Dreamworld and Catastrophe (book review)
G*rd*n
brilliantly post-avant as I would have liked but....:
(http://www.artezine.com/dreamcat.html)
Dreamworld and Catastrophe:
The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West
by Susan Buck-Morss
The MIT Press (2000) ISBN 0-262-02464-0
"The construction of mass utopia was the dream of the
twentieth century. It was the driving ideological force of
industrial modernization in both its capitalist and
socialist forms. The dream was itself an immense material
power that transformed the natural world, investing
industrially produced objects and built environments with
collective, political desire. Whereas the night dreams of
individuals express desires thwarted by the social order and
pushed backward into regressive childhood forms, this
collective dream dared to imagine a social world in alliance
with personal appiness, and promised to adults that its
realization would be in harmony with the overcoming of
scarcity for all.
As the century closes, that dream is being left behind.
... [T]he mass-democratic myth of industrial modernity --
the belief that the industrial reshaping of the world is
capable of bringing about the good society by providing
material happiness for the masses -- has been profoundly
challenged by the distintegration of European socialism, the
demands of capitalist restructuring, and the most
fundamental ecological constraints."
So begins Dreamworld and Catstrophe: it's the political and
cultural frame in which an interesting and idiosyncratic
view of the much of the popular art and other cultural
artifacts of the 20th century, and especially of the Soviet
Union and the United States, are considered, compared and
related.
The book is divided into four very different and rather
unconventional sections. The introduction, quoted above,
leads to the arguments of the first section, which are
presented in a "hypertextual" fashion, that is, an abstract
theoretical development is coupled with a series of
fragments largely referring to events "on the ground", so to
speak. The two discourses occur in two parallel textual
streams, one above and one below on each page, much as if
the second were an annotation to the first, or perhaps the
base of the first.
This structure is probably not as helpful as it was intended
to be, but it is not obscurantist or difficult. The central
idea of this first section, in a magisterially-delivered
dicussion which I will not attempt to condense here, is to
argue that the absolute violence and total power assumed by
20th-century states required legitimation in the material
utopia which these states were supposed to bring forth.
That supposition in turn goes back to the idea of
perfectable man and state, and of the "General Will" which
began to appear in the 18th century and is associated with,
for example, Rousseau. The framework of progress and
perfectability so described is the setting for the
ubiquitous and often savage ecstasy of populist utopianism
enacted in 20th century Communism and, to some extent,
capitalism, as well as other movements and ideologies. The
cultural artifacts associated with this utopianism,
especially in Russia, are the central subject of of this
book.
The second and third sections deal with the way in which art
and other features of popular culture were used to cast this
imaginary world before the thirst of the suffering populace,
for whom, of course, utopia was always tomorrow. The fourth
section is a curious personal account of how the dissolution
of the utopian vision worked out in the life of the author
and her colleagues and associates.
The middle parts of the book, the second and third section,
are probably more about Soviet than American culture.
Nevertheless, the author never forgets that Soviet leaders,
planners and visionaries were often looking over their
shoulders at the United States; one is reminded of Mikoyan
telling a reporter in the 1950s that the United States was
much closer to communism than the USSR. Henry Ford, the man
who made cheap cars and paid his workers enough to buy them
was (ironically in view of some of his sympathies) a great
hero in early Soviet society.
Some truly remarkable resonances are discovered, as, for
instance, Stalin's vision of a tremendous building in
Leningrad surmounted by a statue of Lenin himself; the
correspondences to King Kong standing on top of the Empire
State Building across the page are unmistakable once they
are shown to us. And although King Kong was never shown to
the public in the USSR, Stalin himself vetted Western movies
to see if they were suitable for the people under his
control, and there is every reason to believe that King Kong
was one of them. King Kong, the character as well as the
movie, is given quite a bit of attention, in fact, since it
is not difficult to see in him the powerful, primordial
natural man (or Nature itself) who rebels against the
repressive, exploitive structure of the industrial state and
climbs up and thus overcomes -- or becomes! -- its greatest
monumnt.
Another remarkable, similar resonance, is that between a
Soviet worker looking out a window at "his" factory, and an
American business manager looking out at his -- or,
probably, "his" in quotes, since by the first decades of the
20th century we are already very much in the epoch of
alienated, non-proprietary managers as well as workers. (In
twenty or thirty years he will find himself in the movies,
in a gray flannel suit.)
In general, this consideration of the arts and styles the
opposed and yet paired behemoths of the East and West is a
tour de force which illuminates a great deal about the
popular culture of the Soviet Union, especially its
pre-Stalin experimental phase, of which I had formerly only
seen scattered glimpses, as out of their context as a
prehistoric fish. The striking work of the various
post-Revolutionary artistic schools are matched up with the
political and cultural currents which surrounded them, and
these are compared when possible with similar ideas and
images from the United States, many of them quite
remarkable, like the King Kong- Lenin reflection.
