"Symphony": Music Appreciation for Middle England

The closing focus of BBC4’s recently repeated series Symphony is on Dmitri Shostakovich’s 9th. Written in 1945, it incensed the authorities with its sardonic, untriumphalist character contrary to the great outpouring they are said to have expected as Soviet riposte to Ludwig van Beethoven’s monumental 9th Choral Symphony at the end of World War II. There is ongoing speculation about Shostakovich’s two-fingered gesture and at whom it may have been aimed (if it was such a gesture, consciously aimed or otherwise). But it is hardly likely that, as suggested here, he intended the 9th to be a ‘goodbye’ to the ‘great symphonic tradition in Germany’ which had ‘come to an end’. There are many cultural assumptions embedded in this statement, which interprets music history along very particular lines. Even so, German composers did continue to write symphonies after the war (Hans Werner Henze alone produced ten between 1947 and 2000). Moreover, Shostakovich himself wrote a further six symphonies, completing his 15th in 1971 and thereby refuting any supposed death of the symphony itself despite the series’s abrupt halt at 1945 with murky hints of ‘new forms’. So why might Symphony choose to ignore post-war and contemporary composers, despite the genre’s continuing importance today (Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies being just three, high-profile contemporary symphonic composers)? We might answer this by exploring some ways in which the series is a product of those very cultural assumptions contained within the statement about Shostakovich and the German tradition.

An initial perusal of Symphony reveals little investigation in any generic or formal sense; rather, we are taken on a journey through the symphonic canon of works from an imagined start to finish through biographical and historical surveys of the ‘great composers’ and some of the better-known ‘great masterpieces’ they composed. As cultural sightseers, we visit places of interest including museums preserving a totemised bric-a-brac of daily life alongside venerated autograph scores. We see many gravestones and hear many eulogies; conductors, musicologists, curators and living composers (although whether themselves symphonists we are never told), offer glowing descriptions of these past, iconic figures and their music. We hear numerous symphonic extracts, performed as tantalising sound-bites in a dramatic narrative charting the apparent progress of the symphony through the ages. Glimpses are shown of the workings of the orchestra. Yet more emphasis is placed on the role of the conductor as interpreter supreme. This is high gloss, ‘high culture’, stripped of nuance and meaningful critique; beautifully presented, but hollowed out for a passive, unquestioning audience.

This might seem harshly dismissive of what is, on one level, a fun and informative entertainment programme. But the very blandness of Symphony arises from its particular ideology; a smoothly unchallenging approach to music history which raises concerns about the place of classical music in society today. There is ongoing questioning as to why classical music has become a museum culture largely comprising ritualistic performances of familiar works from the past to ever-shrinking niche audiences of ever-increasing average age*. This series not only fails to address any of these issues, but is itself a product of the museum culture, pandering to an archetypically genteel classical music audience and inviting others to join through a kind of highbrow marketing. By constructing a narrative within the blinkered confines of post-imperial Home Counties values, Symphony merely succeeds in reinforcing cultural myths about symphonic music. Alas, in so doing, it confirms the reality that classical music today is simply - beyond a tiny minority interest and bar the occasional, fleeting exception - no longer a part of serious cultural discourse or debate.

Myths of Genius and Transcendence

The cultural myth most central to the series and, indeed, to most thinking about classical music, is a continued acceptance of Romantic assumptions about ‘genius’ and the transcendence of art as expressed through the ‘work’. According to this view, the work itself becomes a cultural icon; it is lifted through the ‘vision’ of its creator from its localised, historical context to attain independent universality and timelessness. The composer himself becomes a god-like figure (this is a masculine ideal, which may help to explain why so few women have been given the opportunity to write symphonies), imbued with super-human intellect and emotional sensitivity; often a brooding, difficult personality at odds with society and certainly ahead of his time. It is the job of the listener to seek to understand the vision of the composer; not necessarily through the acquisition of technical, formalist knowledge (although this helps), but ultimately through a combination of emotional sympathy and spiritual aspiration.

