Critique of the word ‘Bitchy’

Defined in  wordnetweb.princeton.edu as ‘arising from malice, a catty remark’, we immediately see the animalistic and therefore dehumanising connotations associated with the word ‘bitchy’.

As is evident in popular culture, ‘bitchy’ is a descriptive comment aimed towards women that can be extended to refer to gay men, or jokingly to the obviously heterosexual male. My problem with the word is twofold.

Firstly as I have suggested, it dehumanises woman. The insult ‘bitch’ knowingly meaning a female dog and synonymous with ‘catty’, linguistically deprives woman of her dignity and space in the cultural sphere as rational human.

My second problem with the word is the concept associated with the already detrimental word-in-itself. Being bitchy means making a petty, injurious remark, normally towards another female about her appearance or attitude. As both of these have been defined by men across the centuries these remarks serve only to divide women. The exclusivity that accompanies a bitchy remark spouted by a group of girls/women against another girl/woman is hugely detrimental and serves to undermine the little confidence that women are endowed with in this still patriarchic society.

I have heard many people, men and women alike, complain about the ‘bitchy’ nature of girls, especially as an excuse for why they prefer the company of males.

The bitchy concept stems from an inability of women (through prohibition, not capacity) to participate in the political/cultural sphere and a reduction of their interests to fashion and all that is petty. If we are removed from these spheres, and we still are to quite an extent, what else are we supposed to impassion us other than another girl’s hairstyle or the latest chick flick (encouraged as our interests by women’s magazines – the most obvious representation of definers of female identity). Over the course of history, this has sadly resulted in the political force we are naturally charged with being channelled towards the banal, leaving us with lack of role models, lack of history, but worst of all, a lack of confidence.

The E.N.D of the Machine

The capitalist machine which has been condemned by Marx since the dawn of modernity is no longer in need of threatening our independence, individuality and lifestyle.

Denounced fervently by Rancière in his ground-breaking ‘The Emancipated Spectator’, he tells us that critiques of the system in the form of unveiling the hidden message of the image are merely the flip side of the coin of capitalism, reinforcing its values.

Rancière argues that the competing Grand Narratives of Cultural Criticism and the Capitalist Machine/Modernity have a mutually dependent, symbiotic relationship. Rancière turns traditional theory on its head and argues that in a world in which Cultural Criticism and Capitalism exist, it is actually Capitalism that is the Big Other, that Cultural Theory has stolen its previous limelight. The idea that Cultural Theory is the Grand Narrative (at least in leftist and popular academic circles) saving civilization from the evils of the System is an inversion of the concept of Capitalist Order (think Baron Haussman’s 19th century Paris imposing order on medieval chaos) coming to the rescue in the face of human pandemonium.

This dialectic between the two forces is continuing. It is evident by the case of the imbecile and the rotations of perspective around this. We were once taught to laugh at the imbecile that thought that the images that he is seeing (think the train on the 1940s cinema screen) were real. The imbecile was then educated and told the difference between images and reality. Nowadays however the advent of over-analysis and over-deconstruction advocated by Derrida has led to a change. The imbecile is now he who believes there to be a separate reality, distinct from appearances, a Don Quixote-esque figure who believes there to be a secret world conspiring against him in front of his very eyes.

Cultural Criticism and Capitalism are mutually-propogating forces. What Rancière proposes therefore is a critique of criticism, a meta-criticism if you like. He propounds a series of propositions that are illogical to the current institutions we reside in. These are:

1. The incapable are capable.

2. There is no hidden machine that keeps them in their place.

3. There is no fatal mechanism turning reality into image.

4. There is no monstrous beast absorbing all desires into its belly.

In this way let the neo-democratic individualism commence. Rousseau’s chains  holding us down preventing us from acting do not exist! Do not let yourself be subjected to anxieties about the abundance of information – instead, surf the 21st century wave of possibilities: enjoy them, love them, submit to them, but most importantly of all ACT!

A Collective Theory for a Collective Consciousness

We are living in the dawn of mass information-sharing. Knowledge is rapidly gained and just as easily forgotten. The revolutionary websites  of Wikipedia and Youtube convert what used to be a continuum of knowledge into fragments, leaving us to piece together the enormous amount of information on offer.

