LBST 311 Simon Fraser University Penetration and The Elements Involved Presentation please use sample words and sentence structure to summaries this chapte

LBST 311 Simon Fraser University Penetration and The Elements Involved Presentation please use sample words and sentence structure to summaries this chapter and since this chapter need to be presented and plese help me identify the main ideas and what i need to talk about. and at the end please comeup a question and provide a brief answer(50 words ich ) 5 Penetrations
Although we have looked In some detail through case study at the experience and
cultural processes of being male, white, working class, unqualified, disaffected and
moving into manual work in contemporary capitalism, there are still some mysteries
to be explained. In one sense it might seem that one set of random causalities individual pathology and cultural deprivation – has simply been replaced by another
– cultural creativity and continuity. We have seen how some working class lads
differentiate themselves from the institution, but why is this so? We have seen the
conviction with which they hold their views, insights and feelings of cultural
election, but what is the basi$ for this subjective elevation? We have seen their
attitude to the occupational structure, but how can we explain its reversal of the
conventional evaluation? We have seen how their genuinely held insights and
convictions lead finally to an objective work situation which seems to be entrapment rather than liberation. But how does this happen? What are the basic deter·
minants of those cultural forms whose tensions, reversals, continuities and final
outcomes we have already explored?
Elements of Analysis
In order to answer some of these questions and contradictions we must plunge
beneath the surface of ethnography in a more interpretative mode. I suggest that
we may approach a deeper understanding of the culture we have studied through
the notions of penetration and limitation.
‘Penetration’ is meant to designate impulses within a cultural form towards the
penetration of the conditions of existence of its members and their position within
the social whole but in a way which is not centred, essentialist or individualist.
‘limitation’ is meant to designate those blocks, diversions and ideological effects
which confuse and impede the full development and expression of these impulses.
The rather clumsy but strictly accurate term, ‘partial penetration’ is meant to
designate the interaction of these two terms in a concrete culture. Ethnosraphy
describes the field of play in which the impulses and limitations combine but
cannot isolate them theoretically or show them separately.
Penetrations are not only crucially skewed and deprived of their independence,
but also bound back finally into the structure they are uncovering in complex ways
by internal and external limitations. There is ultimately a gullty and unrecognisedprecisely a ‘partial’ – relationship of these penetrations to that which they seem to
be independent from, and see into. It is this specific combination of cultural
‘insight’ and partiality which gives the mediated strength of personal validation and
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identity to individual behaviour which leads in the end to entrapment. There
really is at some level a rational and potentially developmental basis for outcomes
which appear to be completely irrational and regressive. It is, I would argue, only
tltis contradictory double articulation which allows a class society to exist in
liberal and democratic forms: for an unfree condition to be entered freely. More
concretely, the specific cultural and subjective self-preparation of labour power
which we have examined involves a potential progression towards more rational
alternatives, which is suspended and caught off balance, unprotected, by crucial
limitations. It is precipitated finally – without a stake in the conventional nor yet
in an alternative – as the subjective inhabitation of a certain definition of manual
labour” power. This is a precipitation, however, which nevertheless carries over with
it some of the affirmation and election based on blocked or distorted cultural
penetrations. The astonishing thing which this book attempts to present is that
there is a moment- and it only needs to be this for the gates to shut on the futurein working class culture when the manual giving of labour power represents both
a freedom, election and transcendence, and a precise insertion into a system of
exploitation and oppression for working class people. The former promises the
future, the latter shows the present. It is the future in the present which hammers
freedom to inequality in the reality of contemporary capitalism.
The remainder of this chapter outlines some of the impulses towards penetration
in the counter-school culture. The next two chapters deal with those internal and
external limitations which prevent and distort their sweep down to the really
determining conditions and full context of the cultural form. Much of what follows
is relevant to working class culture in general. Before that, however, it is necessary
to examine more closely the elements invoJved in the notion of ‘penetration’: the
real form of its action in the world, the scope of this action and its base in human
agency. In particular we must define in what sense cultural penetrations of the
fundamental relations and categories of society can be either ‘rational’ or ‘creative’.
The counter-school culture and its processes arise from definite circumstances
in a specific historical relation and are in no sense accidentally produced. The
recognition of determination does not, however, dismiss creativity. Two qualifications must be insisted upon immediately however. Creativity is in no individual
act, no one particular head, and is not the result of conscious intention. Its logic
could only occur, as I argue later, at the group level. Secondly creativity cannot be
pictured as a unique capacity or one able to produce limitless outcomes. Nor can it
be considered in any sense as mastery – over the future or the present. On the
contrary, it leads, paradoxically, to profound entrapments barred over more by the
flush of subjective certainty.
Having entered these caveats, however, it must also be insisted that this cultural
form is not produced by simple outside determination. It is produced also from the
activities and struggles of each new generation. We are dealing with collective, if not
consciously directed, will and action as they overlay, and themselves take up
‘creative’ positions with respect to finally reproduce what we call ‘outside determinations’. It is these cultural and subjective processes, and actions which flow
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from them, which actually produce and reproduce what we think of as aspects of
structure. It is only by passing through this moment that determinations are made
effective in the social world at all. Decisions are taken by individuals ‘freely’ and
with ‘consent’ in this realm which no amount of formal external direction could
produce. If working class kids on their way to work did not believe the logic of
their actions for themselves, no-one outside, nor outside events, could convince
them – especially in view of the conventional assessment of what they are doing
and where they are going. The culture provides the principles of individual movement and action.
The penetrations produced, however, at the cultural level in the working class by
what I still want to call a certain creativity are by no means quite open ended. They
run along certain lines whose basic determinants lie outside the individual, the
group or class. It is no accident that different groups in different schools, for
instance, come up with similar insights, even though they are the products of
separate efforts, and thus combine to make distinctive class bonds. All the groups
are penetrating through to roughly the same really determining conditions whlch
hold their present and future possibilities. The object, therefore, of creativity is
something to be discovered, not imagined. The limits to, and internal relationships
of, what is discovered are already set. In another society ‘the lads’ would have been
shown the way, they would not have discovered their own.
Of course the whole specificity of the cultural level developed here is that such
insights are not merely set lessons learned, nor passive information taken in. They
are lived out and are the result of concrete and uncertain exploration. It is on the
basis of such ‘insights’ developed in its depths that those other forms of behaviour,
action and enjoyment are predicated which give the most flamboyant appearance
and obvious creative life to a culture.
In a sense this most central point of reference is an absent or at least silent
centre beneath the splendid bedizenment of a culture. It is impossible to prove its
rationality. No amount of direct questioning will elicit it from cultural participants.
The variety of forms and challenges at the surface of the culture bewilder a notion
that they might have a concentric cause. This is why the ethnography of visible
forms is limited. The external, more obviously creative, varied and sometimes
random features must be read back to their heart. The logic of a living must be
trac-ed to the heart of its conceptual relationships if we are to understand the social
creativity of a culture. This always concerns, at some level, a recognition of, and
action upon, the particularity of its place within a determinate social structure.
One of the most profound reasons why this social creativity cannot be expressed
rationally at the surface of the culture is that it is truly only half the story. It really
does- not proceed with a pure expressive purpose from the centre of the culture.
We must posit the penetration as a clean and coherent insight in order to say what
it is, but the concrete forms of cultures; as ethnography insistently reminds us, do
not allow single pure dynamics. In their very formation these ‘insights’ are distorted,
turned and deposited into other forms – such as subjective affirmation of manual
labour -which make it hard to believe there has ever been, or could ever be, even
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a notion of a rational kernel, never mind that it should be easily expressed. This
means, amongst other things, that we must distinguish between the level of the
cu\ura and he eve of ptacica consciousness in out specification of cteativiy
and rationality.
The argument is not that insights are made consciously in any one mind or even
in the same mind or groups of minds over time – although the spoken everyday
word might illuminate aspects of it variably and in contradiction with itself or
perhaps unconsciously. Direct and explicit consciousness may in some senses be
our poorest and least rational guide. It may well reflect only the final stages of
cultural processes and the mystified and contradictory forms which basic insights
take as they are lived out. Furthermore, at different times it may represent the
contradictory moments of the cultural conflicts and processes beneath it. In this,
for instance, it is unsurprising that verbal questions produce verbal contradictions.
Not only this but practical consciousness is the most open to distraction and
momentary influence. Repetition of given patterns, attempts to please the other,
superficial mimicry, earnest attempts to follow abstract norms of, say, politeness,
sophistication or what is taken as intelligence, can be mixed in with comments
and responses which have a true cultural resonance. Survey methods, and all forms
of methods relying basically on verbal or written responses, no matter what their
sophistication, can never distinguish these categories. [ 1]
This is not in any way to dismiss consciousness. It is a privileged source of
information and meaning if properly contextualised, and ultimately the only stake
in the struggle for meanings. It is part of the cultural level and relates most basically
to it as the immediate expression of its law. It binds in with it, and has a consistency, validity and directly developmental role with respect to its complexity.
Consciousness is in any conceivable sense ‘false’ only when it is detached from its
variable cultural context and asked to answer questions.
The creativity and rational impulses of the counter-school culture are not then
idealist or fantastic products of the imagination. Nor are they basically centred on
the acting individual and his consciousness. Nor are they able to take any turn they
wish. They are not finally able in any way to prefigure the future.[2l A romantic
view of working class cultural forms asserts that they are experimenting in some
way with the future. This implies that they provide concrete outlines for living
for when capitalism is overthrown. There is no way in which such imaginings can
promise what they offer or give what they promise. It is quite wrong to picture
working class culture or consciousness optimistically as the vanguard in the grand
march towards rationality and socialism. If anything .. the central case in this book
– it is these elements of rationality and of the future in working class culture, and
particularly in that of the school, which act finally in their current social form and
in complex and unintended ways to prevent precisely that. It is the apparent
cultural ascension of the working class which brings the hell of its own real
present.[3)
We must seal this list of negatives, however, by positing the one· distinctive and
often unrecognised potential that working class cultural creativity and insight really
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does have. It is embedded in the only class in the capitalist social formation which
does not have a structurally based vested interest in mystifying itself. Though
there are many barriers to a proper understanding, though there are many ideological inversions and distortions, and though the tools for analysis are often missing,
the fact still remains that the working class is the only class not inherently structured from within by the ideological intricacy of capitalist organisation. It does not
take nor, therefore, need to hold the cultural and social ‘initiative’ and is thus
potentially freer from its logic.
