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Feb. 16th, 2017
via http://ift.tt/2lbUo5R:
“Most white people, especially rural white people (I grew up in a town of 2000 in Ohio) don’t have any concrete culture, they don’t have a unique form of pottery, special wedding dresses, a musical style going back 500 years, special rituals and dances to celebrate things. They are completely reliant on corporate culture to provide them with a sense of identity and purpose, they don’t have Hanbok dresses or special flutes native to their peoples, they have Taco Bell, the Steelers, Applebees, deals on make-up at the dollar store, deal on shirts at TJ Maxx. They have thrown away culture for corporate capitalism, they are empty inside, a vacuity of soul, an emptiness that leads to narcissism and extreme justification in the face of all facts. They don’t want to admit, they are ‘hollow’ inside.”
-
Noah Cicero (via pleaseshutthefudgeup)
I don’t necessarily think this is untrue but I don’t know why the target has to be poor people in rural towns. At the very least it is definitely not “especially rural white people”
(via micawindow)
something really bothers me about this reduction of the notion of ‘culture’ to, like, specific artifacts that supposedly express the essence of some monolithic ethnos. ‘this pottery and these dances give me identity and purpose’ sounds more like the words of people clinging to a dying culture as it’s subsumed into the capitalist world-system than the way that culture works outside of that
like, it’s primarily in the retrospective view that these things take on the sort of meaning that i think is being attributed to them here. when you’re an archaeologist digging through successive layers of dirt, you say ‘each one of the cultures that lived here had its own distinct style of pottery’. but for all you know a person actually alive making one of those pots would have just said ‘this is a pot i made and it looks like all the other pots everyone else makes’. nothing distinct about it
there is a point to be made that white americans are primarily passive consumers of their own ‘culture’ rather than active participants in its reproduction, and that that’s probably a problem, but that would require acknowledging that (1) this is true of people in every capitalist country, even in those dark and mystical corners of the world where people still supposedly ‘have culture’, and (2) what’s represented as ‘real culture’ here, bitingly juxtaposed with a list of consumer goods, is in fact nothing more than a different list of consumer goods. hanbok dresses and special flutes can be mediated by capitalist commodity relations in the exact same way the steelers or dollar-store make-up are
(via quoms)
Yeah this shit is a perfect example of an incredibly orientalist framework being masked as resistance to it. Non-white cultures spring from some primordial a historic “spirit” while white culture is grounded in a material history and power relations. If the person that wrote this were to attempt some sort of consistency they would be saying that no culture exists because all culture articles is embedded in history and societal relations (which make something “not-culture” because….?)
(mine below, idk why tumblr isnt separating this shit)
Actually, y'all, it’s a whole fuck of a lot simpler than that and I personally think you’re both reaching.
The difference between the things referenced and the corporate culture being mentioned is that when someone has a cultural dance or style of pottery or whatever, the style and movements and things that define it all originate from the story of that culture itself. The things that happened, the days they celebrate, the values that matter to them. All they are saying is that actual cultural items stem from being a voice of that culture, whereas white people - and no one is ‘targeting’ poor people please calm down- in america, most identifiably rural white america, have nothing that tells THEIR story except for some rather recent tales of civil war and baseball. Everything else that defines white american culture is a product for product’s sake. A manufactured object to meet a corporate bottom line. And they are forced to try and take these story-less, soul-less items and build from them some sad husk of a culture, often resorting to pilfering bits and pieces from someone else’s.
And I think it’s AWFULLY telling that the throwaway diss at OP is that ‘this sounds like people clinging to a dying culture’ as if any adherence to one’s own culture is some last ditch effort to be pitied, and as if it was not these soul-less white colonialists that are most likely the source of that culture’s dying, if that is the case.
I know it stings, but this is explicitly pointing out how the origin of current white American culture is rootless, soul-less and storyless. Everything is new, everything is plastic, everything is transient. Furthermore, it’s all assimilative. You don’t have any unique stories aside from the aluminum structure of ‘America’ and it doesn’t go back very far at all. The only way anyone can draw from a deep sense of culture insofar as some sort of ethnic identity is to reach back in their family tree to before they lost their accents and started wearing polos. Get it?
