Christoper Lasch

[constant escape]

So would you say there could be some more purchase to his thought, if it can be reconciled with an informed social progressivism? (edit: that is, actually taking the input provided by disenfranchised demographic positions.)

And regarding his discovery, I hadn't heard of him before maybe a couple weeks ago when I saw a post on here about him, so maybe it has to do with a strain of the left that is expressing an intensity elsewhere, discourse wise, and has just now happened to swerve into his territory.

 

[constant escape]

Part of it is just a hype factor that i find anomalous, in bare and pessimistic terms.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

So would you say there could be some more purchase to his thought, if it can be reconciled with an informed social progressivism?

he wasn't against social progressivism. he was strongly in favor of the civil rights movement.

he thought the New Left was a retreat from a direct challenge to empty, meaningless cultural forms that could easily be recuperated

there was a reactionary element bc he thought student radicals were too focused on militancy, violence, etc

but I think his main problem with them was that he thought what they were doing was ineffective

in terms of cultural liberation I just don't think he grasped its intrinsic importance to participants, in addition to the universal economic dimension

 

[constant escape]

Do you see how it can be approached as an exit, or as some reorienting catalyst, from the perspective of disillusioned young far left types, especially if they haven't grappled with and took into account demographic privilege. (edit: and perhaps even if they have. Not sure)

he's always saying basically that cultural liberation movements will only liberate you to become another recognized consumer demographic and/or marketplace cog - which, yes - but he doesn't reckon with the cultural importance those movements have unto themselves.

I read this as arguing that he didn't appreciate the substance of cultural liberation movements. Unless you're saying that he distinguished cultural emancipation from civil emancipation, and read the former as a sort of predicate, privileged endeavor. And that he argued that the former can be appropriated for insincere and capitalistic reasons.

 

[constant escape]

In which case, it makes sense why there would be a lasch renaissance among some portion of the academic far left, and maybe just the youth at that. Could be crying wolf, don't know.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

I read this as arguing that he didn't appreciate the substance of cultural liberation movements

the intrinsic substance, yes

privilege, no - no one thought in terms of privilege in the early 70s-early 90s (his heyday as a social critic), that's much more recent

I think he thought they weren't real challenges to corporate capitalism, and possibly actively harmed real challenges to corporate capitalism

he doesn't really - to my knowledge - discuss appropriation as we might now, but woke capitalism would not have surprised him at all

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

he predates intersectionality, would be the most succinct way to put it

 

[constant escape]

So then what do you think of a criticism of cultural emancipation movements, from a perspective that is clued into the intrinsic substance of those movements? That is, a keener claim that such movements are vulnerable, to some degree, to passing as genuine while benefiting certain people who are indifferent to cultural equality? Not quite sure how to word it.

It does get near the heart of a certain culturally reactionary thrust, either in the far left or in the alt right. But a major crux, as you pointed out, is whether or not the immanent value of these movements is appreciated.

 

[constant escape]

I suppose a major implication is that an affirmation of cultural emancipation movements can also be an affirmation of the potential of capitalism.

 

[linebaugh]

I just thought, "I should start a thread on this Lasch fellow", and lo and behold.

@Linebaugh have you experienced anything weieieieird in your introduction to this guy? For me, it was rapid fire out of nowhere, coming at you live, perhaps this is a zeitgiest thread. Prompted by the red scare / zizek episode, which I just explained the cultural significance of to my dad.

yes he just popped up for me too. were either very on or very off the pulse

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

So then what do you think of a criticism of cultural emancipation movements, from a perspective that is clued into the intrinsic substance of those movements?

I think they're limited in what they can achieve without an economic dimension, and vulnerable to recuperation

again, I don't disagree with Lasch/whoever in that sense, that it is the freedom to be a targeted consumer demographic

the commercialization of Gay Pride is one prominent example, but there are many

but I think you also can't do away with cultural emancipation in favor of only the economic dimension

and I'm deeply suspicious of the motives of anyone who suggests that

it's not only about the freedom to be a target demographic, it's also about having the validity of your personhood recognized, the freedom to publicly be yourself safely, etc

the ideal is always, yunno, to connect the different elements of struggle together

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

also just want to note that it's more than a bit self-serving for Lasch to go in on "theory" in favor of social criticism

since he himself was a historian - i.e., a non-theorist - who wrote social criticism and never performed "empirical social observation"

that is, he was in the humanities himself, rather than the social sciences, and the like the theorists, a card-carrying member of the corporate academic structure for his entire professional life

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

doesn't invalidate anything he says, just yunno, against the idea of him as some lone wolf speaking truth to power

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

oh yeah also standard disclaimer that I'm not endorsing everything everyone has ever done in every cultural liberation movement everywhere, before gus or one of the local reactionaries pops up and starts yelling about Orwellian PC thought police or whatever

I'm not saying these things are impervious to critique, just that I think Lasch's are only partially correct for the reasons previously given

and the pursuit of pleasure isn't always empty consumerist narcissism

 

[constant escape]

I think they're limited in what they can achieve without an economic dimension, and vulnerable to recuperation

again, I don't disagree with Lasch/whoever in that sense, that it is the freedom to be a targeted consumer demographic

the commercialization of Gay Pride is one prominent example, but there are many

but I think you also can't do away with cultural emancipation in favor of only the economic dimension

and I'm deeply suspicious of the motives of anyone who suggests that

it's not only about the freedom to be a target demographic, it's also about having the validity of your personhood recognized, the freedom to publicly be yourself safely, etc

the ideal is always, yunno, to connect the different elements of struggle together

Do you personally believe cultural emancipation movements, at least some, will prove successful? Do you think it, success that is, is largely about refining the representation of disenfranchised demographics, to the enfranchised demographics?

In that sense at least, I think things are improving in a way that will be hard to erase or regress from, in terms of increasingly thorough and robust representation in popular media.

Could be wishful thinking though, could just be that I haven't experienced a seemingly stable social progress get destabilized.

And yeah the suspicion is shared. Just trying to find a way to synthesize things.

 

[sus]

Bookmarking to post here with some bits from True and Only Heaven. That's one of his best books and it doesn't get read very much these days

 

[sus]

@Padraig what Hofstadter goes well side-by-side w Lasch?

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

@Padraig what Hofstadter goes well side-by-side w Lasch?

Anti-Intellectualism In American Life

another, particularly useful book in that area from that post-WWII, pre-Vietnam era (aka "the Long 50s") is C. Wright Mills - The Power Elite

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

the meta-dispute of Hofstadter and Lasch - which didn't take place until after Hofstadter's death in 1970 - was the role of elites in society

and Mills' book is the definitive - afaik - depiction and analysis of the American ruling class - the literal Establishment - ca. the Long 50s

that is, the last point when both the public and Establishment itself still believed in its mystique, before it was shattered by Vietnam, racial tension, etc

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

what Mills was talking about is, I think, received wisdom at this point

but at the time it was harshly received by establishment spokespeople like Arthur Schlesinger

he was accused of conspiracy-mongering, but he's very explicit that it's not conspiratorial, merely a depiction of who actually holds power in America

interestingly, he was strongly influenced by studies of the structure of Nazi Germany

he wanted to understand how such a thing had a happened in a democracy and The Power Elite is what came out of that