This mass of available information cannot be taken on by the individual. Instead it must be captured by online-networks that enable the sharing of these fragmentised pieces of knowledge. This sharing means that the individual’s knowledge depends on the collective knowledge of his/her friends/family/social network. The rise of the Youtube video demonstrates this phenomena. If someone likes something they read/see on the internet, it must then be shared and may/may not become a collective *like*.

Knowledge is commoditised and this commodity is shared. I am not suggesting that this change in the shape of knowledge is either detrimental or to our benefit, I am merely suggesting that we must adapt to this change. As I have pointed out before, with the rise of the internet the public’s attention span has decreased. As Jacques Rancière points out in his ‘The Emancipated Spectator’ (an interestingly short book), everyone is now (and has forever been, really) an intellectual and has an opinion on the internet information-mass. Better still, with the rise of blogs and video-sharing, everyone is their own writer and documenter. The Spectator has truly been emancipated and is now a self-realizing actor.

This change puts knowledge somewhat in the back seat. It means that knowledge must now compete with all the other attractive phenomena on the internet and must produce itself in the shape of ‘what sells’. What Sells as we know from advertising slogans over the centuries is what is short and captures our ever-dwindling attention span.

For this very reason, I come to my conclusion. What is needed in the 21st century is not the ancient-style doctrines of Hobbes and Rousseau, only two different social theories battling for air-space.

What is needed in the 21st century is a democratic social and cultural theory. We need people to club together their separate chunks of this fragmentised world in order to make a new theory. This theory should be self-realizing like a tsunami gaining momentum across the sea. It won’t allow people to get bored as they will be active contributors and not mere readers/followers.

I propose therefore a collective theory for our collective consciousness and urge you all to please get involved. Anything you see on here you disagree with, tell me! I actively encourage debate and discussion and so should you (or should you? You tell me). With this blog I aim to start a discussion point for the new cultural theory, a much-needed theory of the 21st century, which will act in accordance with the fragmentary revolution and knowledge and the Emancipation of the Spectator into self-realizing actor.

Fun! And How to Have it in the Storm of a Cultural Malaise

We have entered a paradoxical situation. Whilst on the one hand we are the most connected, inter-communicable culture there has ever been, on the other we are fast becoming an alienated society that is losing touch with the old-fashioned style of communication in the form of ‘spending time with people’.

In a society that values rapidity and a short-attention span, tended to by MTV’s’ music videos’ notorious shot-changing  every 0.7 seconds (just watch a Kesha video), influenced primarily by the rapidity of the backwards and forwards motion of capital, the nature of our friendships, and therefore community, is changing.

It can often take one brief meeting at a college party to then ‘friend’ someone on Facebook. A Facebook user can have thousands of ‘friends’. The problem with this apparently inclusive, self-confidence boosting procedure is that the quick thrill gained from adding a new friend becomes addictive, and the Facebook user finds him/herself constantly returning to the website (and this happens with all online social networks) in order to reaffirm him/herself again in the world’s eye.

The danger of Facebook is twofold.

1. It stops us getting ‘out there’. The addictive pull of Facebook is enough to, on the most extreme level, keep one in at night as the user is on the website, or:

(2.) is able to manipulate our behaviour as one is aware that one’s behaviour is being documented. It can therefore be seen by friends, family, future employers and other stern figures who would lessen our capacity for having the kind of pure, unadulterated fun that makes life worth living.

I hope to have demonstrated how the social-networking sites that cross cultures, national boundaries and continents are just as divisive as they are cohesive of society. In the face of the fear of the development of the new alienation/segregation I propose two solutions:

1. We go back to good old-fashioned fun. In the style of the Beach Boys (who didn’t even surf by the way), whose song Fun, Fun, Fun encapsulates the notion of pure human contact (and  consequently emancipation from virtual, manipulable reality)  I propose to cure this cultural malaise.