These notions are inherited from a combination of post-Enlightenment thinking about the importance of creative freedom and emotional self-expression with what amounts to a cult-like worship of Beethoven. Whilst they may be pertinent to many 19th Century European composers, therefore, they are anachronistic when applied to music written before (certainly mid) Beethoven and questionable as a contemporary cultural ideal. In the 19th Century, such thinking was applied to the music of the time or very recent past, whereas today it exists largely as a form of rose-tinted nostalgia for ‘great composers’ and works from more distant eras. So it is not surprising that Symphony should avoid contemporary music because descriptions of ‘genius’ and ‘transcendence’ applied to living composers - whilst they certainly occur - can begin to feel socially inappropriate. Such discomfort might risk the museum culture in turn by throwing a more critical light on those very notions of genius revealing them to be, in fact, a particular ideology; a distinct set of values regarding not just ideas about ‘greatness’ - which, strangely, never quite gets defined - but relying on particular assumptions about the very nature of music and creativity.

Nonetheless, Symphony adopts Romantic values wholesale, even applying them to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn to whom such concepts would have been entirely alien. Mozart, we are told in the first programme (tellingly named Genesis and Genius), was so in thrall to a symphonic ideal that he felt ‘inspired’ to ‘give something to the form’ through his last three symphonies. What he might have given beyond his ‘palate of emotional intensity’ is not, alas, made clear. Likewise Haydn, whose life and music are described in terms of ‘epic journeys’, is said to have ‘taken the idea of what the symphony could be further and further down the path’. This assertion is based on his deepening self-expression as symphonic music increasingly appealed to individual as well as to public reception. Might such ‘expressiveness’ be what is meant by the ‘idea’ of the symphony? We are left with no way of knowing, let alone what it might mean to take the symphony down some path. It would have been intriguing to explore this in light of the later point that Richard Wagner was an essentially symphonic ‘composer of ideas’ (albeit almost exclusively utilising opera or Gesmantkunstwerk) but this latter is merely given as information, leaving us really none the wiser.

Indeed, little of substance is said about symphonic composing. We are told that the symphony is generally a work with four (or so) movements of contrasting character and an allusion is made to the use of sonata form in opening movements as taking a motif on a ‘journey’. There are points made regarding orchestration and some time is spent distinguishing absolute from programmatic music in the form of the symphonic poem. But throughout, the commentary is shallow and ultimately reliant on the audience having a fair degree of pre-knowledge; a newcomer to classical music would surely be lost among the superlatives. For all the featured composers are lavished with quasi-Romantic phrases which, as well as being value-laden, actually tell us nothing about the composers’ work beyond its being in some way ‘great’. Music may be notoriously difficult to describe in words but this does not deter the Symphony team, who litter the commentary with effusive descriptions like so much verbal confetti. By the time we get to the ‘incredible visionary’ Charles Ives, the devotional tone is so pervasive that his being said to be ‘so ahead of his time, his music still isn’t known today’, amounts to more of the same dreary adulation.

The Myth of History as Progress

In the series’s march forward through the ages, we see another cultural myth central to Symphony’s narrative; that is the presentation of music history as progress. The history of the symphony is described as the relentless advance of Enlightenment ideals through Europe and beyond in a gathering crescendo of modernity from Haydn’s post-French Revolution London Symphonies to Shostakovich’s 9th at the end of World War II. As already noted, this amounts to the authoritative view of Western music history familiar to ‘educated’ listeners. However, not only does this narrative constitute a particular interpretation of history rather than being fact as presented here, but it also presupposes some deep contradictions; not least, in relation to the music itself. Every composer discussed is said to have been pushing the symphony ‘forward’, ‘turning the page of symphonic history’, and ‘breaking rules’ (although these ‘rules’ are never explained, let alone how they are broken). Certainly, each of the featured composers develops a profoundly individual voice and, of course, approaches to and methods of symphonic writing change over time and according to fashion. But the implication that history is, therefore, in some way causal or goal-directed entails huge ideological leaps.

