of a lost golden age. Every dance subculture the world over reaches its own compromise with dominant culture - is it fair to say that the ‘dress to impress’ ethos of UK Garage circa 2000 is inherently sexist? Or that Grime’s macho energy and testosterone-fuelled lyrical acrobatics should be dismissed as illegitimate because it appeals largely to young men? Obviously not. But there has been a visible trend, in the UK and elsewhere, away from the unprecedented sense of unity that the dancefloor can provide.

Perhaps it’s in line with the relentless onset of a Neoliberal ideology - set in motion by Thatcher and Reagan - which values the sanctity of the individual over any form of collective spirit. When there’s ‘no such thing as society’, where does that leave social dancing? Rave culture originally set itself up as the antithesis of this shift, but whether through co-option by commercial forces or a more general dispersal across the confused geography of contemporary culture, its boundaries have been eroded over the years, making the battle lines far less clear cut. It’s also harder and harder to find accessible urban spaces in which DJs and dancers can congregate to create this sense of togetherness - soaring property prices and the imperatives of real estate signalled an end to the illegal warehouse circuit which was rave’s backbone, in London and elsewhere.

“The ergonomic dimension of public and political life is nowhere as evident as in contemporary urban environments. Although often in subtle and largely imperceptible ways, the urban fabric is constantly affecting our material and physical well-being as well as the ways in which we relate to each other.Take any random street near you, and you will find a myriad of mundane devices that, day in and out, are silently, but effectively, informing, constraining or allowing the ways in which you move, inhabit and relate in the city and its citizens. One just needs to think about the different types of public benches and the different kinds of being un/comfortably together (or alone) that they afford…It is in this sense that talking about ‘urban comfort’ offers a way to talking about the quality of our public and political life. However, this has hardly been the case. Comfort has usually been considered a purely technical question, not a political one. The ultimate goal of ergonomics has been to comfort users, not citizens. Comfort, in other words, has been about coupling bodies with things to increase fit while preserving functionality, aesthetics and efficiency, rather than about how to couple bodies with environments to increase the quality of public and political life. The Guggengeim lab is, in this sense, a much-welcomed attempt to open up the discussion of ergonomics in urban life and about the need to see comfort, and the processes involved in generating or constraining it, as genuine political questions.”

“When the digital world is so connected with the self, we have the right to know who is real – and when we are escaping reality.”

“The working class is underrepresented on the Internet. Without their voices, their issues are ignored…That chasm is unlikely to break down until everyone has a host of digital production tools at both home and work.”

“We are living in the context of a generation of youth—which is over 60% of our populations—that has grown up as part of a global youth culture equipped with mass communication technologies and amid huge challenges to established powers. I mean, who would have thought the Soviet Union would collapse; or that religion would re-emerge so strongly after decades of attempts to keep it out of politics; or that a woman and former guerilla fighter would be elected president of the largest Latin American country, and a black man would be elected as president of a country that once went to war with itself over racism? This generation is growing up at a time when even what it is to be a man or a woman is being radically redefined.”

“No genre is without its controversial and offensive characters- I’m not naive. I’ve asked myself a thousand times why this is pushing me over the edge. Maybe it’s the access to him (his grotesque twitter, etc). Maybe it’s because I’m a human being, both a girl and a lesbian. Maybe it’s because my mom has spent her whole adult life working with teenage girls who were victims of sexual assault. Maybe it’s because in this case I don’t think race or class actually has anything to do with his hateful message but has EVERYTHING to do with why everyone refuses to admonish him for that message.”

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My opinion is that the left is not able to offer a true alternative to global capitalism. Yes, it is true that ‘capitalism will not be around for ever’ (it is the advocates of the new politics of resistance who think that capitalism and the democratic state are here to stay); it will not be able to cope with the antagonisms it produces. But there is a gap between this negative insight and a basic positive vision. I do not think that today’s candidates – the anti-globalisation movement etc – do the job.

So what are we to do? Everything possible (and impossible), just with a proper dose of modesty, avoiding moralising self-satisfaction. I am aware that when the left builds a protest movement, one should not measure its success by the degree to which its specific demands are met: more important than achieving the immediate target is the raising of critical awareness and finding new ways to organise.

However, I don’t think this holds for protests against the war in Iraq, which fitted all too smoothly the space allotted to ‘democratic protests’ by the hegemonic state and ideological order. Which is why they did not, even minimally, scare those in power. Afterwards, both government and protesters felt smug, as if each side had succeeded in making its point.