“There’s a new band in town. Word is they’re pretty good. Real good, in fact. So and so reckons so too. I haven’t seen them yet. Think I’ll catch them next Friday. They’re doing a special gig at Club X.”
How many times have I heard that before? Yet no matter how many times I hear that line of inverted cult promotion, I shall never fail to be mystified by its workings and origins. That flagrantly manufactured yet vaguely existent phenomenon of the ‘street vibe’. A machine that runs its course through a series of presences despite its nature being one of absence. I suppose it could be part of an ongoing mythology of Myths, but such a proposition doesn’t quell the flame of mystery, the will-o-the-wisp of hype that powers the ‘street vibe’.
Post-Modernism affects me in the same way: a phenomenon beyond the scope of phenomenology. As the current cultural collision of the arts and philosophy resembles a dead cat splattered across a highway, Post-Modernism equates the bacterial germ breeding somewhere in the flattened out spectacle of the cat’s remains. Post-Modernism (I would still suspect) has no substance or materiality. Not that philosophical modes ever do, but Post-Modernism has always tended to gravitate toward objects, products, events, holding up instances of Post-Modernism which are meant to live on as Post-Modernist objects. A difficult task considering that Post-Modernism (for now) doesn’t stain these objects of its discourse as being ‘Post-Modern’. If Modernism has provided us with a catalogue of formal constructions that work to decode and recode textual objects (shifting the axis of conventionalism to various artistic practices) one wonders how Post-Modernism relates itself to Modernism under such terms. Indeed, does Post-Modernism even ‘have’ objects or texts, or does it foist itself upon Modernism’s formal and textual reconstruction to make a statement about reconstruction? Perhaps my suspicion of Post-Modernism is linked to the fact that I can’t see it. Not that I need to see and touch to believe, but that I’m sick and tired of getting so lost within language when my consequent location is not disorienting but frustrating, as discourses becomes miscourses.
I’m sure that if I were presented with the word “Post-Modernism” in an automatic word-association test my first response would be “clothes”. you know: those shirts with triangular flops; coats with extraneous coverings; dresses with multiple layers; jackets with angular buttoning systems. Garments that seem to declare “I’ve moved elsewhere”. Fabric constructions which through the guise of a reassembled constructional ethic present themselves as commentaries on the whole notion of manufacturing fashion. In short: pseudo-meta-clothes. But the real clincher is the dags who wear these clothes! People like progressive bank-clerks, disco-academics, and Rene Geyer’s backing band. Signs of Post-Modernism tend to postulate themselves as declarations more than qualifications or evaluations. Everyone is “moving elsewhere”; telling us that they are “moving elsewhere”. Such is our environment of Post-Modernism—little more than a clash of Modernisms; a cancelling of their trajectories. The “post” may signify an ‘elsewhere’ but it generally evokes feelings of ennui and deja vu ... “Another Time, Another Place” ...
What is most frustrating about this situation is that while I condone and can get excited over various Post-Modernist approaches, tendencies and tactics, they often just don’t cut it. Once again (and perhaps forever it shall be this way) we are abused by our theoretical language. We talk about some sense of movement into another dimension, turning things inside-out and upside-down as we pose our Post-Modernist discourses as articulated re-contortions of the state of ourselves. But this other dimension, this new terrain, this void, this Black Hole is just too damn comfortable. It’s like having your loungeroom redecorated everything has simply been adapted rather than redefined. A reiteration of the material and substance of new forms, images and gestures, texts, etc. is not a ‘new’ substance in itself. Abstraction and concretization become identical processes if we handle them without even caring for their ultimate difference to one another—a difference which should prevent us from handling them the way we do. The rhythm of Post-Modernism is certainly seductive, but it nonetheless remains a hip form of concretism.
I would be happy we if moved into this Black Hole and became truly lost—but one could only truly be ‘lost’ is one either demanded or desired an absurdly rationalist framework within which to work. The awareness of being ‘lost’ is maintained by the fear of being lost; no fear—no being lost. So here we all are, in a jumble of contradictions (some knowing, some unknowing) that resigns us to a theoretical detachment without fully acknowledging the consequences of our grand proposals. And what exactly are these grand proposals, these observations, these statements? To me, they are poetry. I can’t understand or follow their fiction, with their tone of awareness and revelation which carries the produce born of their analyses. All this sensuousness, all this seductiveness, all this pleasure. A painfully prolonged courtship with no delivery of the goods. In the poetic vein, its language is savoured for its tantalising effect, but the object of one’s affection and attention is not centred: no tastes is encountered, there is no experience of the object. This is where Post-Modernism is a fatal enchantment.