America’s culture is a corporate husk and if you’re white in America you’ve become part of a peach-hued blob that lacks any old tales, any old roots, any spirit. Because it’s fucking true: America has no spirit. What you call spirit is simply a battlecry on a football field unless you’re in a church. White America is cut off from connectedness, soul, mana, spirit, Qi, whatever the fuck you call it, whatever it is named in so many other countries and cultures but here. It is dead and dying, corporate and cheap, a husk. It is a husk. This is why our institutions fail, this is why America poisons its lands, this is why the people here are markedly unhappy and consumed by product after product to fill that hole, that space, and give them some sense of self.
It may hurt to come to terms with it but I’m really not about to let any of you squirm away from that sting. It’s killing everyone else because white/America’s assimilationist culture finds itself at odds with deeper, older cultures and habitually destroys them.
(via trapqueenkoopa)
First off, who said anything about ‘dying cultures’?? Second off, if this isnt about specifically poor people then what was the purpose of using the word “rural” unless this is supposed to be about ranch owners or something?
And finally this is all incredibly reductive and reduces non-white cultures to what would be presented at a cultural festival and while that stuff is certainly culture it pretends that non-white cultures dont have the vulgarities of everyday modern consumerism. When I lived in Manila as a kid you think I wasnt bombared by ads? You think I wouldnt go to the Greenbelt Mall with my mom and maybe beg for certain toys or games or maybe wait at the arcade playing Marvel vs Capcom with cousins while our parents shopped for clothes and sales? The author briefly mentions Korean culture well did you know that Korean baseball teams are named after their corporate sponsors eg; Samsung Tigers?
This is distilled orientalism. The West (or America) is comprised of material people who live material lives embedded in history. The East on the other hand is comprised by a bunch of primordial spirits who are by some magical essence imbued with ‘authenticity’.
(via memecucker)
“Most white people, especially rural white people (I grew up in a town of 2000 in Ohio) don’t have any concrete culture, they don’t have a unique form of pottery, special wedding dresses, a musical style going back 500 years, special rituals and dances to celebrate things. They are completely reliant on corporate culture to provide them with a sense of identity and purpose, they don’t have Hanbok dresses or special flutes native to their peoples, they have Taco Bell, the Steelers, Applebees, deals on make-up at the dollar store, deal on shirts at TJ Maxx. They have thrown away culture for corporate capitalism, they are empty inside, a vacuity of soul, an emptiness that leads to narcissism and extreme justification in the face of all facts. They don’t want to admit, they are ‘hollow’ inside.”
-
Noah Cicero (via pleaseshutthefudgeup)
I don’t necessarily think this is untrue but I don’t know why the target has to be poor people in rural towns. At the very least it is definitely not “especially rural white people”
(via micawindow)
something really bothers me about this reduction of the notion of ‘culture’ to, like, specific artifacts that supposedly express the essence of some monolithic ethnos. ‘this pottery and these dances give me identity and purpose’ sounds more like the words of people clinging to a dying culture as it’s subsumed into the capitalist world-system than the way that culture works outside of that
like, it’s primarily in the retrospective view that these things take on the sort of meaning that i think is being attributed to them here. when you’re an archaeologist digging through successive layers of dirt, you say ‘each one of the cultures that lived here had its own distinct style of pottery’. but for all you know a person actually alive making one of those pots would have just said ‘this is a pot i made and it looks like all the other pots everyone else makes’. nothing distinct about it
there is a point to be made that white americans are primarily passive consumers of their own ‘culture’ rather than active participants in its reproduction, and that that’s probably a problem, but that would require acknowledging that (1) this is true of people in every capitalist country, even in those dark and mystical corners of the world where people still supposedly ‘have culture’, and (2) what’s represented as ‘real culture’ here, bitingly juxtaposed with a list of consumer goods, is in fact nothing more than a different list of consumer goods. hanbok dresses and special flutes can be mediated by capitalist commodity relations in the exact same way the steelers or dollar-store make-up are
(via quoms)
Yeah this shit is a perfect example of an incredibly orientalist framework being masked as resistance to it. Non-white cultures spring from some primordial a historic “spirit” while white culture is grounded in a material history and power relations. If the person that wrote this were to attempt some sort of consistency they would be saying that no culture exists because all culture articles is embedded in history and societal relations (which make something “not-culture” because….?)
