Course Highlights
This course features an extensive list of readings and assignments. A list of useful Web sites is also available in the related resources section. This course also features archived syllabi from various semesters.
Course Description
This course will survey the conditions of material life and the changing social and economic relations in medieval Europe with reference to the comparative context of contemporary Islamic, Chinese, and central Asian experiences. The subject covers the emergence and decline of feudal institutions, the transformation of peasant agriculture, living standards and the course of epidemic disease, and the ebb and flow of long-distance trade across the Eurasian system. Particular emphasis will be placed on the study of those factors, both institutional and technological, which have contributed to the emergence of capitalist organization and economic growth in Western Europe in contrast to the trajectories followed by the other major medieval economies.
Textbooks
Hawthorn, Geoffrey, ed. The Standard of Living: Tanner Lectures. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989. ISBN: 9780521368407.
Lopez, Robert. The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950-1350. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1976. ISBN: 9780521290463.
McCloskey, Deirdre. Economical Writing. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 1999. ISBN: 9781577660637.
Pomeranz, Kenneth, and Steven Topik, eds. The World That Trade Created: Culture, Society and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000. ISBN: 9780765602503.
Hodges, Richard. Towns and Trade in the Age of Charlemagne. London, England: Duckworth, 2000. ISBN: 9780715629659.
Additional Readings
Bailey, Mark. "Demographic Decline in Late Medieval England." Economic History Review 49, no. 1 (February 1996): 1-19.
Braudel, Fernand. The Wheels of Commerce. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1982, pp. 231-249.
Brenner, Robert. "Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe." Past and Present, no. 70 (February 1976): 30-74; Reprinted in Aston, T., and C. Philpin, eds. The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 10-63.
Campbell, Bruce. "Economic rent and the intensification of English agriculture, 1086-1350." In Medieval Farming and Technology: The Impact of Agricultural Change in Northwest Europe. Edited by G. Astill and J. Langdon. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997, pp. 225-50.
Columbus, Christopher, et al. The Diario of Christopher Columbus's first voyage to America, 1492-1493. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989. Selections: 3 August-21 October 1492.
De Joinville, Jean. "The Book of the Holy Words and Good Deeds of Our King, Saint Louis (1309)." In The Medieval Record: Sources of Medieval History. Selected by Alfred J. Andrea. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1997, pp. 367-370.
Domar, Evessy. "The causes of slavery or serfdom: A hypothesis." Journal of Economic History 30, no. 1 (March 1970): 18-32.
Mauricio, Drelichman. "All that Glitters: Precious metals, rent seeking and the decline of Spain." European Review of Economic History, (December 2005): 313-36.
Duby, Georges. Early Growth of the European Economy. New York, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974, pp. 162-180.
Ekrem, Inger, and Mortensen. Lars Boje. Historia Norwegie. Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum.
Epstein, S. R. "Regional Fairs, Institutional Innovation, and Economic Growth in Late Medieval Europe." The Economic History Review (August 1994): 459-482.
Fogel, Robert. "Second thoughts on the European escape from hunger: famines, chronic malnutrition, and mortality rates." In Nutrition and Poverty. Edited by S. R. Osmani. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1992, pp. 243-286.
Fossier, Robert. Peasant Life in the Medieval West. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1988, chapter 2.
Genicot, Leopold. Rural Communities in the Medieval West. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990, chapter 1.
Harvey, Barbara. "Introduction: the crisis of the early fourteenth century." In Before the Black Death: Studies in 'Crisis' of the Early Fourteenth Century. Edited by Bruce Campbell. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1991, pp. 1-24.
King, Gregory, Charles Davenant, and W. Couling. "Tables of Estimates." Table 2: "A Scheme of the Income and Expense of the several Families of England, calculated for the year 1688."
Knighton, Henry. "Chronicle (1348)." In The Medieval Record: Sources of Medieval History. Selected by Alfred J. Andrea. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1997, pp. 385-388.
Kremer, Michael. "Population growth and technological change: One Million B.C. to 1990." Quarterly Journal of Economics 108, no. 3 (August 1993): 681-716.
Lopez, Robert, ed. and tr. Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1990/1955. Documentary selections on "The Jewish Role in World Trade," "Milan in 1288," and "Reports from the Fairs of Champagne."
McCants, Anne. "Exotic Goods, Popular Consumption, and the Standard of Living: Thinking About Globalization in the Early Modern World." Submitted to Journal of World History, March 2006.
Mokyr, Joel. "Dear Labor, Cheap Labor, and the Industrial Revolution." In Favorites of Fortune: Technology, Growth, and Economic Development Since the Industrial Revolution. Edited by Patrice Higonnet, David S. Landes and Henry Rosovsky. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 177-200.
Monk, Robert the. "A Jerusalem History, c. 1110." In Urban and the Crusaders. Edited by Dana C. Munro. Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History. Revised ed. Vol. 1, no. 2. New York, NY: AMS Press, 1971/1897, pp. 5-8.
Pegolotti, Francesco di Balduccio. "Traveling to China." In Cathay and the Way Thither, II. Edited by H. Yule. Chestnut Hill, MA: Adamant Media, 2006.
Solow, Robert. "Economics: Is Something Missing?" In Economic History and the Modern Economist. Edited by William N. Parker. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1986, pp. 21-29.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. "Three Paths of National Development in 16th Century Europe." In The Capitalist World Economy: Essays by Immanuel Wallerstein. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Wrigley, E. A., and Roger Schofield. The Population History of England, 1541-1871: A Reconstruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981. Tables from pp. 468 and 474.
Readings by Session
Course readings. WEEK # TOPICS READINGS
1 Introduction - Why Economic Growth and the Methodology of Economic History Solow, Robert. "Economics: Is Something Missing?" and McCloskey, Deirdre. Economical Writing.
2 Late Roman Antiquity and Barbarian Europe Lopez, Robert. The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, pp. 1-26; and make substantial headway into Hodges, Richard. Towns and Trade in the Age of Charlemagne.
3 The Structure of Medieval Life: Manorialism and Feudalism Duby. Early Growth of the European Economy, pp. 162-180; Fossier, Robert. Chapter 2 of Peasant Life in the Medieval West; and Genicot, Leopold. Chapter 1 of Rural Communities in the Medieval West. Please also consult two primary source documents: The Plan of St. Gall, and articles from "The Capitulary on the Maintenance of the Royal Estates."
4 Medieval Agriculture and Commercialization: A Revised Story Lopez. Commercial Revolution, pp. 27-55; Clark, Gregory. "The Economics of Exhaustion..." In Journal of Economic History, (March 1992): 61-84; and Campbell, Bruce. "Economic rent and the intensification of English agriculture, 1086 -1350," In Medieval Farming and Technology.
5 Rise of the Commune and Revival of Trade: Counterpoint to Autarkic Agriculture Documentary selections from Lopez, Medieval Trade in the Mediterranean World, on "The Jewish Role in World Trade," "Milan in 1288," and "Reports from the Fairs of Champagne." And Lopez. Commercial Revolution, pp. 56 -147.
Recommended: Chorley, Patrick. "The Cloth Trade of Flanders and Northern France during the 13th c." Economic History Review, no. 3 (1987): 349-79.
6 The Wider Medieval World: Vikings, Mongols, and Scaracens Selections from Monk, Robert the, "A Jerusalem History, c.1110"; selections from Joinville, Jean de, "The Book of the Holy Words and Good Deeds of Our King, Saint Louis, 1309." The instructions for "Traveling to China," and a selection from the Historia Norwegie.
7 The Plague and its Consequences Harvey, Barbara. "Introduction: the crisis of the early fourteenth century." Selections from Henry Knighton, Chronicle, 1348. Domar, Evessy. "The causes of slavery or serfdom." Journal of Economic History, (March 1970): 18-32; and Bailey, Mark. "Demographic Decline in Late Medieval England." Economic History Review, no. 1 (1996): 1-19.
8 Methodology and Theories of Historical Demography Wrigley and Schofield. Population History of England, tables from pp. 468 and 474. Fogel, Robert. "Second thoughts on the European escape from hunger: famines, chronic malnutrition, and mortality rates."
Optional: Kremer, "Population growth and technological change."
9 Overseas Expansion of Europe Pomeranz, Kenneth, and Steven Topik. The World that Trade Created, chapters 1 and 2, pp. 3-76, and one additional chapter from either chapters 3, 4, or 5. Columbus, selections from the Diario.
10 Grand Theories about Medieval Development: Malthusians, Marxists and The Classical Economists Wallerstein, Immanuel. "Three Paths of National Development in 16th Century Europe." In The Capitalist World Economy; and Epstein, S. R. "Regional Fairs, Institutional Innovation, and Economic Growth in Late Medieval Europe." The Economic History Review (August 1994): 459-482; and Drelichman, Mauricio. "All that Glitters: Precious metals, rent seeking and the decline of Spain." European Review of Economic History (December 2005): 313-36.
Recommended reading: Brenner. "Agrarian class structure and economic development." Past and Present (February 1976).
11 Capitalist Organization of Economic Life: The Globalization of Trade and The Rise of Consumer Culture Braudel. The Wheels of Commerce, pp. 231-249. Gregory King's "Social Table." One page table; and McCants, Anne. "Exotic Goods, Popular Consumption, and the Standard of Living: Thinking About Globalization in the Early Modern World." Unpublished manuscript.
12 Measuring Welfare Sen, Amartya. The Standard of Living. pp. 1-38, and comment by Keith Hart, pp. 70-93.
13 The Rise of North-Western Europe: Improvements in the Standard of Living Mokyr, Joel. "Dear Labor, cheap Labor, and the Industrial Revolution." From Favorites of Fortune. Edited by Paul Bairoch. Harvard University Press, 1991; and de Vries, Jan. "Economic Growth before and after the Industrial Revolution: a Modest Proposal." In Prak, Early Modern Capitalism.
Recommended: Horrell, Sara, Jane Humphries and Hans-Joachim Voth, "Destined for Deprivation: Human Capital Formation and Intergenerational Poverty in Nineteenth-Century England." Explorations in Economic History, no. 3 (2001): 339-365.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Mass Culture
Mass Culture, Popular Culture
03 Oct 1994 12:02
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Revisiting this notebook after many years, I find myself uncomfortable with this category, which I basically got from reading a lot of mid-20th century cultural criticism (McCarthy and Macdonald, especially). The idea, so far as I can reconstruct it, is that there is (or was) a separate sphere of "mass culture" or "popular culture", sharply distinguished in form, genesis or content from other spheres of culture. I suppose what I had in mind, roughly, is commercially-produced culture, most of whose consumers are not, themselves, also producers of the same kind of culture --- as, for instance, most people who listen to commercial recordings aren't also musicians, and music-making is a business. But calling this "mass culture" seems to have a very unfortunate connotation, which I don't (any longer) accept, that most people are passive consumers of the degraded products of the manipulative Culture Trust, accepting whatever they're given without thought. There is a Culture Trust, and of course those who run it would have easier jobs if that were how things worked, but it seems to me to be false to the realities of how culture is produced, received and reworked, and how cultural trends and styles emerge and are used by the various people involved. "Mass culture" also seems to carry a connotation that once upon a time we lived in a non-alienated condition, where there wasn't the same distinction between producers and consumers, which seems again to be false.
