Enduring Schooling (Part 4)

Against Robozombism

Back to the reminiscences of David, Mark’s late younger brother. Like those memories, alongside the triumph of the failure to rob the plant, should be the gateway to “a kind of eternal childhood” with which Mark claims to be rewarded (Welsh 2012, 530). In accord with questioning the nature of the closing episode, one wonders whether it is so, or, perhaps, if Mark and company are unaware of succumbing to oppressive instruments of social control deploying a model of extended childhood as a manipulative device. He might as well be one of Thatcher’s infantilized adults epitomizing fetishization of youth pertinent to commodity culture sentiment, as presented in Michael Bracewell’s (2002, 15).

Mark, a collage dropout, whose decision to return to Edinburgh could be motivated by a need to pursue different kinds of experience, other kinds of knowledge, might not be exemplary of fashionista affinities. His choices can partly be perceived through the lens of Bracewell’s remarks about the social climate during the decades portrayed in Welsh’s novels:

Now, since the designer consciousness of the late 1980s has given way to the quest for spiritual hygiene and social responsibility that pumps the heart of New Labour’s New Britain, the nurturing of our inner child by any means possible has achieved a new fashionableness – at the expense, perhaps, of our inner adult. (Bracewell 2002, 124)

Welsh conjures up a hybrid vernacular combining local slang with standard English, clearly indicating idiosyncrasies of a specific subcultural milieu—an idiom of the outcasts. Demarcating the intricacies of drug-related phenomena, the narrative technique invokes the question of voicing out the predicament of the socially underprivileged. In an age of the proliferation of social margins, this complicates the entrenched perception of the center-periphery divide and the historization of the distribution of political power. Mark’s streetwise scholarship provides him with plenty of material for retrospective contemplation, as he writes in one of his journal entries:”Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards” (Welsh 2012, 462 original emphasis).

Yet, neither backward nor forward fabrications of cultural realities and / or selfhood is in the postfuturist parlance spelled out either as a nostalgic longing for the times bygone, since no historical epoch is worthy of complicity in the proliferation of inhumane social relations, nor idealized future anticipations. Rather, firmly anchored in hic & nunc / anticarpediem turntablist poetics, the remix seeks sources of storytelling, i.e., creative / critical remapping of cultural realities in counternostalgic, antisomnambulist legacy of punk rock mafothers : perseverance in the reemergence of genuine communication in the key of humbleness invigorating solidarity within the community of selfless, yet reindividualized, fellow humans enduring the hindrances to patient, persistent creation of a free culture based on love and trust. Focused on the existing vocabularies, always bearing in mind the inherited ones, postfuturist DJs draw inspiration from selectively remixable tradition and current stories, and yet, distance the inquiry from reestablishing social relations based on inequity, austerity, and inhumaneness.  On the contrary, the remix is recuperation of the past, reimagining the future, and resurrecting the present.

In Skagboys, the sources of reconfiguring the conversation between change and preservation hide in the least expected interstices in the intersection of the time axes. First, of all the characters, it is Seeker whose random commentary becomes a basis for Mark’s insight into a possibility that some of the acquaintances might be friendly. Only, the attitude is severed by heroin’s emotional obstructiveness and the capacity to hinder making a clear distinction between bonding and bondage. However, rather than on the level of characterization, plot, or any central literary element of the novel, a quirky sense of communality is woven in the connective tissue of the storyline--the “Junk Dilemmas” interludes, diary entries, casual observations.

Paradoxically, it is also infused in the whole of the very last chapter, ambiguous as it might be. Unlike the prevalent high octane narrative in the greater part of the novel, the very last scene poses to the reader puzzling possibilities of interpreting the looks exchanged between Mark and Simon and the silence saturating the atmosphere of the room—the silence “into which all time collapses” (Welsh 2012, 531). Given that the second chapter of Trainspotting is entitled “Relapsing,” the paralyzingly “frozen second” defying time might not be all that undecipherable (Welsh 2012, 531). As a symbolic device telling a tale exceeding the plot of either the prequel or the evolvement of the retrospectively introduced trainspotter narratives, the looks exchanged might be a token of the victory that needs no explanation. If the former, the possibilities for further inquires include wondering where in the age of the onset of the legalization of drugs and politics of medicalization resistance can be found. More precisely, unrecommendable form of countercultural activism as it might be, drug misuse in habitually politically indifferent social segments can be a visceral response against cultural realities that dilute vision of the human face.

