A letter
from Chris Stroffolino. I’ve left
it unedited, save for the addition of two footnotes:
Dear Ron—
Having recently read your blog in which you ask us to note
the excision of your historical analysis in the comments attributed to you by
Gary and Nada for their (nefarious?) “Blank Generation” feature, it occurred to
me that my response might have been significantly different had I been aware of
the elided passage, and so would like to take this opportunity (especially in
the rocket’s red glare of events that “have substantially rewritten recent
history”) to consider some of these points.
Taken in your “slightly broader” context, the comments
about “depoliticization”
consider in turn two particular historical moments that seem to
have significance in one way or another for many of us, 1989 (roughly) and
1974. Ultimately it seems you argue that 1974 was the more crucial year in
terms of the “depoliticization” you’ve noted. Whether the increased
deterioration of “shared point of agreement as to the goals of the left” was
primarily due to the U.S. exiting Vietnam, “identarian tendencies,” the resignation of Nixon, the “Oil Crisis,”
inflation, or other less easily pin-downable factors
(such as, for instance, the so-called “coming up age” of many of the baby boomers at that time; the
co-optation of symbols of rebellion by the dominant culture, or the burgeoning
re-se
For the present purposes, I am especially interested in
the question of demographics. The fact that the baby-boomers had a significant
numerical and demographic advantage viz-a-viz their elders (and, surely you
would agree that some of the excesses and “mistakes” of the weather
underground, etc., related very specifically to the idea(l) of an “alternative
youth culture”) had much to do with both the “shared point of agreement”; and
that, by definition, could not be sustained without being reconceptualized as
many began the slow-march toward “dropping out from the drop outs” with age. At
the same time, many of us born in the 60s found that one of the major
disadvantages we had was that we would not be heard. Over and over again in the
80s, whether at Nuclear Freeze or “U.S. Out of El Salvador” rallies, or in
hard-core punk mosh-pits, there seemed to be ample evidence that, no matter how
we organized, no matter what little victories we were able to achieve locally,
that we couldn’t affect the public sphere, couldn’t access the airwaves,
largely because the demographic doors had been shut on us. This was not so much
“an incentive not to organize,” --and certainly, for many of us, REAGAN (as
well as Bush I) was A PRIMARY SHARED POINT OF AGREEMENT—but there definitely
was a developing politics of “cynicism and disgust” as you put it---even amidst
the attempts to organize. Basically, as you probably know already, many of the
“underground” or “punk” (or whatever term you wish to use) of the 80s developed
a strong aversion to working within the system, a DIY ethos*, to some extent
out of necessity, but to some extent it was an attempt to WILL the
“marginalization” that had been forced on many of us — to make a kind of
separatism a virtue. Surely there were some heroic exceptions, for instance
Act-Up circa 1990, with its poignantly comic post-yippee media interventions,
but, for many, a kind of “purism”
reigned---words like “sell-out” were perhaps even more common currency
during this time than they were during the 1960s (for instance, some of the
punks in the squat in which I lived called me a sell-out for 1) taking an
adjunct job rather than continuing to be a trash picker or 2) for wanting to
play melodic music rather than simply bang on metal like the local (Philly)
“industrial band” Sink Manhattan. I could quote many more examples of
others….).(As a sidenote, I should probably add that
in many ways in subsequent years I’ve found such dynamics of political “purism” also played itself out in much of the
avant-garde poetry scene I began to become more involved with after that New
Coast conference in 1993. The parallels are striking, and so when I read your
use of the word “disgust” here, it’s hard not to think of Sianne
Ngai’s essay** in which she argues for the continuing of an elitist, er, marginalized, post-language coterie as “political”….and
thus I concur with you, at being disgusted by this ORGANIZED disgust, whether
seen in squats or Stanford professors---although, I TOO don’t want to make such
a charge in any kind of dogmatic way, since, as you say, events have
substantially written recent history.)