I call to mind the current Greater Union logo which functions as a visual coda for any of their trailers. The illusion is of a computerized simulation of shooting through a tunnel which ends up being the inside of one of the letters of the logo. A vertiginous ride through a void where the sensation of movement overrides any spatial sense. I could go on and on about its effect, but the ‘bottom line’ here is that I get a chill up my spine and my toes curl up. It gives me a buzz that the following film rarely gives. My point is that I think you have to ‘barometerize’ your consciousness so as to be able to hold onto the object of your analysis, to have some way (however primitive or mystical) of knowing which things really do have an ‘effect’. I register things that affect me in such a way as unable to be reconstituted. I don’t wish to possess them—why should I when their effect can manipulate me on call? When you say “effect” are you talking about effects upon yourself or some vague notion of the individual or collective subject? It is sad that in Post-Modernism’s ‘lack of objects’ one is so often trapped by fissures of hipness, as subjects which ‘look good’ in Post-Modernist analysis obscure the possibility of the most unhip of subjects providing the most rewarding Post-Modernist analysis. A vicious circle indeed—starved of objects yet glutted with effects.
This problem of what objects to analyze, to accord Post-Modern preoccupations, is a very real one, because Post-Modernism can only reveal itself through its cultural artefacts (in itself, a suspiciously religious point of view). The profit is not to be found in the analysis—it is found in the discovery of those objects which will nurture the analysis. This means they may well be overlooked films, misinterpreted artworks, neglected Pop trends—products of Post-Modernism as a social force, but for which there is a compatible philosophical discourse that could explicate their effects. Which philosophical method or discursive procedure is going to comprehend the Dolby soundtrack in film? The rounding of edges in visual design throughout the 1970s? The ‘difference’ in stalk & slash movies? Digital electronics in record production and video-synthesis? The re-invented nostalgia in contemporary advertising. These are but a handful of areas which attract my intellectual curiosity at the moment; areas which have an effect upon me; areas that are culturally displaced and theoretically misplaced.
The ‘Black Hole’ aptly describes a juncture of contemporary philosophical discourse and social observations. It does not, however, describe a cultural state. All that is really collapsing in on itself (and this nonetheless an extremely important note) is an articulated mode of perception, dumbfounded by the scope of its subject and the alarming degree of arbitrariness that ties discourse to experience. Discourse is only fixed by appearance, as culture only ‘appears’ to be spinning on a Post-Modern orbit. It remains an eerie plateau, a desolation of differences (they exist without our marking them) wherein we can only map out our terrain of difference. I am not convinced that Post-Modernism can condition us at all. It is, rather, a condition of our own over-Modernist desires. Upon this Post-Modern plateau (signposted as such only by my presence) I shall attempt to describe to you my surroundings ...
The premiere of Michael Jackson’s Thriller on MTV in early November 1983 was given a big build-up. And when it finally came—boy, did it come. They played it at two times in every three hour block. Having now seen it twenty times over and having never fully been satisfied with it, there are two shots from Thriller which will remain for me as oblique markings from a Post-Modern time: (i) the opening claimer/disclaimer where young Michael Jackson tells us that due to his deep religious beliefs and personal convictions (and parental Mormon pressure?) he doesn’t believe in the existence of zombies and the Living Dead; and (ii) the title credit “Michael Jackson’s Thriller” which grows bumpy veins in its letters, rising with pulsation to a raspy, muffled, inhuman breathing. That is perversity! A truth, belief, a direct expression of the personal self—followed by a sign, an image, a gesture that furnishes an effect that allows one to live out in full hedonistic style all that the disclaimer disallows. What belief is at function here? What is in operation? Either the beliefs are lies or the mechanics of the effects are entirely without referents. And then, Michael Jackson could agree or disagree with either or neither proposition. The Thriller video is an embodiment of both the fullness and emptiness of values, of their relationship to the Self. A thick ambiguity embalms the work, further postulating Michael Jackson as a body disconnected from action; a vessel that produces gestures instead of reproductions. A creation, not an object. Could Michael Jackson then be a Post-Modernist object?
