By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 16th, 2012 
A major problem for the left, before, during and after, “the Wisconsin Uprising” is sectarianism, I am convinced. It undermines a basic strength. As I concluded in the past “heat and light” post: “After the fall of Communism, the strength of the left is its diversity, its turn away from dogmatism. Understanding what different actions, movements and institutions contribute is crucial.” It was with this view in mind that I read the discussions here and on my Facebook page on Chad Goldberg’s recent post. Here is a dialogue blending the two discussions.
I appreciated Vince Carducci’s Deliberately Considered comment, even though I wondered how he decided what is radical:
“This discussion is really getting to some good ideas, helping to move beyond the knee-jerk facile reactions to the recall. I think there’s value in both positions, though Henwood is more radical (which I have sympathy with) and perhaps as a result more reductive (which I don’t like so much). Chad Goldberg brings important firsthand experience into the discussion. I do think there’s another aspect to Fox Piven and Cloward’s book that he overlooks. It’s true that the legislative process was crucial to the success of poor people’s movement in the end, but the central thesis of the book is that the substantial gains are usually made *before* legislation not really in tandem. The legislative process, Fox Piven and Cloward assert, is the way in which the grassroots movements were mainstreamed and thus brought under control. So in this regard, I side with Henwood to a certain extent. However, even as a strategy of containment by the so-called powers that be, the fact that the legislative process embedded progressive ideals into the mainstream is important. Examples include: the creation of the Food and Drug Administration, fair labor laws, the Civil Rights Voting Act, and in fact the provisions of labor into what Daniel Bell termed “the Treaty of Detroit.” I’d like to suggest a framework within which both perspectives might be brought, specifically Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato’s work in Civil Society and Democratic Theory. I modify their . . .
Read more: Heat and Light over the Wisconsin Uprising: Cooptation?
By Nancy Weiss Hanrahan, January 19th, 2012 
In most fields of human endeavor, increasing computerization has been accompanied by some kind of critical evaluation of the possibilities that technology affords and those that it forecloses, of the potential good or harm that attends technological mediation. But in music, arguably the field of human experience most profoundly transformed by the new digital technologies, this type of examination has yet to take place. Rather, it seems that if the technology provides a specific capability, it is inherently good, or it must become the new standard. I am not suggesting that there is nothing worthwhile in the new musical situation – it would be difficult, having worked in the music business for many years, to mourn a system that limited the range of music possibilities that reached the market or that routinely denied creative artists the financial rewards of their work. But to claim that new developments are inherently democratic or that they constitute a form of freedom obscures, rather than illuminates, the underlying social conditions and aesthetic ramifications. Music’s material integration with the new technology has been largely accomplished. The question is whether or not technological mastery itself is becoming the dominant criterion of aesthetic value.
Corynne McSherry, intellectual property director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, recently appeared on CounterSpin (1/6/12) to talk about SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act). In the course of her remarks, she made a concise statement of the prevailing common sense:
“… what’s also troubling is this claim that you hear over and over, that in our brave new world, artists can no longer survive. And that’s empirically untrue. In fact what we are seeing is that more people are more able to get their creative expression out to a broader public than ever before. And the artists that are taking advantage of new technologies are doing just fine. The folks that aren’t doing as well are the old media companies that are committed to an old business model…. that’s organized around finding the next Lady Gaga and the next Britney Spears. But if you are in fact an artist or if you’re . . .
Read more: Music, or the Triumph of Technics?
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 30th, 2011 
I am often accused of being an optimist. I write “accused” because I take it as a mistaken characterization. I think it suggests that I am naïve and unrealistic. And as it happens, I don’t think I am naïve or unrealistic, and don’t feel particularly optimistic. I actually have a rather dark view of the human prospect, one of the reasons I am more conservative than many of my friends and colleagues. That said, I do know why people think I am an optimist. It is because I understand my intellectual challenge to be to find the silver lining within the clouds, to try to find ways in which it may be possible (even if unlikely) to avoid the worst. Thus, my study of the politics of small things, which started with the proposition that after 9/11 “it hurts to think,” and also thus, my investigation in my new book of the possibility of “reinventing political culture,” showing that political culture is not only an inheritance that constrains possibility, but also one that provides resources for creativity and change.
In Reinventing Political Culture, I make two moves: I reinvent the concept of political culture and I study the practical project of reinventing political culture in different locations: Central Europe, the Middle East and North America. I plan to use the book to structure a deliberately considered debate early in the new year. At this year’s end, I thought I would highlight some past posts which examine the power of culture and the way I understand it pitted against the culture of power, which also exemplify the course we have taken this year at Deliberately Considered and a road we will explore next year.
First, there is the link between small things and the power of culture. In a small corner of Damascus we observed people creating an autonomous world for poetry. Clearly the present revolution there is not the result of such activity, though it did anticipate change. But I think such cultural work makes it more likely that the post authoritarian situation will be . . .
Read more: Hope against Hopelessness for the New Year
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 23rd, 2011 
In recent posts, Vince Carducci examining the urban environment in terms of psychogeography, derive and detournment, and the gift and potlatch, explored the art of Detroit, the city at the epicenter of Fordism and ground zero of post – Fordist devastation. While I think his inquiry is illuminating, showing art playing an important role in democratic society, I am skeptical about his political utopianism, as he stands on the shoulders of Marx and the Situationists and Ken Wark’s account of them. I don’t think that the full power of the artwork is captured as a critique of capitalism or that the full political significance of the work is in its message. We disagree, once again, on art as propaganda and how art becomes politically significant.
Artwork, and the world it creates when appreciated, is, in my judgment, more important than context. The art, its independent domain, is where the action is, which is then related to a variety of different contexts. To be sure, Carducci shows how this works. Detroit artists don’t only speak to each other, creating work that communicates for themselves and their immediate audience. They speak to the de-industrializing world, providing insights, suggesting an alternative way of living. But this can work in many different ways, not necessarily tied to political programs of the left or the right or the center.
Take an example drawn from two past posts: Ivo Andric novelistic depiction of The Bridge on the Drina inspired Elzbieta Matynia to reflect on the way that bridge, connecting Serbia and Bosnia, provided a space for interaction between people from elsewhere, at the kapia, the public square on the bridge, enabling civility. Her account, in turn, inspired me to reflect upon the bridges I observe on my daily run through the public park that was the Rockefeller estate, and provided me with critical perspective for thinking about the devastation . . .
Read more: In Review: Democracy and Art for Art Sake (Without Elitism)
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