Cool Capitalism

Jim McGuigan

Description

Thomas Frank coined the term 'the conquest of cool'. This book shows how this conquest is at the heart of the dynamics of contemporary capitalism.



Jim McGuigan argues that 'cool capitalism' incorporates disaffection into capitalism itself, absorbing rebellion and neutralising opposition to the present system of culture and society.



The book explores a huge variety of cultural examples, from the sleek images of mainstream advertising, to the fringes of artistic production, offering a vigourous critique of our understanding of subversion, resistance and counter-culturalism.



Is there is still any space left for rebellion against the seductive power of the free market economy?
Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction - On 'Cool'

1. The Spirits of Capitalism

2. The Great Refusal

3. Consumer Culture

4. Market Values

5. Working Life

6. Anti-Capitalism Revisited

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Media studies
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Social Science

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 09 octobre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783718269
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Cool Capitalism
Cool Capitalism
JIM McGUIGAN
First published 2009 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Jim McGuigan 2009
The right of Jim McGuigan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN  
978 0 7453 2640 5  
Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 2678 8 Paperback ISBN 978 1 8496 4354 2 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1827 6 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7837 1826 9 EPUB eBook
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. The paper may contain up to 70 per cent post-consumer waste.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, 33 Livonia Road, Sidmouth EX10 9JB, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
To the memory of my grandfather, James Patrick McGuigan, who started me on this course .
CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgements

Introduction: On ‘Cool’
1
The Spirits of Capitalism
The Old Spirit
The New Spirit
Capitalism Transmogrified
2
The Great Refusal
Rebellious Autonomy
Picasso, Rivera and Kahlo
Cool Art and Business
3
Consumer Culture
Conspicuous Consumption
Mass Consumerism
Cool Seduction
Commodity Fetishism and Mobile Privatisation
4
Market Values
Neoliberal Discourse
Enterprise Culture
Creative Industries
5
Working Life
Emotional Labour
Individualisation
Generation Crisis
6
Anti-Capitalism Revisited
Cool Brands and Sweated Labour
One No and Many Yeses
Limits to Capitalism