In any case, there lies a problem in the towering figure of Beethoven, around whom both the series and received music history, pivots (the second episode is the only one of the four to bear a single composer’s name, Beethoven and Beyond). If Beethoven is the ‘indisputable hero’ against whom all other composers are measured, what does it mean for  later composers to be nonetheless ‘developing’ the symphony, ‘taking it forward’ ‘beyond’ Beethoven and becoming ‘great’ in their own right? Progress, it seems, is something to be strived for but which is, ultimately, unattainable. With this paradox we arrive firmly at post-Enlightenment, Romantic ideals, but with the disturbing addendum that no composer has managed - or, by implication, ever will manage - to surpass Beethoven’s nine symphonies as these continue to be held as the utopian pinnacle of Western musical achievement. It turns out that a strong belief underlying current mainstream music-history is actually a contradiction; for, on the one hand, Romantic ideals are still held to be supreme but, on the other, they have failed and, moreover, must fail. Musical ‘progress’ has not been, and cannot be, made and the age of the ‘great’ composer is, therefore, dead. In light of this conundrum, it is perhaps not so surprising that a museum culture obsessed with the past should have taken hold regarding classical music.

More problematic is a question regarding Romantic ideas of the transcendent work: for how can a symphony be at once a timeless masterpiece and yet continually surpassed in greatness by later works by the same composer (a point made most vociferously in the series about the symphonies of Sibelius)?  Unless, that is, some masterpieces are more masterful than others. These contradictions are, clearly, difficult to reconcile but Symphony merely presents us with swathes of interpretation on the familiar yet ludicrous sliding-scale of genius; a system of indefinable value judgements based on arcane and culturally out-moded criteria. That late-Romantic composers such as Johannes Brahms were intimidated by Beethoven coming from behind with the ‘tramp of a giant’ is no reason for us to continue to view music history, or to judge musical ‘greatness’, through that particular lens. Similarly, the fact that many composers after Beethoven (like Hector Berlioz) idolised him, is no reason for contemporary discourse about classical music still to be dominated by the cult of personality as demonstrated, alas, by this very series.

The Twentieth Century Neglected

Nevertheless, it is instructive to note some personalities absent from the narrative as this throws further light on Symphony’s cultural bias and returns us to the series’s lack of exploration of recent and contemporary music. For, as well as ignoring post-war music entirely, the programme avoids any mention of key modernists from the first half of the Twentieth Century beyond a curt dismissal of the avant-garde. The contention in programme four, Revolution and Rebirth, is that composers writing in late-Romantic idioms such as Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams were ‘actually more important than the avant-garde because they were saying very important things about modernity to a large audience’. This opens an intriguing line of enquiry which, however, remains unexplored, as are the implied assumptions about value and modernity. Elgar and Vaughan Williams undoubtedly were - and remain - important but not all modernists rejected the symphony by any means. Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, for instance, wrote chamber symphonies and a symphony respectively that were very much taken to be saying something important about modernity which continues to reverberate today. But if audience size is the real arbiter of importance, it seems downright odd also to ignore Igor Stravinsky, whose several symphonies placed issues of modernity (as well as specific aspects of modernism) before very large audiences, including via the gramophone, which technological advance the programme rightly deems important.

What cultural value-system might be lurking here to explain the total absence of these and other major Twentieth Century figures (like Carl Nielsen and Serge Prokofiev) from Symphony? A look at the preceding, third episode, New Nations and New Worlds, might offer a clue. For here we discover that it is nationalism that supposedly propelled the symphony from Austria and Germany across late-Romantic Europe, forward into the Twentieth Century and across the Atlantic to the USA. Before we examine this particular narrative more closely, it is worth noting that, whatever aims the many, contrasting avant-garde composers may have had, they were certainly not nationalist in any Romantic sense. So it is, perhaps, unsurprising that they should be excluded from this particular version of history regardless of their actual contribution as symphonic composers.

European Nationalism and Germanic Decline

Looking more closely at the third episode and issues of nationalism, it is true that many Romantic composers sought to establish an individual style that also reflected the music of their birth country. Antonín Dvořák was one such, but it is questionable how far Jean Sibelius continued to be nationalist beyond his youth as distinct from getting stuck with the label; indeed, in terms of his overall career, Sibelius might more accurately be described as a modernist. What is clear, however, is that nationalism has long been a catch-all term to describe music (symphonic or otherwise) which incorporates features of indigenous folk or popular music. Music, that is, of any nation besides Austria or Germany. Because, in keeping with music-historical orthodoxy, the central pillar of the musical establishment as described in Symphony is assumed to be Austro-German (and, incidentally, ‘serious’ as distinct from ‘popular’). Indeed we are told with astonishing assurance that ‘German music was international’. What might this actually mean?

