As
Deaf As A Bat
published in Streetwise Flash Art: Is There A Future For
Cultural Studies, Power Institute publications, 1987
In this paper I mean to not criticize ; I mean to propose.
It is formulated from three distinct spaces : a direct response
to the question posed in this forum - "What's the use of
cultural studies" ; an indirect response to the theorization
of such a manual ; and an account of how I score, conduct
and perform cultural studies myself.
First,
a song - EXOTIC by The Rhythm Kings, from Delano somewhere
between 1962 and 1963. As the novelty of Instrumental Rock
wore off by 1962 to then return reinvigourated by the Surf
sound of '63, these post-Rockabilly mutant strains of Instrumental
Combo Rock on the west coast had to compete with the rise
of Soul (so named) from the east coast throughout 1963.
This of course is all before the real big battle of the
first British Invasion of '64. The Rhythm Kings were also
known as the Soul Kings, and on other occasions, The Rhythm
& Soul Kings, and were locally renowned as prime exponents
of 'the soul beat' to which was danced 'the Soul' as an
alternative to the major surf dance 'the Stomp'.
EXOTIC
I propose as a cultural object. My discusssion of it is
not intent on moulding this object into a model or shaping
a theory from its being, but rather I intend to address
the relationship between two abstract terms : 'culture'
and 'object', for it is there within the defined space,
the cast shadow, the outlined form that the viability of
the 'cultural object' exists. More importantly, I wish to
be confined to that space, remain in that shadow, and touch
that outline alone ; not to be determined by the object,
but to be controlled by it.
EXOTIC
is both material (noun) and material (adjective). Its effect
as a cultural object is made apparent through studying its
status, its presence, its substance, its value. These four
natures constitute an atmosphere of 'auras' which can exist
in the object's past and present, and my past and present,
and as such are trans-historical and multi-dimensional.
They are auras in the most obvious and basic sense of artifacts,
meaning that they exist in various displaced manners : hovering
light, floating vapour, shimmering reflection, peeling tissue.
And of course, these auras are illusory - they can only
be perceived whilst experiencing their object. In summary,
that is what a material effect would be : a perceptual sensation
that is immediate and simultaneous, each in terms of time
and space.
Despite
the implications of the term "material effect", it is not
something hyper-physical that overwhelms the conscious senses
(like Sly Stone's glistening sweat beads through macro-lenses,
Yves Klein's vibrating blue monochromes seen in the flesh,
or the snare drum on Janet Jackson remixes pumping a night
club). Nor does it reside in the realm of subtlety and sensuality
(like new age compact discs and fine art photographic prints)
where the erotics of detail massage egos that thrill to
the feel of intrinsic perception. Sophistication and bluntness
mirror each other as sensibilities dislocated from cultural
totality and isolated through cultural privilege. The point
is that material effects range from the bombastic to the
slight, from the present to the absent, and it is this incredible
range that warrants skill and expertise in perception ;
an ability to take in extremes of modalities which rarely
touch on any norm or fix to any side. Perception, then,
is neither a matter of aesthetic education nor a god-given
talent. It is developed - through exercise and practice.
If the brain is "the seat of sensation" (as in the Shorter
Oxford Dictionary), I furthermore regard it as a muscle.
In
plain terms, I seriously doubt most people's perception
- not their intellectual capability, but quite simply their
hearing and their sight. The rhetoric of perception (in
reviews, essays, debates, research, etc.) is so quickly
and so easily transformed into an authorative voice, where
gaps between words and spaces between lines tell the lie
that though all sentences may be opinions, they are nonetheless
founded on some total comprehension of the object's physical
dimension. But all those spaces and gaps never have to be
justified. When was the last time a critic, teacher or theoretician
submitted to either a hearing or seeing test? Beethoven
may have still composed when deaf, but how much analysing
of other works did he do? If material effects are the primary
means of facilitating our perceptual encoding, our focus
should be as scrutinized as much as our discourse. This
possibility of inaccurate focus is the most pervasive and
haunting fear of cultural studies. Like a nightmare effect
erupting into the following day's domain, it exists in the
morning papers, the weekly reviews, the term lectures, the
quarterly journals, the yearly forums - as deaf as a bat.
Let
us consider the materials and materialisms of EXOTIC. As
a cultural object it demonstrates clearly the state of confusion
into which we are thrown as we try to link signifier to
signified, to make sense of its sounds and images, to reconcile
experience with interpretation, reading with listening.
Its multiplicity is itself multiplied : historically (in
its origination), musicologically (in its composition),
technologically (in its production) and aesthetically (in
its application). Reflect on your first experience of hearing
this song, of hearing all its musical and linguistic ridges
and troughs : California & Egypt, Spain & Jugoslavia,
surf & twang, fezzes & crewcuts, new wave &
revivalism, ethnicity and parody, and so on. How did you
distinguish between the cues and the signs and the tricks
and the suggestions and the nuances and the resonances and
the marks and the traces? If you weren't confused, you weren't
listening.
To
be confused by culture is to know culture. To study culture
is not to understand it, but to maintain that confusion.
The cultural object is not only the object (thing) under
analysis but also the object (aim) of analysis : it is both
the reason for inquiry and the reason for not concluding
the inquiry. To conclude the inquiry is to then present
the findings, to close the text and shut the case. When
this is done, all simultaneity and immediacy evaporate in
a discourse that presents evidence to state that there were
things not evident in the 'original' object ; that there
was little to be discovered in the immediate and simultaneous
experience of the object's material effects. That evidence
is intended to prove a point of view - when it should be
proving the object.
There
you have the popular notion of cultural studies : a crack
team of academics dressed as crusaders and mediums, discovering
and disclosing hidden meanings. One is reminded of the theological
mandate expressed in the phrase "To know Him is to love
Him" where the act of knowing covers everything from seduction
to orgasm. The analysis of cultural objects often operates
under a similar compression, though ideologically more akin
to cargo cults than Christianity.
An
important distinction missing in cultural studies in general
is that between knowing the object and knowing its confusion.
One can still retain an experience of the object if one
embarks on a search for the cause of its confusion. The
findings from such a search would describe the multiple
workings of the object, but they would not define the object.
The object can only be defined by its auras, not by the
actual thing itself. To define it in terms of the latter
is to forfeit the object's presence, status, substance and
value in favour of some mysterious essential quality. This
search for the cause of confusion is grounded in research,
where meaning is not so much 'hidden' as it is lost, where
all primary searching is based on trying to find out where
to start researching. The archeology of culture is thus
posed as comprising of civilizations lost in both our and
their present and past, where unwritten histories speak
with most force and invisible connections vibrate with most
intensity.
Cultural
objects caught up in these schemes of our making resemble
hollowed forms with weird openings rather than solid shapes
with smooth finishes. Perception involves not only experiencing
the tactility (ie. the apparent) of their surfaces, but
also discerning what lies within and without their shapes
as viewed through their various openings. With EXOTIC, we
peer through it to see what its gaps reveal as well as the
form and texture of its inner casing. This presence of EXOTIC
as a cultural object is thereby divided into four distinct
realms : its outer surface, the space in front of it, its
inner surface, and the space behind it. Specific research
through trans-historical discourses becomes the instrument
for peering through the object - which pragmatically means
(in the specific case of EXOTIC) hunting down obscure specialist
fanzines, plugging into psychotics, obsessives and anal
retentives (ie. collectors) who could help with some information,
plus buying up anonymous records which might by chance reveal
some oblique hyper-lateral connection to what you're searching
for.
Thus
EXOTIC gets located as an instance arbitrarily pinpointed
within a density of flows : west coast surf subculture,
regional radio formatting, the economics of leisure activities,
stylistic appropriation of ethnicity, the function of instrumental
music, sub-generic mutation and competition, etc. The findings
here would suggest specific workings of ironic gesture,
rhythmic intergration, harmonic fusion, etc. This of course
is contrasted to and compared with one's perceptual experience
of the piece in order to gauge its substance (for example,
what is the precise resonance resultant from overlaying
the trumpet line of Herb Albert's THE LONELY BULL on a post-Rockabilly
riff over neo-blues chord slides?). To scantily summarize
the remaining two auras - its status could then be proposed
by its performance in communication, whether it calls attention
to its codes, whether it indicates a conflict in authorial
voices, whether it constitutes an identity, etc. ; while
its value could be proposed through a variety of hierarchical
discourses such as its popularity, its affect, its potential
as being seminal, innovative, perverse, etc. And once again,
to talk of these auras - that is, to directly address EXOTIC
- requires as full an understanding as possible of the work's
trans-historical and multi-dimensional environment, wherein
it existed and exists. If cultural space is the final frontier,
the cultural object is the ultimate dimension.
But
now the contradiction. If I was to comprehensively address
EXOTIC I would have reservations in presenting a discourse
based on the afore mentioned propositions, talking so much
about my discursive actions. Furthermore, I probably wouldn't
bring it up in a forum such as this, but would consider
it for a more conventional "rock" context, where the core
elements of EXOTIC would be recognized. This is because
the most effective writing on culture (in the service of
cultural studies) writes like its objects. Reminded of the
'naturalist' who tramps through the bush but is careful
to replace all unturned stones, cultural studies should
similarly return a voice, to converse with the object ;
not for moral or ethical reasons but in consideration of
the terms of one's address. I heed what I regard the 'logic'
of objects, that is that they can usually communicate quite
successfully without analysis, and that it would be profitable
to acknowledge that success in the form of a critical appendage
rather than a philosophical tangent ; to write without claiming
meanings, staking values and declaring notions. The returned
voice is the 'voice of experience' - constituting a writing
that describes the experience that created the writing.
In
conclusion, I restate the confusion evoked by EXOTIC. It
ably demonstrates how much can be lost - not how much can
be hidden. To figure culture as a mystery is to instantly
posit hidden meanings. But cultural objects themselves are
rarely hidden or lost : they exist in a universe of peripherys,
in the environments of cults, subcultures, minorities, segregations,
undergrounds, factions, and the like. Their signification
both within their environments and within our schemes is
the major thing lost. That signification is retrievable
but only at the cost of translation - but what else is the
language of culture but the movement of its translation?
As such, cultural objects (as signifying artifacts) are
best described as versions. Not originals, not copies, not
quotes, not rewrites, but versions joined to one another
through pixilation (in the cinematic sense) : a series of
still snapshots immediately replaced by another version
to generate the illusion of movement, an effect dependent
on the the degree of difference in each snapshot. Cultural
studies can survey the snapshots in any order or sequence,
but it can never make them move. They only move when we
experience them.
