#stephen duncombe

[sharpened--edges]

In a society like our own, rooted in inequality, conflict is unavoidable. Liberal fantasies aside, this conflict is not the result of those with power not ‘understanding’ the majority of people who don’t. Read the Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, or Business Week: the powerful are trying to understand the needs and desires of the majority of citizens, and it is part of their job to keep understanding […] But this doesn’t mean that they understand in order to give away their power; quite the opposite. What products will people buy? What will make them work harder? What political policies will they accept? Those with power make it their business to understand those without it in order to keep and build upon what they have.

Stephen Duncombe, Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture (2nd ed., Microcosm, 2008 [1997]), p. 198.

[aioleis]

To be human is to refuse to accept the given as given.

Stephen Duncombe, Dream: Re-imaging Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy (New York: The New Press, 2007), 182.

[kinniepika]

Week 8 Blog Prompt

Prompt: Write a thoughtful and in-depth response to Notes From the Underground. Focus on one or two points that Duncombe makes about zine culture and its practitioners and/or any aspect of zines or zine culture that he mentions that sparks your interest. 

While Notes From the Underground was quite dense in terms of the amount of information presented, it kept my attention the whole way through. Having little to no knowledge about zine culture before reading this book, it goes without saying that I learned a lot from it. One point that Duncombe reiterates throughout the book that I found intriguing was the fact that the underground relies on the greater society it resists in order to exist. This point is what sparked my interest the most while reading since it's so paradoxical, and there's not really a solution to it either. For instance, Duncombe brings this up in chapter four, which is about work; he says "As long as the rest of the world isn't made up of slackers, slacking is made easier," in relation to the celebration of leisure amongst zinesters (Duncombe 100). This, especially presently because of the unlivable wages many my age are offered, resonated with me and gave me a lot to think about. I know I am not alone in wishing to pursue a life of leisure, but that isn't possible without others there to pick up the slack. Duncombe also reiterates throughout the book that he is not criticizing these aspects of zine culture, but is merely pointing out the contradiction. The idea of "negative identity" is related to this as well, something that Duncombe brings up again and again. "Negative identity" refers to the ways in which the underground identifies themselves as "outside" greater society, thus still linking their identity to the outside world (93). It's an interesting point to consider, and I'm glad that Duncombe brings it up in many of the chapters. One of the most interesting chapters to me was chapter 7, "Purity and Danger," as it expands on this idea of negation as it relates to the underground's discovery by mass media/dominant society. It also describes another paradox of the underground: that of obscurity and "selling out." Duncombe refers to the underground's romanticization of obscurity/purity as its "fatal flaw," as obscurity eventually leads to a fizzling out, and those part of the underground turn to the culture industry as a means of networking (182). This, again, proves that the underground relies upon outsiders to sustain its existence. The topic of negative identity as well as obscurity is one that I would love to explore more, though I think Duncombe does a great job laying groundwork on the topic and provides a good introduction to it.

[meandmythesis]

Progressives should have learned to build a politics that embraces the dreams of people and fashions spectacles which give which gives these fantasies form - a politics that employs symbols and associations; a politics that tells good stories. In brief, we should have learned to manufacture dissent.

- Stephen Duncombe "Dreams"

[sophierosepalmer-blog]

Rational External vs Imaginative Internal

The empiricist view is that things exist if they can be measured independently of those doing the measuring. But could this be inverted somehow? On reading Dream by Stephen Duncombe, I was struck by the statement ‘Reality, once freed from tradition and superstition and no longer clouded by imagination and emotion, is self-evident.’ But why? Imagination and emotion are two of the most central qualities that make our lives interesting, and make the human race an innovative one!

Galileo wrote of the importance of measurable qualities in external bodies, like size, shape and quantity, rather than taste or colour, which rely on the judgements of a sensitive body. While it is the job of science to ‘hold human subjectivity in check in order to reveal the objective reality that precedes it’, perhaps it is the job of designers to do the exact opposite - celebrate and expose the sensual, subjective reactions and emotional, imaginative interpretations of our realities. 

[opticsetc]

This is brilliant. 

Utopia Is No Place: The Art and Politics of Impossible Futures

A growing number of artists are abandoning truth-telling political art for a boldly utopian practice, recognizing that political problems can't be solved by an atrophied collective imagination. With examples ranging from Thomas More's 16th-century tome Utopia to the Yes Men's recent "special edition" of the New York Times, Stephen Duncombe explores the creative terrain within this new world of dreampolitik. Duncombe is an associate professor with the Gallatin School at New York University.

[westmeathlibrary]

Called Open Utopia, it's a free, online version of Thomas More's Utopia that anyone can browse—and annotate. An example of what's sometimes called social reading, Open Utopia builds on the idea that a book doesn't have to be a static text. Online, a book can be a gathering place, a shared space where readers record their reactions and conversations. Those interactions ultimately become part of the book too, a kind of amplified marginalia. "We live in a world where people can talk back to their books," Mr. Duncombe told me.

With 'Social Reading,' Books Become Places to Meet By Jennifer Howard in The Chronicle, Nov 26th 2012

[jasonashlock]

A conventional book invites readers to shut out the world while they read. Social reading asks them to connect with others as they encounter the text. Whether that sounds like a more perfect world depends on the reader.

http://bit.ly/YkZY6q by Jennifer Howard via Dan Visel