Cultural Criticism
06 Jul 1998 16:40
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cultural criticism is what is practiced by cultural critics, the intellectuals formerly known as moralists and publicists, before those became dirty words. That is to say, they are those who have taken it upon themselves to describe the conduct of their fellow citizens to their fellow citizens, taking conduct in a very broad sense, including prominently that part of it which concerns moving ideas from one mind to another; to judge whether and how that conduct is wanting; and to suggest more desirable states of affairs. No principled distinction can be drawn between cultural criticism and the writing of newspaper editorials, just as there is none between book reviewing and literary criticism; the main social difference is that people who say they engage in "foo criticism" are now more likely to be university professors than the op-ed writers and reviewers.
There are differences between cultural criticism and sociology, apart from the merely conventional ones made by publishers, tenure committees, etc. Sociology is not (overtly) normative, and at least claims to prefer statistics and data, and logical and methodological rigor, to personal impressions and arbitrary or conventional generalizations, and rhetoric and emotional appeals. In reality, of course, much sociology is just disguised cultural criticism, and much cultural criticism is just conventional wisdom --- that is to say, prejudice --- in distilled form.
To say all this is not to dismiss cultural criticism as unworthy of notice; we do need to decide what is to be done about various aspects of our life in common (and even our several lives in private, which are inevitably tied to the common life); and many aspects of society are simply beyond the reach of (good) sociology, at least for now. There is a genuine need for good cultural criticism, and it goes beyond demonstrating the writer's cleverness, and the writer's and reader's righteousness. (One of the most prominent sorts of leftist cultural criticism, the Frankfurt School of "critical theory," seems to meet only one need in addition to those two, namely paranoia; but that can be satisfied by reading Stephen King or watching the X-Files.)
03 Oct 1994 12:02
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Revisiting this notebook after many years, I find myself uncomfortable with this category, which I basically got from reading a lot of mid-20th century cultural criticism (McCarthy and Macdonald, especially). The idea, so far as I can reconstruct it, is that there is (or was) a separate sphere of "mass culture" or "popular culture", sharply distinguished in form, genesis or content from other spheres of culture. I suppose what I had in mind, roughly, is commercially-produced culture, most of whose consumers are not, themselves, also producers of the same kind of culture --- as, for instance, most people who listen to commercial recordings aren't also musicians, and music-making is a business. But calling this "mass culture" seems to have a very unfortunate connotation, which I don't (any longer) accept, that most people are passive consumers of the degraded products of the manipulative Culture Trust, accepting whatever they're given without thought. There is a Culture Trust, and of course those who run it would have easier jobs if that were how things worked, but it seems to me to be false to the realities of how culture is produced, received and reworked, and how cultural trends and styles emerge and are used by the various people involved. "Mass culture" also seems to carry a connotation that once upon a time we lived in a non-alienated condition, where there wasn't the same distinction between producers and consumers, which seems again to be false.
Cultural Criticism
06 Jul 1998 16:40
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cultural criticism is what is practiced by cultural critics, the intellectuals formerly known as moralists and publicists, before those became dirty words. That is to say, they are those who have taken it upon themselves to describe the conduct of their fellow citizens to their fellow citizens, taking conduct in a very broad sense, including prominently that part of it which concerns moving ideas from one mind to another; to judge whether and how that conduct is wanting; and to suggest more desirable states of affairs. No principled distinction can be drawn between cultural criticism and the writing of newspaper editorials, just as there is none between book reviewing and literary criticism; the main social difference is that people who say they engage in "foo criticism" are now more likely to be university professors than the op-ed writers and reviewers.
There are differences between cultural criticism and sociology, apart from the merely conventional ones made by publishers, tenure committees, etc. Sociology is not (overtly) normative, and at least claims to prefer statistics and data, and logical and methodological rigor, to personal impressions and arbitrary or conventional generalizations, and rhetoric and emotional appeals. In reality, of course, much sociology is just disguised cultural criticism, and much cultural criticism is just conventional wisdom --- that is to say, prejudice --- in distilled form.
To say all this is not to dismiss cultural criticism as unworthy of notice; we do need to decide what is to be done about various aspects of our life in common (and even our several lives in private, which are inevitably tied to the common life); and many aspects of society are simply beyond the reach of (good) sociology, at least for now. There is a genuine need for good cultural criticism, and it goes beyond demonstrating the writer's cleverness, and the writer's and reader's righteousness. (One of the most prominent sorts of leftist cultural criticism, the Frankfurt School of "critical theory," seems to meet only one need in addition to those two, namely paranoia; but that can be satisfied by reading Stephen King or watching the X-Files.)
Friday, May 29, 2009
Reproduction of Race and Racial Ideologies
Post-Doctoral Fellowship, Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture
at Univ. of Chicago Fellowship Date:2006-02-01 (in 22 days)
Date Submitted:2005-12-08
Announcement ID:148906
2006-2007 Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Race and Ethnicity Center for the Study
of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago
The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of
Chicago invites applications for the 2006-2007 post-doctoral fellowship to
begin September 25, 2006 and end June 30, 2007. Qualified candidates from all
disciplines who have their Ph.D. are encouraged to apply.
Fellowship Description: The goal of the fellowship is to support the work of an
outstanding scholar whose research focuses on the study of race or ethnicity by
allowing the fellow to devote his or her energies to the further development of
their research agenda. The fellowship carries a stipend of $45,000, a travel
and research budget of $2,500, and up to $2,500 for moving expenses. The fellow
will be provided with office space and a computer at the Center, full access to
University libraries and other facilities, and participation in a University
medical-benefit plan. Awardees will be expected to be in full-time residence
during the academic year beginning September 25, 2006; teach a 10-week
undergraduate course related to race and/or ethnicity (one quarter); present
his or her work at one of the Reproduction of Race and Racial Ideologies
Workshop meetings; and actively participate in the workshop and other
activities sponsored by the Race Center.
The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture (CSRPC) at the
University of Chicago is an interdisciplinary program dedicated to promoting
engaged scholarship and debate around the concepts of race and ethnicity. We
are especially interested in how these ideas and their structural and cultural
manifestations impact and shape people?s daily lives. Faculty affiliated with
the Center recognize the significance of the black/white paradigm in the United
States, however, we are committed to expanding the study of race and ethnicity
beyond this framework. Broadly, our research program encourages the study of
race and processes of racialization in comparative and transnational frameworks
as well as work that highlights the intersection of race and ethnicity with
other identities such as gender, class, sexuality and nationality, and
interrogates social and identity cleavages within racialized communities.
Eligibility: Applicants for the 2006-2007 academic year are required to have a
Ph.D. and must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States at the
time of application.
Application Process: All applications should include the following:
1) Formal letter of application describing your work and the project(s) that
will be undertaken over the course of the fellowship year (3-5 pages)
2) Writing sample, which may be a published or un-published work (not to exceed
30 pages double-spaced)
3) Curriculum vitae
4) Syllabus and one-page description of proposed course
5) Two letters of recommendation under separate cover
Deadline: Complete applications must be received at the address below by
February 1, 2006. Award will be announced by March 15, 2006. For additional
information call (773) 702-8063 or e-mail csrpc@uchicago.edu.
Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture
The University of Chicago
Attention: Postdoctoral Fellowship Selection Committee
5733 S. University, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture
The University of Chicago
Attn: Postdoctoral Fellowship Selection Cmte.
5733 S. University,
Chicago, Illinois 60637
at Univ. of Chicago Fellowship Date:2006-02-01 (in 22 days)
Date Submitted:2005-12-08
Announcement ID:148906
2006-2007 Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Race and Ethnicity Center for the Study
of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago
The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of
Chicago invites applications for the 2006-2007 post-doctoral fellowship to
begin September 25, 2006 and end June 30, 2007. Qualified candidates from all
disciplines who have their Ph.D. are encouraged to apply.
Fellowship Description: The goal of the fellowship is to support the work of an
outstanding scholar whose research focuses on the study of race or ethnicity by
allowing the fellow to devote his or her energies to the further development of
their research agenda. The fellowship carries a stipend of $45,000, a travel
and research budget of $2,500, and up to $2,500 for moving expenses. The fellow
will be provided with office space and a computer at the Center, full access to
University libraries and other facilities, and participation in a University
medical-benefit plan. Awardees will be expected to be in full-time residence
during the academic year beginning September 25, 2006; teach a 10-week
undergraduate course related to race and/or ethnicity (one quarter); present
his or her work at one of the Reproduction of Race and Racial Ideologies
Workshop meetings; and actively participate in the workshop and other
activities sponsored by the Race Center.
The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture (CSRPC) at the
University of Chicago is an interdisciplinary program dedicated to promoting
engaged scholarship and debate around the concepts of race and ethnicity. We
are especially interested in how these ideas and their structural and cultural
manifestations impact and shape people?s daily lives. Faculty affiliated with
the Center recognize the significance of the black/white paradigm in the United
States, however, we are committed to expanding the study of race and ethnicity
beyond this framework. Broadly, our research program encourages the study of
race and processes of racialization in comparative and transnational frameworks
as well as work that highlights the intersection of race and ethnicity with
other identities such as gender, class, sexuality and nationality, and
interrogates social and identity cleavages within racialized communities.
Eligibility: Applicants for the 2006-2007 academic year are required to have a
Ph.D. and must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States at the
time of application.
Application Process: All applications should include the following:
1) Formal letter of application describing your work and the project(s) that
will be undertaken over the course of the fellowship year (3-5 pages)
2) Writing sample, which may be a published or un-published work (not to exceed
30 pages double-spaced)
3) Curriculum vitae
4) Syllabus and one-page description of proposed course
5) Two letters of recommendation under separate cover
Deadline: Complete applications must be received at the address below by
February 1, 2006. Award will be announced by March 15, 2006. For additional
information call (773) 702-8063 or e-mail csrpc@uchicago.edu.
Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture
The University of Chicago
Attention: Postdoctoral Fellowship Selection Committee
5733 S. University, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture
The University of Chicago
Attn: Postdoctoral Fellowship Selection Cmte.
