This, along with your piece on housing, merits a much longer treatment. I have a nagging, general question along the lines of why isn't the material world better? I don't think the contrast between "tradition" and "architecture" (or "design") gets us very far, as you suggest. "Progressive" vs "populist" even more distracting, even if that might be driving policy positions. Nor is the idea of "creative class" very good -- it ended up being very flattering to university types, who were reassured that people of the same background, politics, especially gender, and general prejudices were also "creative," and that must be good, right? Terrible as art history, and now that it is clear that an awful lot of what is created "the Marvel Universe" is driven almost entirely by capital, or political zealotry . . . so "progress" seems in short supply. But the whys remain elusive and, when glimpsed, confused. Anyway, keep up the good work.
Maybe these unhelpful categories and dichotomies are the answer to your question about why isn't the material world better. They suggest that creativity and even identity are trapped in a largely symbolic realm of discourse, where they struggle to make contact with deeper social and economic realities. This is a problem I've been struggling to formulate for a while - maybe I'll give it some more thought.
Always struck me the UKs cultural inheritance is something to be proud of but impossible to see how either party can capitalise on that- in labour’s case because they’re in a state of continuous rejection on a unwoke past and it’s art, and many of the contributions that British people themselves are most proud of are connected to that past. So you get a lot of wan corporate rubbish about being vibrant etc that no one likes. I feel like T Blair didn’t have those problems, or at least not as much
Over the last year or so I've been reading more into the history of these issues in the UK, and it's striking how these tensions between modernising elites and popular taste keep coming back, albeit in different forms. There are moments when those tensions seem to die down, and I agree the New Labour period was one of those, but they always come back again.
This, along with your piece on housing, merits a much longer treatment. I have a nagging, general question along the lines of why isn't the material world better? I don't think the contrast between "tradition" and "architecture" (or "design") gets us very far, as you suggest. "Progressive" vs "populist" even more distracting, even if that might be driving policy positions. Nor is the idea of "creative class" very good -- it ended up being very flattering to university types, who were reassured that people of the same background, politics, especially gender, and general prejudices were also "creative," and that must be good, right? Terrible as art history, and now that it is clear that an awful lot of what is created "the Marvel Universe" is driven almost entirely by capital, or political zealotry . . . so "progress" seems in short supply. But the whys remain elusive and, when glimpsed, confused. Anyway, keep up the good work.
Maybe these unhelpful categories and dichotomies are the answer to your question about why isn't the material world better. They suggest that creativity and even identity are trapped in a largely symbolic realm of discourse, where they struggle to make contact with deeper social and economic realities. This is a problem I've been struggling to formulate for a while - maybe I'll give it some more thought.
Good one wessie
Always struck me the UKs cultural inheritance is something to be proud of but impossible to see how either party can capitalise on that- in labour’s case because they’re in a state of continuous rejection on a unwoke past and it’s art, and many of the contributions that British people themselves are most proud of are connected to that past. So you get a lot of wan corporate rubbish about being vibrant etc that no one likes. I feel like T Blair didn’t have those problems, or at least not as much
Over the last year or so I've been reading more into the history of these issues in the UK, and it's striking how these tensions between modernising elites and popular taste keep coming back, albeit in different forms. There are moments when those tensions seem to die down, and I agree the New Labour period was one of those, but they always come back again.