Culture’s failure to absorb discontent may force politics into rawer, uncaptured form.
Evidence
Yet if this disconnection is bad for culture, it might be good for politics. For if music and subculture no longer act as effective mechanisms for controlled desublimation, converting disaffection into culture which can in turn be transformed into entertainment — feeding what Jean-François Lyotard memorably called the “Tungsten-Carbide stomach” of capital, which omnivorously consumes anything, and excretes it as commodities — then discontent can appear in a rawer form. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1296
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely counterintuitive density: the collapse of the cultural-desublimation pipeline as potentially liberating for politics. Fisher inverts the usual lament that culture’s decline harms radicalism.
- DEFINE: Usefully glosses ‘controlled desublimation’ and Lyotard’s ‘Tungsten-Carbide stomach’ as capital’s omnivorous consumption of culture into commodities.
- XREF: connects to: Everyday culture signals political ruptures before formal politics registers them. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 1134; Inserting raw politics into youth culture prevents achieving real cachet. — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 806; Unfocused public discontent gives politicians no incentive to act on it. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2186 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Everyday culture signals political ruptures before formal politics registers them.
#expands(0.80) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 1134 - Inserting raw politics into youth culture prevents achieving real cachet.
#expands(0.72) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 806