5733 S. University,
Chicago, Illinois 60637
Recently added poets
Poet of the Lord
by John Marinelli
Hear, Oh Poet of the Lord.
I offer you a great reward,
A gifting that shall never cease,
An outpouring of Joy and Peace.
I send you from my throne above,
As a messenger of my eternal Love,
To a lost and dying land,
To every creature, every man.
Speak, Oh Poet of the living God.
Dare to walk where Angels trod.
Tell your world in Rhymes of Praise,
Of Jesus, whom from the dead I raised.
I give you words full of life.
Use them as an end to strife.
Send them by land and sea,
For this is your destiny.
I have chosen you especially by name,
So set aside your sorrow and shame,
And speak now on my behalf,
Of love and peace and even wrath.
Listen closely for my inner voice,
And pen your rhymes of choice.
Then cry aloud, as I speak to you,
So others may know me, as you do.
May God bless you
as you view our site!
by John Marinelli
Hear, Oh Poet of the Lord.
I offer you a great reward,
A gifting that shall never cease,
An outpouring of Joy and Peace.
I send you from my throne above,
As a messenger of my eternal Love,
To a lost and dying land,
To every creature, every man.
Speak, Oh Poet of the living God.
Dare to walk where Angels trod.
Tell your world in Rhymes of Praise,
Of Jesus, whom from the dead I raised.
I give you words full of life.
Use them as an end to strife.
Send them by land and sea,
For this is your destiny.
I have chosen you especially by name,
So set aside your sorrow and shame,
And speak now on my behalf,
Of love and peace and even wrath.
Listen closely for my inner voice,
And pen your rhymes of choice.
Then cry aloud, as I speak to you,
So others may know me, as you do.
May God bless you
as you view our site!
Poetry and Poetics
Recently added poets
April 1, 2009
Armando Orozco Tovar (1943)
A poet and painter born in Bogotá, Armando Orozco Tovar received a bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Havana, Cuba, where he worked at Radio Havana. Back in Colombia, he has been a university professor of humanities and worked as a journalist. He has also held poetry and short-story workshops and has been a judge for several poetry prizes. He has published five books of poems and held three exhibitions of his paintings, the first one in Havana. He has written many essays and feature articles, and is now writing his memoirs, entitled The Bad Memory of a Mythomaniac.
April 1, 2009
Eugenia Sánchez Nieto (1953)
Born in Bogotá, in a time of great civil unrest, Eugenia Sánchez Nieto (known by her pen-name “Yuyín”) witnessed the difficult years of social and political violence in Colombia in the last half of the twentieth century. From a young age, already a voracious reader, Eugenia Sánchez Nieto gained, in addition to her love of literature and the humanities in general, a great sensibility to the injustice and inequality in Colombia.
April 1, 2009
William Agudelo (1942)
A self-taught musician, sculptor and poet, William Agudelo has lived in Nicaragua since 1966, where he helped the poet Ernesto Cardenal in the founding of the community of Solentiname. In the 1980s he worked as a director of graphic arts in the Ministry of Culture of Nicaragua, and in the 1990s he was director of a cultural centre there. He has published a diary, translated into German and English, two books about the Nicaraguan Revolution, and many poems in reviews and magazines. He now devotes his life to writing poetry and to wood-carving and pyrography on leather.
April 1, 2009
Armando Orozco Tovar (1943)
A poet and painter born in Bogotá, Armando Orozco Tovar received a bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Havana, Cuba, where he worked at Radio Havana. Back in Colombia, he has been a university professor of humanities and worked as a journalist. He has also held poetry and short-story workshops and has been a judge for several poetry prizes. He has published five books of poems and held three exhibitions of his paintings, the first one in Havana. He has written many essays and feature articles, and is now writing his memoirs, entitled The Bad Memory of a Mythomaniac.
April 1, 2009
Eugenia Sánchez Nieto (1953)
Born in Bogotá, in a time of great civil unrest, Eugenia Sánchez Nieto (known by her pen-name “Yuyín”) witnessed the difficult years of social and political violence in Colombia in the last half of the twentieth century. From a young age, already a voracious reader, Eugenia Sánchez Nieto gained, in addition to her love of literature and the humanities in general, a great sensibility to the injustice and inequality in Colombia.
April 1, 2009
William Agudelo (1942)
A self-taught musician, sculptor and poet, William Agudelo has lived in Nicaragua since 1966, where he helped the poet Ernesto Cardenal in the founding of the community of Solentiname. In the 1980s he worked as a director of graphic arts in the Ministry of Culture of Nicaragua, and in the 1990s he was director of a cultural centre there. He has published a diary, translated into German and English, two books about the Nicaraguan Revolution, and many poems in reviews and magazines. He now devotes his life to writing poetry and to wood-carving and pyrography on leather.
Medieval Studies
Virtual lais: a trancontinental collaboration in teaching medieval studies
DT KlineA1 and LA McMillinA2
A1 Department of English, University of Alaska Anchorage, Building K, Room 212C, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage, AK 99508, USA E-mail: afdtk@usaa.alaska.edu A2 History Department, Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA, USA
Medievalists at institutions in largely rural or geographically removed areas often struggle to find ways to connect their students to the wider intellectual community of scholars interested in the Middle Ages. However, new electronic technologies offer a flexible and promising avenue for intercampus and interdisciplinary collaboration. One such experiment in virtual partnership occurred during the spring 1998 semester when students at Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, in Dr Linda McMillin's History 337 (The Middle Ages) were linked via a threaded web-based discussion forum to students at the University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, Alaska, in Dr Dan Kline's English 315 (Survey of Medieval Literature) course. The team-teaching project entailed the careful coordination of shared readings, complementary assignments, and technical resources in an effort to create an interdisciplinary learning community. Using course syllabi, classroom materials, and student work, this article outlines the results of this pedagogical experiment, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the course design, details the pedagogical rewards and technical challenges of the effort, and offers suggestions for others interested in designing linked courses. With fine-tuning brought by more experience, it is believed that such collaborative interdisciplinary ventures offer both students and faculty a much wider range of pedagogical, intellectual, and social possibilities, especially at institutions with limited resources for medieval studies.
DT KlineA1 and LA McMillinA2
A1 Department of English, University of Alaska Anchorage, Building K, Room 212C, 3211 Providence Drive, Anchorage, AK 99508, USA E-mail: afdtk@usaa.alaska.edu A2 History Department, Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA, USA
Medievalists at institutions in largely rural or geographically removed areas often struggle to find ways to connect their students to the wider intellectual community of scholars interested in the Middle Ages. However, new electronic technologies offer a flexible and promising avenue for intercampus and interdisciplinary collaboration. One such experiment in virtual partnership occurred during the spring 1998 semester when students at Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, in Dr Linda McMillin's History 337 (The Middle Ages) were linked via a threaded web-based discussion forum to students at the University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, Alaska, in Dr Dan Kline's English 315 (Survey of Medieval Literature) course. The team-teaching project entailed the careful coordination of shared readings, complementary assignments, and technical resources in an effort to create an interdisciplinary learning community. Using course syllabi, classroom materials, and student work, this article outlines the results of this pedagogical experiment, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the course design, details the pedagogical rewards and technical challenges of the effort, and offers suggestions for others interested in designing linked courses. With fine-tuning brought by more experience, it is believed that such collaborative interdisciplinary ventures offer both students and faculty a much wider range of pedagogical, intellectual, and social possibilities, especially at institutions with limited resources for medieval studies.
Mass Culture
Nietzsche's Critique of Mass Culture
By Douglas Kellner
Along with Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche can be read as a great theorist and critic of modernity who carried out a "ruthless criticism of all that exists."[1] Nietzsche's powerful polemics against religion, morality, and philosophy deploy a mixture of Enlightenment-inspired criticism and romantic vitalism to attack the life-negating aspects of modern culture. In addition, Nietzsche criticizes many of the institutions and values of modern societies as oppressing bodily energies and creativity, while blocking the generation of stronger individuals and a more vigorous society and culture. In his appraisals of the modern age, Nietzsche developed one of the first sustained critiques of mass culture and society, the state, and bureaucratic discipline and regimentation, producing perspectives that deeply influenced later discourses of modernity.
While Nietzsche is a major critic of modernity, he also exemplifies its spirit and ethos. Although he argues against democracy, liberalism, and various progressive social movements, Nietzsche's attack is at least partially carried out in a modern Enlightenment style, negating existing ideas in the name of a better future. Despite his keen appreciation for past cultures like classical antiquity and defense of some premodern values, Nietzsche is very future and present-oriented, attacking tradition while calling for a new society and culture. An impetus toward innovation, involving negation of the old and creation of the new, is therefore at the very heart of Nietzsche's complex and often enigmatic theoretical work, which, in the spirit of modernity, affirms development and transcendence of the old as crucial values for contemporary individuals and society.
Nietzsche wanted to surpass modernity for a superior mode of culture and society that would create stronger and more fully-developed individuals. He believed that fresh potentials for individual creativity and for a "higher" form of culture, made possible by the eruption of the modern age, were being curtailed and suppressed by the prevailing social and political organization, requiring radical socio-cultural change. This too, however, was in some ways a very modern posture. Thus, despite assaults on modernity, Nietzsche exemplified the modern ethos of critique, and throughout his career attacked the perennial and contemporary idols of the mind which he saw as obstacles to free thinking and living.
In this study, I will interrogate Nietzsche's critique of mass culture in the context of his analysis of modernity and broader philosophical perspectives. I argue that Nietzsche developed one of the first major philosophical critiques of mass culture that inspired later thinkers on both the right, such as Heidegger and Junger, and the left, such as members of the Frankfurt School and Foucault. Nietzsche was one of the first to see mass culture as central to modern social reproduction processes and especially to what he saw as the distinctive features of modern societies: massification and the eradication of individuality, creating herd societies and mediocrity. He was thus a major source of the later critiques of mass society and culture which he saw as forces of decadence and nihilism, sapping cultural vitality and preventing the creation and dissemination of genuine culture and strong individuals.
The Debate Over Mass Culture
Critiques of mass culture and the press began emerging during the late 18th century. These critiques were rooted in reflections on modern life and leisure which began appearing in the 16th century during the demise of feudalism. The rise of the industrial and democratic revolutions was accompanied by the emergence of popular literature, journalism, and the modern press which fuelled great debates over their impact and consequences. Thinkers like Montaigne and Pascal noted the need for diversion already in the 16th century, and writers like Goethe began attacking the banal diversions offered by the press and mass culture, noting that they were serving as major means of escape from social reality.
