of 35
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Symbolic creativity and
political economy
John Fiske and Paul Willis
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Review: What is Ideology?
Karl Marx
Commodity Fetishism as the law of exchange value
Herbert Marcuse
Control Mechanism of the status quo Generating and maintaining happy consciousness
Jean Baudrillard
All-embracing hyperreality
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Questions and
Challenges
Pessimism?
No changes without revolutionary subject (proletariat?
radical youth? avant-gardist?)How to take account of ordinary people in their
everyday life?
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Cultural Populism
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Two Origins of Cultural Populism
Critique of Marxist determinism
Human agency (use value) versus capitaliststructure (exchange value)
Organic community culture Could folk culture continue in modern times?
Yes, but embodied in
artisan culture (E. P. Thompson) working class culture (Richard Hoggart)
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Cultural Populist
Richard Hoggart (Working-class culture)
Raymond Williams (Common Culture)
Paul Willis (counter-culture and youth)
John Fiske (commodity and consumption)
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Paul Willis and John Fiske
Paul Willis (1950-)
Born in Wolverhampton (UK)
The early member of CCCC (Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies) Teaching at Princeton University now
John Fiske (1939-) Studied in Britain
Taught in Australia and the US
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Basic Assumption:Double Nature of Cultural Commodity
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Double Nature
Cultural commodity and Non-cultural commodity
Industrial product and popular culture
Dual Hieroglyphs
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Cultural and Non-culturalcommodities (Willis)
Cultural Commodities Non-Cultural Commodities
Use Value: Stability
of Sensuousness
Use Value: Inviting avariety of uses and
communication
Exchange Value
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Repertoire ()
The possibilities of usage and communication
Example: Jean
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Uses and Communication
Uses
Casual wear
Ripped jean
Tight jean
Baggy jean
Communication
Individual freedom Ruggedness/ physicality
naturalness Masculinity Sexiness
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Industrial product and
popular culture (Fiske) Cultural industries:
A commodity is designed andproduced by industrial system Popular culture
It is consumed as culturalproduct
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Cultural industries
They provide a repertoire of textsor cultural resources (meanings)
for people to use or reject.
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Popular culture
It is of peoples interest
It bears the interest of the people It involves the active process of
generating and circulating
meanings and pleasures within asocial system
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Generating and circulating
meanings The possible meanings of Jean
Individual freedom--> repressingpersonality Ruggedness-->(male) working
class identity
Masculinity-->Tomboy
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Dual Hieroglyphs
Designed cultural codes (encoding)
Users appropriation (decoding)
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Fiske: Popular Culture
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Willis: Symbolic Creativity
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Everyday life and SymbolicCreativity
Everyday is full of activities which although notrecognized asArt, share the same Symbolic
Creativity as art practices.
EVERYDAY
NECESSARY WORK
SYMBOLIC
CREATIVITY
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SYMBOLIC CREATIVITY
The necessary part of human activity
Integral part of necessary work
It has to be done everyday
It is not extra but essential of daily
production and reproduction
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English Radical Tradition
Art = Work/Pleasure
Work is Holy: The daily reproduction is Holy andthe play of Symbolic Creativity in these thingsmake them Holy (Example: Artisan)
Modern Industry destroyed the possibility ofart by Technical division of labor: fragmented task rather than art
work
Introduction of automatic machine: laborer rather than
craftsman Hierarchy and management: Separating body from mind
altogether out of workplace.
S b li k i d
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Symbolic work in moderneveryday life
A humanly necessary work.
Application of human capacities to and through, on andwith symbolic resources and raw materials.(language, texts, songs, films, images and artifacts of all kind)
Grounded aesthetics (versus Marcuses high-arts aesthetics)
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Basic elements
Language: the primary tool that allow us to assess our impact on othersand theirs to us. It allows us to see ourselves as others.
Active Body a site of knowledge and set of signs and symbols. It is thesource of productive and communicative activity. (corporeality)
Drama rules, rituals and performances that we produce with others( dancing, singing, joke-making, story telling in dynamic settings and throughperformance).
Symbolic Creativity transforms what is provided and helps to producespecific form of human identity and capacity.
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Being human
To Be Creative
remarking the world for ourselves as we find our own place and identity.
Produce Individual Identity
Who and what I am and could become.
Place the Identities in larger wholes
Identities do not stand alone above or beyond history. They are related totime, place and things.
Develop our own vital capacities in the process
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Informal Cultural Practices
E b dd d E i
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Embedded ExpressiveLabour
Production Side
LP (labor input or wage ) Capital accumulation
Consumption Side
Expressive Labour (uses and communication)Capital accumulation
Some residual elements (resistance and evasion)spill over the capital circuits
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Cultural
industries
consumption
conformity Resistance /evasion
Resistance /
evasion
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Example: English Football
Labour Power (wage): Football fans contributetheir money to their football club
Expressive Labour: Football fans support thefootball players and look for the authenticity oftheir club (bodily investment: language,drama, )
Residual elements
Challenge to the official policy and management oftheir football club
Re-fabricating local communities
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Example: Adbuster
A Canadian anti-consumerist group
"a global network of artists, activists, writers,pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurswho want to advance the new social activistmovement of the information age."
Campaigns: Buy Nothing Day, Occupy Wall Street
Cultural Jamming: subvertisements (Spoof Ad)
Example: Spoof Ad in Hong
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Example: Spoof Ad in HongKong
A TV commercial of insurance company
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-0gkOYLs
A parody about the election of Chief Executive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8Ih96zSYI&feature=channel_video_title
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-0gkOYLshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8Ih96zSYI&feature=channel_video_titlehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8Ih96zSYI&feature=channel_video_titlehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8Ih96zSYI&feature=channel_video_titlehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD8Ih96zSYI&feature=channel_video_titlehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-0gkOYLshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-0gkOYLshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZL-0gkOYLs7/30/2019 Symbolic Creativity
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Concluding Remarks
Old Paradigms of Ideological
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Old Paradigms of IdeologicalCritique
Develop a general theory and critique ofcommodity culture
Imagining an overall strategy of revolution
New Paradigms of
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New Paradigms ofIdeological Critique
Looking for cultural practices
Looking for eruptions of the commodity culturalforms
refusalssubversions
ironizations