In keeping with Michel Foucault's analysis of the ubiquity of surveillance in
everyday life, Bourdieu suggests that bourgeois culture self-surveys
its own private life. The bourgeois male shaves every morning,
regardless of whether he is going out to town.
The lack of distinction between public and private shows symptoms of the prioritization of form over function. With bourgeois rituals of dining and entertaining guests, the persons in this social stratification or class act according to "rules", which have been transported down to their time, almost arbitrarily. The rules have become detached from history, and they autonomously direct social norms.
The lack of distinction between public and private shows symptoms of the prioritization of form over function. With bourgeois rituals of dining and entertaining guests, the persons in this social stratification or class act according to "rules", which have been transported down to their time, almost arbitrarily. The rules have become detached from history, and they autonomously direct social norms.
The relationship between genius and insanity, or the creative and the "degenerate,
Nordau next addresses. He is utterly disgusted with thinking that
he feels does not withstand the test of time that "healthy" intellectual
production, righteously accomplishes. In a fit of mental excitation,
the degenerate improvises on the piano, or sings a melody with
a harmonious structure, without practice.
Here definitively under the tutelage of Charcot, Nordau attempts to disclaim fin de siecle musicians. Specifically, he attacks Wagner, and latches upon so-called evidence of his lack of talent, the criticisms of other musical critics and that of philosophers who have taken notice of Wagner. Here Nordau is caught up with intentionality rather than reading the artifact of artistic production for the unconscious patterns embedded in intentional acts. Regardless of intention, texts have
signification.
Here definitively under the tutelage of Charcot, Nordau attempts to disclaim fin de siecle musicians. Specifically, he attacks Wagner, and latches upon so-called evidence of his lack of talent, the criticisms of other musical critics and that of philosophers who have taken notice of Wagner. Here Nordau is caught up with intentionality rather than reading the artifact of artistic production for the unconscious patterns embedded in intentional acts. Regardless of intention, texts have
signification.
In comparison to 'degenerate' bourgeois ceremonies, 'degenerate' musical aptitudes
are a combination of class and biology. Class first of all is a
matter of economic community, which implies the groups comprising
the commonwealth, their subdivision into moieties, and the fashion
and cultural orientation of their members; biology, secondly, is
a matter of genetic influence, which implies organic ingredients,
life evolved from simpler forms, and predetermination. The two
components, class and biology can be used to articulate the musical
dispositions of artists’Äî who are considered to be musicians by
poets, and poets by musicians’Äîby examining the cross-sections of
code and vicissitudes and translating these into a larger picture:
for example, cultural orientation is more class-oriented than genetic,
but qualitatively this orientation can be seen in the way that
DNA reproduces certain tendencies that form patterns of thought
that make particular cultural selections. This extension of the
factors contributing to cultural selections into the qualitative
expression of those factors (as one of the utilities of the social
sciences) remain separate from
the bourgeoisie's moral behavior related to their cultural selections.
Instead the bourgeois is divided between social engagements such
as dinner parties and becoming a master enthusiast in the the art
of music; while never developing a qualitative expression of a
fact of nature/culture or the the history of ideas, his music is
the closest approximation to qualitative expression, yet his end
in playing amounts to simply appreciation of the masters. Bent
on emulating Mozart and Beethoven, the 'degenerate' bourgeois erects
a conflict between his faculties of judgement and his driving yet
hidden sensation to overrule the territory defined in the the practice
session and the guided musical endeavors of emulation. The way
in which this sensation is prolonged is a clue to the working class
background of this particular bourgeois. The entire bridge between
the working class and the bourgeoisie can be seen in the degenerate
musician bent on emulation, but secretly desiring to return to
his ad hoc stylizations in music
as before switching to emulation as a bourgeois. This condition
of the drive to stop emulation along with the continued emulation
of musical afficionados is a sign of the degeneration according
to theories of progress, which allot for degeneration cyclically,
and at the same time the distinction of individuals in classes
different or the same, which mark a particular brand of cultural
selection or refer to the class struggle, the struggle for prestige,
for distinction. The degenerate bourgeois is a mixture on the one
hand of the idiot savant or the debilitated sufferer from neurosis
who improvises with a musical instrument in the absence of erudition,
who receives his harshest criticism from fellow musicians, and,
and the other hand of a person concerned with presentation and
consumption in a ceremonial sense and concerned with formalisms,
or form over function, in the emulation of key players/composers
in the music world. But the operative image with the degenerate
bourgeois is the emulation of masters
in music. The aspects of progress in reverse are foregrounded along
with this emulation, while his social history or lack thereof is
latent, the aspects of mysticism and his practice as an artist
before becoming bourgeois...