Nowadays, intercultural dialogues, including intergenerational ones, appear to be understood in terms of economic vocabulary. One might be led to think that such a subtext of power relations is the only currency of social exchange. Furthermore, this could signal vulnerability, nearly incapacity for wholesome resistance. Youth might find taking the stance towards the situation to be of the highly delicate character. In culture plagued by oppressive infantilization, superficial, forced entertainment is one of the most prominent means of social control. Flawed/afflicted maturity, (un)masked immaturity, and childishness oftentimes strangely conspire in muting sound social responses against bewildering noise, thereby dissolving communication capable of solidifying solidarity and generating refacement.

Alongside intergenerational dialogue, the production of knowledge is clearly integral to discursively negotiated, occasionally noise-infested, cultural realities. Paul Virilio’s antidistraction theory, as presented in his book Open Sky (1997), may illuminate such cultural flows by remarking pollution by velocity: “Alongside air pollution, water pollution and the like, there exists an unnoticed phenomenon of pollution of the world’s dimensions that I propose to call dromospheric – from dromos: a race, running”(Virilio 1997, 22 original emphasis). The pollution is related to “forgetting the essence of the path, the journey” (Virilio 1997, 23 original emphasis).

He proposes dromology as antidistraction antidote against desertification resulting from dromospheric contamination: “the desert of world time – of  a global time – complementing the desert of flora and fauna rightly decried by ecologists” (Virilio 1997, 125 original emphasis). Thus, dromology, an ecology recuperating “the pace of public life” (Virilio 1997, 23), can be taken to have the capacity to redeem the public realm void of communication, despite verbal content being the apparent currency. In that context, the center of the subject-object thematic is relocated into the gap between them—on the path so persistently kept out of the critical focus: “Between the subjective and the objective it seems we have no room for the ‘trajective’”(Virilio 1997, 24). Or, do we not, indeed?

Like skagboys, wandering through the desert of trainspotter narratives, humans are perplexed by superimposed acceleration of activities, which more often than not aims to engender quantified accumulation of material wealth, an increase in bank statements, and  property values. Yet, it threatens to deprive individuals of the time to think, enjoy, and be with each other. Work hours and workload are often directly proportionate to consumer purchasing power, and clearly discrepant from human needs.

Whirlpools of frenzied time may feel like a syncopated rhythm in a jazz tune. Like knots in time, they seem to tie the communication flow.  As if it were inhibited, not very gently prevented from continuing to facilitate exchange in the communication channel. Syncopation like noise. Until the strings sound resistance against captivity. The winds accept the call for dissensus. The percussions agree, too.

One wonders how discourse can approach such complexities. Based on Terry Eagleton’s ideas, one is prone to think that cultural theory has an almost impossible task (Eagleton 2003). One aspect of the problematic concerns the fact that cultural theory deals with art, religion, subcultures, entertainment, to name a few. What Eagleton accentuates is that each segment of culture constituting the subject matter of cultural theory is part of human life, reflects how people live, and informs social relations and communication / exchange among and / or between humans. Hence, cultural theory may not be as troubling as it appears, should it sustain a reasonable balance between heavy-laden, self-referential technicality and jargon-free reductionism.

In other words, as a vocabulary reflecting how people live, create, know, and learn, to name a few ingredients of cultural realities, cultural theory should not be detached from the subject matter in order to preserve an insight into the questions pertinent to it. Nor should it lose a vibrant distance from what it explores and avoid identification with it in order to ensure discursive status.

Of particular significance regarding the academic aspect of cultural theory is that, as a rhetorical apparatus, it calls for the aforementioned balance, thereby making itself comprehendible both to the community of scholars and to those not fluent in the vernacular. If it is not resilient to the nondiscursive influx, it tends to desensitize itself from the vital themes comprising the field of study. By contrast, if it is articulated solely in a jargon-free style, it might: (a) be simplistic and/or insufficiently distanced from the object level; (b) be utilitarian; (c) not be intelligible even to itself; and (d) not convey the message clearly. The crux of the polemic calls for a response in an antibabylonian fashion, divesting itself of the image of an ivory tower and remaining vocabulary in the service of humanity. Just as cultural theory is and should be. Just as education is and should be.