We have newspapers for all hours of the day. A clever head could still add a few more. This way everything, what everybody does, wants, writes, even what he plans, is publicly exposed. One can only enjoy oneself, or suffer, for the entertainment of others, and in the greatest rush, this is communicated from house to house, from town to town, from empire to empire, and at last from continent to continent.[2]
Goethe argued that the press constitutes a squandering of time wherein the reader "wastes the days and lives from hand to mouth, without creating anything."[3] Also anticipating Nietzsche, he criticized the ways that modern entertainment and the press promoted passivity and conformity, noting in a ditty how the press is eager to provide its readers with almost anything except dissenting ideas:
Come let us print it all
And be busy everywhere;
But no one should stir
Who does not think like we.[4]
Others had more optimistic appraisals of the impact of mass media, and particularly the press. Karl Marx, for instance, had an especially high opinion of the press in the promotion of democracy and civil liberties, writing in 1842 that:
The free press is the ubiquitous vigilant eye of a people's soul, the embodiment of a people's faith in itself, the eloquent link that connects the individual with the state and the world, the embodied culture that transforms material struggles into intellectual struggles and idealizes their crude material form. It is a people's frank confession to itself, and the redeeming power of confession is well known. It is the spiritual mirror in which a people can see itself, and self-examination is the first condition of wisdom. It is the spirit of the state, which can be delivered into every cottage, cheaper than coal gas. It is all-sided, ubiquitous, omniscient. It is the ideal world which always wells up out of the real world and flows back into it with every greater spiritual riches and renews its soul.[5]
By the 1840s, the press was thus a contested terrain with fervent defenders and critics. Some saw it as an instrument of progress and enlightenment, while others saw it as a vehicle of distraction and banality. Moreover, different political groupings were developing their own distinct presses and attempting to shape public opinion in different ways. The most radical critiques came from thinkers like Kierkegaard who saw the press as a vicious attack dog that goes after individuals in a contemptible way and disseminates a "phantom" and spurious public opinion.[6] Nietzsche's contribution is to extend the critique of the press found in earlier writers to a critique of mass culture and society as a whole. Throughout his works, Nietzsche saw culture as central to human life and believed that strong and healthy cultures would create distinguished, creative, and powerful individuals, whereas weak and fragmented cultures would create mediocre and inferior beings. His critique began with his early writings that contrasted a strong and healthy Greek culture to his increasingly banal German culture and continued through his later writings where he contrasted his own conceptions of culture and strong individuality to dominant modern European conceptions.
The Young Nietzsche's Critique of Mass Culture
The early Nietzsche saw Greece as the model of a strong, healthy, and organic culture that would generate creative and robust individuals. In his first published book, _The Birth of Tragedy_, Nietzsche contrasted the vibrant Dionysian culture evident in pre-Socratic Greece and early Greek tragedy with the more rationalistic Apollinian strains evident in Socratic reason and later Greek tragedy. Dionysian culture was eminently life-affirming, expressive of bodily energies and passions, and bound together individuals in shared cultural experiences of ecstasy, intoxication, and festivals, which Nietzsche believed created strong and healthy individuals and a vigorous culture.
In Nietzsche's view, Socratic culture was a response to the breakdown and fragmentation of tragic Greek culture which it attempted to replace with a set of shared, homogeneous ethical values, theoretical norms, and methodological procedures, based on Socratic logic and reasoning, which would replace the warring gods of the Greeks with a more unified rational culture. In a sense, Socratic culture thus provided a cure for a cultural emergency with extreme rationalism coming to curb the strong, warring impulses that had been released and that Socrates/Plato believed were out of control. The result was an equation of reason and knowledge and virtue, making reason the instrument of both truth and morality.[7]
Thus, Socratic culture replaced what Nietzsche saw as the profound pre-Socratic tragic vision of suffering, and redemption through culture, with the Socratic optimism that reason can discover truth and produce a good life. For Nietzsche, the triumph of Socratic theoretic man provided the origins of modern rationalism and Enlightenment optimism. This was counterpoised to a tragic pessimism which, in the manner of his early mentors Schopenhauer and Wagner, perceived great philosophy and art as the teachers and redeemers of humanity and the instruments of strong, healthy cultures.[8] Throughout his work, Nietzsche saw Socratic culture as a formative force of the modern period, also with life-negating results (for example, _Twilight of the Idols_, "Socrates"). "Socrates" for Nietzsche was thus a symbol of decay, of atrophying life-instincts in which reason came to dominate the body and the passions, a process that intensified over the centuries and that Nietzsche saw as constitutive for the modern era.
In _The Birth of Tragedy_, Nietzsche championed Richard Wagner's music-theater as a potentially revitalizing cultural force that he hoped would promote a rebirth of German culture, and with whom he formed a deep, albeit conflicted, friendship. Indeed, Nietzsche became a frequent visitor at Wagner's house in Tribschen and a propagandist for the maestro's music drama which he hoped could provide a basis for a new German culture. Near the end of the book Nietzsche describes the debasement in contemporary art and how a low level of cultural criticism "prepared by education and newspapers" has led to inability to appreciate genuine art:
The attempt, for example, to use the theater as an institution for the moral education of the people, still taken seriously in Schiller's time, is already reckoned among the incredible antiques of a dated type of education. While the critic got the upper hand in the theater and concert hall, the journalist in the schools, and the press in society, art degenerated into a particularly lowly topic of conversation, and aesthetic criticism was used as a means of uniting a vain, distracted, selfish, and moreover piteously unoriginal sociability (_The Birth of Tragedy_, S22, pp. 133-134).
Nietzsche thus sees a massified culture, perpetuated through both schooling and newspapers, as undermining authentic art and creating a mediocre culture. Nietzsche himself hoped to create the philosophical foundations for a new culture that would revitalize Germany and undertook studies of Greek philosophy which he believed provided essentials components for a life-affirming culture which would create strong and superior individuals. In 1873, however, Nietzsche turned from his meditations on Greek philosophy and project of developing his own philosophical perspectives, to write a series of attacks on the present age. Commentators often see this turn toward the contemporary as an attempt to please Wagner who was contemptuous of purely philological or philosophical studies and as an active intervention on Nietzsche's part in the German cultural wars of the time.[9] While subservience to the Wagnerian project of shaping contemporary German culture and Wagner's desire to see a critique published of his enemy Strauss, who had once criticized him, might have influenced Nietzsche's immediate intention, the turn toward the "untimely reflections" was a decisive move to engage contemporary culture that was becoming a central element of Nietzsche's emerging philosophical project.
Nietzsche began to take on pivotal phenomena of the present age in a series of _Unmodern Observations_ which attacked, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, key figures and features of Germany and the modern age while proposing ideas for cultural renewal. The target of the first _Observations_ was the German writer David Friedrich Strauss, author of an influential _Life of Jesus_ which through detailed comparison of the account of Jesus in the Gospels argued that Christianity was a myth that served the needs of people of the epoch. Nietzsche read Strauss' demythologizing bombshell at twenty and was deeply impressed with his philological critique.[10] After paying homage to Strauss' earlier work, Nietzsche sharply criticized his more recent writings which he saw as exemplary of the philistinism that was ruling German life since its victory over France and unification, and which blocked the rebirth of genuine culture that he desired (_Dionysus_, S2). Excoriating the joyful self-satisfaction of the Germans after the Franco-Prussian war, Nietzsche writes:
I sense this ecstatic joy in the incredible self-confidence of German journalists and the manufacturers of novels, tragedies, poems, and histories. These men clearly form a tightly knit club conspiring both to control the hours that modern man devotes to leisure and digestion, that is, his 'moment of culture,' and to stupefy him with printed matter. Since the war, all is joy, dignity, and self-satisfaction for this little club. After such a 'triumph of German culture' its members consider themselves not only established and sanctioned, but nearly sanctified, and therefore speak all the more solemnly. They delight in direct appeals to the German people, publish their collected works in the manner of classical authors, even announce in the journals at their disposal the few from their own ranks who will serve as our new classical models (_Dionysus_, S1).
This constitutes for Nietzsche an "abuse of success" and he hopes that at least some Germans would step forth to criticize "the distressing spectacle enacted before them" (ibid). Nietzsche himself reprimands "the scholarly caste" for neglecting to engage "popular German culture" and to examine the lack of a vibrant and unifying culture in Germany. Strauss for Nietzsche was the exemplar of a "cultural philistinism" that Nietzsche believed was undermining contemporary German culture and society. Nietzsche was especially appalled that Strauss had set himself up as the teacher of the German nature, the molder and shaper of the next generation, the teacher of youth. For Nietzsche, it was a horrifying to contemplate that such banal philistinism could shape the future of Germany (_Dionysus_, S7).
Nietzsche saw the prevalence of mass culture as the source of the debasement of thought and culture in contemporary Europe. Strauss' ideas "are all uniformly bookish, in fact, journalistic (_Dionysus_, S8).[11] The degradation of culture results from mass culture that influences the language, style, ideas, and judgements currently circulating and dominant. In Nietzsche's view:
The bulk of the German's daily reading material can be found, almost without exception, on the pages of the daily papers and the standard magazines. This language, its continual dripping -- same words, same phrases -- makes an aural impression. For the most part, the hours devoted to this reading are those in which his mind is too weary to resist. By degrees the ear feels at home with this workaday German and aches when, for any reason, it is not heard. But, almost as an occupational hazard, the producers of these newspapers and periodicals are the most thoroughly inured to the slimy journalistic jargon. They have quite literally lost all taste and relish, above all, the absolutely corrupt and capricious. This explains that tutti unisono with which every newly coined solecism instantly chimes in spite of the general torpor and malaise. With their impudent corruptions these wage-laborers of language take revenge on our mother-tongue for boring them so incredibly.
... When the flat hackneyed, vulgar, and feckless are accepted as the norm, and the corrupt and malapropos as charming exceptions, then the powerful, the uncommon, and the beautiful fall into disrepute. This is why in Germany we so often hear the story of the handsome traveler who visits a land of hunchbacks. Wherever he went, he was mocked and abused for his apparent deformity--his lack of a hump. Finally a priest took up his cause, saying to the people: "Have pity on this poor stranger and offer thanks to the gods for gracing you with such stately humps of flesh" (_Dionysus_, S11).
Throughout his _Meditations_, Nietzsche claimed that modern culture was "barbaric" (i.e. a formless amalgamation of fragmentary competing styles, ideas, and works) and assailed the excessive rationalism, egotistical individualism, shallow optimism, homogenization, and fragmentation that he saw as characteristic of modern culture. In _On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life_, Nietzsche argued that with the proliferation of historical studies modern man was becoming paralyzed and overwhelmed with historical knowledge (_Husserl_, Foreword). He argued that: "We moderns... possess nothing which is truly ours," assimilating an overwhelming amount of factual knowledge that does not play a transformative role in social life: "And so all of modern culture is essentially inward; on the cover the binder has stamped some title like 'Handbook of Inner Culture for Outward Barbarians'" (_Husserl_, S4).
