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Sunday, 11 November 2007 Laim, I couldn’t agree with you more. I have been ruminating over your emailed response to the blog (I love receiving responses; that way I know I am communicating, albeit indirectly, with someone.) I hope my follow-up helps to elaborate on what I meant by my original sketchblog post. Let me just say before I begin, I hope the sketchblog becomes more of a springboard for the ideas I write about in the regular blog, like they have (will) with this post. I get these ideas, suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, and feel the urgency to get them down on paper, make them manifest, as a record of their existence. I suppose because the world is subtle, riddled with details, and we’re lumbering creatures whose senses fix on what they need and ignore the rest, we need time to let ideas soak, simmer, and incubate. With so many of our ideas and plans for life, there is never enough time to implement them all. We’re selective, not comprehensive. And for that matter, a good deal of our ideas turn out to be bad ones, and thankfully never come to fruition. Thus, the job of the unconscious (sketchbook) is to act as a workshop for rough shaping ideas, storing observations until something relevant appears in the landscape. But alas, this one has stuck to the wall like spaghetti noodles ready to come out of the boiling water. (Really, I just like that image. I am reminded of my eccentric aunt from Vegas who told me on a visit out to see her, when I was five, that you know the noodles are ready to eat if they stick to the wall. Much to my surprise, upon saying so, she threw some noodles to the wall.) I am here, interested in these common roots in terms of the relation between Midwestern criticism and Coastal critical theory. The idea of a “Midwest culture” never really occurs to most. However, this ‘Culture’ comes intuitively to those of us living in the Midwest and so I (we) don’t consciously think about it. Certainly, given the high degree of ignorance (or is it simply lack of exposure?) of the West Coast/East Coast-ers concerning Midwesterners – who are often stereotyped as unsophisticated and stubborn – I feel obligated to detail the Culture of upper Midwest. Though, by taking a closer look at Midwestern culture should help to clarify the record and realize certain things in the upper Midwest, particularly Wisconsin, are actually culturally progressive.
CNN recently conducted a survey to discover readers' favorite American cities, based on certain aspects like culture, people, dining and shopping. The list is supposed to serve as a basis for travelers who are looking to visit different parts of the country and experience the richness and benefits that each city has to offer. Unsurprisingly, the list, both frustrating and annoying, focuses on the "culture-rich" coastal cities like New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, while almost entirely ignoring the whole Midwestern United States. In fact, the only two Midwestern cities that were even considered for this survey were Chicago and Minneapolis. There's so much going on in the Midwest, it's a shame that, as a region, we are constantly maligned and designated as "fly-over states" just because we don't have the hustle and bustle of the big coastal cities. Like the little scientific evidence (though families have always intuitively figured) on the importance of birth order, the Midwest becomes the obvious middle child. Stuck for life in a center seat, the Midwest and middle child alike get shortchanged on national, family recognition. Unlike the firstborn East Coast who has an immediate historical, cultural, and artistic accessibility directly tied to the old world (the dogged achiever in the family), and the West Coast who represent the youngest, looser canons in the family the gamblers and adventure-seeking cowboys of the wild west, the artists, and “visionaries” of Hollywood, where does that leave those of us in between? (We are the last to revcieve the cultural imports from Europe and Asia.) The problem is that it is so hard to define the middle-borns, and largely due to the fact that it is so hard to define who they are (were) growing up. The youngest in the family, but only until someone else comes along (we were the West before the Middle West), we are both student and teacher, babysat and babysitter. People from the Midwest are often stereotyped as meek, rustic, and stern. We are praised for our friendliness and authenticity, but criticized for our grim and solemn steadiness. Though, perhaps this seeming downfall is our advantage; not willing or pursing something, but letting a little time elapse, gives the brain a change to dismiss some bad ideas, free itself from habitual ways of reasoning, try new angles, and wait. Wait for something relevant to enter the mix. Could it be possible that the Midwest does not contribute in any way to the