The Young-Girl prizes “sincerity,” “good-heartedness,” “kindness,” “simplicity,” “frankness,” “modesty,” and in general all of the virtues that, considered unilaterally, are synonymous with servitude. The Young-Girl lives in the illusion that liberty is found at the end of total submission to commodity “Advertising.” But at the end of this term of servitude there is nothing but old age and death.—Tiqqun
“LIBERTY DOESN’T EXIST,” SAYS THE YOUNG-GIRL, WALKING INTO THE DRUGSTORE.
The Young-Girl wants to be “independent,” which is to say, in her spirit, dependent only on THEM.
The Young-Girl is the central article of permissive consumption and commodity leisure.
In the Spectacle, access to liberty is nothing but access to marginal consumption of the desire marketplace, which constitutes its symbolic heart.
THE YOUNG-GIRL SAYS YOLO
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YES. this text was hugely inspirational for the one-off zine i'm doing which contrasts women 'makers' with constructed the "Feminine" order.
ReplyDeleteit's so fucking on-point..."The Young-Girl's depressing because she'd like to be a thing among things, that is, she'd like to be like everyone else as they are seen from the outside and she can't; because she'd like to be a symbol, and circulate smoothly within the gigantic semiocratic metabolism."
YEAH! I've only read the excerpts posted on Triple Canopy but the full translated book should arrive soon. I haven't stopped thinking about it since I read it. I can relate most things to it. Tiqqun are just so good at diagnosing our situation. I had another term made up in my head before I read their text. I called Young-Girls 'First Lifers'...because when I've observed people I've noticed the way they react to an EVENT is much different than others. For them, it is always the first time and it is always special/amazing/mind-blowing/positive. The processing never moves past the EVENT (or SPECTACLE), the explosion but no aftermath, hence constant war. Young-Girl Theory does a way better job of explaining this.
ReplyDeleteWill you send me your zine when you complete it?
ack! just saw this--yes of course; the zine should be finished by Fall. i'll keep you posted!
ReplyDeleteAs for the issue of SPECTACLE: I think the "First Lifers" condition you describe is both a product of (1) literal "constant war" (a normalized social/visual condition) (2) the neverending stream of online imagery that deluges the mind (especially pertinent to young girls learning what's up from tumblr and the like), and (3) the ways in which media insidiously present "antidotes" to political consciousness. Taken together, it's all just another war, albeit a more covert one on our psyches. The positivity of response is proportionate to the actual banality of the situation/event.
...something Chomsky said, I can't remember the exact quote now, but it related to how media-producers/controllers severely limit the scope of public dialogue (i.e. Centrist politicians are branded as "liberals")--yet they encourage very lively debate *within* that constricted frame. So it's all surface, and if you were to try and investigate the content below, you'd find nothing there. SPECTACLE maintenance is prime. A war of images, basically. Everything must be reduced to totalizing Events to inhibit the public from sussing out the systems which engender them. This breeds apathy, and YOLO becomes our generation's answer to "turn on, tune in, drop out"...a means of codifying one's own existential frailty/powerlessness--forging solidarity through it!--and perversely turning Egoism into a form of rebellion.
An excerpt from "Social Music" that you reminded me of, as it too recalls that Debord-ian dystopia: "our era tries to force politics out of its domain and right into the economic domain, replacing it with the deception of communications and free access to commodities...If economics becomes the sole criteria in the organization of our society, then the cultural goods--"the ones which make us accept all the other ones"--are its most effective propaganda. The society of entertainment...organizes and accelerates the distribution of cultural products, releases them as silent propaganda (that doesn't say its name). What doesn't belong to the mercantile arena--and its twin, the media--will therefore have no chance to reach an audience, to oppose some form of contradiction to the reproduction of an instant falsely lived."