I relate this to my own experience of The Jacksons’ full-length (9 ½ minutes) video entitled The Triumph, set to the music of The Jackson’s “Can You Feel It?”. Here is something (of which there are many other examples, from Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life to David Cronenberg’s Dead Zone; from contestants on Don’s/Bert’s Wheel to advertisements for Telecom ISD) that can affect me in the purest way in perfect line with its schema of emotionalism. I watch it and am virtually reduced to tears by the giddy ride of its emotionalism. But it is also a sickly sense of humanism that burns me like a cross does the vampire. I am both elated by the effect and thwarted by the manipulation. I am depressed by the ungainly gravitational pull that emotions have on me, no doubt caused by my refusal of any mysticism in their existence., I can’t work it out, because everyone I have pointed the video out to simply laughs at its corniness and contrivance—though the embrace the workings of far more subtle manipulations (because, I argue, it is the subtlety that allows them then privilege of continuing an existence as the opinionated self). The Triumph is totally over the top. And I can’t turn away from it. Why am I attracted to these blunt yet effective works for the lowest common denominator, these homages to universalism? What perversion allows my desires to confound my rationale?
It’s like being caught in the middle of a tragic scenario which analytically I find very boring. I watch Sale of the Century and relate to all the contestants like characters, full-blooded semes, depictions of people. Their manner, looks, tone of voice, answers and skill make me label them either affectionately or derisively. This is all instantaneous. The problem is what do I do with the show when it is finished? No! The problem is why the hell do I bother with the show when it has finished? Why do I want t connect things, relate them, observe them, prod them? This middle ground affords me no rest. Rest like that of all those who watch the show, eat dinner, got to bed, get up to go to work the next day with neither hide nor hair of any observatory extrapolations carried over from viewing the show. (Is this what is meant by mindless entertainment, i.e., not that one it mindless to watch such ‘crap’ but that no space is prescribed for activity of the mind?) “Turn off, shut down, here comes the morning light.” This middle ground is an inhuman, amoral analytic activity in a Twilight Zone, unable to turn off. A place where experience is not denied but consumption is virtually prohibited. Forever detached yet unable to detach; a discursive dilemma and a personal perversion.
A long time ago a friend told me how the ‘middle ground’ is the domain of straights, dags, reactionaries, bigots, sceptics. For her, it had to be extreme: totally to one side or the other, black and white being colours that symbolized this steadfast dedications to one’s ideals. I never agreed because it seemed so painfully simple. Being in the middle though is probably a stupid place to be, always distanced, however slightly. This is not a matter of nihilism, which for me is a very vibrant things, a heated germ that has a lot more life in it than moral strands of philosophical thought give it credit for. Nor is it a matter of solipsism, a vague and strained way to maintain, like trying to start a party when you’re the only one there. It is this piddling middling that instigates this paper, that lets it stream out me in a strangely uninspired way. But for all its frustrations, anti-climaxes and dull diversions, it feels to be the right place. A place where answers and solutions do not grow like ripened fruit placed just out of reach in an oh-so-mannered way. It is an area where perversity caves in on itself—where one can feel perverse in following through a discourse only to realize that the perversity worked almost as a means to an end to dislocate oneself so as to flow the multiplicity of cultural forces.
I actually thought that this paper would be an argument ‘for’ perversity, but in the theoretical dilemma of Post-Modernism as we are surrounded and obsessed by it today I find that perversity is actually a rudimentary working of those areas and objects of culture (from Thriller to the Art of Noise to Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixen) through which post-modernism can be seen to manifest itself. Post-Modernism ‘per se’ is not perverse, but perversity certainly allows me to gauge effects (Thriller) and ‘barometerize’ my perception (The Triumph), stranded as I am on this blank Post-Modern plateau. And finally, perversity is not even solely attributive to this state or condition, as perversity manifests itself in the very act of talking ‘about’ something, of attempting to link language to the dislocated experience. By the means of discursive perversions, of matching resonances to perversity, there just might be ways of navigating that Black Hole of culture-as-subject and culture-as-object.
