So then cris, let's not get dragged away from real and present issues  
by etymology. Nevertheless, what you say is useful because it points  
to the soft politics, or lifestyle politics new morality aspect of  
some who used to call themselves UNbourgeois - those for whom the  
right to be cool was always much more important than the right to a  
decent wage etc. I'm not saying it has to be one or the other but I  
suppose I am saying that one found it easy to thrive while the other  
continued to struggle - the powers that be have never been too  
bothered by lifestyle rebellion - it can be used, controlled etc. The  
revolt into style (sorry George) fed right into the capitalist/ 
consumerist project and even sustained it. Therefore some of these old  
aspects of being bourgeois or not don't mean anything any more,  
they've been stood on their head. Come on, we're 'post modernists', we  
know all about this stuff. The fact that some young man from a middle  
class family takes drugs, enjoys lots of sexual partners, wastes some  
of time, watches arty films, reads cyber fiction, knows his ultra- 
modern 'art' etc, means diddly squat. He operates within a certain  
sociological context (call it whatever you/we like, but for purposes  
here I'm calling it bourgeois) that supports him culturally and  
financially and he will soon grow up to be just like daddy, thanks. I  
suppose what I am saying is that if this debate is not Political, with  
the hard P, it is pointless.

It is tempting to say that 'art' took itself outside of this debate  
years ago. I often prefer the honesty of the blatantly commercial to  
the false revolutionary rhetoric of coolspeak, as you know. However,  
life goes on, and however twisted and illusional art (and poetry) are,  
by their very nature they are forced to engage one way or another,  
however slight, however marginal.

As regards one of these slight and marginal engagements I detect, in  
some of the more recent avant poetry coming out of the States, a move  
away from the open and generous poetry that characterized everything  
from the Objectivists to Black Mountain to Beat to New York School to  
early Language towards something a lot more enclosed and anal,  
something a lot more concerned with doing and saying the right thing,  
with status, with how it is going to be seen by others etc, with a mix  
of conforming to group expectations while highlighting its 'novel'  
expertise - i.e. bourgeois. I know what you'll say - "Give us some  
examples' and I could, but I won't, not here, so don't bother asking.

cheers

Tim A.

On 28 Sep 2009, at 10:14, cris cheek wrote:

> agreed Sean
>
> pulling together some definitions around the terms
>
> Functions as an adjective with an etymology in Middle French. It has  
> variant versions of the words for town embedded in it and was most  
> often used to describe attitudes and conformity to standards of the  
> social middle class in towns . . . marked by over-concern for  
> material interests and respectability and having a tendency towards  
> mediocrity. That pulls together a rash of definitions. Somewhat  
> later it became a way of referring to people dominated by commercial  
> and industrial interests . . . i.e. those who could be called  
> capitalistic within a manufacturing context.
>
> In Marxist discourse it became simply someone marked by owning  
> property . . . which would have included Marx and Engels . . . so  
> it's not just that but in usage more to do with "exploitation" or  
> property value for profit that is considered excessive????
>
> It has a residue of usage around the mediocritizing (euch) values of  
> convention . . . so again that sense of holding onto something that  
> acts as a weakening of aesthetic force perhaps??? that by turn  
> became attached to a raft of european perspectives about what it  
> means to be "conservative"
>
> complicated term . . . down to specific context rather than pepper- 
> spray usage as Sean suggests
>
>
> as is
>
> so far
>
> xx
>
> cc