In my Chinese politics class, we talked about the Chinese student movement in 1989 and the professor drew extensive parallels between what is happening at our school and what happened in Tienanmen Square.
The basic question posed: is occupy a performance, as our FORM is our CONTENT?
The occupy movement has long recognized that the message, what the objectives are, what are the demands...are not clear and coherent across the board. Does that mean what we're doing is for symbolism--a symbol of resistance against the economic tyranny of the exploitative powers that be (1%).
This class has really made me question my academic background that was rooted in literal meaning, objective numbers, or allocatively efficiency. I had come to Cal with a vague notion to "change the world" and was offered, through classes in development, economics, math, statistics--that there isn't value, not in the real world, for emotions or moral appeal or faith in humanity. the tools i was given were critical thinking, graphs on supply and demand, impact assessments, or human capital. Feelings got lost.
the significance of the previous paragraph is to emphasize that occupy doesn't speak that language as well as it speaks the symbolic language of change. if the movement wore suits and talked in numbers and figures, backed up by charts and graphs, what would it be?But Songs and Places returns me to state of nature...we use words like..."going there" and "important." vague, powerful, and ultimately deeply personal. this seems to be a pretty accurate reflection of what occupy is: we have grievances and people are suffering because of them--we gather under a movement and project this symbol. up against that world, the world of increasing bureaucratization, commodification, corporatization, privatization, institutionalization...
as i'm listening to willie dixon and muddy waters and thinking about the 50 year rule...there is a definite longing for a different time.
Beautifully stated.
ReplyDeleteI'd offer a comment on the "50 Year Rule," though (having invented it)--which is--by listening to the old songs we're given a picture of where the music of today comes from--its starting points and origins. The energy in Muddy Waters isn't so much from his being "old" as his being very immediate and in many ways very new--taking the delta blues he was born with and re-making them into the urban blues of power-house post-war Chicago. What Occupy can re-make of our own vital past--and present--is the connection...and the beautiful challenge...