crtique of capitalism and the kinds of anxiety it raises

[Before reading this post, please be aware that before I have constructed a justified argument, based on carefully gathered evidence, I tend to express how I feel about an article by making overstated, randomly connected statements and suggestions. My posts probably seem self-indulgent, incoherent and just annoying to read. Then again, this is a blog, so I suppose that is to be expected.]

even in class, i feel that defensive tensions are raised if anyone makes a comment that appears to implicate some larger system such as the 'mainstream capitalist (sometimes white) culture'- there are immediately vehement counterarguments.

Such as: such experiences happen everywhere, to everyone, people dont intend it to be perceived that way, people possess the agency to remove themselves from the situation, and so on.

All of this presupposes that the person being blamed is the "white middle class" person. but this is not the case. There are arguments that even when "white imperialists" were writing "imperialist discourse" they themselves were the subjects of that discourse in a number of ways. Others (like Nadine Gordimer) have pointed to the ways in which class 'privileges' cause discomfort and limited, prescribed subjectivities for upper class people as well as lower class. We only need to think about the immense anxiety experienced by a "privileged" University of Chicago student walking down Kimbark avenue past 10pm to understand that 'privilege' contains contradictions of its own.

Its true that the way in which a system works or attempts to work can be at odds sometimes, in spurts, with individual desires, that people act in ways that the 'capitalist system' cannot predict. But this does not reduce the interesting point made about the 'contradiction of consumer capitalism' IS that it strives to produce particular subjectivities while making it appear as though those subjectivities are the person's individual choice. This could be extended as a description of the ambiguity of 'publics' in warnmer's sense, insofar as public discourse presupposes an indefinite audience.

I should be more clear about what exactly Im referring to. I really liked the article about the Mall that we read today (Sterne) as well as the one about Radio Texture by Tacchi.

In particular what stood out to me was Tacchi's point that 1. The woman, Trisha, experienced her relationship with the radio community as very real and the fact that they had no idea who she was caused dissilusionment and 2. her reiteration that this disillusionment was real, felt, tactile, part of Trisha's identity (p 255). Emphasising materialisty becomes a larger theme in tachhi's paper because she begins the paper too, with arguments about how "material culture" is particularly insidious because its materiality "belies its actual nature".

Moving on to the Sterne, Sterne suggests that this mall plays music in order to attract a largely upper-middle class white group of consumers, or at any rate is sometimes unfreindly to Black consumers, and has a highly ambivalent attitude towards the actual nature of the audience the mall attracts, which is ethnically diverse. This suggests the capacity of consumers to suprise, to be independent, the capacity for chance within the capitalist system. But Sterne is careful to mark out for us that "this is not subversion, this is contradiction" (p 339). I would argue that this contradiction is revealed here because it points to the impossibility of the imagined capitalist community, and points to the unpleasnt side-effects of capitalism that it finds painful to look at.

Now this may sound like a polemical argument about white capitalism vs black proletariat, or something overly dialectic and paradigmatic, out of Marx. Thats not what Im trying to say. Like I said above, this doesnt reflect on the white consumers in the store as the ones imposing something upon the black consumers. It suggests rather that BOTH black and white consumers are being influenced by the capitalist consumerist system to envision themselves with particular subjectivities.

In fact, capitalism is NOT interested in revealing the contradiction, in openly blocking the 'undesirable' consumers or in sounding 'racist'. the rhetoric of multicultural globalism (and the visual language of benneton and gap ads) would emphatically suggest that everyone is included. The contradiction is that they are included conditionally. everyone promises not to raise the uncomfortable topic.

As Sterne suggests, listening to music with "an ironic ear" never got anyone thrown out of a mall. So hipsters, sorority chicks, jocks, nerds, whatever other stereotypes subject-position exists can all go in the mall. If they are ironic about it to different extents, thats fine, they needsnt agree. In fact, their difference is good. Irony here becomes a safety-valve, a way to complain and mentally disociate oneself from the system and still buy products.

If they actually bring up race, or class, or start a fight (all phrases and activities that sound like 'reality') then they get thrown out.

As consumer subjects, we enter a contract. we are promised a part in the market if we promise to follow certain rules, and those rules include not questioning why we are not fully accepted in it, or accepted in it to differing extents.

people who try to disagree are reappropriated into the system.

maybe a good way to disagree would be to not engage in media practices. But this may not work either. interestingly, in a survey conducted by an Indian advertising agency about 'youth attitudes' the one kid who reported that he didnt watch TV was not included in the results (Mazzarella).