With the "market" as the dominant representation of our material interdependence, I take it as an historical and practical fact that human commodification is a material and cultural inevitability. I expect that with a little effort, something verging on a thermodynamic law could be assserted to rigorously describe commodification as a phenomenon of cultural degeneracy.
Disaffection and dispossession are hallmarks of a control system implemented historically to maintain governance of commodified humans (blacks) not only in their material, but also in their psychological particulars. It is in the psychological realm that I believe jim crow produced unanticipated results.
IMO - cultural aesthetics were/are epiphenomenal to the interpersonal *strategies* implemented by blacks as psychological countermeasures to racialist governance and market predation. I believe that the interpersonal praxis arising within certain of our segregated communities gave rise to the intrapersonal epistemic genius that undergirds the cultural aesthetic for which I and old school others may correctly be accused of feeling nostalgic.
For me, the question is not one of getting back to a retro aesthetic, so much as, getting back to an interpersonal praxis of self-worth and exceptional valuation (with which you don't take issue) that served as a potent countermeasure to outgroup psychological oppression. My opinion is that the interpersonal praxis, or forced psychological interdependence gave rise to the aesthetic and developmental genius for which the old school feels nostalgic.
As you say, in the market, negro, colored, or black represents conspicuous commodification of a people. However, a people compressed into an interpersonal communion will adaptively begin to exhibit emergent properties neither anticipated by themselves, or, by those who viewed them as commodified prey. It is in the market that *black* connotes *commodity*. Since our communities are no longer compressed as they once were, the transformative powers of our previously unnaturally compressed interpersonal communion are no longer active. It is as if - post integration - the community has lost its leaven.
Bereft as we now all are of our compressed and alchemically transformative communities of yesteryear, we are all of us merely *men in black*. Some of us free of material and psychological constraints, others of us laboring under both, some of us now having succumbed to the basest market forces and psychological apostasy in which we not only commodify ourselves but lead as many others as possible into the sin of minstrelsy. I find minstrelsy to be epidemic throughout all modes of cultural production in which blackness is bought and sold. Massie, Nelly, Artest, are but a few recent examples of blackness gone bad...,
I believe that interpersonal communion as a catalyst to intrapersonal communion is the most powerful mode of psychological development available to human beings. If you invert Matthew 7:3 it not only indicates that the individual cannot see his own shortcomings and should therefore be slow to judge others, rather, it simultaneously (esoterically) indicates that others can see the individual more clearly - and if so inclined - assist him in achieving an objective view of his ultimate nature, i.e., developing toward realization of his psychological potential.
I believe that as a people, the now fragmented black cultural diasporans were once engaged in precisely such an interpersonal communion. Moreover, that it was our compression in segregated communities that gave rise to a psychological and developmental chain reaction that produced the extraordinary individual and group results for which I and others feel nostalgic. (:
Posted by at December 6, 2004 06:36 PM | TrackBackHow much you wanna bet?
If your drawing room dialogue happens at this level of the game;
http://rense.com/general60/stun.htm
minimally suggestive that your diasporan collective is well-able to assert its interests in the systems of production and distribution in which depictions of our diasporan collective have been commodified for fun, mischief, and profit - I'm not sure lamentations on the demise of interpersonal communion in the ghettos of yesteryear have the same existential urgency as lamentations on the demise of the hood.
As for the segregation issue, I'm with Michael on this one. The global capitalist brains-for-hire meritocracy has been in effect for long enough that there are domains that have been integrated on the basis of knowledge, skill and ability. I believe that the *leaven* of the once vital black community has been extracted and integrated elsewhere.
Posted by: cnulan at December 7, 2004 12:59 AM
'I believe that the *leaven* of the once vital black community has been extracted and integrated elsewhere.'
Singing-'I've got jungle fever, you've got jungle fever, we've got jungle fever. We're in love!'
Interesting that you say that the leaven has been extracted. I'd posit the contrary. Instead, the *leaven* of capitalism, individualism, and uber self-determinism, have corrupted the flava of the black community.
In order to be 'extracted and integrated elsewhere' would assume there is a place where the black collective resides. Where is that place? I can't seem to find it anymore.
Capitalism, the *market* exists on the horizontal axis of life. It is mechanical, not psychological or developmental, and determines what we consume.
Flava, or *leaven* as I've termed it, exists on the vertical axis of life. It is a set of psychological or developmental possibilities that inform what we produce and how we live.
The interpersonal communion of yesteryear was self-rising but not self-determining or autonomous. Profligate in its generation of individuals in whom psychological ferment was strong, the black community was NOT hermetically sealed, NOR was it infrastructurally rooted. It lacked the foundation of material interdependency.
As soon as legally sanctioned segregation ended, as soon as the market was opened, the black community lost its vital critical mass and crumbled at its foundations. Its vitality was devoured and it began to die.
It seems clear that what Cobb said is true;
"The affinities of the Old School are more important today even though we are living in an age that doesn't explicitly permit the values. We need the value of your father spanking me when I'm out of line, more than we need the value of a 'tip drill' or the various perversions of intimate relationships exemplified in much of hiphop culture. The Old School is black nationalistic and forged a brotherhood out of a dysfunctional Negrohood. It took Community and moved it up to Nation. We are now the diaspora of the black nationalism, all within the US. We have to aggregate in order to preserve the enduring values of black nationalism.
At the same time, I understand that successful integration will deliver many of the same goals, but only to a different soundtrack. I think blackfolks have too much pride to accept that with grace, but the substance is the same. "
The question(s) fall to you Don;
Do you have the will to aggregate?
Is your pride sufficient to pay more than lip service to the enduring values of Black Nationalism?
Or, are you in thrall to the market and simply complaining ungracefully about what has befallen our fading collective?
If the collective is an intrapersonal reality in us, then it can be reconstituted anywhere, if not, then it exists only in our imaginations and virtual conversations...,
Posted by: cnulan at December 7, 2004 10:23 AM
I'm not privvy to conversations in Jewish American circles, but I would be willing to bet that they are saying much the same thing. How much of this is a modern phenomenon? We are still segregated--though not integrated by class as much as we once were. Is this really a phenomenon of supposed desegregation or are we really talking about the encounter with postmodern life?
Posted by: Lester Spence at December 7, 2004 12:13 AM