Raiding the inarticulate since 2010

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The hollowness of cultural politics 

In complete agreement with this. From Riots and Political Protest, by Simon Winlow, Steve Hall, Daniel Briggs and James Treadwell, pg 7:

The idea that constantly challenging what are often incautiously deemed to be aspects of cultural hegemony is a political act in itself, insofar as it will clear away ideological obfuscation and allow latent organic politics to flow forth, is now revealing itself to be a fundamental error. In the absence of a coherent and unifying alternative, the endless iconoclastic deconstruction of various bits of liberal capitalism’s hegemonic cultural output is not inspiring political thought and action, but furthering the fragmentation, cynicism, pan-scepticism and symbolic inefficiency on which the system thrives (see Winlow and Hall, 2013).

They see this conception of ‘politics’ as leading to a fixation on the micro-social reality of everyday life which systematically occludes the macro-social field of politics.

I’m not sure if they’re saying there’s a necessary antagonism here – for what it’s worth, I don’t think there is – but I think the crucial point they make is about how one leads to the other. How do micro-political acts aggregate? This question is often swept aside, motivated by a hugely optimistic assumption that they just will, much like critiquing hegemonic cultural forms just will allow a politics of positivity to take shape.

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