The working class does not have to believe the dominant ideology. It does not
need the mask of democracy to cover its face of oppression. The very existence and
consciousness of the middle class is deeply integrated into that structure which
gives it dominance. There are none who believe so well as those who oppress as
honest men. What kind of bourgeoisie is it that does not in some way believe its
own legitimations? That would be the denial of themselves. It would be the solution of a problem of which they were the main puzzle. It would invite self·
destruction as the next logical move. The working class is the only group in
capitalism that does not have to believe in capitalist legitimations as a condition of
its own survival.
Clear boundaries must, however, again be marked. This potential for de-mystifi·
cation falls short of an ability to prefigure other forms – that must wait for a basic
structural shift to reflexively determine its own cultural practices and stable forms
of pattern and circle in intention and unintention. All we can say is that the de·
mystification of capitalist ideology, legitimations and self-delusions would be
a precondition for a properly socialist society. We have yet, though, no examples of
this. For the moment, and especially for our immediate object of study, this greater
capacity for cultural penetration has, in its real social form, resulted in a deeper
and more entangled entrapment within the capitalist order. It is far from settled
whether this capacity, in any way in which it has actually been taken up, is a blessing or a curse.(4)
This is to argue, therefore, for a certain kind of creativity. It is still free-floating,
however, unless we can specify the human base from which it springs and its
particular form of work on the world, its form of praxis.
I suggest that the smallest, discrete unit which acts as the basis for cultural
penetration is the informal group. The group is special and more than the sum of
its individual parts. It has, in particular, a social dynamic which is relatively independent of issues and locations, preconceptions and prejudice. A social force which
we might simply call loyalty tends to overdetermine previous attitudes and the
specific conditions of the group’s existence. It has been shown in American microsociology that leadership, leadership aims, maintenance of the group, and con·
vergence of individual views, are permanent characteristics of groups (at least in
Western capitaJism).[S) It is a requirement for the group’s continued existence
that there should be strongly held group views and purposes. Social psychology
calls this high morale. The power that is thus generated in the group, and its
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unspecified open nature, constitutes an important social force. It is partly from this
source that wider symbolic cultural articulations are generated.
We have, therefore, in the informal group a relative suspension of individual
interests and a commitment to the reality of the group and its aims, which is not
closely specified in the membership history, or location of the group. In this sense
the group can, therefore, be considered as a subject in its own right. It has an
internal impulse to find an objective specific to its own level in a way not limited
by the previous knowledge, experience or ideology of its individual members.l6)
I want to suggest that working class counter-school culture, supported by the
informal group and an infinite series of contacts between groups passing on what is
best and most relevant, turns its generated and open-ended force at least in part
upon a de-mystification in its own way of its members’ real conditions and possibilities within a class society. This is not to assert that any such intention, or final
content of understanding, is actually in any one person’s head, the result of an
individual subjective will, or even in the form of an individual rationality. We are
dealing with the unit of the group, and the specific level of cultural ‘insight’. It
should also be remembered that the partiality of the penetrations made at this
level anyway prevent their full rational development and expression.[?)
Having suggested the basis, force and scope of what I maintain must be seen as
a kind of creativity, it remains to suggest the characteristic manner of its work
upon the world, the praxis which yields what I have called cultural penetrations.
The characteristic expression of this force upon the world is, I suggest, a kind of
production. The cultural does not simply mechanically mark, or in some simple
sense ‘live out’ wider social contradictions. It works upon them with its own
resources. to achieve partial resolutions, recombinations, limited transformations
which are uncertain to be sure, but concrete, specific to its own level and the basis
for actions and decisions which are vitally important to that wider social order.
The relevant materials are not necessarily provided from outside for this kind
of work and production. Indeed the praxis I am pointing to produces partly its
own materials for its own activity in a struggle with the constrictions of the
available forms. (8] What delivers the group force into the concrete form of the
specifically cultural as studied in part I of the book is importantly a deflection
from the dominant mode of signification -language- into antagonistic behavioural,
visual and stylistic forms of expression. Conventional words cannot properly
harness and ‘say’ the material of penetrations made at the infrastructural unit of
the group in the mode of the cultural. Words created under bourgeois sway in
determinate conditions cannot express what did not go into their making. Part of
the reaction to the school institution is anyway a rejection of words and considered
language as the expression of mental life. The way in which these creative insights
are expressed, therefore, is one of expressive antagonism to the dominant bourgeois
mode of signification -language. In a real sense for the working class the cultural is
in a battle with language. This is not to reduce the cultural to anti-abstract behavi·
our. It is to posit it, in part, as an an…
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