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/183/ Acid Bunga Bunga ft. Mike Watson (Patreon)

Published:
2021-03-30 06:00:03
Imported:
2024-07
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Content

On memes and the counter-culture.

Theorist and curator Mike Watson advances the argument for "acid leftism". What is this, and why do we need a new counter-culture? Is contemporary leftism lacking a utopian imaginary?

Plus: slow memes and fast memes; the democratisation of art and media; and generations: which ones became conservative, which one might not?

Running order:

  • (00:04:15) - Interview with Mike Watson
  • (01:02:00) - 'Afterparty' discussion on what a counter-culture might look like today

Readings:

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Comments

Paul Brewer

I'm not as hostile to this episode as some of the other commentators but I don't think Acid Leftism is conceptually the answer -- yet/if at all. On the other hand, the collective dismissal of 'culture' as a possible 'soft underbelly of Capitalism' might be a little hasty. I do think that the way Capitalism co-opted the 1960s Counterculture was more contingent than perhaps it might seem nowadays. The cause of this phenomeon might well be that the Counterculture itself was rooted in an ideology in which 'all that is solid melts into air', in the sense that it was an acid aimed at dissolving pre-modern institutional survivals that still gripped society. As such it could easily be culturally appropriated by Capitalism. That perhaps raises the issue of whether by defniition a Marxist Culture can be a countercultural agent against Capital, since socialism is a successive stage of development and thus in a sense 'completes' the work of Capital. On the other hand, the nature of cultural discourse might indicate that culture is the terrain on which an ideology of collective experience could be re-established, rather than on the stony ground of workplace re-mobilisation (see the outcome of the organising campaign in Bessemer recently). The evidence just doesn't seem conclusive yet for any of the voices in this episode.