Notes
Index
Everything relates to everything else .
David Harvey
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book consists mainly of cultural analysis and ideology critique, less so of political economy. It is concerned with certain aspects of the culture of capitalism that are prevalent today. Of necessity, however – since the book is about capitalism – the cultural processes explored here cannot be detached entirely from economic and political processes. Capitalism was never considered so legitimate and taken for granted as a virtually natural state of being as it has been over the past 30 or so years. Consequently, it might be thought, capitalism hardly needs justifying. Yet, in a significant sense, it is constantly justified according to the terms and referents of everyday life both by necessity and by apparently free choice. Still, there are reasons for criticising capitalism, as a great many people are now becoming aware. To call its justification, however deep-seated, into question is to call into question capitalism itself. This book is principally about a curious feature of how capitalism is legitimised today – the extraordinary incorporation of dissent – and how debilitating that is for both opposition and, indeed, for justice. In the absence of dissent that is genuinely disconcerting, however, capitalism is allowed to get away with murder, and not only metaphorically speaking.
In writing about these matters, I have drawn upon the knowledge and advice of many people, only a few of whom will be mentioned here since I cannot remember the source of every nugget of wisdom for which I am personally indebted. Mick Billig for straightening me out about formal logic; Jackie Dingly-Jackson for explaining the significance of the Japanese Knotweed plant; Jan Flaherty on money and youth; Mike Gane for tolerating my purportedly redundant delusions; Martyn Lee for checking that I wasn’t completely wrong about consumer culture; Ruth Lister for suffering my ultra-radicalism; Jo Littler for confirming in her work that I might be thinking along the right lines; Christopher McGuigan for the insight of youth; Angela McRobbie for worrying about some of the same things as me; Graham Murdock for always making sure that I wasn’t too stupid; John Richardson for checking that I didn’t say anything too politically incorrect about The Apprentice ; Chris Rojek for originally suggesting the idea of writing a book about this subject; Dominic Wring for sharing my angst about these matters; and Laurie and George Salemohamed for being very nice. As usual, I am grateful to Lesley and Jenny for putting up so patiently – especially Lesley – with my constant diatribe against the iniquities of capitalism. The general approach I have taken is very much inspired by the work and example of Trevor Griffiths and Doug Kellner, which has taught me a great deal about dialectical thought. Also, I would like to thank Tom Lynton for his excellent work on the cover.
The work for this book was largely completed before American sub-prime mortgage defaults led to a credit crunch, an international financial crisis and a recession turning into what is likely to be a lengthy depression on a worldwide scale. This, no doubt, has rekindled awareness of the deeply flawed political economy of global capitalism. However, at the time of writing, the cool culture of capitalism still persists as a powerful feature of ideological hegemony throughout the Earth. It will take a while before that pervasive set of assumptions and practices are called properly into question. This book is dedicated to such questioning.
Leamington March 2009
INTRODUCTION: ON ‘COOL’
Cool capitalism is the incorporation of disaffection into capitalism itself. ‘Cool’ is the front region 1 of capitalism today for those who are seduced by its cultural appeal and especially for those who aspire, mostly in frustration, to the greatest fruits of a capitalist civilisation. For capitalism to command hearts and minds, it is necessary to mask out its much less appealing back region, manifestations of which are perpetual sources of disaffection. For the sake of capitalist legitimacy, such disaffection must be assuaged: hence the role of ‘cool’ in translating disaffection into acceptance and compliance. What is ‘cool’? Before exploring that question, I should say something about how I was prompted to write on these matters.
A few years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I was struck by two American TV ads. (I cannot remember which brands they were selling nor have I sought to find out since it is of no consequence, and I have anyway no desire to contribute to the advertising effort.) The first ad involved a young man seeking to persuade his boss, an older man, of the virtues of a new computer system he wants him to buy for the office. He repeatedly describes the system as ‘cool’. The expression on the boss’s face is one of deep scepticism concerning the young man’s peroration. Eventually, however, the young man observes that the new system will save the company money, whereupon the older man replies, ‘cool’. The second ad featured Dennis Hopper as a middle-aged business executive driving a sleek automobile across an American wilderness. This footage is inter-cut with footage of Hopper’s younger, hippy self riding a motorcycle in the 1969 movie, Easy Rider . In both cases, the ads featured the relationship between a younger and an older man. The first ad showed the younger man convincing the older man that a new computer system was ‘cool’. At the end of the second ad, Hopper burns off his younger self when he accelerates past him. It brought to mind the old adage that if you are not a socialist at 20 you do not have a heart, but if you are still a socialist at 30 then you do not have a brain. It is a fitting ideological coda to the twentieth century.
Since the early 2000s I have been collecting similar references to ‘cool’ either in the actual use of the word or in signs somehow redolent of sentiments associated with it. For instance, in 2001, Switzerland’s ambassador to Britain became concerned about the negative impact internationally of aspersions cast upon his country’s reputation, such as stories about the banking of Nazi gold. In order to demonstrate that Switzerland was cool he decided to invite graffiti artists to adorn the walls of the underground car park in the London embassy. One of these artists was to become highly renowned and indeed bankable – the elusive, Bristol-born artist who calls himself Banksy. His principal graffiti for the Swiss embassy, which remains on the wall next to the car park’s exit, is a montage of 21 copies of a picture of Lenin with a Mohican haircut and the legend, ‘Vulture Capitalists’. This and other examples of Banksy’s work at the embassy are now said to be worth a million pounds. 2
In 2004, Hill & Knowlton (China) Public Relations Co. Ltd. conducted a ‘China Cool Hunt’ survey of students in Beijing and Shanghai. The market research evidence showed that Chinese students value ‘cool’, whatever that means, and they associate it with leading Western or Westernised brand companies, most notably Nike, Sony, Adidas, BMW, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, IBM, Nokia, Samsung, Ferrari and Christian Dior. 3 ‘Cool’ has travelled a long way, from the West coast of Africa to the Americas and around the whole world – as far, in fact, as ‘communist’ China.
It is generally agreed among commentators that the notion of ‘cool’ came out of Africa. The American art historian Robert Farris Thompson traces its sources to the Yorubaland coastal region of modern-day Nigeria. Although origins do not legislate for current meaning and significance when tracing the genealogy of discourse, 4 nevertheless, it is