(mine below, idk why tumblr isnt separating this shit)
Actually, y'all, it’s a whole fuck of a lot simpler than that and I personally think you’re both reaching.
The difference between the things referenced and the corporate culture being mentioned is that when someone has a cultural dance or style of pottery or whatever, the style and movements and things that define it all originate from the story of that culture itself. The things that happened, the days they celebrate, the values that matter to them. All they are saying is that actual cultural items stem from being a voice of that culture, whereas white people - and no one is ‘targeting’ poor people please calm down- in america, most identifiably rural white america, have nothing that tells THEIR story except for some rather recent tales of civil war and baseball. Everything else that defines white american culture is a product for product’s sake. A manufactured object to meet a corporate bottom line. And they are forced to try and take these story-less, soul-less items and build from them some sad husk of a culture, often resorting to pilfering bits and pieces from someone else’s.
And I think it’s AWFULLY telling that the throwaway diss at OP is that ‘this sounds like people clinging to a dying culture’ as if any adherence to one’s own culture is some last ditch effort to be pitied, and as if it was not these soul-less white colonialists that are most likely the source of that culture’s dying, if that is the case.
I know it stings, but this is explicitly pointing out how the origin of current white American culture is rootless, soul-less and storyless. Everything is new, everything is plastic, everything is transient. Furthermore, it’s all assimilative. You don’t have any unique stories aside from the aluminum structure of ‘America’ and it doesn’t go back very far at all. The only way anyone can draw from a deep sense of culture insofar as some sort of ethnic identity is to reach back in their family tree to before they lost their accents and started wearing polos. Get it?
America’s culture is a corporate husk and if you’re white in America you’ve become part of a peach-hued blob that lacks any old tales, any old roots, any spirit. Because it’s fucking true: America has no spirit. What you call spirit is simply a battlecry on a football field unless you’re in a church. White America is cut off from connectedness, soul, mana, spirit, Qi, whatever the fuck you call it, whatever it is named in so many other countries and cultures but here. It is dead and dying, corporate and cheap, a husk. It is a husk. This is why our institutions fail, this is why America poisons its lands, this is why the people here are markedly unhappy and consumed by product after product to fill that hole, that space, and give them some sense of self.
It may hurt to come to terms with it but I’m really not about to let any of you squirm away from that sting. It’s killing everyone else because white/America’s assimilationist culture finds itself at odds with deeper, older cultures and habitually destroys them.
(via trapqueenkoopa)
First off, who said anything about ‘dying cultures’?? Second off, if this isnt about specifically poor people then what was the purpose of using the word “rural” unless this is supposed to be about ranch owners or something?
And finally this is all incredibly reductive and reduces non-white cultures to what would be presented at a cultural festival and while that stuff is certainly culture it pretends that non-white cultures dont have the vulgarities of everyday modern consumerism. When I lived in Manila as a kid you think I wasnt bombared by ads? You think I wouldnt go to the Greenbelt Mall with my mom and maybe beg for certain toys or games or maybe wait at the arcade playing Marvel vs Capcom with cousins while our parents shopped for clothes and sales? The author briefly mentions Korean culture well did you know that Korean baseball teams are named after their corporate sponsors eg; Samsung Tigers?
This is distilled orientalism. The West (or America) is comprised of material people who live material lives embedded in history. The East on the other hand is comprised by a bunch of primordial spirits who are by some magical essence imbued with ‘authenticity’.
(via memecucker)
via http://ift.tt/2lmKcKq:
when you spend like three minutes making voiceless velar fricative sounds and your tongue and throat get really itchy #andaliteproblems
when you spend like three minutes making voiceless velar fricative sounds and your tongue and throat get really itchy #andaliteproblems
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