Believing that modern individuals suffered from a weakened personality, Nietzsche wanted the study of history to be put into the service of creating great personalities, to help make possible a rebirth of a life-affirming culture. During the 1870s, Nietzsche was becoming increasingly disappointed with the philistinism of the German Reich and progressively intensified through the 1880s his critique of German bourgeois culture, Wagner, Bismarck, German militarism, and the Reich. He distanced himself from his search for a new German culture based on Wagner's music dramas and published a series of aphoristic works which promoted a the ethos of enlightenment and social critique, beginning with _Human, All Too Human_.
Nietzsche's Critique of the Present Age
For Nietzsche, mass culture encompassed the press, forms of culture from magazines to scholarly publications, religion, politics, beer, and nationalism.[12] Nietzsche saw the importance of emergent modes of communication and technologies in the development of modernity: "The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw" (_Harvey_, p. 378).[13] On the whole, mass culture in his middle and later writings is that which massifies, that which levels, that which produces a mediocre culture and individuals. Religion, for example, was a form of mass culture for Nietzsche. Although Nietzsche is sometimes accused of being an irrationalist he assaulted Christianity precisely because of its irrationality and attack on the body and this world. Jesus Christ, he claimed, "promoted the stupidifying of man, placed himself on the side of the poor in spirit and retarded the production of the supreme intellect" (_Harvey_, p. 112). Nietzsche also dissected the Christian transvaluation of values which declared strength and wisdom as bad, while lowliness, humility, and submission were deemed "good". He believed that this promotion of a slave morality excessively valuated spirit over body and promoted general societal repression and regression (_Genealogy of Morals_).
Modern politics for Nietzsche are also a form of mass culture. Nietzsche was "anti-political" in the sense that he believed contemporary mass politics led to herd conformity, the loss of individuality, and mass manipulation and homogenization. In _Thus Spake Zarathrustra_, he carried out one of the first critiques of the modern state in "The New Idol," presenting the state as "a cold monster" that is the "death of peoples." The contrast is between a "people" with its traditions, "customs and rights" and the modern state with its lies and pretensions, spread through the press and mass culture. Nietzsche's critique of the state takes place from a radically individualistic position in _Zarathrustra_, espousing withdrawal and isolation over participation and involvement in mass society: "Foul smells their idol, the cold monster.... break their windows and leap to freedom."
Nietzsche's critique of the state is bound up with his critique of mass society and culture which he sees as homogenizing and harmful to vital life energies, creativity, and superior individuality. Nietzsche thought that modern democracy, liberalism, and enlightened social movements contributed to the regression of "modern man" behind the more vital and powerful individuals of the Renaissance. Consistently championing ancient Greece and the Italian Renaissance as paradigms of strong, vigorous cultures, Nietzsche's strategy was to choose past ideals which could serve as models or norms for future "greatness." Greek and Renaissance cultures affirmed the body, were secular, developed science and technology, were highly aesthetic, and produced strong individuals -- all Nietzsche's ideals. These prototypes, he believed, were concentrated in strong individuals like Julius Caesar, Caesar Borgia, and the "great men" of the Renaissance. Nietzsche's normative contrasts are supported by a distinction between sickness and health, between descending and ascending life. His texts exult in an affirmation of life energies and criticize everything that suppresses and inhibits the full expression of primary instincts. His assault on religion, morality, mass culture, and the banality of modern societies is thus unleashed from the standpoint of an ideal of the free and uninhibited flow of life energies, an unrestrained expression of instinctual powers.
Likewise, he argues that the democratic, liberal, feminist, anarchist, and socialist movements are expressive of declining life, of sickness, of resentment. All are manifestations of Socratic culture that posit reason over passion, ideas over life, and all are also manifestations of modern homogenizing tendencies, and are thus anti-life, helping to produce weak individuals and cultures. In opposition to liberal cultural tolerance, Nietzsche advocated cultural war which he believed would generate cultural diversity and a stronger, more creative culture and individuals.
Although Nietzsche's assault on liberalism and other progressivist social movements contain elitist and anti-democratic attitudes, one also finds some positive positions on democracy in his writings, as when Nietzsche presents the democratization of Europe as irresistible and a "link in the chain of those tremendous prophylactic measures which are the conception of modern times and through which we separate ourselves from the Middle Age" (_Harvey_, p. 376). Moreover, "[d]emocratic institutions are quarantine arrangements to combat that ancient pestilence, lust for tyranny: as such they are very useful and very boring" (_Harvey_, p. 383). These passages indicate Nietzsche's dual attitude toward democracy quite clearly: on one hand, it is useful as a counterforce to tyranny, but it is boring and promotes mediocrity. In his writings later in the 1880s, Nietzsche will sift out the positive aspects of democracy and his posture will be predominantly negative.
Thus, Nietzsche attacked both the modern state and mass society and culture, for their normalizing and homogenizing tendencies, endearing himself to the Frankfurt School and French theorists like Foucault. For Nietzsche, the state and mass culture were bitter antagonists against genuine culture and he saw both the modern state and mass society as producing mediocrity and cultural backwardness, as well as generating mass hysteria such as nationalism and anti-Semitism. The modern state and mass society and culture level status and value hierarchies, reducing ideals and tastes to the lowest common denominator and producing mediocre individuals.
Critical Concluding Remarks
Nietzsche was generally pessimistic about the impact of modern social processes. For the most part, he felt that modern society and culture had become so chaotic, fragmented, "arbitrary," and devoid of "creative force" that it has lost the resources to create a vital culture and ultimately advanced the decline of the human species. He especially thought that the press and mass culture were forces of degeneration and mediocrity, focusing attention on the trivial, superfluous, and sensational, and creating homogenization and conformity. He did not, however, develop systematic critiques of the press or specific forms of mass culture, except, perhaps his critique of Strauss and cultural philistinism, or Wagner and Wagnerianism which he eventually came to see as a lowbrow exhibition of mass culture and bad taste. He thus did not develop an institutional critique of the media or the culture industries, as did Adorno and Horkheimer,[14] or detailed criticisms of the phenomena of mass culture, as did those in the field of critical cultural studies.
Moreover, Nietzsche was radical and totalizing in his critique of mass culture, he saw no progressive moments, except perhaps in light opera that expressed a joi de vivre and gaiety of which he approved. Culture for Nietzsche fundamentally consisted of an "ordering of rank" (_Rankordnung_) that established higher and lower values and he called for a revaluation of values, an overturning (_Umwertung_) of the highest values and establishment of superior values that would promote stronger individuals and a more vital culture. His "Ubermensch", therefore, is a superior individual who overcomes the decadent values of mass culture, and is able to create life-affirming values and a stronger and more life-affirming culture.
Developing superior individuality requires overcoming dominant forms of culture and conformity, pitting the individual against mass society and culture. Nietzsche believed that some individuals could exert their will to power to create higher, more refined selves, thus ultimately he champions a form of aristocratic individualism and aestheticism. Making an implicit distinction between high and low art, Nietzsche argues that authentic art allows "freedom above things" and the demands of morality and other repressive institutions:
we need all exuberant, floating, dancing, mocking, childish, and blissful art lest we lose our freedom above things that our ideal demands of us.... We should be able also to stand above morality -- and not only to stand with anxious stiffness of a man who is afraid of slipping and falling any moment, but also to float above it and play. How then could we possibly dispense with art -- and with the fool? (_GS_, p. 164).[15]
Authentic art was privileged by Nietzsche precisely because it cultivated the senses, imagination, and other aspects of the mind and body, allowing individuals to enter a realm that transcended conventional morality and social norms. Nietzsche championed art as the most powerful enemy of the ascetic ideal and the ultimate source of cultural vitality. The crisis in modern culture is partly rooted in the fact that aesthetic sensibilities have been savaged by the repressive forces of instrumental rationality, social rationalization, and mass culture and society, thus art has been relegated to the margins of society. For Nietzsche, however, these rationalizing forces must be constrained by aesthetically rooted values. Free spirits were needed who would experiment with art, ideas, and life and who would create new values and a superior culture that would produce in turn higher human beings.
Ultimately, Nietzsche wanted a life-affirming culture that would create superior individuals. He is a cultural revolutionary who seeks a healthy and vibrant culture and believes that culture is the most powerful mode of social and individual transformation. His radical critique of mass culture is fuelled, in part, by the conviction that it represents a degeneration of culture, that it is a debased form of precisely that mode of existence that is supposed to produce better, higher, and healthier human beings. Thus, Nietzsche resolutely affirms a normative distinction between high and low culture and is an unabashed cultural elitist. As my parenthetical asides have suggested, Nietzsche would probably be appalled at the debased state of contemporary culture,[16] and Nietzschean impulses have contributed to radical cultural studies today that carries out a systematic assault on contemporary culture as a whole -- often mediated with Marxian, feminist, or post-structuralist motifs.
Nietzsche's negative critique cuts across and against the populist turn in cultural studies that would affirm and celebrate popular culture. On the whole, Nietzsche's cultural critique is dialectical, affirming what he considers life-enhancing and empowering, and criticizing what he believes to be life-negating and disempowering. In _Twilight of the Idols_, Nietzsche wrote: "Formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal..." ("Maxims"). Thus Lyotard gets it wrong when he claims that Nietzsche is a fundamentally affirmative thinker, attacks Adorno's proto-Nietzschean conception of philosophy as negation, and himself champions purely positive and affirmative "libidinal economy."[17] To be sure, Nietzsche is not just a nay-sayer and always accompanies his No! with a Yes! It is therefore not a question of the negative versus the affirmative Nietzsche, but is rather a dialectical relationship of both, seeing how the yes and the no always necessarily supplement each other in Nietzsche's thought.
In my view and to conclude, Nietzsche's radical and negative critique of mass culture is valuable and certainly finds plenty of targets today. But I would argue against Nietzsche for a more dialectical optic that sees what I call media culture as a contested terrain, as a site of social struggle, that contains reactionary and progressive, life-affirming and oppressive features.[18] A critical theory of media culture would thus be as relentlessly negative as Nietzsche, but would also affirm socially critical, subversive, and democratizing moments. Its cultural politics would not just be for superior individuals, but would attempt to develop a cultural pedagogy which assaulted all forms of oppression and domination and attempted to produce a more democratic, just, and pedagogical society and culture.
