One of the things these high-falutin' intellectuals write about is the erosion in the (post-)modern mindset of the idea of place: the copy machine , the (cell) phone, the camera, the automobile, the projector, and the internet have all worked to turn presence into (functional) omnipresence. Increasingly nothing is anywhere, everything is everywhere. (1) And business has mirrored this, too, moving to meet popular desire wherever possible. No matter where you go there they are: a Starbucks, a Walmart, a McDonald's, a Best Buy. Or better yet, amazon.com. This is the essence of Western Culture as it conceives itself: the love affair between desire-satisfying boxes and desiring bodies; it's hard to know which is reproducing faster.
This is, of course, an illusion. Meijer is at the corner of Carpenter and Michigan Ave (among other places), and the products within all have a history and an origin. Nothing "comes from the store." You can do a google image search for "Magritte pipe" and find a copy (of a copy of a copy of a copy...) but -- çeci n'est pas une tableaux! -- you'll find neither a pipe nor a painting. The real one (the painting, I have no idea about the pipe) is still in the LA County Museum.
But, and this is where it gets interesting, there is this emerging counter-desire that unsentimental ad execs tell me is taking America by storm! (True story.) Apparently The Charm of The Highway Strip has faded with middle-age; people are really into local business now. Well kind of. How many people do you know who shop at the Food Co-op exclusively, for instance? But, the unsentimental ad execs told me, local-ness is the Most Valuable Thing local business can sell. In other words, our most precious, most fetishised commodity.
As cool as that sounds, and as much as it would seem to promote a decentralized, heterogeneous culture, I'm not sure I'm buying. The unique, cool, and firmly localized Ypsilanti Food Co-op does not transfer a portion of its essence to that can of tomatoes you bought. Just check your receipt, it's not on there. Local-ness in not another commodity, like crude oil, coffee, or the iPhone.
And what about all these other things we are being sold along with our cars, diamond rings, and mutual funds? What about security, love, and happiness? What is up with this collision of consumption and desire? It's one big mass delusion. Commodities have to be objects of exchange, the fact that we desire them is not enough.
Can we let ephemera remain ephemeral? I hope so, or we risk the madness of confusing closeness with control, and
like The Duke of Ferrara, ending up with a rather poor substitute. People cannot purchase presence, except in real estate, fine art and (still, lamentably) the slave trade.
It's something to think about as I drive my Japanese car with Venezuelan gas on my way to the local East African grocery store (where they now call me brother) to buy a Bermudan phone card to call my girlfriend. In Azerbaijan.
Can we let ephemera remain ephemeral? I hope so, or we risk the madness of confusing closeness with control, and
like The Duke of Ferrara, ending up with a rather poor substitute. People cannot purchase presence, except in real estate, fine art and (still, lamentably) the slave trade.It's something to think about as I drive my Japanese car with Venezuelan gas on my way to the local East African grocery store (where they now call me brother) to buy a Bermudan phone card to call my girlfriend. In Azerbaijan.
1) Critics are split on whether the fact that nothing is anywhere means that nothing means anything anymore, (man, how's that for a brain teaser) but Kevin Dole 2 thinks so.
Lookout! Names dropping!
Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Robert Browning, and YOU.
Lookout! Names dropping!
Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Robert Browning, and YOU.
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