Post-Modernism—as a society that ritualises promiscuity—need not deny commitment in its discursive method. A commitment to sorting out and gauging effects; seeking out and discovering objects; citing and following perversity is what would here constitute a philosophical practice. This is different from a philosophical discipline. Philosophy (as a subject, body, strategy, discipline) is a strange animal that I have trouble in understanding, yet it is one that governs the presentation of this paper in this conference. When I think of philosophy, I think firstly of philosophy departments, of people bound into a physical space, institutionalized, giving a sense of being to their endless discourse on discourse. It’s almost as if we out all the philosophy departments together we would have a world of philosophy; we could stick together all philosophical tracts and disseminations and we would have the body of philosophy, the universal philosophical text. As naive as my assumptions may be, I can’t get away from feeling (fearing?) the nature of philosophy as an institution, as a theatre for thought, eternally awaiting adaptation and modification. Granted that my feelings are probably affected by an educational system rather than philosophy ‘itself’ but a similar defense is used to explain the reckless state of Contemporary Art at the moment, in that its practitioners are somehow separate from the constitution of their practice within a defined field. Perhaps one would be freer to treat philosophy as a supermarket for the Self is one were not so intimidated by codes of discipline and practice. I’m sure that many a field of interest mapped out by individuals in the Post-Modern sprawl could only accommodate philosophical debate in a very awkward fashion.
The thing that worries me most (precious as I am about my own menial ideas) is not the gap between seeing and thinking, but thinking and doing. This tension between theory and practice, concept and work, idea and execution: a vital integration upon which the philosophical apparatus imposes bureaucratic mandates of existence, unable to counter materials, intentions, determinations, processes. I’ll never forget the first time I made an edit in film, how I was then able to comprehend the performing function of the ‘cut’ in cinema. The ‘middle ground’ is also the space between material construction and perceived effect, information which I am doubtful of philosophy succinctly supplying. Many philosophers in Australia should be away writing poetry; or science fiction stories; or plays; or sociological analyses. But this is a criticism which I feel a part of, being more ‘there’ or more ‘here’. My passport is in the land of ‘doing it’ because I prefer to be away in a different place, attempting to make objects in this Post-Modern predicament rather than merely declaring objects ‘Post-Modern’. Working for the hopeful event of things ‘cutting it’ which leads me and leaves me here, skirting around and sifting through thoughts and options of going back, to get the hell out of here. My philosophical practice would hopefully allow me to say “I’ve come from elsewhere” rather than “I’ve moved elsewhere.”
Philosophy to me involves Thoughts more than Ideas (an admittedly frail framework, but who said solidness guarantees results?). Ideas are projects, schemas, theoretical units which should not pose difficulty in setting things going in order to execute something, to see what happens. Thoughts are like particles that cluster, cling and conglomerate only to forever continue making manic organic structures and objects whose flows await some dynamism, some force to knead, pulp and mould then into ideas. Ideas have only ever been the stuff of my interest. Philosophy is too much thinking, too many dull-boy-Jacks. What might be pleasure for others is somewhat opposite for myself, in that philosophy’s interlocution of the abstract appears to have no boundaries of self-convolution. Even its saturation point (normally a level of tangible or relative exhaustion) is as meaningful as to be meaningless. The practice of concrete activities on the other hand get caught up in and defined by boundaries—legal, financial, political, physical boundaries. The fusion of theory and practice has only become outdated because many have handled the two areas well enough (as entities, fluxes, oscillations) but without a full enough desire for their actual fusion, for their affection of one another. And this is the area that will ultimately affect either the furthering or the decaying of Post-Modern thought, drained as we are by its ‘practices’; exhausted by its ‘objects’. The solution to finding the Post-Modernist textual-object is perhaps that we should make it.
If my own Post-Modernist condition is determined by the dilemma I experience in wondering about the values of affections I accumulate from the irreducibility of effects that bounce me back and forth in the world, then it must equate in some way with what would be the fundamental contradiction of Post-Modernism: expounding multiplicity while desiring specificity. The question should not be “What is the Post-Modern?” but “What is Post-Modern?” Post-Modernism might after all be its own bluff. The ‘post’ might indicate a shift so minute that only philosophical discourse in its pedantic pleasure could get a fix on, Or perhaps Post-Modernism is not the scene after a narrative, an extended epilogue or sequel, but a setting for an event, a site for an actual construction. If anything, it is a condition of hysteria that vomits out zeitgeists, self-destructing definitions, and orgasmic rhythms. All we really have is a profusion of ‘personalisms’. Mine is perversity. What’s yours?