Similar to the phenomenon of individual composers being subject to comparison with Beethoven, in today’s symphonic cultural museum, past Austro-German ‘tradition’ is still taken to be the cultural norm against which other nations are viewed. The resulting double-standards are breath-taking. When Franz Schubert or Brahms, say, are shown to utilise indigenous folk or popular music, their motivation is rarely described in terms of nationalist sentiment. But when Dvořák, Vaughan Williams or Aaron Copland do the same, the talk instantly focuses on ‘national identity’, representations of ‘native soil’ and ‘popularisation’. That such blatantly unbalanced cultural analysis should still be a feature of Western classical music thinking - post-modernism notwithstanding - is an irony that would surely not be lost on those symphonic nationalists who attempted to establish their music in its own right and to challenge the constant comparisons to hegemonic Austro-German ideals that they themselves suffered.

Let us return, then, in the light of these uncomfortable issues around nationalism, to the notion of symphonic decline from the fourth episode with which we started. If the ‘great symphonic tradition in Germany’ is held to have ‘come to an end’ around 1945, it appears we should take this to indicate the loss of some supposedly international cultural custodian. An awful lot of ‘keening’ is described in this final episode, from Shostakovich bassoons to Vaughan Williams bugles and Elgarian oboes. The implication beyond the actual horrors of death and war is clear (as if this were not enough) in a larger sense of cultural decline absolutely at odds with the ‘rebirth’ of the title which, in any case, is never seen actually to materialise. Might this loss of German tradition and ensuing downward slide reveal another underlying reason to end the series at 1945 as if the symphony itself stops there? One would hope not as the implied reliance on Germanic culture to lead the way would be distasteful to say the least. Even within the series’s own dubious terms, further mileage could have been made of the Revolution and Rebirth title with a post-war shift of focus to the Soviet Bloc and refugees from there, if only to bring the narrative closer to the present day. For a clear and continued commitment to the symphony as a genre was palpable post-war in Communist countries such as Poland, to name just one example; there, coming after Karol Szymanowski, with Witold Lutosławski, Krzysztof Penderecki and Andrzej Panufnik.

A great deal more could - and probably should - be said about Symphony as the smooth jolliness of its tone is a cover for so much blithe parochialism. To say the series misses an opportunity is a huge understatement - and not only to discuss contemporary composers and works. For the prevailing museum culture must be overcome if classical music is to re-gain relevance in wider contemporary life as a living art form. Indeed, a contemporary perspective of the symphony as a living genre could have been made a base from which to present a history; by all means including a review of orthodox notions of music-history, but described as such and placed in a framework of critical exploration. The irony of setting so much store by historical interpretation of the unquestioning type we see in Symphony is that it ultimately falls foul of the very issue discussed in episode two with regard to wildly contrasting uses of Beethoven’s 9th (firstly in Nazi Germany, then later at the fall of the Berlin Wall and lastly as an honouring of victims of 9/11); and that is propaganda. There is no such thing as a ‘neutral’ history, and this is as true of music-history as any other. This series demonstrates that how we view history tells us more about who we are in the present than the past times to which we refer. As such, beneath the glossy exterior, it paints a sadly impoverished picture of mainstream classical music culture today.


* See, for example, Lydia Goehr’s enormously influential: The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music published by OUP 2007

Response to Weekend Magazine Gay Special: Guardian 21/4/12

It is hard to know quite who the ‘Gay special’ edition of last Saturday’s Guardian Weekend Magazine was aimed at. Evidently it was felt at the newspaper that a focus on gay culture and gay people was required but why and for whom was not made clear by the resulting publication, which was a kind of ‘rough guide’ verging on titillation for the straight, liberal mainstream. With some bravado, the magazine offered a 'life and style’ perspective on ‘everything gay, from comedy and fashion to family and politics’. Whilst this was never likely to amount to more than a cultural snap-shot it was, however, crudely done and, in places, ill-judged.

Overall, it seemed an exercise in box-ticking that pulled out all the clichés. An interview with Alan Carr supplied the obligatory celebrity tv comic (with the added frisson of his being criticised in some gay quarters for being ‘too’ camp). There was a serious article which purported to be about gay parenting but which was actually about the legal difficulties around international surrogacy affecting straight as well as gay parents (amended online on 23rd April to clarify that the British couple reported as using a Ukrainian surrogacy service were not actually gay).

