By Jan Baetens

The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries

Eds Kate Oakley and Justin O’Connor

New York: Routledge, 2015, 575 p.

ISBN-13: 978-0415706209

Hardback, $142.55

There are many reasons to consider this book, for now alas only available in a hardback, library-only version, the most important publication in cultural studies of the year 2015. True, the scope of this collection is not cultural studies, but at the same time it makes very clear how much the current reflection to the cultural industries owes to existing work in cultural studies as well as political economy – the former having a strong focus on issues of representation, popular culture, and minorities, the latter being centered on the role of media and communication systems in the organization of capitalist systems. In all recent scholarship on cultural studies, the gradual merger with political economy has become more or less self-evident, which can only be seen as a wise and sound evolution.

The same can also be said of the increasing proximity, if not merger of the fields of cultural studies and cultural industries. The best available handbook at the time being, David Hesmondalgh’s The Cultural Industries (3 successive editions since 2002) is very clear in this regard, and here as well this is an evolution that can only be welcomed. There is, however, an ongoing mix-up of the notions of “cultural” and “creative” as far as the “industries” are concerned. Besides the many qualities of the separate contributions in this incredibly rich and very up to date overview, Oakley and O’Connor’s book also proves invaluable in demonstrating the necessity to avoid any confusion between creative industries on the one hand and cultural industries on the other hand.

Not an easy task, given the profound vagueness of both terms (“culture” is everything, and who doesn’t want to be “creative”?). Yet the difference between both types of industries can be neatly explained in two ways. It is first of all internal: creative industries have as their target the production of ideas, techniques, goods and services, that can be legally protected as “intellectual properties”, which is not necessarily the case in the cultural industries. But it is also, if one can say so, external: the goal of a creative industry is to make money (and the authors of this book are clever enough to stress that there is nothing wrong with this), whereas the basic horizon of a cultural industry is not automatically such (many cultural industries try for instance to “produce culture” rather than to make profit in the first place).

The Routledge Companion to the Cultural Industries is therefore a publication that can be cited as a model to all modern cultural studies research. It offers a broad synthesis, not only of the various cultural industries that exist today, but also – and more importantly – of the various theoretical and disciplinary frames essential for a correct understanding of what is happening in this field. In addition, and this is no less crucial, it also makes a strong plea for the cultural specificity of these industries, always in danger of being absorbed by the economically more interesting branch of the creative industries.

(Another reason to recommend the reading of this book is the strong presence of the work by our former MA student Christiaan De Beukelaer, currently teaching at Melbourne University whose publications are mentioned no less than 6 times in the general introduction.)

 

By Jan Baetens

On: Jean-Marie Apostolidès, Debord, le naufrageur (Paris, Flammarion: 2015)

The founding father of situationism, a highly politicized neo-avant-garde movement that is said to have played a decisive role in the May 68 turmoil (see the database “Situationist International Online:  http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/) and author of the influential essay The Society of the Spectacle (various editions online, see for instance: http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/4 ), Guy-Ernest Debord is considered one of the most important French thinkers of the second half of the 20^th Century. One can guess students know him best from one of the most radical May 68 graffiti: “Ne travaillez jamais” or “Never work”, a principle Debord has held during all his life, for it was always others –family, friends, sponsors– who helped him make his living. The mysteries that surround Debord are numerous: first there is the enigma of the societal impact of his work, hardly known till the publication of his major work in 1967 and certainly much less noticed in that period than that of most other left-wing philosophers and activists; second, there is also the puzzle of his life, which has been the subject of intense efforts of mythification and self-mythification.

