Artifacts

2004-02-06 - 12:51 a.m.

Only a few chapters in, I've decided that No Logo is already an artifact, but it's definitely a useful artifact.

The chapter that I'm reading now is about the connection between early-90s activism and the rise of Branding as a marketting necessity. The chapter talks about the enthusiasm for "identity politics" ("the personal is political", etc) among university students and activists. Reading it was a little like opening a time capsule. I was in high school in the early-to-mid-90s, and I can remember the hubbub around "outing" people, the conflict over "political correctness", discussions about language and visibility and inclusiveness.

I guess that, at the same time as all that was going on, there was a sort of crisis in the marketting world. Advertising seemed, to some companies anyway, to have lost its edge, and some folks were even on the verge of panic.

Obviously, the whole marketting thing didn't go away, and it's clear that corporations haven't given up on advertising just yet (I dare you to find a place without an advertisement visible). According to the chapter I'm reading now, it was in part because of identity politics that the advertising industry experienced a renaissance. Apparently, "individuality" isn't all that hard to package and sell, and if all it takes for a product or company to be accepted by, say, the gay community is to run an ad or two where two men kiss or shop for furniture together, then why wouldn't someone embrace identity politics as a marketting strategy?

Naomi Klein, from what I can tell in this chapter, seems to view those days and those politics as being necessary, but also as being naive. It must have been easy for those early-90s activists to see progress when suddenly everything was gay/black/punk/whatever, when companies started giving same sex benefits and instituting environment-safe(r) policies, and I also think I agree with the tone of this chapter that, while progress was made, identity politics became something of a red herring quite quickly, and that the same strategies and ideas of that time have already been co-opted, and that they aren't really as effective anymore.

Which is why this chapter has me interested, because I think that the politics of No Logo are as out-of-date now as the identity politics were out-of-date in 2000 when No Logo was published.

Activism has changed. The problems we face have shifted somehow, and the tactics and ways of thinking that we might have used four or five years ago aren't as effective anymore. I'm afraid that I was riding a wave that had already crested when I attended protests in the last couple of years.

Not that public protests are passe. They've worked in various ways and circumstances for centuries, and I think that they'll always be an important part of an activist's toolbox for a long time to come - there's a reason why corruption is often accompanied by oppression and the stifling of a public's right to gather and speak out.

But I feel like the motivations, the reasonings behind some of the current movements are flawed.

Throughout the whole anti-war movement last year, even at its height when thousands of people were gathering, millions of people all over the world, I could feel something was missing. Something wasn't quite grabbing me, and I kinda suspected that others weren't quite being grabbed, either. And, after all of the excitement had died down, I don't think any of the energy that we saw was captured very efficiently. I think a lot of enthusiasm that could have been directed towards something world-changing just got wasted, in part because mainstream activism either wasn't aiming at the right target, or it wasn't using the right tools.

Of course, I'm a great big giant light-weight when it comes to activism. I've been to, like, 4 protests or something, and I haven't been able (yet!) to find any sort of project where I fit, or that is sustainable. There's a chance that it's not modern activism that's wrong, it's me (albeit, a really, really small chance. Because, really, how often am I ever wrong?).

But what I see is a bunch of groups with different agendas, trying to make progress in small ways to varying degrees of success, in a world where everything is connected and where the leftovers of identity politics (are you a marxist, a feminist, or a social justice advocate?) won't ever make very much progress anymore.

I don't have any idea of what modern activism should look like, but I'm fairly certain that it needs to change. I think there are people out there who are already making those changes, who are on the cutting edge of activism, and who are seeing the birth of the next wave of revolutionaries, but there has to be a better way to get those tactics and methods and ways of thinking into the mainstream, to take advantage of those groundswells of support that happen every few years.

I mean, wouldn't it be great if the millions of people who participated in the largest peace protest in earth's history last year (Heck, it'll be exactly a year on February 15th) were to ALL direct their energies to changing the world, instead of being sucked back into their old lives?

And there we go, I've finally written some sort of a politically entry, after promising one for about a million months. It's too bad that I'm still trapped in some sort of a well of apathy when it comes to all of this stuff. Maybe it's just because of winter.

Cheers,

The Magus

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