A sad first-person portrait of a man struggling to reconcile his homosexuality with his Christian beliefs contrasted with an article investigating the apparently contradictory phenomenon of gay (male) Tories; the lame conclusion here being that - shock - Tories can be as diverse as gays! Alongside the pop psychology, careful gender and political balance was ensured through an otherwise banal Q and A with Labour MP Angela Eagle, whilst further entertainment was provided with a ‘special’ gay version of the familiar Weekend Blind Date which was, however, no less inane than usual.

Inevitably, there were shots of gay fashion icons (‘gay’ apparently equaling ‘fashion’ in popular parlance; at least, regarding gay men) and photographs of witty protesters’ slogans were on hand to reassure that gay activism has a cuddlier side. But, veering to a sharply different tone, perhaps the creepiest offering was a confessional article on lesbian lust which, by casting the author in a predatory light, unfortunately only served to showcase that particular lesbian stereotype.

How much more nuanced and genuinely thought-provoking about contemporary gay life were pieces from other mainstream media outlets that same weekend. In the Times (Saturday) Matthew Parris considered the fluidity of male sexuality against a backdrop of bisexual taboo whilst in Sunday’s Observer, Barbara Ellen questioned the pressure on gay women pop singers to present themselves as bisexual rather than be openly lesbian. Both these pieces engaged with issues of sexual politics in a way which, unlike the Guardian’s patronising offering, presupposed a readership capable of subtle thinking. By all means, let’s have a lighthearted look at gay culture - but can we please find a way of doing so which doesn’t marginalise and over-simplify what is a hugely diverse LGBT community at a time when calls for equal rights (regarding marriage, for example) are revealing continued homophobia in many quarters?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/series/weekend-magazine-gay-special
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/  (subscription viewing only)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/22/barbara-ellen-lesbian-popstars-very-rare?INTCMP=SRCH
http://philosovariant.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/what-does-gay-mean.html

Letter to Eleanor Mills re "Cuddling Schoolboys Kiss Homophobia Goodbye", Sunday Times 8/4/12

I read your column about the decline of homophobia amongst teenage boys in yesterday's Sunday Times with great interest but some dismay. I would love to believe that you are right in suggesting that we have come from "homo-hysteria to homo-acceptance in a quarter of a century" but, alas, I think you are looking at the issue through very rose-tinted spectacles. The increased tactility you describe amongst some teenage boys is clearly a good thing and might indeed be indicative of positive changes in acceptable masculine behaviour among those groups - but I would suggest this is not as indicative of wider changes in attitude towards LGBT people as you might hope.

Mark McCormack's study is only based on three secondary schools in one town and Ruth Hunt of Stonewall has therefore urged caution with regard to his findings:
"I think it matches what we know in that some schools which are good on this are very, very good. But plenty are not......we still see many schools with significant problems."
Indeed, the youth support charity Allsorts found in a 2010 survey of Brighton schools that 16% of bullied primary school children and 23% of bullied secondary school children reported that the bullying was homophobic in nature. Of LGBT pupils, half reported they had been subject to homophobic bullying. Allsorts spokesperson Jess Ward commented regarding McCormack's study: "It is definitely not our experience, I'm afraid. It remains the second-highest reason children give for bullying." The problem is greater still in Wales, where a 2009 Welsh assembly Government survey found that by far the most prevalent from of bullying in Welsh schools was homophobic. I am sure you will recall the recent tragic suicide of 15 year old Dominic Crouch after homophobic bullying. Sadly, suicide rates for LGBT teens are far higher than for other groups; Dominic wasn't even gay, but subject to gay abuse nonetheless.

Regarding the negative use of the word "gay", do please read my article (published in Planet magazine 205 in February and available to read here: http://philosovariant.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/what-does-gay-mean.html) for a very different view of this change in the language.

http://philosovariant.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/what-does-gay-mean.html

Owl

‘Too much, too much’
Cries the owl behind my head.
Stopping and starting, a
Whole gathering of owls,
Hooting and squeaking as I play
Spot the branch,
Swiveling my head into the
Dark aroma of night.

I sit back down and that
One, insistent voice
Starts up again behind me.

It seems I
Haven’t yet got the message.