Notes
1. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, _Collected Works. Vol I_ (New York: International Publishers, 1975, p. 142). This study draws on collaborative work with Robert Antonio on an unpublished text on theories of modernity and work with Steven Best in works on postmodern theory, so I am indebted to these collaborations for my readings of Nietzsche. In this article, I am interpreting Nietzsche predominantly as a modern theorist, addressing crucial issues of modernity; for discussion of how Nietzsche anticipates the postmodern turn, see Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, The Postmodern Turn (New York: Guilford Press, 1997).
2. Goethe, in Leo Lowenthal, _Literature, Popular Culture and Society_ (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961, p. 20).
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Marx, op. cit., p. 165.
6. For his critique of the press and public opinion, see Soren Kierkegaard, _Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978) and _The Corsair Affair_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). For commentary, see Steven Best and Douglas Kellner "Modernity, Mass Society, and the Media: Reflections on _The Corsair Affair_," in _International Kierkegaard Commentary, The Corsair Affair_, edited by Robert Perkins. (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1990) and Best and Kellner, _The Postmodern Turn_, op. cit.
7. Friedrich Nietzsche, _The Birth of Tragedy_ (New York: Random House, 1967) and _Twilight of the Idols_ (New York: Penguin Books, 1968, p. 33). The historical Socrates, of course, was much more intuitive, passionate, aesthetic, and erotic than in Nietzsche's model, thus his conception of Socratic culture should be read as an ideal type that crystallizes a type of Greek rationalism in the figure of Socrates, a mode that Nietzsche believes continues to characterize modern culture.
8. See Nietzsche's meditations on Schopenhauer and Wagner in _Unmodern Observations_ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990). On Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, see Georg Simmel, _Schopenhauer and Nietzsche_ (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991 [1907]). It was under Schopenhauer's influence that Nietzsche could proclaim in _The Birth of Tragedy_ that art is the "essential metaphysical activity" and that "it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified" (_BT_, p. 52).
9. See Herbert Golder, "Introduction" to _DS_ in _Unmodern Observations_, op. cit, pp 3ff.
10. Ronald Hayman, _Nietzsche. A Critical Life_ (New York: Penguin Books, 1980, p. 63). Strauss' text greatly influenced the Young Hegelians when it was published in 1835 and intensified the modern philological and philosophical critique of religion begun in the Enlightenment which culminated in Nietzsche himself. Indeed, the Young Hegelians anticipated Nietzsche's critique of religion with Bruno Bauer declaring "God is Dead," Marx describing religion as "the opium of the people," and Feuerbach interpreting religion as the projection of human qualities onto a deity.
11. Nietzsche intended to write a critique of religion, school, press, state, society, Man as I, Nature, and the road to liberation as part of a series of _Unmodern Observations_, after the four he published (see the list on pp. 321-322). While he never completed this project, reflections on these topics are found throughout his succeeding aphoristic works, such as _Human, All-Too-Human_.
12. See, for example, _Twilight of the Idols_ where Nietzsche complained that the press, beer, religion, education, and nationalism had stupefied the German people ("Germans"). He makes a similar criticism in his Strauss critique (S4).
13. See _Human, All Too Human_ (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 378.
14. See Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno, _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ (New York: Continuum, 1972) and Douglas Kellner, _Media Culture_ (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
15. See _The Gay Science_ (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 164.
16. Thus, in contrast to Stephen Barker's paper also published in this issue, it is hard for me to imagine Nietzsche as affirmative of contemporary technoculture in the light of his radical critique of mass culture. I would imagine that Nietzsche would find appalling many of the examples of contemporary technoculture that Barker affirms in his name, and that Nietzsche's higher culture and individual would posit themselves against technoculture.
17. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, _Economie Libidinale_ (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1974) and "Adorno as the Devil," _Telos_ 19 (Spring 1974): 127-137.
18. Kellner, _Media Culture_, op. Cit.
By Douglas Kellner
Along with Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche can be read as a great theorist and critic of modernity who carried out a "ruthless criticism of all that exists."[1] Nietzsche's powerful polemics against religion, morality, and philosophy deploy a mixture of Enlightenment-inspired criticism and romantic vitalism to attack the life-negating aspects of modern culture. In addition, Nietzsche criticizes many of the institutions and values of modern societies as oppressing bodily energies and creativity, while blocking the generation of stronger individuals and a more vigorous society and culture. In his appraisals of the modern age, Nietzsche developed one of the first sustained critiques of mass culture and society, the state, and bureaucratic discipline and regimentation, producing perspectives that deeply influenced later discourses of modernity.
While Nietzsche is a major critic of modernity, he also exemplifies its spirit and ethos. Although he argues against democracy, liberalism, and various progressive social movements, Nietzsche's attack is at least partially carried out in a modern Enlightenment style, negating existing ideas in the name of a better future. Despite his keen appreciation for past cultures like classical antiquity and defense of some premodern values, Nietzsche is very future and present-oriented, attacking tradition while calling for a new society and culture. An impetus toward innovation, involving negation of the old and creation of the new, is therefore at the very heart of Nietzsche's complex and often enigmatic theoretical work, which, in the spirit of modernity, affirms development and transcendence of the old as crucial values for contemporary individuals and society.
Nietzsche wanted to surpass modernity for a superior mode of culture and society that would create stronger and more fully-developed individuals. He believed that fresh potentials for individual creativity and for a "higher" form of culture, made possible by the eruption of the modern age, were being curtailed and suppressed by the prevailing social and political organization, requiring radical socio-cultural change. This too, however, was in some ways a very modern posture. Thus, despite assaults on modernity, Nietzsche exemplified the modern ethos of critique, and throughout his career attacked the perennial and contemporary idols of the mind which he saw as obstacles to free thinking and living.
In this study, I will interrogate Nietzsche's critique of mass culture in the context of his analysis of modernity and broader philosophical perspectives. I argue that Nietzsche developed one of the first major philosophical critiques of mass culture that inspired later thinkers on both the right, such as Heidegger and Junger, and the left, such as members of the Frankfurt School and Foucault. Nietzsche was one of the first to see mass culture as central to modern social reproduction processes and especially to what he saw as the distinctive features of modern societies: massification and the eradication of individuality, creating herd societies and mediocrity. He was thus a major source of the later critiques of mass society and culture which he saw as forces of decadence and nihilism, sapping cultural vitality and preventing the creation and dissemination of genuine culture and strong individuals.
The Debate Over Mass Culture
Critiques of mass culture and the press began emerging during the late 18th century. These critiques were rooted in reflections on modern life and leisure which began appearing in the 16th century during the demise of feudalism. The rise of the industrial and democratic revolutions was accompanied by the emergence of popular literature, journalism, and the modern press which fuelled great debates over their impact and consequences. Thinkers like Montaigne and Pascal noted the need for diversion already in the 16th century, and writers like Goethe began attacking the banal diversions offered by the press and mass culture, noting that they were serving as major means of escape from social reality.
We have newspapers for all hours of the day. A clever head could still add a few more. This way everything, what everybody does, wants, writes, even what he plans, is publicly exposed. One can only enjoy oneself, or suffer, for the entertainment of others, and in the greatest rush, this is communicated from house to house, from town to town, from empire to empire, and at last from continent to continent.[2]
Goethe argued that the press constitutes a squandering of time wherein the reader "wastes the days and lives from hand to mouth, without creating anything."[3] Also anticipating Nietzsche, he criticized the ways that modern entertainment and the press promoted passivity and conformity, noting in a ditty how the press is eager to provide its readers with almost anything except dissenting ideas:
Come let us print it all
And be busy everywhere;
But no one should stir
Who does not think like we.[4]
Others had more optimistic appraisals of the impact of mass media, and particularly the press. Karl Marx, for instance, had an especially high opinion of the press in the promotion of democracy and civil liberties, writing in 1842 that:
The free press is the ubiquitous vigilant eye of a people's soul, the embodiment of a people's faith in itself, the eloquent link that connects the individual with the state and the world, the embodied culture that transforms material struggles into intellectual struggles and idealizes their crude material form. It is a people's frank confession to itself, and the redeeming power of confession is well known. It is the spiritual mirror in which a people can see itself, and self-examination is the first condition of wisdom. It is the spirit of the state, which can be delivered into every cottage, cheaper than coal gas. It is all-sided, ubiquitous, omniscient. It is the ideal world which always wells up out of the real world and flows back into it with every greater spiritual riches and renews its soul.[5]
By the 1840s, the press was thus a contested terrain with fervent defenders and critics. Some saw it as an instrument of progress and enlightenment, while others saw it as a vehicle of distraction and banality. Moreover, different political groupings were developing their own distinct presses and attempting to shape public opinion in different ways. The most radical critiques came from thinkers like Kierkegaard who saw the press as a vicious attack dog that goes after individuals in a contemptible way and disseminates a "phantom" and spurious public opinion.[6] Nietzsche's contribution is to extend the critique of the press found in earlier writers to a critique of mass culture and society as a whole. Throughout his works, Nietzsche saw culture as central to human life and believed that strong and healthy cultures would create distinguished, creative, and powerful individuals, whereas weak and fragmented cultures would create mediocre and inferior beings. His critique began with his early writings that contrasted a strong and healthy Greek culture to his increasingly banal German culture and continued through his later writings where he contrasted his own conceptions of culture and strong individuality to dominant modern European conceptions.
The Young Nietzsche's Critique of Mass Culture
The early Nietzsche saw Greece as the model of a strong, healthy, and organic culture that would generate creative and robust individuals. In his first published book, _The Birth of Tragedy_, Nietzsche contrasted the vibrant Dionysian culture evident in pre-Socratic Greece and early Greek tragedy with the more rationalistic Apollinian strains evident in Socratic reason and later Greek tragedy. Dionysian culture was eminently life-affirming, expressive of bodily energies and passions, and bound together individuals in shared cultural experiences of ecstasy, intoxication, and festivals, which Nietzsche believed created strong and healthy individuals and a vigorous culture.
In Nietzsche's view, Socratic culture was a response to the breakdown and fragmentation of tragic Greek culture which it attempted to replace with a set of shared, homogeneous ethical values, theoretical norms, and methodological procedures, based on Socratic logic and reasoning, which would replace the warring gods of the Greeks with a more unified rational culture. In a sense, Socratic culture thus provided a cure for a cultural emergency with extreme rationalism coming to curb the strong, warring impulses that had been released and that Socrates/Plato believed were out of control. The result was an equation of reason and knowledge and virtue, making reason the instrument of both truth and morality.[7]
Thus, Socratic culture replaced what Nietzsche saw as the profound pre-Socratic tragic vision of suffering, and redemption through culture, with the Socratic optimism that reason can discover truth and produce a good life. For Nietzsche, the triumph of Socratic theoretic man provided the origins of modern rationalism and Enlightenment optimism. This was counterpoised to a tragic pessimism which, in the manner of his early mentors Schopenhauer and Wagner, perceived great philosophy and art as the teachers and redeemers of humanity and the instruments of strong, healthy cultures.[8] Throughout his work, Nietzsche saw Socratic culture as a formative force of the modern period, also with life-negating results (for example, _Twilight of the Idols_, "Socrates"). "Socrates" for Nietzsche was thus a symbol of decay, of atrophying life-instincts in which reason came to dominate the body and the passions, a process that intensified over the centuries and that Nietzsche saw as constitutive for the modern era.
