K-Punk

john eden

male pale and stale
I ran out of material.

Did Ben UFO come here from the dubstep forum?

Maybe not as he probably checked the blogs but he also looks deceptively youthful so it’s hard to gauge.
 

luka

Well-known member
he did yep. was he good on here? he loved me and craner so im going to say he was good
 

droid

Well-known member
Ben originally came from Subvert Central, I may have been cross posting from here at the time. There's an amusingly mawkish thread over there from back in the day where he's asking what all this dubstep stuff is about.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
was UK Dance really as vicious as everyone says?

it was quite full on yeah. But we were all 20s 30s passionate idealists in offices venting with hangovers I think. A few mentals and contrarians.

Main fractures were politics and moral issues and whether a particular Underground Resistance track was trance or not.

There is quite a nice summary history here:
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Ben originally came from Subvert Central, I may have been cross posting from here at the time.
I think I might have started there, too.

Maybe if there was a culture clash in the old days, it was between people who were primarily here to talk about music and didn't mind the discussion getting a bit heavy on theory, and people who were primarily here to talk about theory and saw the music, film, architecture etc that they were into as raw material for that?
 

version

Well-known member
I finally started Capitalist Realism earlier. It's good. I like what he's saying about the stashed artworks in Children of Men and rituals and practices being reduced to aesthetic objects like trophies in a Predator spaceship.
 

luka

Well-known member
I enjoyed it more the second time around. Was going to start a thread on it but then couldn't be bothered rooting around for the relevant quotes.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
Really liked Capitalist Realism, having spent some time teaching it hit home. I'm reading Discipline and Punish right now and I think Capitalist Realism can be called a blend of the feudal model of spectacular, arbitrary power and the norm defining disciplinary model. You see that clearly in schools:

"Walk into almost any class at the college where I taught and you will immediately appreciate that you are in a post-disciplinary framework. Foucault painstakingly enumerated the way in which discipline was installed through the imposition of rigid body postures. During lessons at our college, however, students will be found slumped on desk, talking almost constantly, snacking incessantly (or even, on occasions, eating full meals). The old disciplinary segmentation of time is breaking down. The carceral regime of discipline is being eroded by the technologies of control, with their systems of perpetual consumption and continuous development."

Foucault talked about 'necessary crimes' in the feudal model, illegal but socially permitted crimes that allowed for a stable, functioning relationship between the king and his subjects. This is exactly how a classroom operates. With the necessity of 'continuous development,' students commit a whole litany of permitted transgressions that make bearable, for both student and teacher, the process of subjection demanded by the arbitrary necessity to pass. The punishments doled out are arbitrary because they are at the whim of whatever the teacher feels they can handle at any given moment, its the 'wrong place, wrong time' that convicts the student.

But teachers don't have the unchecked authority of the autocrat; teachers are subjected to disciplinary regimes. There is not one aspect of teaching that hasn't been explicitly defined and mandated, right down to posture. We once lost our weekly team meeting -a single, crucial 45 minutes the department has to coordinate the upcoming week- because an administrative speaker used that time to review the recommended procedures for said weekly meetings. Teaching now acts like a science, a rigid order of operations predetermined to generate a specific result, and like the panoptic prison guard, surveillance of the teacher is done by anyone who can view the student, i.e. the public. Inevitable complaints levied on the students will be the justification for further regimentation, training and inspection of the teacher. 'Indefinite postponement', Fisher calls it. 'A consequence of this 'indefinite' mode of power is that external surveillance is succeeded by internal policing.'

Where teaching departs from strict discipline is the incredulity that pervades the entire process. Everyone knows that the prescribed functions are not only arbitrary, but counter productive. The administrator I mentioned earlier began their presentation with an apology. They knew that the review was unnecessary and hindering the teacher's ability to do their job, but the their hand was forced. Enter Big Other. Big Other is for those in a position of indefinite postponement and communal surveillance the insidious promise that there will always be some outsider to appeal to and is capable of levying punishment if not properly done so. Optics become first priority of all internal teaching functions. If the teacher looks to be perfectly executing the prescribed functions, they should be absolved of blame when the system inevitably fails. With Big Other looming, teachers now look less like disciplinary subjects and more like feudal subjects. Big Other imposes on teachers an arbitrary sentence, but this is tolerated for the protection Big Other provides.

The school worker is constantly switching between the mode of the autocrat, doing fuck all in they can to take their immediate circle to some desired end, and the feudal servant obediently spinning the gears. Here power is at its most effective when it is disavowed and reclaimed. Its hot potato power games, knowing how long to hold it, when to toss it and when to reach out and grab it is the meta.
 
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