Lindsey Collins* argues that globalisation is transforming the way we produce and consume art and culture, but that they still remain an important part of our resistance to capitalism.
Capitalism, in its early stages, was known for hurling people together in huge work establishments. At one and the same time it cut them off from past forms of production and cultural creation. On the other hand, these new forms of production and large urban concentrations created the possibilities for new areas of cultural creation: in music – pianos in jazz bars, new bands, popular orchestras, concerts, millions of children with guitars and flutes, records in hundreds of cultures selling like hot cakes; in writing – novels like Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, poems in cheap editions in Latin America; in every kind of visual art from graffiti and caricatures, to giant Mexican murals; in cinema – everyone going to Bollywood movies to TV commercials from Brazil; and in theatre, productions from street theatre to Brecht’s plays challenged capitalist society itself.
There always was a big part of this that was “consumer culture”, dictated by record companies, publishers and art galleries. But then at times a radical art that criticised capitalism would emerge out of this, for example, in the case of music the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Hendricks, and others created a radical music tradition. In the case of cinema and TV, many artists made beautiful and critical movies from countries like Japan, India, Italy, Britain, and Poland.
And of course, working people had much less time for the actual process of cultural production than artists from other classes. Working people were often consumers of art. But globalization is rather different from earlier capitalism, and it has also brought changes in artistic production, and in the way we consume art.
Art and culture under globalisation
The globalisation stage of capitalism is a force that tends towards isolating working people from each other. Unlike large-scale factory production of the previous phase of capitalism, this new phase works on the “one person one computer” model, or on the model of one person all alone checking an immense electronic factory. In agriculture it has ushered in the one operator of a combine-harvester in a two thousand acre field.
Globalisation is also attempting a take-over of ownership and control of intellectual and artistic production, through, for example, Trade Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS) agreements in the World Trade Organization, something never attempted before. Furthermore, “cultural services” now fall under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), another WTO agreement. This agreement is aimed at making sure that governments and municipalities open up the arts and education, as well as other services supported and delivered by governments to ‘international competition’. This agreement will also make sure that the multinational corporation can take over industries like theatres, cinema, and so on. This will lead to the privatisation of these services, making sure that in the long run there are no longer State subsidies on art production.
Simultaneously, finance capital now controls an immense part of the media, itself, thus mediating our access to many forms of culture. It is through Murdock and Fox that we are fed knowledge in general, and knowledge about art and culture in particular.
The impact of the control of art and culture by big corporations can be seen in how our imagination is already coming under daily attack. We can hardly get our minds around the facts of aerial bombardment of cities, as in the bombing of Baghdad. Images of these events, and to a certain extent our understanding of them, are now controlled by the media multinationals and the governments they serve. The people in Palestine, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Liberia are meanwhile being atomized by wars that not only kill individuals, but also destroy peoples’ cultures. The media corporations are trying to ensure that we get used to seeing images of people starving on our planet earth, when we know – even from personal experience that increases in productivity allow one agricultural worker do what 50 people did 20 years ago. And then there is the way the meaning of words is being changed in order to defend the present capitalist order, and to weaken our resistance. ‘Reform’, to take just one example, used to mean “The amendment, or altering for the better, of some faulty state of things” (OED) but is now a synonym for ‘privatisation’, which can only mean making some faulty state of thing. And how do we keep all this in mind? Keep a certain proportion? See the wood, and not just the trees?
Art and culture is part of our resistance
Art and culture is too important for us during these times, and we cannot loose it to the Murdocks and Foxes of this world. They are important not only for their potential to make life good. They are important not only because they can mediate our experiences, our emotions and our understanding of things for us. Art and culture are also part of our resistance to exploitation. The production of culture is a deeply collective process, and is a natural part of our existence as human beings. Our production of new culture and independent interpretation of the culture around us is now under threat.
Art and culture, however, is not only available to the rich and powerful in their attempts to oppress.
It is also available to us as a tool of resistance. We use art and culture to struggle consciously against the powerful. Through art and culture we fight them, as we try to understand their barbaric ways. We bring people together to fight them. We bring people together to share plans on how to fight them.
In this struggle we have singers, poets, writers, painters, sculptors, film makers, dancers. And it is these artists, the ones amongst us, who we, in the struggle, need to nurture at a very local level, all around us, in times like this. It takes very little to build and nurture these artists: The space, the time. But without our help, wonderful art may not manage to be born.
From this art, there may be born the sudden insights that we need. These insights, in turn, may prove vital. Making some unthought-of leap forward in our resistance.
But art and culture is part of our resistance in another way. They make it possible for us to survive the daily attacks by the capitalist system and its media.
On an emotional level, for example, how do we cope with this knowledge of suffering and poverty as we try to absorb it? Can we let it in? Doesn’t it, in its enormity, risk threatening the limits of our compassion? Can we keep control of our repulsion at the endless capitalist bureaucracies, once we realise their full scope? What anger do we feel when our language and concepts, all we have to help understand the world, are mutilated by the powerful? Some of us go mad. Others laugh. Others still, especially in the USA take anti-depressants. And others still, specially in the Middle East turn to terrorism.
From our artists, we can gain the necessary distance from the world that irony gives us. Irony, that ability to laugh and smile at an adverse and terrible situation, is the mother of all emotional maturity. Irony can give us the stamina; give us the timing to last the enemy out. Artists help us not burn ourselves out by giving us an ironic view of the world.
Artists are also activists
Artists are the ones that see the pattern as it’s still just getting formed. They sometimes see it without conscious understanding, but only with some inner knowledge. And then, amongst artists are those who are fearless. They tell the truth to power. Sometimes encoded in laughs, other times in tears, other times in horror. Always with undercurrents of meanings that are important to the struggle against exploitation and oppression.
So we must create the space for the artists to emerge among us. Create the time. See how they draw, see how they sing and see how they write about the world. And from them, perhaps we will also get the intuitive feel as to which (of the millions of tactics and strategies we can follow) will be most successful.
Art, culture and solidarity
And then, we must also share our local artists with others. Arrange for them to perform, to draw, to read and to hold exhibitions. At the same time, we now have the Internet for telling each other, worldwide, about good art that manages to get through the multinational record companies and publishers. We must spread the word. Which artist, which poet, which writer has got something to say? Which musician composes beautiful new sounds? Where to get it? Where to download it from. Where to hear it, where to buy it.
But art is just one bit of culture. Our culture also involves our languages. We must fight to use them in every sphere of life, to keep the creativity amongst ourselves going full-speed. (This will not stop us communicating in shared languages, as well.) And our culture involves a million other things. Our artists may help to make it clearer to us which we must nurture, as part of our resistance to globalisation, and which will evolve into something else.
Art, culture and building alternatives
And in resistance, which is a defensive activity, inside it, there are always the germs of counter- attack. Which are the questions that this resistance of ours now allows us to pose? Are these questions already creating a vision of a new society that is possible? Here again, it is also the artists amongst us who can often help us identify the political counter-attack needed at a particular time in history, so as to make a new world possible.
* Lindsey Collen is an artist who has written many novels, and is an activist in LALIT – a left party in Mauritius. She is also active in the social movements in Mauritius.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.