glass_icarus | Entries tagged with thinky

Critical Reflections on the Politics of Need, Robertson 1998:

The objectivity - and, therefore, irrefutability - of human needs, based on a scientific theory of human nature as fundamental and given, means that for Marx "needs represent both a teleological imperative and a motivational mechanism" (Springborg, 1981, p. 2). The pursuit of social justice is, thus, rendered scientific and no longer has to rely for its justification on ethical systems. Marx viewed ethical systems as always embedded in bourgeois morality, a morality which perpetuates the status quo in terms of an unequal distribution of social goods, both material and non-material (Lukes, 1985). For Marx, it is the unfolding of "truly human needs" which provides the impetus for the necessary and historical progression of industrial society from capitalism through socialism to communism and, hence, greater social justice.

This brings us to another dilemma, for to suggest that there exists "true" human needs is also to suggest that there exists human needs which are not true. While a fuller discussion of the centuries old debate over true vs. false needs is beyond the scope of this paper, for the purposes of the ensuing discussion one issue emerging from this debate will be very briefly highlighted. Proponents of the twentieth century doctrine of false needs (for example, Fromm, 1947; Maslow, 1954; Marcuse, 1972; Sartre, 1974; Illich, 1977, 1978) argue that the inculcation of ever-expanding false needs under capitalism has produced a new kind of person, one with a "willing compliance as an insatiable consumer" (Springborg, 1981, p. 6). Moreover, it has been argued that Marx's original notion of "commodity fetishism" has been replaced in the late twentieth century with a "services fetishism", with its even greater potential for an ever-expanding repertoire of false needs (Illich, 1977).

In contrast, Springborg argues that the doctrine of false needs not only oversimplifies the articulation of what human needs are, but also makes the project of meeting them seem almost futile, for "the doctrine denies the ethical character of [social] problems and puts their appropriate solution further out of reach... therefore beyond the rational scrutiny and control or responsibility, of the individual" (Springborg, 1981, p. 250). In addition, as I shall argue later, it takes the problem of human need out of the social and political realm and, therefore, beyond the community.

Crossposts: http://glass-icarus.livejournal.com/298326.html

From Gloria Anzaldúa's La Frontera/Borderlands: The New Mestiza, which I finished reading just the other day:

My "stories" are acts encapsulated in time, "enacted" every time they are spoken aloud or read silently. I like to think of them as performances and not as inert and "dead" objects (as the aesthetics of Western culture think of art works). Instead, the work has an identity; it is a "who" or a "what" and contains the presences of persons, that is, incarnations of gods or ancestors or natural and cosmic powers. The work manifests the same needs as a person, it needs to be "fed," la tengo que bañar y vestir.

...

The aesthetic of virtuosity, art typical of Western European cultures, attempts to manage the energies of its own internal system such as conflicts, harmonies, resolutions and balances. It bears the presences of qualities and internal meanings. It is dedicated to the validation of itself. Its task is to move humans by means of achieving mastery in content, technique, feeling. Western art is always whole and always "in power." It is individual (not communal). It is "psychological" in that it spins its energies between itself and its witness.

Western cultures behave differently toward works of art than do tribal cultures. The "sacrifices" Western cultures make are in housing their art works in the best structures designed by the best architects; and in servicing them with insurance, guards to protect them, conservators to maintain them, specialists to mount and display them, and the educated and upper classes to "view" them. Tribal cultures keep art works in honored and sacred places in the home and elsewhere. They attend them by making sacrifices of blood (goat or chicken), libations of wine. They bathe, feed, and clothe them. The works are treated not just as objects, but also as persons. The "witness" is a participant in the enactment of the work in a ritual, and not a member of the privileged classes.

Ethnocentrism is the tyranny of Western aesthetics. An Indian mask in an American museum is transposed into an alien aesthetic system where what is missing is the presence of power invoked through performance ritual. It has become a conquered thing, a dead "thing" separated from nature and, therefore, its power.

(I loved the entire book, my non-comprehension of Spanish notwithstanding, but this passage made an exceptional number of things go "ping!" in my head. Still attempting to sort them out.)