Recent weeks have been awash with media anxiety over a series of 'new' drug crazes sweeping across the United Kingdom. First it was reports that university students are commonly resorting to using 'smart drugs'-- mostly Ritalin and Modafinil--in order to give them an edge in preparing papers and revising for exams. Then it was the identification of a mephedrone use epidemic amongst UK youth, initially spurred by an erroneous report that over 180 students at a school had missed classes due to consumption of the substance. In the United States, recent years have seen the rise in reports of Pharm Parties-- social gatherings where teens allegedly swap random prescription medications--and the great Jenkemscare of 2007.
Second, in most of these stories--save for Jenkem--what we see is in fact quite an old phenomena being dressed up as 'new'. For example, university students taking substances in order to raise their levels of alertness is not a recent development. Nor is the social practice of teenagers congregating together for the purposes of taking drugs. Similarly, that people ingest substances that give them a rush is not a 21st century phenomena devoid of historical precedent.
Third, hyperbole is the means by which these stories must be conveyed. It is not just an exaggeration of the events, effects or compositions of the substances, and who is using them that is required. Rather the emphasis must be on what these activities are said to represent: a loss of ethics, hedonistic degeneration, corrupted youth, and moral decay. The consequences are then said to be eschatological --or in case of Jenkem, perhaps scatological?--resulting in the destruction of an entire social structure and way of life.
Fourth, given the outrageous claims that are being made and that many of these claims are devoid of any corroborating evidence, they all turn to linking the threats to children. And all children are not equal in these stories. It is important that white middle class kids be identified as at risk because those are the children we are supposed to really care about.
Fifth, the linking of particular forms of drug use with children not only catalyzes the reactionary safety impulse of parents, it also locates the threat in a world (i.e., youth culture) that is familiar but still somewhat alien, making the claims seem much more plausible than they might otherwise.
Sixth, while children and youth are identified as the principle actors in these stories, they are granted no degree of agency towards the provision of their own well-being. Instead, children are framed as objects in need of protection. This framing is important because the assumed inability of youth to make reasoned decisions immediately precludes policy options--such as evidence-based drug education initiatives--in favour of panoptic surveillance and draconian criminal prohibitions that do very little to address the public health aspects of illicit drug use or to prevent the recurrence of recent tragedies.
Analytically, what is interesting is the work that is done by the substances themselves to make these stories appear plausible. What is it about prescription medications that makes the practice of artificial stimulation that much more dangerous or unethical than downing multiple cups of coffee, energy drinks, or over-the-counter sleep suppressants? Why is mephedrone that much more pernicious than extreme sports or marathon running where preventable injuries and deaths are quite common?
There is also no acknowledgment of the social-medical context that may be contributing to contemporary youth drug consumption patterns. Given the increasing numbers of children who are being prescribed Ritalin and other drugs to make them more docile and compliant in under-funded classrooms (in 2005 over 23 million prescriptions were filled in the US alone), not only are many of these drugs more widely available, but a culture of regularized drug taking for the purposes of altering mood has been established. But acknowledgment would uncomfortably shift the source of the problem away from reckless youth or foreign producers to parents, teachers, and doctors who have been complicit in the construction of a brave new world.
So what can be done? Charlie Brooker may have it right. Rather than focusing efforts on prohibiting drugs, perhaps its high time that we banned tabloid journalism? Or, in the very least, the people responsible for whipping up fear and outrage ought to be held to account.
As information about Operation Moshtarak in Afghanistan--a coalition offensive purportedly against a key Taliban stronghold of 80,000 residents called Marjah--becomes available from web muckrakers like BagnewsNotes and Truthout, I can't help but think of the following passage from Jean Baudrillard's essay on Simulacra and Simulations:
The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth
which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true...
...Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror
or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential
being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without
origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map,
nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory
- precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory
and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose
shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map,
whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer
those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself.
In many ways, we can see Afghanistan as a governing assemblage of simulacra: democracy, humanitarianism, human rights, community capacity building, reconstruction, and the war on terror. Unfortunately, the bodies of the dead, maimed, sick, and injured--from all sides--remind us that the desert of the real is also a very brutal place.
Photo credit: Paolo Alfieri (his flickr-stream of Afghan landscapes is pretty stunning)
Are you currently working on a Masters or Ph.D. that explores aspects of how art and social change are related? Or are you really interested in the topic? If so, the following workshop organized by colleagues at the University of Bristol might just be for you. Please see the details below:
‘Beauty will save the world’*: An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Workshop on Art and Social Change
University of Bristol, 7-8 September 2010
Hosted by the Department of Politics and sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Global Insecurities Centre, University of Bristol
How does art construct, resist and contest dominant identities and social practices? How does art open up possibilities for (re)creating the world? What are the relationships between art, aesthetics, and politics? What are the power relations involved in art? Whose art, and whose values are best placed to change the world? Can engaging with art help us develop new epistemologies and research methodologies? Can beauty ‘save’ the world?
This two-day interdisciplinary postgraduate workshop is premised on the assumption that art actively constructs social ‘reality’, as opposed to merely reflecting it. Against dominant pronouncements privileging the centrality of rationalism and science as the legitimate avenues towards knowledge and social change, this workshop poses the question: what does the ‘serious’ pursuit of ‘progress’ miss out on when it disqualifies the artist’s imaginary as superfluous, lacking impact, unimportant?
The workshop aims to bring together postgraduate students working in and across various disciplines to share research which looks at the contested meanings of art and aesthetics, explores art in different cultural and historical settings, and examines the ways in which art and its constructions of beauty, society, politics can help in understanding, and changing, the social world. The workshop will also enable postgraduate students to engage and network with more established scholars, who will be present at the workshop as keynote speakers, panel chairs and roundtable discussants.
We welcome paper and panel proposals (2-3 presenters per panel) which engage specifically with the theme of art and social change, from various disciplines, including but not limited to: Archaeology, Anthropology, Classics, English, Modern Languages, History, History of Art, Visual and Performing Arts, Cultural Studies, Geography, Philosophy, Sociology and Politics.
Ideas for papers might include:
Art as nationalism;
The aesthetics of social movements, protest and revolution;
The envisioning of utopia(s);
‘The world as a stage’: playwrights, audiences and social change;
Art as methodology.
Papers can include think pieces or works in progress. We encourage a diversity of presentation styles, from ‘traditional’ papers to interactive sessions, involving short film screenings, musical and dramatic performances, and the display of paintings, sculpture, photographs, and installation art. Presenters will be assigned a 30-minute slot for their presentation, which can be used by the presenter as they wish, but must include at least 5 minutes for audience questions.
Please email abstracts (maximum 300 words) of proposed presentations to both Cerelia Athanasiou (cerelia.athanasiou@bristol.ac.uk) and Shaira Kadir (shaira.kadir@bristol.ac.uk) by 31 May 2010.
Presenters will be able to make use of a digital data projector and DVD/CD player. However, we will not be able to provide musical instruments or any other specialist equipment.
And congratulations to David Campbell and Sharron Lovell on being awarded the 'Online excellence in projects for mid-sized websites' by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers at the 15th Annual Best in Journalism Competition for the multi-media project 'Living in the Shadows'.
As part of its 60th Anniversary celebration, the UK's Political Studies Association is polling its membership to compile a list of the top 'political' songs of all time.
They state that:
the top ten
songs voted by members and an additional ten chosen by a judging panel will be
published by the New Statesman to
coincide with the Association’s 60th Annual Conference, which is
being held in Edinburgh from 29th March to
1st April.
And here's the list of songs that they've chosen as being exemplary 'political':
Annie
Lennox & Aretha Franklin: Sisters are doing it for themselves
Anon.: Bella Ciao
Barry
McGuire: Eve of Destruction
Billie Holiday: Strange
Fruit
Billy
Bragg: Which side are you on?
Bob
Dylan: The Times They Are a changing
Bob
Marley: Redemption Song
Bruce
Springsteen: Born in the USA
Carl
Bean: I was born this way
Cecil
A. Spring-Rice: I vow to thee my country
Charles A. Tindley: We
Shall Overcome
Charly García: Nos
siguen pegando abajo
Claude Joseph Rouget de
Lisle: Le Marseillaise
Donovan: Universal
Soldier
Edwin
Starr: War
Elvis
Costello: Tramp The Dirt Down
Enoch
Sontonga: Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika
Eugène Pottier: The
Internationale
Fela
Kuti: Zombie
Gil
Scott Heron: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Horst
Wessel: Die Fahne hoch
Jim
Connell: The Red Flag
John
Lennon: Imagine
Joni
Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi
Leornard Cohen: The
Partisan
Li
Youyuan: The East is Red
Marvin Gaye: What's
Going On?
Midnight Oil: Beds are
Burning
Nena:
99 Luftaballons
Nina
Simone: Mississippi Goddam
Pete
Seeger: Where have all the flowers gone?
Peter
Gabriel: Biko
Plastic Ono Band: Give
Peace a Chance
Public Enemy: Fight the
Power
Randy
Newman: Political Science
RATM:
Killing in the name
Robert Wyatt:
Shipbuilding
Rolling Stones: Gimme
Shelter
Sex
Pistols: God Save The Queen
The
Beatles: Revolution
The
Clash: Know Your Rights
The
Cranberries: Zombie
The
Jam: Eton Rifles
The
Police: Invisible Sun
The
Specials AKA: Free Nelson Mandela
The
Strawbs: Part of the Union
Tracy
Chapman: Talkin' 'bout a revolution
U2:
Sunday Bloody Sunday
UB40:
1 in 10
Verdi: Chorus of Hebrew
Slaves
Victor Jara: Te Recuerdo
Amanda
William Blake: Jerusalem
Woody
Guthrie: This Land is Your Land
Now to give credit where it is due, the list is not as lame as one might have feared, even if it is heavily skewed in favour of nostalgic boomer anthems and assumes that music stopped being political sometime in the mid 1990s.
But, it is an obvious collection, in part because it is underpinned by a very narrow assumption about what politics 'is' and therefore what can properly count as 'political'. These choices reveal that politics--at least for those who drafted this list--is defined by explicit representations of nationalism, street protest, conflict, inequality, support for--or opposition to--government policy, and perhaps alienation that have become associated with historical time periods or events. These are presented as songs that have responded to a politics that exists out there regardless of what we may think about it.
It is the politics of recognized issues, institutions, and actors, that have been invested by the dominant socio-economic forces of the time with the importance and privileged status of being coded as 'political' in political discourses. Moreover, it is a politics of direct intentions, intentions that the audience can supposedly discern from the lyrical content or title of the pieces.
To be clear, I am not arguing that these songs do not cover what we can consider to be political subjects. And it is not to say that these songs do not address important political issues. But there is more to music being political and to the politicization of music than a neat fit with events that are recorded in orthodox history books as being 'of' the political sphere.
For example, take the Rolling Stones' 'Brown Sugar'. Some might dismiss it as a cheeky song about lust--or maybe lines of prose from Strom Thurmond's secret diary--that is devoid of any broad political significance. Yet, the narrative exposes the societal power-relations enabled by the privileging of the white heterosexual male gaze. More specifically, the song can be seen as an example of how that gaze eroticizes difference into an object of fetishistic corporeal desire while simultaneously denying the humanity of the eroticized other. This strikes me as incredibly political and as important to understanding gender and racial dynamics today as when it is was first performed.
Similarly, this list does not take into account that aesthetics are in part about the shaping of what we can and/or are prepared to perceive as well as the value to be accorded to ways of representing our perceptions. And since perception itself shapes political possibility by forwarding a particular understanding of reality, then music that challenges aesthetic norms is also highly political. So pieces like John Cage's 4'33 or genres like Noise Music are themselves constitutive of the limits of the political, transgressing boundaries that are supposed to separate art, profanity, the abject, or even the sublime. While I am unsure how these might relate to a specific praxis, that does not mean that they lack a political sensibility.
Furthermore, the limited conception of the political underpinning the PSA list completely misses the constitutive role of music in the creation and maintenance of particular relations of power. For example, the Barney the Dinosaur Theme Song or the Meow Mix Commercial Jingle were favoured by American interrogators as a means to torture detainees in Iraq. In my mind they have just as an important political significance as Pete Seeger lamenting the metaphorical absence of flowers.
So in the end, even with my reservations above, I'm not entirely sure how to read the PSA's attempt to form links between the field of politics and popular culture. On the one hand, given how small-c conservative the disciplines of politics and international relations are in general, might this represent an opening--however small--to begin to get colleagues to take the popular culture-world politics continuum seriously? Or is this best seen as a shallow and gimmicky appropriation that just reinforces problematic understandings of politics and of popular culture?
Update: you can find the top 20--as voted for by some members of the PSA--here.
