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December 7, 2003
New York, 1930s:
New York is of a global city that branded itself as the cutting edge of modernity.
It was what every city aspired to be. But they could never could be.
There is only one New York. There can only be one New York.
It was modernity. It was the new. The new that arose out of the old.
The new become the transitory. The old becomes that which is the self-same.
This is another kind of birds eye view:
Walker Evans, Manhattan, New York City, 1930.
It shows that New York had to reinvent itself with skyscrapers to be modern. In contrast, Paris stood for the past --the nineteenth century. It was what needed to be demolished to make way for the new:
Eugene Atget,Rue de l'Hotel de Ville, Paris, 1921.
But Paris could never be as modern as New York. It was not the new and constantly changing.
What these photos do not show is the way the various networks of power shape our subjectivity within the city. One kind of network is mentioned here by Elizabeth Albrycht over at Corporate PR. Elizabeth says:
"In the recent past, the marketing director had at his or her fingertips an array of powerful tools to develop and support a company's brand. Television and print advertising, billboards, product packaging, even entire stores. Public relations acted in support of the brand, disseminating stories about happy customers, keeping executives "on message", creating glitzy press conferences, and so on. Consumers were the passive audience, sucking up these messages and, hopefully, emptying their wallets in the pursuit of relationships (no dandruff = beautiful date), family harmony (our "meal in a bag" will ensure family table togetherness"), health (take our drug = stay at work, keep the boss happy), etc."
This is the culture industry at work at a micro level. It is what made us modern.
It sold us dreams of happiness through ever more consumption whose messages reached into our minds. These did not just cause us to buy the products being advertised: the casual nexus is far more complex than that. It was also more about us accepting the culture of consumer capitalism, andthe culture industry's shopping pathway to happiness and a better life.
That is the micro level of Foucault's disciplinary power. Some call it retail therapy: we indulge ourselves by maxing the credit credit. We do not need to feel guilty because we deserve to pamper ourselves. Guilt free consumers who forget about the future as they embrace the new and the transitory.
But it is not just the mind that has been branded. Today, in postmodernity, we are altering and shaping our bodies through the germline genetic engineering of human genes to "improve" human beings.
We can imagine More Dvanced Cell Technologies Inc. doing this through adding or deleting genes, and then implanting one that is likely to turn out the best. their scientists say that we have the program for the code of life (ie., DNA sequence).
It is now just a process of editing the DAN sequence the way you would edit a document on a word processor.
A whole new world beckons.
The brand is perfection and it embodies an age old dream of being super human. That dream is now being expressed in a techno-eugenic vision of designer babies that fits comfortably with our consumer culture. It promises a different (and better) future withe techno-science means to achieve it.
The taboo on human germline engineering is now lifting and a new mode of control over our bodies and individuality begins to take shape.
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we ignore strength in diversity/variety at our peril..