Anyway, since “my” generation had, compared to yours, a relatively
protracted adolescence (due to economic and demographic factors at least as
much as the lack of a 10 year anti-Vietnam movement), I wonder about those born
in the 1980s who are now in their teens and early 20s. The 1980s baby boom,
we’re told, is numerically larger than than the late
40s---50s baby boom (though, still smaller demographically---no one’s
predicting that half the nation’s population will be under 30, as it was in
1967 I think, any time soon). So there may be an opportunity for this generation,
coupled with those of my “protracted” generation (many of us still floating in
a temp-economy with no health-benefits, and thus not as easily seduced by the
patriotic rhetoric of “privilege” as many who were our age [late 30s, early
40s] in the late 60s), to actually “successfully negotiate” whatever
“reconstruction” may very well be recurring in the coming times. It’s, as you
say, still to early to tell---but working against the hope of an anti-war (and
anti-“homeland security,” etc.) movement even as effective as the one in the
60s remains the large degree of media censorship, whether it’s Clear Channel
banning the Dixie Chicks for making anti-war statements, to the more salient,
if not benign propaganda of Teen People, to get the youth hooked on materialism
much more effectively than ever (though this itself may very much parallel
1950s America much more than the 1980s was---though it bugs me that one of the
things the press—well at least that dares reports on anti-war activities today
somewhat favorably, keeps saying is “unlike the 1960s, it’s not a bunch of
shaggy drop-outs. No, it’s respectable business people who protest the
war” as if the reason for that isn’t
because so many are forced to dress and look more ‘respectable’ in office-like
ways now than at any time in American history! Ah, health!)
Ah, I remember how so many of us thought the 1980s was
LIKE the 1950s and so therefore the 1990s could be like the 1960s, and for a
second there, around 91, 92, it seemed not unrealistic---but the 1980s, though
politically conservative, were perhaps not socially conservative enough to be a
seed-bed for a 1960s kind of life affirming opposition to the
military-industrial complex. For instance, Madonna, who many of us had contempt
for, was still speaking sexual liberation to some extent, even amidst AIDS,
While the far more sanitized pop-acts today may be much closer to Pat Boone,
etc.
To return to your original point----
Although I therefore don’t think 1974 effected a
depoliticization of younger people generally (though it is a convenient year
for marking the depoliticization of many who had been young in the 1960s; the
next “crop” of young was very political, just less heeded), I am willing to
grant the significance of 1989—1992 as time in which I witnessed a substantial
depoliticization, a breakdown of much of the underground political and artistic
networks of the “youth culture” of my generation---whether it was the “Clinton
Democrats” or the Major label co-optation of the vital potential of the 80s
underground music scene, the 90s was such a cynical time (in its alleged
economic prosperity that never quite trickled down) that I found myself in many
ways nostalgic for the late 80s, even though in the late 80s I, and others born
in the 60s, felt “things can’t much worse than this!” Furthermore, in terms of socialism, some of
us tried to make the argument that NOW THAT the Stalinist Bloc has collapsed,
actually we should be in a position to make a BETTER case for socialism or
communism because, as you point out,
Those so-called communist countries weren’t
communist---but ultimately this argument got lost in the shuffle of so-called
90s prosperity, and even (if not especially?) in the poetry “world,” such
class-based arguments fell on deaf ears amidst identarian tendencies and an
over-obsession with the politics of poetic form (which, however useful a
counter strategy in the 70s, seemed to be thoroughly bourgeois-ified by the early 90s…). Whether the current war, as well
as the “war-on-terrorism” will begin to be articulated in terms of class
remains to be seen, and I do not want to too giddy for a shared point of
agreement as Bush/Chaney/Rumsfield et al, for I am
very suspicious of becoming too much like The general and majors who always
seem so unhappy unless they got a war (as that 1980 song puts it…)
One last thing, speaking of 1974---
I recently read a poem by Jeffrey McDaniel (b. 1967) that
begins like
this--- I’ve a hunch it not be your
thing, but here’s how it starts.
“Nixon fell in ’74, like a painting off the wall,
and we busted out the lighter fluid,
the marshmallows,
danced around the bonfire of him, ripped
off
our paisley blouses, made love so
cosmically
even the sun came, birds squirting in
every direction,
but when the drugs wore off—what had
changed?
When they said WATERGATE (italics), we expected an ocean,
A river at least, to irrigate
sunflower seeds of protest.
Not Gerald Ford in a see-through apology….
(etc….)
all best Ron,
keep on bloggin’
Chris
* Do it yourself.
** “Raw
Matter: A Poetics of Disgust,” Open
Letter, Tenth Series, No. 1, 1998; also in Telling It: Avant-Garde Poetics of the 1990s,
edited by Marc Wallace & Steven Marks, U. of Alabama, 2002.