In _The Birth of Tragedy_, Nietzsche championed Richard Wagner's music-theater as a potentially revitalizing cultural force that he hoped would promote a rebirth of German culture, and with whom he formed a deep, albeit conflicted, friendship. Indeed, Nietzsche became a frequent visitor at Wagner's house in Tribschen and a propagandist for the maestro's music drama which he hoped could provide a basis for a new German culture. Near the end of the book Nietzsche describes the debasement in contemporary art and how a low level of cultural criticism "prepared by education and newspapers" has led to inability to appreciate genuine art:
The attempt, for example, to use the theater as an institution for the moral education of the people, still taken seriously in Schiller's time, is already reckoned among the incredible antiques of a dated type of education. While the critic got the upper hand in the theater and concert hall, the journalist in the schools, and the press in society, art degenerated into a particularly lowly topic of conversation, and aesthetic criticism was used as a means of uniting a vain, distracted, selfish, and moreover piteously unoriginal sociability (_The Birth of Tragedy_, S22, pp. 133-134).
Nietzsche thus sees a massified culture, perpetuated through both schooling and newspapers, as undermining authentic art and creating a mediocre culture. Nietzsche himself hoped to create the philosophical foundations for a new culture that would revitalize Germany and undertook studies of Greek philosophy which he believed provided essentials components for a life-affirming culture which would create strong and superior individuals. In 1873, however, Nietzsche turned from his meditations on Greek philosophy and project of developing his own philosophical perspectives, to write a series of attacks on the present age. Commentators often see this turn toward the contemporary as an attempt to please Wagner who was contemptuous of purely philological or philosophical studies and as an active intervention on Nietzsche's part in the German cultural wars of the time.[9] While subservience to the Wagnerian project of shaping contemporary German culture and Wagner's desire to see a critique published of his enemy Strauss, who had once criticized him, might have influenced Nietzsche's immediate intention, the turn toward the "untimely reflections" was a decisive move to engage contemporary culture that was becoming a central element of Nietzsche's emerging philosophical project.
Nietzsche began to take on pivotal phenomena of the present age in a series of _Unmodern Observations_ which attacked, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, key figures and features of Germany and the modern age while proposing ideas for cultural renewal. The target of the first _Observations_ was the German writer David Friedrich Strauss, author of an influential _Life of Jesus_ which through detailed comparison of the account of Jesus in the Gospels argued that Christianity was a myth that served the needs of people of the epoch. Nietzsche read Strauss' demythologizing bombshell at twenty and was deeply impressed with his philological critique.[10] After paying homage to Strauss' earlier work, Nietzsche sharply criticized his more recent writings which he saw as exemplary of the philistinism that was ruling German life since its victory over France and unification, and which blocked the rebirth of genuine culture that he desired (_Dionysus_, S2). Excoriating the joyful self-satisfaction of the Germans after the Franco-Prussian war, Nietzsche writes:
I sense this ecstatic joy in the incredible self-confidence of German journalists and the manufacturers of novels, tragedies, poems, and histories. These men clearly form a tightly knit club conspiring both to control the hours that modern man devotes to leisure and digestion, that is, his 'moment of culture,' and to stupefy him with printed matter. Since the war, all is joy, dignity, and self-satisfaction for this little club. After such a 'triumph of German culture' its members consider themselves not only established and sanctioned, but nearly sanctified, and therefore speak all the more solemnly. They delight in direct appeals to the German people, publish their collected works in the manner of classical authors, even announce in the journals at their disposal the few from their own ranks who will serve as our new classical models (_Dionysus_, S1).
This constitutes for Nietzsche an "abuse of success" and he hopes that at least some Germans would step forth to criticize "the distressing spectacle enacted before them" (ibid). Nietzsche himself reprimands "the scholarly caste" for neglecting to engage "popular German culture" and to examine the lack of a vibrant and unifying culture in Germany. Strauss for Nietzsche was the exemplar of a "cultural philistinism" that Nietzsche believed was undermining contemporary German culture and society. Nietzsche was especially appalled that Strauss had set himself up as the teacher of the German nature, the molder and shaper of the next generation, the teacher of youth. For Nietzsche, it was a horrifying to contemplate that such banal philistinism could shape the future of Germany (_Dionysus_, S7).
Nietzsche saw the prevalence of mass culture as the source of the debasement of thought and culture in contemporary Europe. Strauss' ideas "are all uniformly bookish, in fact, journalistic (_Dionysus_, S8).[11] The degradation of culture results from mass culture that influences the language, style, ideas, and judgements currently circulating and dominant. In Nietzsche's view:
The bulk of the German's daily reading material can be found, almost without exception, on the pages of the daily papers and the standard magazines. This language, its continual dripping -- same words, same phrases -- makes an aural impression. For the most part, the hours devoted to this reading are those in which his mind is too weary to resist. By degrees the ear feels at home with this workaday German and aches when, for any reason, it is not heard. But, almost as an occupational hazard, the producers of these newspapers and periodicals are the most thoroughly inured to the slimy journalistic jargon. They have quite literally lost all taste and relish, above all, the absolutely corrupt and capricious. This explains that tutti unisono with which every newly coined solecism instantly chimes in spite of the general torpor and malaise. With their impudent corruptions these wage-laborers of language take revenge on our mother-tongue for boring them so incredibly.
... When the flat hackneyed, vulgar, and feckless are accepted as the norm, and the corrupt and malapropos as charming exceptions, then the powerful, the uncommon, and the beautiful fall into disrepute. This is why in Germany we so often hear the story of the handsome traveler who visits a land of hunchbacks. Wherever he went, he was mocked and abused for his apparent deformity--his lack of a hump. Finally a priest took up his cause, saying to the people: "Have pity on this poor stranger and offer thanks to the gods for gracing you with such stately humps of flesh" (_Dionysus_, S11).
Throughout his _Meditations_, Nietzsche claimed that modern culture was "barbaric" (i.e. a formless amalgamation of fragmentary competing styles, ideas, and works) and assailed the excessive rationalism, egotistical individualism, shallow optimism, homogenization, and fragmentation that he saw as characteristic of modern culture. In _On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life_, Nietzsche argued that with the proliferation of historical studies modern man was becoming paralyzed and overwhelmed with historical knowledge (_Husserl_, Foreword). He argued that: "We moderns... possess nothing which is truly ours," assimilating an overwhelming amount of factual knowledge that does not play a transformative role in social life: "And so all of modern culture is essentially inward; on the cover the binder has stamped some title like 'Handbook of Inner Culture for Outward Barbarians'" (_Husserl_, S4).
Believing that modern individuals suffered from a weakened personality, Nietzsche wanted the study of history to be put into the service of creating great personalities, to help make possible a rebirth of a life-affirming culture. During the 1870s, Nietzsche was becoming increasingly disappointed with the philistinism of the German Reich and progressively intensified through the 1880s his critique of German bourgeois culture, Wagner, Bismarck, German militarism, and the Reich. He distanced himself from his search for a new German culture based on Wagner's music dramas and published a series of aphoristic works which promoted a the ethos of enlightenment and social critique, beginning with _Human, All Too Human_.
Nietzsche's Critique of the Present Age
For Nietzsche, mass culture encompassed the press, forms of culture from magazines to scholarly publications, religion, politics, beer, and nationalism.[12] Nietzsche saw the importance of emergent modes of communication and technologies in the development of modernity: "The press, the machine, the railway, the telegraph are premises whose thousand-year conclusion no one has yet dared to draw" (_Harvey_, p. 378).[13] On the whole, mass culture in his middle and later writings is that which massifies, that which levels, that which produces a mediocre culture and individuals. Religion, for example, was a form of mass culture for Nietzsche. Although Nietzsche is sometimes accused of being an irrationalist he assaulted Christianity precisely because of its irrationality and attack on the body and this world. Jesus Christ, he claimed, "promoted the stupidifying of man, placed himself on the side of the poor in spirit and retarded the production of the supreme intellect" (_Harvey_, p. 112). Nietzsche also dissected the Christian transvaluation of values which declared strength and wisdom as bad, while lowliness, humility, and submission were deemed "good". He believed that this promotion of a slave morality excessively valuated spirit over body and promoted general societal repression and regression (_Genealogy of Morals_).
Modern politics for Nietzsche are also a form of mass culture. Nietzsche was "anti-political" in the sense that he believed contemporary mass politics led to herd conformity, the loss of individuality, and mass manipulation and homogenization. In _Thus Spake Zarathrustra_, he carried out one of the first critiques of the modern state in "The New Idol," presenting the state as "a cold monster" that is the "death of peoples." The contrast is between a "people" with its traditions, "customs and rights" and the modern state with its lies and pretensions, spread through the press and mass culture. Nietzsche's critique of the state takes place from a radically individualistic position in _Zarathrustra_, espousing withdrawal and isolation over participation and involvement in mass society: "Foul smells their idol, the cold monster.... break their windows and leap to freedom."
Nietzsche's critique of the state is bound up with his critique of mass society and culture which he sees as homogenizing and harmful to vital life energies, creativity, and superior individuality. Nietzsche thought that modern democracy, liberalism, and enlightened social movements contributed to the regression of "modern man" behind the more vital and powerful individuals of the Renaissance. Consistently championing ancient Greece and the Italian Renaissance as paradigms of strong, vigorous cultures, Nietzsche's strategy was to choose past ideals which could serve as models or norms for future "greatness." Greek and Renaissance cultures affirmed the body, were secular, developed science and technology, were highly aesthetic, and produced strong individuals -- all Nietzsche's ideals. These prototypes, he believed, were concentrated in strong individuals like Julius Caesar, Caesar Borgia, and the "great men" of the Renaissance. Nietzsche's normative contrasts are supported by a distinction between sickness and health, between descending and ascending life. His texts exult in an affirmation of life energies and criticize everything that suppresses and inhibits the full expression of primary instincts. His assault on religion, morality, mass culture, and the banality of modern societies is thus unleashed from the standpoint of an ideal of the free and uninhibited flow of life energies, an unrestrained expression of instinctual powers.
