Eating my words

[paulhope]

Remember all that stuff I was saying about the film, "Load After Load," playing at the party of My Pal, Foot Foot? I take it back. Shame, shame, shame--what's wrong with me? Here's a problem with having (acknowledging) split motivations for every action

Comments

Re: this is hal

[anonymous]

Situationists were an interesting bunch. One of them, Guy Debord, became lastingly famous. they were the primary intelletuals behind the '68 riots in france. I think they saw their work as "liberating" as opposed to negative work + positive work. but yeah, as for them never getting anywhere, you're right

when I called hipsterism consumerist, I wasn't referring to the tendency of mainstream fashion to mimic them. it would indeed be absurd to hold them responsible for that. in fact, I'm not holding hipsters responsible for anything. like I said in another comment (or did I?), I'm not "critiquing" hipsterism, I'm just commenting on the general shape and political dynamics of our culture today. when I said it was consumerist, I was referring to the hipster trend of fetishizing vintage consumer goods or out-of-the-way consumer goods (pabst blue ribbon anyone?). maybe I'm being too reductive though in seeing it as a repetition of commodity fetishism instead of a subversive reaction to it.

I agree that the highest "intellectualism" of philosophy always finds vulgar expression somehow. I don't think it's so much a matter of filtering down, as you say, as everyone reacting to the same changing set of material, economic, and politcal circumstances, the people in their own way, the intellectuals in their own way.

I'm glad you brought up redstate fundamentalism. that really is the conflict of the day, relativism and fundamentalism. I don't understand most of your last big paragraph, but I agree with the parts I understand, the part about social reform being either impossible (hipsters) or quixotic (evangelicals).