Search

This article argues that, by looking to the generalization of a certain kind of artistic or creative character in paradigms of work, there is a view onto a different kind of relationship between culture and militant action and fugitivity. Here, the term destituent art is proposed to sketch out a form of cultural production that does or might lay waste not only to institutional targets of critique but also to the structurally immanent belief in institutional reform that underlies the aesthetics of that critique. It is an invitation to reconsider some key myths that structure art discourse (even if they appear as objects of critique) and an appeal to read that discursivity as not just productive but potentially destituent. To do so, the author reads operaismo's rereading of Marx against Marxism alongside theorizations of destituent insurrection through the subject of the artist. Some recent social movements in New York City targeting art institutions are analyzed to consider this connection. Like Colectivo Situaciones' discussion of destituent insurrection as a grammar that unifies surplus populations through their expressions of refusal (the riot, the strike, the commune) that are simultaneously modes of reorganizing forms of life, a destituent art would not signal a turn to a productive pessimism—that all creative work is already subsumed—but that the cultivation of destituent power actualizes and is actualized by the aesthetic production of places of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elite cultural fields are often not diverse. Existing studies have examined how marginalized cultural producers are actively discriminated against or excluded from positions of prestige, but less is known about how ethnoracial inequality affects the evaluative processes used to assess products in fields of cultural production. This article analyzes 120 in-depth interviews with critically-recognized chefs in New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area and 1,380 Michelin restaurant reviews to uncover the system of insidious racial inequality that shapes evaluation in the American fine dining field. I find that there are three logics of evaluation—of (1) technique, (2) creativity, and (3) authenticity—that are differentially enacted for distinct ethnoracial categories of restaurants in the field. I show how these different, racialized evaluative processes result in the systematic devaluation of culinary products categorically associated with non-whiteness, what I call Ethnic restaurants, and disproportionate consecration of products associated with whiteness, which I term Classic and Flexible restaurants. I bring the race/ethnicity and sociology of culture literatures together to illuminate the ways in which inequality infiltrates the logics that organize systems of value in fields of cultural production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the formative but largely unacknowledged role played by women in shaping the material and intellectual cultural productions of the mimeograph revolution in mid-century New York City. I argue that women poets used their positions as editors of little magazines to claim space – material, textual, cultural, and metaphorical – in literary and social networks in which they faced gendered marginalization. I suggest that the varied success with which they were able to do so reveals the complexities of editing, the uneven nature of the influences of gender, the determining role of domestic spaces, and the significance of affective labor in relation to the mimeograph revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes how Interface Archive (IA), a community archive in Brooklyn, New York, provides access through an open stacks policy and experiential learning, allowing unique educational opportunities. Topics discussed include brief history of IA including its archive collections and day-to-day activities, its mission which is to explore the link between cultural production and social movements, and impact of the IA activities on the growth of collection through regular donations.

Copyright of Communication Theory (1050-3293) is the property of Oxford University Press / USA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: The history of New York’s creative districts from Greenwich Village in the early 1900s to Bushwick today shows that the unanticipated consequences of unplanned or naturally occurring areas where artists work and live are higher housing prices, more intensive capital investment, and eventual displacement and gentrification. Despite predominant motifs of grittiness and transgression, the esthetic representation of “difference” in creative districts attracts non-creative cultural consumers who develop a taste for an authentic, bohemian lifestyle. Cultural entrepreneurs, some of whom are creative producers themselves, enable knowledgeable consumers’ entry into the creative district, followed eventually by the media, more consumers, and real estate developers. The little state regulation of artists’ housing that exists does not serve the stated goal, for the building of a district’s reputation as “creative” results in group out-migration to other places. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This study explores New York City's underground rock ethos at the legendary, now defunct rock club CBGB & OMFUG (Country Bluegrass Blues & Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers). The traditional confidence (or 'con') game model is employed to examine the processes by which the CBGB event was accomplished. I argue that the club's allure was fundamentally attached to its claims of authenticity, and that the traditional con game model is an underused resource for contesting such claims. By observing the interplay among the club owner, boosters, musicians, support personnel, and patrons, I develop a theory of active cultural production as a kind of collective strategy employed by multiple actors, all in search of authenticity as a commodity to be produced and consumed. While making note of their important differences, the study demonstrates ways in which the production of live music shares many formal properties with that of confidence games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How are patterns of cultural production informed by the nature of the field? In particular, I am concerned with how the mode of cultural production mediates relations among creators and, in turn, how these relations affect cultural production. I also inquire into how these two sets of relations are influenced by the connection between the field of cultural production and the larger social world. I rest my inquiry in the field of culinary arts. Drawing on ethnographic research with elite chefs in mid- to high-status restaurants in New York City and San Francisco, where I have conducted 45 in-depth interviews and observation in their restaurant kitchens, I analyze how actors subjectively manage the institutional conditions of authorship and differentiation through their discursive practices on the mode of cultural production and on their relations with other creators. By analyzing how chefs manage these issues, we will also observe how they subjectively deal with their objective position in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]