A kung fu fighter in a disco

The backlash is kind of dim in that it doesn't seem to be rooted in anything anyone is actually writing or doing. At least a lot of attacks on rockism tended to have specific examples of discourse that they were cross about. The 'popism backlash' has - what? Some trolling by The Lex on the Stylus singles jukebox?

And it's not as if I - as an apparently stereotypical 'popist' - don't do things that invite that kind of analysis. I help run a pop club. I have a blog reviewing #1 singles. There's surely plenty of nuts-and-bolts material there for people to criticise if they want to.

Oddly during my bout of insomnia last night I started drafting a quick piece for Stylus about 'hacking' ones music taste.

From:

zenith.livejournal.com

I help run a pop club. I have a blog reviewing #1 singles. There's surely plenty of nuts-and-bolts material there for people to criticise if they want to.

Oh, but there'll be no fun for the backlashers if they have to actually engage with the generous and reasonable instances of actual existing pop(p)ism!

From:

The trouble with going back to the listener is that -- and I think Tom I were talking a bit about this at the weekend -- the way people code their responses (i.e. explain them to others when asked, and possibly to themselves when they think about things) may well be intrinsically rockist. Rockism for me isn't an ideology, i.e. a conscious set of values which we can choose to hold or not hold, but a name for something like our background cultural assumptions (embedded in practices as well as words & concepts). This is why any revolt against rockism can always be held to have failed (and returned to an alternative form of rockism), since to totally disconnect from that background (which may not even be possible) would mean being unable to explain ourselves to anyone within it (c.f. those who have left the cave in Plato). Pop-ism, or poptimism -- a name I prefer -- might be seen as an attempt to construct a line of flight from rockism (which probably acknowledges that it can't actually escape if it's honest) along which interesting encounters might take place. It thus has a moral edge over rockism, since by being part of the cultural background, to be rockist is to take on trust rather than to think for yourself, so fails the Kantian definition of moral autonomy (which itself runs into problems, but is a useful rule of thumb here). The proof of poptimism's power as a strategy is the extent to which it makes others feel threatened. Poptimism for me would be a continual interrogation of your own assumptions and their objectivity, not a return to subjectivity.

From:

1/ Much musical discourse, I expect, will be intrinsically rockist in terms of ranking tracks, end of year lists and canons, yes, even perhaps saying, "I like when the beat drops out" I suppose...but what would be the poptimist way of outlining a response be? Am I to suppose that you don't think this is possible?

1b/ So, do you think use can be made of rockist response? Canons are a interesting example. I saw an ILM discussion about an ILM canon; I can only presume that if this community continues then there will develop a canon here. It seems to me a useful way of what you were referring to as an interrogation of our assumptions. As in "This is good", why? should it be grouped with this other "good" track and so on. The problem with objectivity here is doesn't it make songs etc kind of totemic? We all stand around and worship them and stare at them ponderously and then it just becomes another canon and not the interrogative device...

2/ Also, is poptimism a single line of flight, a single path to follow, and then isn't just like Kant's categorical imperative OR is it a more personal thing? As in, it allows us to forge a looping and winding path of our own?

From:

Sorry that last part should read: "and then isn't IT just like Kant's" etc...

From:

I don't think poptimism needs a particular response to rockism -- it IS a response, as in an attempt at a different way of living (I like Tom's idea of hacking your music taste very much) i.e. it is a moral activity (but in post-C18th discourse, morals and criticism are directly hardwired together, which is why rockism is so affective, and arguing about music really is arguing about (the good) life. Accepting you may never escape 'rockism' would be a guardrail against thinking you can (the path which leads to the 'radical' and 'subversive' fallacies, or the 'innocent', 'neutral' and 'natural' fallacies (which all return the operator directly to rockist jail [do not pass go, do not collect 200 credits].) It wouldn't mean not trying.

And yes, the other half of my argument would indeed be that rockism might not be as rockist as all that: canons and things which present themselves as 'objective' are both active and evolving i.e. the fact that the canon is secretly very flexible is the best thing about it. The listmaking on ILM isn't really about canons, so much as a long bout of mutual masturbation (in the bad sense) aka community building, circling the wagons.

I don't think we need some kind of return to objectivity in the sense of something which lasts 'for all time', just the recognition that judgements of taste need to be linked to history / truth rather than simply a question of 'this is what I like, and this is how / why it moves me in the way it does'. Of course those questions aren't a waste of time, they just don't go far enough. Also I suspect most rock talk has space for them anyway (guilty pleasures?): they don't undo the 'some music good, some music bad' front directly.

