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Critical Theory will never die

Another bunch of disaffected academics who claim that they are “beyond theory” set up camp sometime around the turn of the millennium, this time in architecture, but the gripe is aimed at the usual suspects: Frankfurt School Marxists and French Post-Structuralists.

For lack of a clever name, people call it “post-criticality.” Its basic desire consists in wanting to make art while engaging in commerce, to give up the idea that artists and intellectuals are hostile towards money-making institutions. The suggestion is that all the talk of alienation and critique is the fault of philosophers who have convinced regular artists that they should not like mainstream culture, i.e. the place where the money is.

You can read about this cluster of post-critical thinkers in the hippest architecture journals. Last Year Harvard Design Magazine had a piece by David Hickey, called “On Theory: ‘Post-Criticality and Death by Academics.” Hickey is considered cool because he dropped out of academia in the 60s but knows all the theories and writes in a low-key chatty style, like an old philosophy professor having a seminar on the back deck before getting a beer.

The smartest, and most frustrating, aspect of post-critical writing is that it refuses to sound smart. A lot of the time, these guys summarize theory debates with laconic one-liners, Walter Benjamin is just “dopey.” We are all supposed nod and smile.

There is something deliberately down home American about these simple statements. It is also a hip, insider way of talking. German Marxists are just so uptight. You need to have seen the right movies and then you get it.

In Perspecta, another cool journal, Robert Somol and Sarah Whiting explain the difference between Critical and Post-Critical Architecture as the difference between Robert De Niro and Robert Mitchum as actors. De Niro is all intense Method-acting, always showing off how much work goes into his character, while Mitchum is utterly laid back in his bad-boy occupation of a role.

Cool, it’s cool to be cool. This is Facebook Theory. Like the guys in grad school who always have a running joke about this band and that movie. When you see the band, hear the movie, you realize that they are pretty cool, you like them, too, but you wonder if there is more to it.

And the point of theory, of every philosopher since Socrates, is that there is always more to the picture than meets the eye.

Just another murder

How do you write the article about your own murder? Reporters covering the acquittal of low-level suspects in the contract killing of Anna Politkovskava recount that she would easily have described the farce that was her murder trial—the suspects that no one seriously suspected of having committed her murder, the surprising disappearance of the surveillance video from her apartment building—a video that had been broadcast on most major European networks. What is most impressive: that a grand jury let the defendants off, this in a land were 99% of those charged are found guilty. Anna Politkovskava who was so familiar with the tricks of that regime, would have not been surprised. In some sense you have to admit that it is impressive that the poor Schmos who got set up for the murder managed to drive away from the court house. What is to say that two Chechen brothers should have expected such luck? Another twist of fate.

Snow Theory Sources

A model of intellectual life, forced on you by weather, geography and the fortunes of war.

Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method

"At that time I was in Germany, where I had been called by the wars that are not yet ended there. While I was returning to the army from the coronation of the Emperor, the onset of winter detained me in quarters where, finding no conversation to divert me and fortunately having no cares or passions to trouble me, I stayed all day shut up alone in a stove-heated room, where I was completely free to converse with myself about my thoughts."

Carl Gustav Carus, Neun Briefe über Landschaftmalerei, geschrieben in den Jahren 1815 bis 1824

Der Schnee rieselt naßkalt am Fenster nieder, tiefe Stille umgibt mich, im Zimmer ist behagliche Erwärmung, und die in den langen trüben Abenden des Vorwinters zeitig angezündeten Lampe verbreitet anmutiges Dämmerlicht um mich her. Gewiß zu solcher Zeit kann nichts freundlicher sein, als in ruhigem Sinnen Gedanken Raum zu geben, welche um Gegenstände der Kunst sich verbreitend, uns nach und nach so ganz in die Gebiete des Schönen hinüberziehen, daß wir die trüben Tage vergessen und dem Gedächtnis jeder frühern unbequemen Stimmung entsagen.

Eating Smoke

The national rise in obesity is the consequence of not smoking. If we all still had firesticks to warm us in the evenings, we surely would have coughed all those extra calories away. Surely someone has come up with an epidemiological study comparing the rising and falling rates of lung cancer and obesity. Long dull evenings were always made tolerable by the cycle of wanting and enjoying which cigarettes provided every half hour. Whatever else was going on around you, soon you could have a cigarette. This addictive logic has not disappeared, it has merely been transferred to snacks, drinks and the internet.

Weather or not

Here at Snow Theory central, we are very concerned about the discourse analytical implications of weather.

Everyone talks about it, as Mark Twain quipped, but the real point is how they talk about it.

Weather forecasting is one area in which modern society still indulges in superstition. We may not be as fanatical as citizens of Constantinople, but all winter long we let dubious tricksters jack us with the possibility that a wintry mix will keep the kids home, slow the commute. We are not so different from those ancients who ran to the corner temple to find out if the dark cloud formation meant that we should sacrifice a chicken instead of offering three silver coins to the local weather deity.

The answer depends on the priest’s, i.e. station manager’s, agenda, do you want to cook chicken for dinner or do you want to go out to eat, or more precisely, are you pushing stuff left over from the President’s Day sale or last year’s Dodge inventory? Weathermen are the low-end shamans of modernity, they are either clever and ugly, or pretty and witless. They succeed because they claim to have local knowledge: “snow here in the tri-state area.” They invent new geographic terms for their viewing audience, “a cold front moving through the mid-state valley region.”

The very uncertainty of their predictions means that we always have to stay tuned. Sometimes they emphasize how tenuous their forecast is, “more at eleven, check our web site for updates.” Their real accomplishment is turning vague information into advertising cash, and that is most definitely doing something about the weather.

Med Man

SO tell me what am I missing about Mad Men, The first episode was cleverly self-referential with its trying to figure out the next Lucky Strikes campaign, the men were stylish for once, martinis everywhere, suits looked sharp, deception was a sign that everyone could get rich, even the misogyny was fascinating--how do people even think like that? but by episode three it was depressingly about the misery of Connecticut suburbs, the cocky office guys, the merely manipulative, the stupidly deceptive, I grew up in the seventies with everyone talking about the misery of middle class respectability--not that I had any, but I ask, so why the fascination for it again? A few pages of Cheever and Updike will suffice should the heart yearn for Potemkin men and psycho moms.

Political Skin/Stimulating Fingers

As the Republican Party and its supporters retrench after their defeat, the appeal to ancient values finds new words. Racist insinuations are among the many things that have changed since Obama became president. Fox News reported today that there would likely be no Republican “fingerprints” on the stimulus package, so that in the next presidential election four years from now, the bill would be a matter of “Obama’s political skin.” Overtly this means the stimulus bill is Obama’s political skin in the sense that his continued success depends on its actually stimulating the economy. The phrase also allows the Fox viewer to substitute the bill for Obama’s skin. If you don’t like one, the knowing looks implied, then you won’t like the other. Obama’s presidency is forcing racists to invent new connotations for old phrases. Not wanting to vote for the stimulus bill is comparable to not wanting to touch a black man’s skin was the message. This combination of refusing liberal spending in the name of refusing contact with black people may have been around a long time, but it is now being directed not just against the downtrodden but also the president.