It does not come as a surprise that the most recent biography of Debord is written by Jean-Marie Apostolidès, professor emeritus of Stanford University. A specialist of French literature, drama, and cultural theory and history, Apostolidès had already widely published on Debord and situationism, both in fiction and nonfiction (for an example of the former, see for instance his play Il faut construire l’hacienda, 2006, which reconstructs the amazing encounter between Ivan Chtcheglov, a fellow situationist, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau, former prime minister of Canada –and father of the current prime minister of the country, see: http://www.lesimpressionsnouvelles.com/catalogue/hacienda/). Moreover, his work as cultural historian had made Apostolidès very sensitive to some of the basic aspects of Debord’s key influence on society, such as for instance the shift from a patriarchal society to an anti-patriarchal society and the consequences of that shift for social structures either based on or rebuking authority. In his reading of Debord’s life, Apostolidès ceaselessly stresses a decisive paradox in this regard: the very authoritarian character and behavior of the man (but according to the author: the Peter Pan like capricious and megalomaniac child that Debord has always remained).

The current publication of nearly 600 pages is not only the revised and expanded version of previous, shorter biographical and fictional essays, it is also a critical return on the figure of Debord. The focus of the book is less on the literary and cinematographic work of the author than on his life, meticulously described but also systematically interpreted in light of certain childhood and adolescent traumas (absence of the father, overprotection by competing women, conflict with the stepfather and lasting influence of lost and self-constructed identities). The resulting portrait is devastating, at least from a biographical point of view. Apostolidès does not deny at all the literary and intellectual qualities of his model, but his judgment of the man –crudely egoistic, constantly manipulative–  is extremely negative. In that sense, this fascinating biography only increases the mystery of Debord’s publications, whose style and content leave no one indifferent.

By Heidi Peeters

One of Cultural Studies more interesting scholars is Andrew Ross. Besides being an activist, being infamously involved in the Sokal affair (physicist Alan Sokal managed to get a nonsensical article published in the journal with Ross on the editorial board), and being brave enough to ethnographically immerse himself in the life of “Celebration, Florida”, a constructed town by the Disney corporation (as an alternative form of post-Sokal sabbatical reorientation), he also wrote quite a famous book on the conditions of labor in the new neoliberal climate: Nice Work If You Can Get It.

In this book, Ross focuses, amongst others, on how cultural workers (artists, designers, writers, performers…) have been advertised by policy makers, city developers and the New Economy in general as the motor of a dynamic economic reform. Creativity is considered to be a renewable, sustainable and undertapped source of financial value: everyone has it and no large investments are needed to mine this intellectual gold. The mentality of struggling artists is hailed as the new model in neoliberal entrepreneurship: their ethos of self-discipline, their extreme flexibility, their sacrificial willingness to work long-hours for little pay with little overhead (working at home or in the nearest coffee shop), out of pure passion, the need for aesthetic recognition and the hope of climbing to the level of those rare creative stars in the feast-or-famine, winner-takes all economy. Their precarious, part-time, contractual state-of-insecurity is presented as meritocratic freedom, not in the least because self-promotion and the glorification of one’s lifestyle (on Instagram, blogs and facebook) has become part of the creative worker’s job – leisure is always also work. In this way, the perceived “luminosity” (to borrow Angela McRobbie’s term) of the cultural class is used as a force in the renewal of run-down city neighborhoods. With Richard Florida (The Rise of the Creative Class) as the main theorist of and also the private consultant for attracting this rare breed of creative talent, cities become “hipsterized”: bikepaths are created, industrial warehouses get a cultural makeover, and an image of ethnic and sexual diversity is promoted within cultural city-renewal programs. The eventual result of all this luminosity is gentrification: poorer neighborhoods become fashionable and property value rises.

The problem for Ross is the precarious situation of the creative class. Even though they are presented as carefree, latte-drinking, quinoa-eating hipsters, driving around on their fixed-gear bikes and typing away at their apple netbooks, these precarious members of the creative class will not reap the fruit of their intellectual labor, nor will they benefit from the gentrification they bring about. The appeal of creative workers results in a boost of pop-up concept stores, hip eateries and coffee joints and eventually real-estate development projects, chasing away the original creatives who can no longer afford the rents.

Andrew Ross is of course not against creativity or against a creative economy. He nevertheless wants to warn policymakers not to focus blindly on the creation of jobs and growth and economic gain in the creative industries, but also to be aware of the job security and the work-life balance of these laborers, lest the ones who benefit from the policy are real-estate developers and big corporations. But, to quote Ross:

“So far, however, the kind of development  embraced by policymakers seems guaranteed merely to elevate this traditionally unstable work profile into an inspirational model for youth looking to make an adventure out of their entry into the contingent labor force. If the creative industries become the ones to follow, all kinds of jobs, in short, may well look more and more like musicians’ gigs: nice work if you can get it.”

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Andrew Ross, Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life And Labor In Precarious Times, New York: New York University Press, 2009

By Jan Baetens

Recently there has been an impressive amount of publications in French on the cultural as well as the societal value of the humanities (Yves Citton) or, more specifically of literature (Tzvetan Todorov, Antoine Compagnon, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, among others). The new book by William Marx, a world-leading voice in the field of literary studies (see for instance his L’Adieu à la littérature, 2005), does just this and simultaneously brings forth something completely different, and that is one of the many reasons to read it urgently.

In La Haine de la littérature (The Hatred of Literature), Marx is not simply making a plea for the literary text by explaining the numerous benefits it can provide to personal and social development –these arguments pro domo have never convinced those who believe that human societies can do without literary creations and institutions–, he more radically tackles the various critiques that have been addressed since Plato (yes, nothing new under the sun) to all those involved in literature –writers, of course, but also readers, accused of idleness for instance or silly indulgence to as useless, if not dangerous, an activity as spending time with books about nothing.

One of the most surprising passages of the book, which can be found in the section on the alleged lack of social and societal relevance of literary texts, discusses the role of cultural studies in these debates. Marx’s position, which is a vibrant tribute to the British pioneers of the discipline, Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, is all the more refreshing since it helps overcome one of the most deeply rooted prejudices against cultural studies. It has often been argued, indeed, that cultural studies has been the gravedigger, first of literary studies, second of literature tout court. The current competition between literary and cultural studies departments or the tricky ‘culturalization’ of the literary curriculum as a last lifeguard against the final disappearance of literary studies, may have become a reality of current academic life, but what Marx clearly demonstrates is how such a perception is due to a blatant betrayal of the ideas of Hoggart and Williams. Both Hoggart and Williams were very much in favor of literature and the inclusion of literary studies in the emerging paradigm of cultural studies, which would be crippled, they argued, by the abandon of the literary imagination as well as the literary canon. Marx also shows how this misreading came about: he rightly considers it the collateral damage of the hold-up on cultural studies by sociology and the social sciences in general. Incapable of making sense of the rebellious exceptionality of the literary text which they could not frame within their abstract generalizations, sociologists such as Bourdieu –but it would be unfair to put the blame just on him, in spite of the huge responsibility his way of thinking has had on the statistic streamlining and hence erasure of the literary text qua text– accelerated the move away from close reading and literary scholarship. It is now time to repair the damage and to start reading again. And cultural studies has to speak up for the key role it has always wanted to give to literature.

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William Marx, La Haine de la littérature. Paris: Minuit, 2015. http://www.leseditionsdeminuit.fr/f/index.php?sp=liv&livre_id=3179

By Laura Katherine Smith

While doing research for the then upcoming international conference hosted by the KU Leuven: Immunity and Modernity: Picturing Threat and Protection (May 2015), I picked up the book On Immunity: An Inoculation (2014). I thought that Eula Biss’ book might offer a straight forward, medical or law-based analysis that would help me to pin down or to grasp an answer to the question: just what is immunity? Biss’ book did not provide such a ready-made definition of immunity but rather, and to my benefit as a reader, documented a journey of discovery that outlines and embraces the complexity of this concept. Eula Biss, author of On Immunity: An Inoculation, is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at Northwestern University.

The book opens with an image of the myth of Achilles, “whose mother tried to make him immortal” (3). Through such stories of myth and fate, Biss shares her earliest memories with the reader; encounters with what she would later come to recognize as related to the question of immunity. These often cautionary tales were passed from parents to child. The stories, including Grimm’s Fairy Tales, remained in latent consciousness as Biss returned to explore the limits and possibilities of immunity as an adult. The author notes, “I do not remember the brutality for which those tales are famous as vividly as I remember their magic. (…) But it did not escape my notice, as a child, that the parents in those tales have a maddening habit of getting tricked into making bad gambles with their children’s lives” (4). The author’s struggle for clarity with regards to this concept is coloured by her own experience as the daughter of a doctor, as a nonfiction writer and as a mother. The book’s dedication reads: “to other mothers, with gratitude to mine”.

In addition to what Sarah Manguso defines as Biss’ ‘self-documentation’, the reader feels herself well informed by the obvious paramount research that has gone into Biss’ investigation of immunity (Manguso defines this extensive research practice as Biss’ ‘world-documentation’). The collected fragments for this project are drawn from medical journals and articles, nonfiction and fiction books, newspaper clippings, world events, politics, history, poetry, science and myth in an exhaustive effort to come to terms with this concept. Biss’ methodology creates an historical tapestry; stories and voices of Christopher Columbus, Karl Marx, George Orwell, John Keats, Søren Kierkegaard, and Rainer Maria Rilke are woven amidst various scholars, including Susan Sontag and Donna Haraway, as well as historians of immunology and other scientists. Data from the American Medical Association, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization entwine with these stories and voices. References to Alice in Wonderland and, in particular, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, reinforce this tapestry. Biss takes the reader back to the first vaccinations in the eighteenth century that were performed by farmers and involved transferring the pus of infected cows (cowpox) into humans – the author notes that this experiment was successful in the protection against smallpox. Themes and topics of vaccination, fearfulness, paranoia, germ theory, herd immunity, banking immunity, and governmental and pharmaceutical corruption fill out the context upon which we imagine our own and each other’s immunity.

To describe Biss’ book as ‘straight forward’ would be, on the one hand, to highlight the ease with which this book is read – the reader can immediately relate to its reminiscences of personal familial experience concerning, for example, childhood illness, debates about vaccination, and the confusion of frenzied consumerism – its trends and paralysing choices when it comes to ‘knowing what is best for our children’. However, overall, and to her credit, Biss takes the reader on an anything but ‘straight forward’ journey. With the author as guide, the reader discovers that this concept bends, twists, and metamorphoses as metaphor and imagination grip and drive perception and experience.

This book identifies that immunity turns around the central question of self and other. As a new, and she admits ‘fearful’ mother, Biss tries, through the collection and analysis of information, to find the best strategies of protection for her newborn son. Through this investigation, however, the blurring of lines – between imagined and physical self and other, individual and community – becomes evident and Biss posits that humans are not and cannot be immune to life since we are bound to the very elements that we perceive as threatening. We are ‘always already’ both threatened and dangerous it turns out although continuously, “we imagine our bodies as isolated homesteads that we tend either well or badly” (21). George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s book, Metaphors We Live By (1980), is directly put to use here as Biss demonstrates that metaphor shapes the way we perceive ourselves and the world.

Rather than pinning down a static answer to ‘what is immunity?’, I have instead obtained, through Biss’ book, a much richer understanding of the nature of immunity. Rather than a definition of immunity that closes a conversation, Biss’ book creates fertile links that spark further thought – a meditation on the concept without beginning or end. A metamorphic image of immunity, gleaned from Biss’s book, proved a solid foundation for my further research – not despite but because of its malleability in confronting the question: just what is immunity? The image of immunity that Biss paints is one of relation, a continual negotiation, breakdown, and/or redefinition across and between self-other. Biss’ complex constellation, wherein all of life is implicated in the consideration of immunity, inevitably demonstrates that with protection comes vulnerability and vice versa.

Highly recommended reading for research and/or general interest.