And no, poptimism is either a) a name for 1 line of flight (but is probably itself already multiple, since it is only a name, and you can see we all think it means something different already) or b) a name for all those lines of flight (but I think that would be misleading, because by definition what we are trying to escape is the authority of the single name, even when that name acknowledges multiplicity: rockism has space for pluralism).

The problem with the categorical imperative as I see it, is that it is an impossible ideal: which doesn't lessen its force. (actually this is a bit more complicated, by I don't have time to explain). Similarly in this particular line of flight, the aspiration to 'pop' would be impossible, but that would not make it any less desirable. The risk is that this line of flight is rather more rockist in some senses, since it implies a continuous self-overcoming which can only be grasped in terms like 'authenticity'... This would be the sadism of the categorical imperative (smells of cruelty -- nietzsche) coming back to haunt us. So another popism would be the negotiation between this moral poptimism, and e.g. pleasure. Also the recognition that rockism is, like dubdobdee's THING, not as monolithic or even as 'rockist' as it might at first seem.

So hacking your music taste would include hacking the imperative to hack, which is both continuing and turning back on 'hacking' / poptimism. (This is my understanding of what happens in my two favourite philosophers, at least).

From:

Dude! Please be clear that I'm not baiting or winding you up, btw! :) I've never really thought of judgements of taste as linked to truth...but, actually, linking it to morals in this way, it's starting to become a bit clearer for me...

You are a scholar and a gent. I wish you did have the time! :(

Tom, come back and talk about taste-hacking. I'm not sure I quite understand.

From:

Oh no I appreciate the questions immensely, I wish I had more time too!! -- hope I didn't sound tetchy! (just too brief!) ha ha some of this stuff is explained in my forthcoming book (wanky wanky) on Adorno. Dubdobdee has proof of its existence.

From:

I meant re: truth-linked-to-taste that I'd never thought much that I could properly explain to another person why I liked what I liked. I mean, certainly not the sensation of listening itself, the feeling...and perhaps I thought too that "This is good" didn't have any meaning other than for the person uttering it. i.e. "good" was just something which had a personal resonance?

I can see the flaws in this view along Kantian lines though...

From:

Well my Kant is a bit hazy, but as i understand it he tries to reconcile the problem of taste as someone like Hume sees it (viz we all have different tastes, is there an objective standard, Hume sort of says No) by accepting that aesthetic judgement is subjective (i.e. everyone's different) but also objective (i.e. we accept the validity of other people's judgements). The importance of an aesthetic judgement (if there is one) is that it proves there is freedom, just as only a moral judgement in accordance with the categorical imperative (i.e. acting according to duty rather than 'because' it's my duty) is a free one. This passes into romantic aesthetics (via e.g. Schiller) as 'freedom only comes through art'. My version is more sceptical: i.e. if there was any art, there would be freedom. Where I go against Kant is in bringing history in: i.e. in certain historical circumstances freedom in his sense may simply be beyond my capabilities; at which point (and in every post-Hegelian theory of art as in some way bound to time and to history (the development of human spirit as freedom-from-necessity)) real criticism i.e. aesthetic judgements would prove that there was such a thing as history in the sense of progress. Lacking that we dwell in some kind of in-between, unredeemed world, and find ways of acting accordingly.

The 'judgements of taste' are only 'judgements of value for me' I find suspicious because it basically denies the existence of freedom in any way more meaningful than 'I think my judgements are freely made'. And while freedom may be an illusion, I can't accept that one should act as if it was an illusion. It's quite typical of a C20th sociological view that it drops the truth claim in aesthetics (tastes are relative to cultures etc.) but this is a cop-out IMHO. There are complex historical-philosophical reasons for the rise of this view, bound in large part to the insufficiency of late C19th value philosophy (on the one hand too idealist, on the other too miserably sociological), which sees a realm of fact and a realm of value as indefinitely kept apart.

That's the short answer!

From:

I am going to think about this.

Also, I will read some more Kant!

From:

Taste-hacking: experiments in modifying/expanding/demolishing ones tastes. Hopefully I will actually write about this for Stylus soon.

From:

*intrigued*

From:

It's like Kevin Warwick...BUT WITH AN IPOD!

From:

Does this include me downloading loads of random mp3s from the noize dude board and putting them on shuffle to see if my brain melts down?

From:

Yes basically.

From:

And these dudes coming here and d/loading Bo Johnson and Fettes Brot MP3s?

From: