[Dancecult-l] Violence & EDMC

[Nibelungentreue at aol.com]

Just by way of a brief postscript, I guess it might be said in light of 
Derrida's concluding remarks, that the level or appropriation with which he is 
concerned, is that between the economic and the cultural spheres of society. His 
argument is that capital continually disestablishes the category of the human, 
in which case it might need to be clarified whether Tobia's musings about 
becoming "alien" are symptom formations, or counter reactions to the process 
Derrida desribes. In any case, I think it might be helpful to talk about 
democratisation of "speed" in Derrida's sense as an attempt to slow the exchange rate 
[sic] between the economic and cultural spheres. Perhaps unlike Tobias, I think 
this makes questions of ontology secondary, and questions of cultural policy 
primary i.e. a democratisation of cultural policy might help slow the rate of 
imitation/translation between these two spheres. This could mean that the state 
could play a mediating role in the kind of "Gandhi" like alternative Graham 
evokes. Cultural and technological citizenship may help then in qualifying 
violence in the context of EDMC. Indeed, it is imitation of the imperatives of 
citizenship in EDMC that could help play a constitutive, as opposed to a merely, 
after the event role, in such a context. 

This suggests that violence is a symptom formation of imitation of the market 
in EDMC (read: selfish, destructive identities). I leave it to others though 
to consider the aptness of social theorist Nico Mouzelis's prescriptions for 
cultural policy in such a context:

"It requires designing and implementing a regulatory framework for reversing 
the growing imbalance seen in late modernity between the economic and cultural 
spheres. It requires mechanisms that will make it difficult, to use 
Bourdieu's terminology, for economic capital to buy more or less cultural capital. It 
requires mechanisms that will shift the control of cultural technologies from 
media moguls, not necessarily to the state, but to those who all actually 
produce culture (artists, writers, intellectuals, philosophers), as well as those 
actually entitled to transmit it to the new generations (teachers). It 
requires, that is to say, mechanisms that will reverse the present drift from market 
economy to market society".

Just a thought,

Neil Huthnance   
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