Based on Terry Eagleton’s insights in After Theory (2003), invoking McKenzie Wark’s thoughts from The Beach beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International (2011) about the work of Alexander Trocchi and, more broadly, the legacy of the Situationist International, low tech poetics emerges from the reintegrating potential of the remix. Originating in music, the remix combines textual, audio, and visual expressive modes. Creating a hybrid idiom, it puts in conversation certain elements of high culture with a more accessible, yet not oversimplified, not less rigorous idioms.  Firmly anchored in humbleness, it disambiguates the deceitful idea about the totality of discourse, all the while investing in the capacities of critical / creative reading-writing. Likewise, it objects to the delusion of human omnipotence, simultaneously acknowledging the limits and power of the human.

The counterpoint to an arena of self-centered, competitive, solely cumulative erudition, nihilo-cannibalist rivalry, indistinguishable, uniforming amalgam suppressing individuality and mimicking, rather than containing, contemporary culture’s coercive, somnambulist, massifying, monetarist dictum is the awareness that opens up an avenue for thinking a possibility for reshifting onto the pattern that illuminates the significance of humbleness. Disambiguating noise in the battlefields of power—oppressive cultural flows aiming to distract education from the pivotal playfulness—cultural theory may elucidate the significance of unity and individuality of fellow humans within the questlike endeavors such as education. It also opens up the avenue for the remix.

Language is elusive. But it’s also protective. So is knowledge. So is education. At the moment, education is leaning towards a cumulative pattern of obtaining knowledge. It reflects the model of progress for progress’ sake, absurdly resonating with its supposedly oppositional, utilitarian nature that humanity seems to have acquired, oblivious of the need for disrupting such a logic with a friendly reminder that progress is and should be in the service of human beings.

Furthermore, it can cast light on the angle from which the pursuit of knowledge can be seen as the channel for genuine communication invigorating solidarity within the community of humans. Building on the symbolic in Jon Savage’s punk historiography, revealed is just how incredible those sources of enhancement are:“The lack of an overall, defined ideology was heavily criticized but, just like Punk was at its most powerful when impossible to define, this is not a weakness, but a source of strength” (Savage 2001, xvii).

The angle casts light on education to be constitutive of a vibrant source of resistance against noise, and in the service of the remix.

Weakness as strength. Language that eludes, but also protects. Maybe only such epistemological knots can, in a quirky way, explain why the struggle for power is not all education is about. Maybe they can also highlight the distinction between education not being important any more and a slightly altered nature of its significance. This can certainly be indicative of the threat of noise to distort the message and preclude the flow in the communication channel. Disentanglement of syncopations reawakens the sounds muted in a frozen moment. Like the reconstitution of communal cohesion. Like refacement : rebirth of the human face through alternating cycles of noise and silence : reintegration of the subtonic layers preserving the wholesome sound of creation.

Bibliography

Bracewell, Michael. 2002. When Surface Was Depth: Death by Cappuccino Other Reflections on Music and Culture in the 1990's. Boston: Da Capo Press.

Eagleton, Terry. 2003a. After Theory. New York: Basic Books.

Eagleton, Terry. 1986b. Against the Grain: Essays 1975-1985. London: Verso Books.

Eagleton, Terry. 2007c. The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rourke, Lee. 2010. The Canal. New York: Melville House.

Savage, Jon. 2001. England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. 1991. Revised edition.  New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.

Wark, McKenzie. 2012a. “A Christmas Carol: Dedicated to Scrooge, and His Art Collection.” 2013. Verso Books Blog, December 11. Accessed October 7, 2014. http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1201-a-christmas-carol-dedicated-to-scrooge-and-his-art-collection

Wark, McKenzie. 2011b. The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International  London: Verso Books.

Virilio, Paul. 1997. Open Sky. Translated by Julie Rose. London: Verso Books.

Welsh, Irvine. 2012. Skagboys. New York: Norton.

Wilde, Oscar. 2007. The Picture of Dorian Gray.  1891. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Michael Patrick Gillespie, 5-184. Edited Second edition.  New York: Norton.

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“Enduring Schooling : Against Noise, and in the Service of the Remix.” Genero: Journal of Feminist Theory and Cultural Studies. Eds. Katarina Lončarević, Marina Simić, and Daša Duhaček. Issue 18. Belgrade: Women’s Studies Center, 2014. 65-88. Print.