Likewise, he argues that the democratic, liberal, feminist, anarchist, and socialist movements are expressive of declining life, of sickness, of resentment. All are manifestations of Socratic culture that posit reason over passion, ideas over life, and all are also manifestations of modern homogenizing tendencies, and are thus anti-life, helping to produce weak individuals and cultures. In opposition to liberal cultural tolerance, Nietzsche advocated cultural war which he believed would generate cultural diversity and a stronger, more creative culture and individuals.
Although Nietzsche's assault on liberalism and other progressivist social movements contain elitist and anti-democratic attitudes, one also finds some positive positions on democracy in his writings, as when Nietzsche presents the democratization of Europe as irresistible and a "link in the chain of those tremendous prophylactic measures which are the conception of modern times and through which we separate ourselves from the Middle Age" (_Harvey_, p. 376). Moreover, "[d]emocratic institutions are quarantine arrangements to combat that ancient pestilence, lust for tyranny: as such they are very useful and very boring" (_Harvey_, p. 383). These passages indicate Nietzsche's dual attitude toward democracy quite clearly: on one hand, it is useful as a counterforce to tyranny, but it is boring and promotes mediocrity. In his writings later in the 1880s, Nietzsche will sift out the positive aspects of democracy and his posture will be predominantly negative.
Thus, Nietzsche attacked both the modern state and mass society and culture, for their normalizing and homogenizing tendencies, endearing himself to the Frankfurt School and French theorists like Foucault. For Nietzsche, the state and mass culture were bitter antagonists against genuine culture and he saw both the modern state and mass society as producing mediocrity and cultural backwardness, as well as generating mass hysteria such as nationalism and anti-Semitism. The modern state and mass society and culture level status and value hierarchies, reducing ideals and tastes to the lowest common denominator and producing mediocre individuals.
Critical Concluding Remarks
Nietzsche was generally pessimistic about the impact of modern social processes. For the most part, he felt that modern society and culture had become so chaotic, fragmented, "arbitrary," and devoid of "creative force" that it has lost the resources to create a vital culture and ultimately advanced the decline of the human species. He especially thought that the press and mass culture were forces of degeneration and mediocrity, focusing attention on the trivial, superfluous, and sensational, and creating homogenization and conformity. He did not, however, develop systematic critiques of the press or specific forms of mass culture, except, perhaps his critique of Strauss and cultural philistinism, or Wagner and Wagnerianism which he eventually came to see as a lowbrow exhibition of mass culture and bad taste. He thus did not develop an institutional critique of the media or the culture industries, as did Adorno and Horkheimer,[14] or detailed criticisms of the phenomena of mass culture, as did those in the field of critical cultural studies.
Moreover, Nietzsche was radical and totalizing in his critique of mass culture, he saw no progressive moments, except perhaps in light opera that expressed a joi de vivre and gaiety of which he approved. Culture for Nietzsche fundamentally consisted of an "ordering of rank" (_Rankordnung_) that established higher and lower values and he called for a revaluation of values, an overturning (_Umwertung_) of the highest values and establishment of superior values that would promote stronger individuals and a more vital culture. His "Ubermensch", therefore, is a superior individual who overcomes the decadent values of mass culture, and is able to create life-affirming values and a stronger and more life-affirming culture.
Developing superior individuality requires overcoming dominant forms of culture and conformity, pitting the individual against mass society and culture. Nietzsche believed that some individuals could exert their will to power to create higher, more refined selves, thus ultimately he champions a form of aristocratic individualism and aestheticism. Making an implicit distinction between high and low art, Nietzsche argues that authentic art allows "freedom above things" and the demands of morality and other repressive institutions:
we need all exuberant, floating, dancing, mocking, childish, and blissful art lest we lose our freedom above things that our ideal demands of us.... We should be able also to stand above morality -- and not only to stand with anxious stiffness of a man who is afraid of slipping and falling any moment, but also to float above it and play. How then could we possibly dispense with art -- and with the fool? (_GS_, p. 164).[15]
Authentic art was privileged by Nietzsche precisely because it cultivated the senses, imagination, and other aspects of the mind and body, allowing individuals to enter a realm that transcended conventional morality and social norms. Nietzsche championed art as the most powerful enemy of the ascetic ideal and the ultimate source of cultural vitality. The crisis in modern culture is partly rooted in the fact that aesthetic sensibilities have been savaged by the repressive forces of instrumental rationality, social rationalization, and mass culture and society, thus art has been relegated to the margins of society. For Nietzsche, however, these rationalizing forces must be constrained by aesthetically rooted values. Free spirits were needed who would experiment with art, ideas, and life and who would create new values and a superior culture that would produce in turn higher human beings.
Ultimately, Nietzsche wanted a life-affirming culture that would create superior individuals. He is a cultural revolutionary who seeks a healthy and vibrant culture and believes that culture is the most powerful mode of social and individual transformation. His radical critique of mass culture is fuelled, in part, by the conviction that it represents a degeneration of culture, that it is a debased form of precisely that mode of existence that is supposed to produce better, higher, and healthier human beings. Thus, Nietzsche resolutely affirms a normative distinction between high and low culture and is an unabashed cultural elitist. As my parenthetical asides have suggested, Nietzsche would probably be appalled at the debased state of contemporary culture,[16] and Nietzschean impulses have contributed to radical cultural studies today that carries out a systematic assault on contemporary culture as a whole -- often mediated with Marxian, feminist, or post-structuralist motifs.
Nietzsche's negative critique cuts across and against the populist turn in cultural studies that would affirm and celebrate popular culture. On the whole, Nietzsche's cultural critique is dialectical, affirming what he considers life-enhancing and empowering, and criticizing what he believes to be life-negating and disempowering. In _Twilight of the Idols_, Nietzsche wrote: "Formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal..." ("Maxims"). Thus Lyotard gets it wrong when he claims that Nietzsche is a fundamentally affirmative thinker, attacks Adorno's proto-Nietzschean conception of philosophy as negation, and himself champions purely positive and affirmative "libidinal economy."[17] To be sure, Nietzsche is not just a nay-sayer and always accompanies his No! with a Yes! It is therefore not a question of the negative versus the affirmative Nietzsche, but is rather a dialectical relationship of both, seeing how the yes and the no always necessarily supplement each other in Nietzsche's thought.
In my view and to conclude, Nietzsche's radical and negative critique of mass culture is valuable and certainly finds plenty of targets today. But I would argue against Nietzsche for a more dialectical optic that sees what I call media culture as a contested terrain, as a site of social struggle, that contains reactionary and progressive, life-affirming and oppressive features.[18] A critical theory of media culture would thus be as relentlessly negative as Nietzsche, but would also affirm socially critical, subversive, and democratizing moments. Its cultural politics would not just be for superior individuals, but would attempt to develop a cultural pedagogy which assaulted all forms of oppression and domination and attempted to produce a more democratic, just, and pedagogical society and culture.
Notes
1. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, _Collected Works. Vol I_ (New York: International Publishers, 1975, p. 142). This study draws on collaborative work with Robert Antonio on an unpublished text on theories of modernity and work with Steven Best in works on postmodern theory, so I am indebted to these collaborations for my readings of Nietzsche. In this article, I am interpreting Nietzsche predominantly as a modern theorist, addressing crucial issues of modernity; for discussion of how Nietzsche anticipates the postmodern turn, see Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, The Postmodern Turn (New York: Guilford Press, 1997).
2. Goethe, in Leo Lowenthal, _Literature, Popular Culture and Society_ (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1961, p. 20).
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Marx, op. cit., p. 165.
6. For his critique of the press and public opinion, see Soren Kierkegaard, _Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978) and _The Corsair Affair_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982). For commentary, see Steven Best and Douglas Kellner "Modernity, Mass Society, and the Media: Reflections on _The Corsair Affair_," in _International Kierkegaard Commentary, The Corsair Affair_, edited by Robert Perkins. (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1990) and Best and Kellner, _The Postmodern Turn_, op. cit.
7. Friedrich Nietzsche, _The Birth of Tragedy_ (New York: Random House, 1967) and _Twilight of the Idols_ (New York: Penguin Books, 1968, p. 33). The historical Socrates, of course, was much more intuitive, passionate, aesthetic, and erotic than in Nietzsche's model, thus his conception of Socratic culture should be read as an ideal type that crystallizes a type of Greek rationalism in the figure of Socrates, a mode that Nietzsche believes continues to characterize modern culture.
8. See Nietzsche's meditations on Schopenhauer and Wagner in _Unmodern Observations_ (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990). On Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, see Georg Simmel, _Schopenhauer and Nietzsche_ (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991 [1907]). It was under Schopenhauer's influence that Nietzsche could proclaim in _The Birth of Tragedy_ that art is the "essential metaphysical activity" and that "it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified" (_BT_, p. 52).
9. See Herbert Golder, "Introduction" to _DS_ in _Unmodern Observations_, op. cit, pp 3ff.
10. Ronald Hayman, _Nietzsche. A Critical Life_ (New York: Penguin Books, 1980, p. 63). Strauss' text greatly influenced the Young Hegelians when it was published in 1835 and intensified the modern philological and philosophical critique of religion begun in the Enlightenment which culminated in Nietzsche himself. Indeed, the Young Hegelians anticipated Nietzsche's critique of religion with Bruno Bauer declaring "God is Dead," Marx describing religion as "the opium of the people," and Feuerbach interpreting religion as the projection of human qualities onto a deity.
11. Nietzsche intended to write a critique of religion, school, press, state, society, Man as I, Nature, and the road to liberation as part of a series of _Unmodern Observations_, after the four he published (see the list on pp. 321-322). While he never completed this project, reflections on these topics are found throughout his succeeding aphoristic works, such as _Human, All-Too-Human_.
12. See, for example, _Twilight of the Idols_ where Nietzsche complained that the press, beer, religion, education, and nationalism had stupefied the German people ("Germans"). He makes a similar criticism in his Strauss critique (S4).
13. See _Human, All Too Human_ (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 378.
14. See Max Horkheimer, and Theodor Adorno, _Dialectic of Enlightenment_ (New York: Continuum, 1972) and Douglas Kellner, _Media Culture_ (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
15. See _The Gay Science_ (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 164.
16. Thus, in contrast to Stephen Barker's paper also published in this issue, it is hard for me to imagine Nietzsche as affirmative of contemporary technoculture in the light of his radical critique of mass culture. I would imagine that Nietzsche would find appalling many of the examples of contemporary technoculture that Barker affirms in his name, and that Nietzsche's higher culture and individual would posit themselves against technoculture.
17. See Jean-Francois Lyotard, _Economie Libidinale_ (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1974) and "Adorno as the Devil," _Telos_ 19 (Spring 1974): 127-137.
18. Kellner, _Media Culture_, op. Cit.
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