Science has no soul

A response to M. de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life, and R. Barthes’ Mythologies

With a climate established to protect and make applicable the theoretical tenets of the Marxist tradition, the theoretician could now argue that the horizons of the group at hand, relative to the texts in question, are just beyond those of Barthes and de Certeau. Culture as a science, or culture as science; culture being science itself, it must naturally, by the principles of inertia, push beyond the fields previously outlined, and, in the process, gain potential energy. Through displacement, propulsion through vector changes and increasing scalar quantities, it could be said that the subject group in question has developed gravitational, electrical potential energy relative to theory.

This scenario, it might be noted, can only be discerned through a narrative process such as this, through methods all to familiar to the disciplines of science, as forms of representative writings, “gray discourses” in disguise^[1]. Realized theoretically in this way, through the lenses of scientific mysticism, and with these inherent conceptual limitations, this group, rather, the illusion of this group, must naturally find itself outside of the system. However, this does not suggest subjugation, for with the death of the concept of the origin comes the promise of devalued forms. And thus these amber rods, science/theory and culture, find themselves to be remarkably similar, with one distinction: the exteriority of culture has electrical implications, its “charge” being opposite to that of theory.

Of course, in the true spirit of the Humanist, of scholarship, and their modern counterpart, the project of Cultural Studies, this reservoir of energy must naturally be exhausted through an experiment which tests their attractive properties in order to observe the results. Rooted in the Shakespearean fetish for the pun, for the substitution or literary juxtaposition, this clever play, as a staged event, can, of course, only have two results. Initially, contact between the two opposite fields will lessen the reserves of unquantifiable energy stored within these cultural actors, as their practices become stolen and then simulated in discourse, and thus again remade as “potential”, on the surface or within the framework of science. Thus demonstrating exactly the way in which power is reappropriated, just as Foucault and de Certeau have suggested. Of course, in retrospect, yet another possible result becomes apparent. Always the last to dabble in self-referentiality, the scientific method will then finally establish its own role, which is always that of the catalyst, only to recognize that it is indeed the record of this movement, the only evidence of kinetic energy. Without letting romance taint this vantage point, one could argue that this discourse, is just that, a display fueled by this kinetic reaction, itself, a record of motion.

With the process already set into motion, little resistance is possible; power will indeed be reappropriated, rewritten onto the body of the subject subculture. Only small deviations are now possible–brief attempts at reconquest, reallocations of science for narrative purposes–as demonstrated in the introduction. In this way, this discourse is an attempt to mimic the practices of its subject through similar approaches to the descriptive process. Just as factions of the Saddlecreek subculture pretend to perpetuate the science of art, all the while undermining it with their practices, aware of their own “fictional space” and narrative limitations, this project recognizes science in the same way, and uses it accordingly^[1:1]. To manipulate science, to internalize the concept of effects vs. objects, and to situate these notions within the theoretical framework–to knowingly attempt to produce only effects–is perhaps the most practical way to simulate the objects) and to allow for introduction “into our techniques”^[1:2]. The hope then, would be to embrace science for what it can offer, to seek only effects, and to discard description as an ideal, in favor of the narrative, and, in doing so, bring theory closer to the practices themselves. In the end, however, this marriage can only be part of a larger fabrication, as an incestuous genesis through interiorization, inevitably resulting in the big-budget, special effect-laden finale, the eclipse^[1:3].

Manipulated though it is, this discourse still allows for some interesting post Marxist insight. If indeed the subculture under contention was fathered by the philosophic traditions of Barthes and de Certeau, by the science itself and therefore always “closer to the practices themselves”), then it is important to note the locations within the fabric of this group in which theory is utilized. The author surely writes himself onto the body or into the book, and because the theoretical narratives at hand frame the subject group, they also, in a way, impregnate it. Upon consideration of nomenclature, for example, one is easily reminded of Barthes’ wrestlers, whose mythology of exhausted performance permeates the landscape of Saddlecreek bands^[2]. Cursive: a suggestion of style, of form, of motion; a profusion of detail for which there is no suitable quantity of content. In fact, there is no content. The content of the music (and of its subsequent performance) collapses on itself under the weight of style. Self-referentiality plagues the signification process and the practice itself undermines the very project of art to which the band name refers. And so, this band delivers to its parents a child with a birth defect, a wrestler unable to perform, wallowing in his exhaustion, saddened, and yet sickly obsessed by the lack of interest on the part of the audience. Confusion, disruption, of course, follow.

None the less, this only serves as a further demonstration of the inertial energy which this group maintains. Indeed, it has tested the horizons of its authors, and, as science dictates, it has surpassed them. Cursive has shed its performative function, unmapped itself, propped up a false mythology, and perverted its sign, for reasons unknown to the system of petite bourgeoisie values. Born of Marxist tradition, this band has retreated into the world of pure superstructure, and by refusing to conform to the prescribed methods of interpretation, abandoned all meaning.

