Comments on: Hot response or rebirth of the cool? /2013/04/hot-response-or-rebirth-of-the-cool/ THE FREE ASSOCIATION Fri, 13 Nov 2015 11:17:04 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.3 By: brian /2013/04/hot-response-or-rebirth-of-the-cool/#comment-2392 Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:41:33 +0000 http://freelyassociating.org/?p=1469#comment-2392 I’m not too sure about the hot/cold thing: without stretching the analogy too far, I think it’s obvious that we need hot stuff in order to get things moving. With the best will in the world, people generally don’t take to the streets in support of a measured programme or long-term perspective. And the hot things that bring us out on the street might not be the most obvious points of struggle (a battle over piece rates for typesetters – including payment for commas and full stops – famously fed into the 1905 Russian Revolution). The key thing then is how we keep some relation between the hotter moments of battle and the cooler spaces of analysis, debate and growth. Or, to really mangle metaphors, how we let things thicken without congealing and solidifying (insert any number of cooking jokes here – Anton Pancake, “every cook must govern” etc).

Of course, Mark Fisher is right about the use of orchestrated outrages by the likes of the Daily Mail. It’s hard not to respond (and sometimes we should), but every time we engage, we legitimise the terms of debate. Perhaps we should remember that the internet has not spawned a single subjectivity, that of the militant liberal leftist, forever exposing the contradictions within neoliberal ideology and practice. Far more central is the cynical subject: “look at all the fucks I give”. If we can get that “meh” to move, then we might really be on to something.

]]> By: Keir /2013/04/hot-response-or-rebirth-of-the-cool/#comment-2382 Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:43:45 +0000 http://freelyassociating.org/?p=1469#comment-2382 One of the refreshing things about Thatcher’s death week was the way the genuinely spontaneous celebrations wrong footed the right-wing press. Their long planned yet desperate desire for the unopposed deification of Thatcher made the press vulnerable to just the trap of moral outrage that they usually lay for the Left. The Mail and the Telegraph demanded totalitarian piety. Yet by doing so they simply ensured we had a ding dong over the morality of songs in the records charts. Their display of political correctness gone mad meant that the lack of unanimity over Thatcher dominated the headlines. For once we were the ones causing the outrage and the press couldn’t help but move on to territory that undermined their whole position.
Of course much about the week seemed anachronistic. The level of antagonism we summoned up from the 80s was much purer and unambiguous than we’d long been used to. In the 90s and early 00s antagonism wasn’t a contention between two potential equivalent sides. To oppose neoliberalism at that point was to seemingly to oppose the future, to oppose modernization. Antagonism wasn’t a legitimate political position but a psychological failing; simply the echoes of Fukuyama’s last man. Now that neoliberalism’s modernity and future has collapsed we are unsure of the role that antagonism could or should play. This was the second trap the press fell into, portraying rejection of Thatcher as the preserve of extremists and anarchists. But with at least half the country rejecting the desired sanctification anarchism became legitimised and previously ‘extremist’ positions were made to seem normal. That the right wing press played a terrible hand should tip us off to vulnerable state of dominant ideology and remind us that a forthright and confident Left could plan to win for a change.

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