The Culture of You

What is the big deal about stuff white people like? - Samhita @ Feministing

When I first heard about the blog "Stuff White People Like" I didn't think much of it, much less visit the site. I thought it was mildly amusing at most. Samhita from Feministing actually has visited the site, laughed at some things and such; but she has also dug a little deeper into the whole issue of whiteness as a culture. Her point is, a question really, does poking fun at the material goods of white culture actually further the conversation on race, or does it hamper it by perpetuating a stereotype that what white people like is uncool, thus turning what non-whites like into something cool? I think in this case the answer is a yes and no, as Samhita has arrived at as well. The experience a browser of the site might get will differ from another browser and if that experience pitches the browser out of their comfortable spot within their culture then so much the better. White culture is the dominate culture in America so it does help to call it white culture versus simply saying that it's the culture of America. For whites to even minimally understand the black or latino experience in America they must first think of their culture as a culture just the same as any other. Not to say that one must tear down their culture just to get to this point, but merely acknowledge that the dominant culture is white. What happens after that isn't something a website can control but if it can posit in a browser's mind the question of what white culture is then it will have succeeded in furthering the conversation on race in America.
The converse of this acknowledgment is actually quite negative. If by viewing "Stuff White People Like" doesn't push the browser out of their comfort zone then it has failed to further anything except the stereotype that being white is somehow uncool and being non-white is cool. It's that question of hipness that affects the browser's experience. If all the browser gets out of the site is that assumption of white culture's inherent uncoolness then the site harms the conversation on race. While I don't begrudge the operator of the site for doing what he wanted, I do think that he has the opportunity to improve race-relations if he would simply look beyond the quick joke. It's not that he has to make white culture look cool but make it look like culture period--both cool and uncool as any other culture is.