Form

Rivulets of sound become matter.
A repeat signals something new -
Time relived as the
Day drains into evening.

Fluid, precise
Exuberant, poised.
All tactics in a
Game of waiting.

A change of key heralds development -
Time spun forwards backwards to a
Recapitulation which will
Come and then go.

Beyond Lehman Sisters: New Feminism and Economic Collapse

It is hardly news that only a tiny handful of the world’s economic and business leaders are women and that the glass ceiling remains a real obstacle to their promotion. Many women therefore welcomed Christine Lagarde’s quip when, as French Finance Minister, a year after the global banking collapse of 2008, she suggested that the crisis would have looked very different if Lehman Brothers investment bank had been run by Lehman Sisters. Her remark triggered renewed debate about gender inequality in the financial sector and struck a chord in all areas of the workplace at a time of intense criticism of reckless corporate behaviour. Since then, in an ironic aside to Lagarde’s subsequent appointment as Head of the International Monetary Fund, yet darker aspects of the male-dominance culture within the corridors of fiscal power have been highlighted by the scandals attending the downfall of previous Head Dominic Strauss-Kahn (not to mention the serious allegations of sex crime). The need for reform is both clear and urgent. So how far has the ongoing debate got to the root of gender inequality in business and, beyond, to the root of global economic crisis? The answer is not very far. But the reasons for that lie as much within the terms of the debate itself as within the huge complexities of the issue and the difficulties of enacting reform.

Much of the response to Lagarde’s suggestion has been to take it at face value and pursue those questions directly pertaining to the comment itself; the most obvious being whether she is right. Would it really make a difference to corporate behaviour if more women were at the helm? If so, why? What forms might this difference take? Can we be certain any difference would be positive? Positive for whom exactly? Are we talking in purely economic terms of business performance or, more widely, about the role of business and employment in society? Whatever the starting point, the issues very quickly become multiple, complex and far-reaching. Even so, things would appear simple at base for the statistics documenting the lack of women in business are dire; a mere 15% of directors in FTSE100 companies are women despite growing evidence of improved market success for those companies with a greater female presence in the boardroom. To take just one study, a four-year, 2009 US analysis of Fortune 500 companies found that returns were much higher on equity (53%), sales (42%) and invested capital (66%) for those with most women in top management teams compared to those dominated by men. Echoing other surveys, the results were strongest in those companies with at least three women on the board of directors. So it seems clear that encouraging women up the corporate ladder is vital to improving society’s fiscal health - if not to saving its very economic core from potential meltdown.

But there is a growing and uncomfortable sense of deja-vu about the debate, not least because it is failing to address deeper systemic issues. As opinions polarise around Lagarde’s remark and how to tackle the often misogynist cronyism of the old boys’ network, a crass kind of dualistic thinking has re-emerged around gender issues on all sides of the debate in which women are seen only in comparison to men. Indeed, Lagarde’s very comment is predicated upon such binary thinking for, however challenging it may be to the financial establishment to raise issues of gender from within its very heart, and, however controversial her grounds may be for a favourable comparison of female behaviour to male within that predominantly male environment, she is nonetheless advocating nothing more radical than a call for more women to hold positions of corporate power. In a way reminiscent of the identity politics of the ‘80s and ‘90s, she has invited discussion of the role of women in business in terms of how far women are included and represented and in terms of the particular skills they might bring to the table. But, in mainstream circles at least, that discussion does not extend to a feminist critique of Western capitalism itself, despite the system being one in which women, usually participating as unpaid, cheap or cheaper labour, are very much poorer, second class citizens. (Even those women lucky enough to be in full-time employment can expect to earn 16.4% less than their male counterparts, while all women aged 40 earn 27% less than men of the same age according to a 2010 study by the Equality and Human Rights Commission; a statistic sadly demonstrating a very unfavourable comparison of women’s position to that of men’s).

In its current form, the Western capitalist system is not just failing financially, but it is also increasingly dysfunctional at a cultural level; for, whilst lip-service is paid to the supposed mobility of the free-market, in reality, the system is designed in such a way that profit inevitably comes at the expense of social equality both here in the UK and abroad through, for example, morally-dubious foreign outsourcing practices. Indeed, the structure and behaviour of corporations and financial markets is increasingly revealed to run counter to democratic ideals and basic principles of socio-economic justice. The very urgency of the renewed gender debate is testimony to the failure of previous feminist campaigns in business and politics that may well have changed some attitudes towards women for the better and opened some doors for them in the process, but which have been unable to effect systemic reform and are now foundering on the rocks of economic globalisation and collapse.