We see as well what we might call the postmodern phase of
Socialist Realism, the satire and irony of which Komar and
Melamid are the most prominent exponents. Regardless of
one's views of the political framework of the book -- fans
of certain ideologies won't like it, and there is perhaps
more difference between the utopianism of the two
communities than is noticed -- almost anyone interested in
art will find the two central sections absorbing and
enlightening.
In the last part of the book, we are taken to a series of
conferences which began before the fall of Berlin Wall and
which ended after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On
one side of the conferences were those from the East Bloc,
and on the other those from the West, the ideas of both
parties complicated and, in a sense, balanced by each
group's doubts about its own system and its curiosity about
the other's. The breakdown of the East Bloc led to the
destruction of the original equilibrium and thus to the
conversation as it had been. To some extent this book might
be seen as a way of continuing an exchange that had broken
down, or broken apart, and so it, too, breaks out of the
channels of academic discourse.
The book is heavily but unobtrusively annotated and has a
considerable bibliography and a reasonably restrained index.
The apparatus will gratify those who desire to pursue
further research, tourism or intellectual archaeology in
these largely untraveled regions.
Physically, this book is a very attractive production,
profusely illustrated (including several color plates), with
an excellent typeface on good paper, and generally good
overall design, so that it is a pleasure to possess and read
it for its physical form as well as its content. One can
only wish it were physically larger to give the
illustrations more room. Its virtues may console us a little
for our departed utopias.
CV of the author:
http://falcon.arts.cornell.edu/Govt/faculty/Buck-MorssCV.pdf
MIT Press book catalog URL:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/author/default.asp?aid=700
Some other reviews online:
http://www.reconstruction.ws/BReviews/revDreamworld.htm'
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262523310/
http://www.frontlist.com/detail/0262523310
Ned Ludd
"G*rd*n" <g...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:cqpa66$dos$1...@panix3.panix.com...
> ...
> In the last part of the book, we are taken to a series of
> conferences which began before the fall of Berlin Wall and
> which ended after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On
> one side of the conferences were those from the East Bloc,
> and on the other those from the West, the ideas of both
> parties complicated and, in a sense, balanced by each
> group's doubts about its own system and its curiosity about
> the other's. The breakdown of the East Bloc led to the
> destruction of the original equilibrium and thus to the
> conversation as it had been. To some extent this book might
> be seen as a way of continuing an exchange that had broken
> down, or broken apart, and so it, too, breaks out of the
> channels of academic discourse.
>
Do you see capitalism and communism as two extremes
of a spectrum, one end of which has now broken down, or
two different systems, one of which is more suited to the
times/resources/technology and has prevailed because of
that?
Ned
G*rd*n
> > In the last part of the book, we are taken to a series of
> > conferences which began before the fall of Berlin Wall and
> > which ended after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On
> > one side of the conferences were those from the East Bloc,
> > and on the other those from the West, the ideas of both
> > parties complicated and, in a sense, balanced by each
> > group's doubts about its own system and its curiosity about
> > the other's. The breakdown of the East Bloc led to the
> > destruction of the original equilibrium and thus to the
> > conversation as it had been. To some extent this book might
> > be seen as a way of continuing an exchange that had broken
> > down, or broken apart, and so it, too, breaks out of the
> > channels of academic discourse.
"Ned Ludd" <ned...@ix.netcom.com>:
> Do you see capitalism and communism as two extremes
> of a spectrum, one end of which has now broken down, or
> two different systems, one of which is more suited to the
> times/resources/technology and has prevailed because of
> that?
It seems to me that Soviet Communism was profoundly influenced
by big American corporations and industrial leaders, so I wold
not put Communism at the opposite end of a spectrum from
capitalism or say that it was a radically different system.
Industrialization and the maximization of production-
consumption lead to success in war, so the logic of the State
fetishizes production-consumption as a universal good, and
states attempt to form themselves around social structures
which will inculcate it. As Marx observed, arrangements which
become obsolete (in the sense of being less efficient at
achieving the desired goals) are ruthlessly swept aside --
evidently including the one constructed by his disciples in
the Soviet Union. Which model is the best is still debatable;
at present, China is supposed to have the highest acceleration
of prod-con.
What the book notices is that the submission, often brought
about by force or fraud, of individuals to the goal of maximized
prod-con had been justified by the utopia which it was supposed
to eventually bring forth, and that in the 1980s and '90s both
Communist and capitalist authorities had begun to confess
fairly regularly that they could not, after all, bring forth
utopia. There was much talk about reduced expectations, as
you may recall. But this then weakened allegiance to the
prevailing systems, as we observe in war (including terrorism)
and religious fanaticism at home and abroad.