Lukacs and the History of the Personal

One of the things that irked me to some degree with Lukacs' interpretation of history is his focus on the personal but the dismissal of the more cultural or psychoanalytical approach to personal histories. Being a cultural historian myself, of course I find his opinion short-sighted and mistaken. What goes into the creation of a person and how that person acts has a great deal to do with the culture into which they are born. Environmental factors, home life, genetics and a whole host of other elements go into the creation of a personality. If you want to understand the actions of a particular historical character you have to get into their head. Now the psychoanalytical approach does offer some assistance but only so much since most of that kind of history is based on behavior and writings. The cultural approach takes the same evidence and places it in a different context, specifically the world of representation surrounding that individual, what others were thinking at the same time and how particular cultural products were produced, consumed and then reinterpreted in future cultural products.
For instance, using my life as an example, one has to know a great deal of facts about me to even come close to understanding the way I think and why I behave the way I do. If you want to take a mystical, pseudo-science approach to this (of which I hold with a grain of salt, but I do still hold it) then you can consider my astrological sign, year of birth and even my own name. I am a Scorpio, born in the year of the metal Monkey, and given the name Jordan. Now these are perhaps the most coincidental aspects of my existence. These factors of time and pre-decision on the part of my parents had nothing to do with my own free will, environment or genetics. Even so, I was born into a fixed water sign (intensity and confidence inhabit me) during a year that the Chinese ascribe a great deal of creativity and loyalty (also traits of a Scorpio apparently) while the specific year of the Metal Monkey places a great deal of transformative power in me and claims the metals of silver and gold as my architypical metals (which I find strangely ironic since I work as a jeweler). My own name, a Hebrew (note, not necessarily Israeli) name derived from a river and claims the owner of this name to have a deep current running inside them.
So three disparate elements of astrology and superstitious meaning all indicate that I should be an intense, loyal, creative, adaptive and intuitive person while at the same time manipulative, passionate to a fault and given to attacking when threatened, even if the attack comes long after the initial skirmish (still waters and all that).
These are simply elements that exist whether I was born at that specific time or not. They are generalities and hokey ones at that. They give you hints and indications as to who I am but nothing in the way of specifics. Now I will admit that I do exhibit many of the characteristics but whether that is due to my unconscious behavior as ascribed by these supersitious beliefs or reinforced in a sort of feedback effect as I learn more about them I cannot say for certain. Still, they do exist, so while the generalities remain generalities, you can say that they do shape my personality in their own way.
On the other hand (wait for the pun) I am left-handed, relatively short for the average male with long legs but a short torso. I am a combination of both my father and grandfather, packing the muscle of a six-foot man into the frame of a five-foot-seven slender scrapper. I exhibit no strong tendency to the use of one side of my brain or the other and have feet that angle outwards like a penguin. Brown-eyed, brown hair, olive complexion and a "distinctive chin" I genetically in the middle of the pack.
Culturally, I was born in 1980, thus my consciousness of the world did not take shape until around 1992. Imbued with conservative tendencies by my parents I was also subject to an education that repeated the old 'white guys from Boston' history of the U.S. and a belief in the rule of law. A patriotism that was based on individuality (the competing educational interests of liberals and conservatives was the instigator for this) along with a desire to see the best of the U.S. come about informed my politics throughout my teens. College was different as philosophy and history took hold resulting in my transformation from a proto-conservative to a firm GDI (god-damned independent). Language and culture were my mental playground while a sense of the Political continued to take shape.
So those are the basic facts of my life, without getting into personal details. These are facts that one can glean from when I was born, who I was born to, where I went to school and what I wrote during that period. Does this constitute the totality of who I am, of my character and personality? Does Lukacs believe it? I doubt it. For one, how and why I act the way I do is also a product of the cultural elements surrounding me, whether I was consciously or unconsciously aware of them. My personality now is different than it was ten years ago, the product of time itself bearing down on me. How I interpret the world is different as well.
History is the attempt to make the specific general but when you deal with generality solely as your evidence you cannot create an accurate picture of me. This is why I get riled up at the exegetical focus on particular individual like Hitler or Nietzsche as the evidence available of their lives does not offer anything approaching a complete analysis. It avoids the psychoanalytical and the cultural forces at play. It takes the general facts as specific and then attempts to return them to the general. In doing so it offers neither a general nor a specific analysis. I am more than the sum of my parts and so are figures like FDR or Mussolini or Wittgenstein. The fact remains, contra Lukacs, that you still have to find a way to get into the head of the person or people you are examining. Often that requires taking radically different views of things and then attempting to craft a theory around those different perspectives on the evidence available. So while Lukacs argues that we are approaching a turning point in our historical consciousness I believe that we are simply acknowledging the limitations of any one perspective on historical evidence and the need to use multiple points of view to grasp the subjective-objective analysis necessary to understand a historical person or period.

Your Desk in Motion

So I've always taken an interest in what people consistently keep on their desk mixed with the everyday stuff that lands there. I'm not speaking of your desk at work, but the one at home where your real work begins. A desk isn't a requirement though. Coffee tables, floors, beds, countertops, or just anywhere in general where you compose, create or just lounge. I hold this strange belief that what you find on this space at any particular moment reflects a great deal of who you are and what kind of personality you keep.
This is my desk. This is where I spend a great deal of time writing, smoking and playing with media. But it also reflects some of the regular elements of my daily life, whether over the long term or the short term. A glass of water next to a prescription bottle is a regular thing while the dispenser of surgical gauze is reflective of my amazing week in personal injury. Coffee, smokes, cds and dvds are commonplace and travel with me most anywhere I go. What makes this picture of my desk so important is it's representation of the space I produce for myself, whether simulated or real. Each object has their own meaning, a myriad of meanings in fact. But in relation to each other what do they say? What does the totality of these objects reflect about myself and how I produce my reality, my space?
So, what does your creative space look like? If you send me pictures and brief descriptions then I'll post them, sans names and such if desired. I want to see how other creative spaces are produced and what they mean to the producer. So click away.

Building a Better Brain

Culture Influences Brain Function - JohnOneFive @ Truerumors
Culture Influences Brain Function - BJS @ Science Blog

This is the kind of thing I live for. Cultural historians are always looking for new ways to understand the minds of their subjects and how they interpreted the world around them. I don't know how much modern studies of how cultural differences affect the brain will aid historical research but any little bit helps.