The process, however, is slow and sites still exist, of course, which are ripe for bourgeoisie consumption. Bands with names like Commander Venus, which suggests that “inexhaustible mine of imaginary solutions”, that world of automatic perfection, science fiction, which Baudrillard describes^[3], indeed still conform to the traditional modes of performance. And just as the hierarchy of objects in science fiction are centered around the robot, the “domesticated”, unthreatening simulacrum of man, at the helm of Commander Venus there is a similar personality. The frontman, a teenage boy, fulfills this role as the idealized man, his “sexuality… unaccompanied by anxiety” and his rule benevolent; he is Baudrillard’s super-object. 2 4And from this mythology there emanates an object, a t-shirt which reads: “Touchdown for Boy Power”, complete with simulations of 1950’s high school football signification, a play which contemplates the patriarchy while resisting, or perhaps denying the actuality of dominance. Yet this deviance is subtle, perhaps deposited by the theoretician, and would suggest to most merely a clever inversion of mass-marketed feminism. Whatever the case, it seems that the gestation period, at least at this location, has yet to be completed.

And yet there are elements which have failed to depart, which have no inertia, barren fields which still foster “Novels and Children”-like scenarios. Such is the case with the sister to this band, Park Ave. Composed of three twenty-something young ladies and two teenage boys, it can be recognized as yet another manifestation of this idealized world of objects. Not surprisingly, found at the center of this playground are, again, the robots, the young men, who serve the women, objects themselves, as house slaves, like the old South risen again. Unthreatening and protective, this neoconservative, imaginary practice is a semi-transparent attempt to conquer the Other, woman, and its success is only measured in terms of its worth as a spectacle. Performance becomes an experiment in the absurd-as-spectacle, as in the battle royale in Ellison’s Invisible Man^[4], with the female actors devalued in similar ways. Of course, the conquest takes place beneath the proud banner of the concept-city, on Park Ave., an idealized community free of “local authority”, and fully realized by the forces of panoptic power^[1:4]. Within this prescribed web of interaction, of course, the women are like Barthes’ novelists, simulating reappropriation with tolerable methods, while tending to their virtual children. One cannot help to offer forth a comparison to the reader of Barthes’ description and a comment made regarding these women by a scene outsider. “(L)et them decorate their condition, but above all, let them not depart from it,” Barthes writes, and his words seems all too familiar when compared to “(Park Ave.) got up early to make themselves up for the new punk revolution”^[2:1].

Having introduced de Certeau’s concept-city, perhaps now it would be best to attempt to determine the structural position of this group in terms of its relation to the urban landscape. If the decay of the concept-city is indeed in place and the city, by its very nature, tends to produce contradictory movements, then perhaps it can be argued that urban sprawl, the emergence of suburbia, are both developments which validate these tendencies^[1:5]. And yet, there is an inherent magnetism that draws suburbanites back into the city, which suggests that the removal of actors through the mechanisms of sprawl could have been, in fact, an intentional bid for control on the part of the urban machine through inversion, a scientific process. If such is the case, those returning would find themselves exercising their “pedestrian rhetoric” in a world steeped in the microphysics of the panoptic, a concept-city reconstructed during their absence.

Of course, this subculture, born of suburban stock (their street-name subcultural title attests to this, has fulfilled this dream of inversion, by returning to the urban landscape, re-entering into an imagined world, a restored version of the concept- city. Inevitably, decay begins again and accordingly, these new pedestrians are able to establish regions of “local authority”, divorced from their suburban origins, where their practices can saturate “places with signification”^[1:6]. Again, the mythologies beneath these place names are the same. By mapping the terrain and illuminating dark recesses, like the Cog Factory, a club which hints, again, at a fetish for unnecessary production (far removed from the base) and the spontaneous regeneration of machines, this group has managed to uncover a place for itself. And while it sometimes finds itself under surveillance by the larger mechanisms of the techno-structure, this subculture has, for the most part, found its own logic of position, and its own microsystems to install, all the while humoring itself with the notion of establishing an army of “indie police” who would serve as brownshirts for their practices.

By Foucaultian principles, of course, this place must have elements which resist its authority. Whereas the Saddlecreekers have established their place, there are other pedestrians, other subcultures, drunkards and vagrants who frequent these urban neighborhoods, using these areas spatially. It is here, in these relations, that the practices of the Saddlecreek solidify somewhat into a mechanism, a identifiable number, that of the unidentifiable, eventually revealing themselves as part of the fabric of yet another system. Just as de Certeau suggests, it is these others, who treat the urban setting as a space, that are the truly “like the tropes in rhetoric, deviations”^[1:7]. These displaced pedestrians, these indigenous deities of the forest, are the true unidentifiables, and their confused interactions with the Olympians gods of the 'Creek are a testament to this^[1:8].