Naomi Klein is one commentator who might urge us not to miss the economic wood for the trees at this time of global financial crisis. Ten years ago, in her hard-hitting de-construction of corporate culture “No Logo”, Klein argued that an obsession with identity politics prevented activists of the late ‘80s and ‘90s from noticing the ingress of a far greater threat to freedom and equality; identity branding. She contested that, as activists indulged in self-referential turf-fights over the representation and visibility of gays, women and ethnic minorities, they lost sight of the bigger economic picture; they simply did not notice when powerful corporations, already switched on to the youth marketing goldmine of ‘cool’, began actively to appropriate notions of diversity as marketing tools (those infamous Benetton ads appearing to challenge racial stereotypes, for example). Indeed, a corporate coup d’etat took place under the activists’ very noses in which companies successfully exploited global markets in new ways by means of cynical appeal to oppressed groups, utilising the very language of social activism (Nike, for example, promoting sports shoes as objects of female and black freedom and status). In Klein’s words: “identity politics weren’t fighting the system, or even subverting it. When it came to the vast new industry of corporate branding, they were feeding it.”

Today - and right on cue it seems, amidst claims of a supposed ‘90s cultural revival - a new wave of identity politics is cresting as brand-worship has become ubiquitous on every social and cultural level despite rising unemployment, the outstripping of wages by inflation and increasing chasms between rich and poor, the West and developing nations. Governments are adopting punitive austerity programmes and slashing public spending in moves that target their most vulnerable citizens but which are so far failing to halt the collapse of the Eurozone and global financial systems following the credit crunch. Against this backdrop, heated debates are taking place in the UK about everything from Scandinavian-style boardroom quotas for women to new trends in oxymoronic Tory feminism as the Conservative party tries to stop the haemorrhage of its hard-hit female support base. But the toxic legacies of Thatcherite financial deregulation and profit-worship with which we are now faced serve as an ironic reminder that greater involvement by women at management level hardly guarantees greater long-term economic stability, nor does it ensure financial justice for those women and men in the West and the developing world who are paying the highest price for an increasingly sociopathic Western capitalism. Seen from this perspective, current speculation about whether women might, for example, be more or less prone than men to indulge in risky business ventures is not only based on banal gender stereotype, but would ultimately appear to be beside the point.

As the reality and consequences of economic collapse hit home, substantive, not just symbolic, reform is now urgent. It is more vital than ever to become aware of the bigger economic picture and to take action in light of its problems. Whilst battles to do away with glass ceilings and bring about changes in the gender balance of financial institutions are undoubtedly crucial, they can equally be used as a convenient red herring to distract from the wider, more fundamental need to effect deep, systemic reform in the way capitalist structures operate; the urgency of which calls for real, feminist vision from women - and men - experts within the business world. Of course, some form of identity politics need not be incompatible with a broader focus on economic reform but that is the point; the debate needs to take conscious account of the failure of concepts such as ‘trickle-down’, with the unwarranted faith in market success eventually to provide social and economic progress for all. If we truly aspire to notions of democracy and freedom, then ways must be found to establish real principles of equal opportunity and equal access at the heart of our socio-economic system, not merely as desperate add-ons in an attempt to find some kind of panacea to financial and social disaster. As a society, that will entail not just a willingness to tackle the behaviour of powerful corporations that are currently failing to run the system even in their own interests, but to take a good, hard look at our monetary values and undertake a cultural reassessment of how we define ourselves as women and men within the financial landscape. We now need to decide what roles we choose to accept as gendered individuals within a financial system that so plainly affects not just our own but the socio-economic well-being of other women, men and children across the globe.

Published on Interactive Ecology 17th March 2012: paper.li/saphyreblue/1306436290

pulse

left
up down sideways along
breathe
rest head lie back

lift eyes to the grey sky and
marvel at the rain rain rain

everything soaked in tiredness
but the pulse
unrelenting uneven
stubborn angry

alive