2. We use the social-networking concept for a greater good. We come up with a collective theory involving the opinions of everyone, yes everyone (as we are all thinking, observant human beings) and counter the age-old Grand Narrative of The Law (government, society’s presuppositions, but most of all in this case, the Writer or Cultural Critic). A democratic theory for a democratic society which screams the slogans ‘Theory for everyone!’, ‘Art for everyone!’, ‘Enjoyment for everyone!’

Constructing Identity in the Face of the Book

Social networking systems like facebook are undoubtable having a nefarious effect on the individual. Something so widespread and personal that your mum can be found on it (and believe me, she can) cannot help but have an effect on that ongoing process of construction one’s consciousness and reality.

Interestingly enough, Facebook started out in Harvard by that charming rugger-bugger Mark Zuckerberg and friends, its name alluding to the online ‘book’ of people’s faces alongside their personal data the boys had created. The ‘book’ metaphor cannot be overlooked. Facebook shares similarities with other types of ‘book’, or The Book, and is thus increasing in terms of power.

In the same way that ‘The Book’ dictates moral and behavioural norms, Facebook is constructing and enforcing its own contemporary moralistic variants dictated primarily by social pressures and fear.

As Zizek told us long ago, fantasy is a way to organise our pleasure or ‘jouissance’ and in this way I believe facebook to be reconstructing the co-ordinates of fantasy. Instead of desiring to win that prize at school, one now desires to have a status that is *liked* by several, a good photo of oneself that is tagged by another (making oneself look not too needy, but effortlessly cool) or an invitation to a cool event.

Facebook is no doubt both a support network and a medium that imposes isolation. Depending on one’s mood it can make one feel on a real high, winning at life even, but given a worse mood it can make one feel like a social outcast or recluse. In this way Facebook is not only changing the shape of our fantasies, but also of our nightmares.

In the Western age of constant exposure, it is a way to catalogue and categorise the untenable and precarious present. However, the sheer size of media available and the extensive even circular network of ‘friends’ renders this process overwhelming and perhaps redundant.

In this way I propose to ‘save face’ and to take Facebook on only on a superficial level. If we are to prohibit the death of the real, authentic, personable fun that involves the real physicality of other people, we must not submit to the inevitable fatality of succumbing to Facebook when bored. Instead we must seek out the real, the happening NOW of the present. It is only in this smaller, fragmented way that we may be able to reconcile the overwhelming present and not succumb to the detrimental aspects of the Book .

And a new theory is born!

This blog arises out of an awareness of the current void in critical theory. As a response to the on-going pervasiveness of names such as Freud, Lacan, Kristeva and Zizek in the field of literary criticism, most of whom are out-dated and in need of a modern interpretation, I propose this blog as a space for discussion about the theme mentioned above.

The blog in my opinion seems an apt medium for this discussion in our globalised, panopticon world, where from the computer at one’s desk one can observe the world at play; one’s friends, one’s friends of friends and one’s enemies. In a time of heightened self-consciousness, paranoia and the rise of the image, I believe a new theory is needed to represent this new crisis in identity.

Crises of identity of course occur with every major socio-economic/cultural change, be it the industrial revolution or the Reformation/Counter-Reformation, but it is the task of serious thinkers and critics to be able to piece together the present, what is happening NOW(!), which Jean-François Lyotard writes about in his ‘The Sublime and the Avant-Garde’ in order to be able to understand the individuals current role in society. I hope with the continuation of this blog to be able to answer some of the following questions:

How private do I want my personal life to be? Is it a source of mirth and discussion amongst friends and highly visible on facebook or is it something more delicate than that? How am I, myself, my constructed identity, supposed to survive in the face of a thousand people who have seen my face and pre-judged it before meeting me? How am I to survive in the cult of the celebrity – the state of contemporary culture in which anyone can make themselves an instant celebrity, with all the temporality that goes with it? How are problems on a larger scale – Africa, poverty, the Middle East – going to get any stage time amongst the enormous space given to the middle-class consumerist individual during one’s personal use of the internet?

I hope this blog to be a space of discussion for anyone, yes anyone, who wishes to write and help me and others formulate their world-view in the face of a multi-media induced capitalist dystopia.