global art world or to general cultural discourse on account of its incompatibility? On the coasts, in the past forty years we have witnessed a paradigm shift in thinking. New disciplines (e.g., cultural studies, visual studies) and new fields (e.g., women’s studies, gay and lesbian studies, postcolonial studies) have emerged, which have eroded the sold and somewhat rigid traditions of art criticism and art history, shaking their very foundations. I imagine some leading Coastal curators qualifying the Midwest phenomena as “second hand,” passed down from New York and L.A., all while advising us Midwesterners to take crash courses of the relevant cultural theories to catch up theoretically with them. But to what extent does Coastal discourse enable the articulation of Midwestern experiences? Midwest modernists, by virtue of their more universalist claims about ‘Culture’ and ‘Art’ have traditionally turned to the Coasts and to the ‘World’ outside. In the present discursive context, however, Midwestern minds feel uneasy operating in the Postmodern discourse (the Midwest has long mistrusted Northeastern elitism). After all, these frameworks are like clothes that were tailored to someone else’s body size rather than to one’s own. The Midwest does have a place in the dominant paradigm, but only as a secondary one as befitted with “other” within the dominant paradigm, thus we have had the predicament of orienting ourselves. Thus, assuming the their Postmodern theory is accessible to everyone, Coastal theorists do not understand why their Midwestern colleagues still hesitate to assimilate the “ready-made” theory.
Postmodernism would seem to come in handy, as it could offer a possibility for the region to join the process of common thinking and to fully articulate their own voices. That is, this new way of thinking, based on the awareness of structures of power that build and legitimize reality through representation, has created a multiplicity of voices and questioned the credibility of grand narratives. Thus the Midwest has been liberated from the marginal position imposed on them by the modernist paradigm. And yet, the new critical practice is present only sporadically – the dominant reaction being opposition, along with a stubborn adherence to a version of Modernism, which on the coasts has lost its validity. While Postmodernists contend that the modernists’ ethnocentric and elitist dismissal of cultures and subcultures outside of the ‘canon’ is oppressive. Modernists, in turn hold that postmodernism is another example of cultural imperialism. Certainly in the practice of Midwestern culture criticism a persistent survival of the elements of modernism is preventing the assimilation of new thinking. Though, I would argue, the modernist paradigm of the region is not pure formalism. (But more of this new, renovated Modernism later…) What, then, is the cause of this phenomenon? What are those points of resistance, those points of resistance, those remains of the mental walls from which the teachings of the new theories keep bouncing back? Even though rural communities might not be getting into the Postmodern debate, they do shape cultural opinion. We also shape public policy opinion because of our voting power. Even though they aren't very vocal on the issue, they still have a lot of power in shaping American thought for those two reasons. I shall first detail the political opinion of the Midwest. As the Midwest's population has shifted from the countryside to its cities, the general political mood has moved to the center, and the region is now home to many critical swing states that do not have strong allegiance to either party. “Surprisingly(?),” upper Midwestern states, such as Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan have proven reliably Democratic, while even Iowa has shifted towards the Democrats.
I think some of the factors that probably have affected the shaping of our Midwest values include the religious heritage of the abolitionist, pro-education Congregationalists, to the Calvinist stalwart heritage of the Midwestern Protestants, as well as the agricultural values inculcated by the hardy pioneers who settled the area. The Midwest remains a melting pot of Protestantism and Calvinism, which are inherently mistrustful of authority and power.
It is true Midwestern politics tend to be cautious, and informed by the (largely Protestant) ideals of profit, thrift, work ethic, pioneer self-reliance, education, democratic rights, and religious tolerance influence us. Still, the caution is often peppered with protest, especially in minority communities or those associated with agrarian, labor or populist roots. In fact, the metropolis-strewn Great Lakes region tends to be the most liberal area of the Midwest. This was especially true in the early 20th century when Milwaukee was a hub of the socialist movement in the United States, electing three socialist mayors during that time.
Madison too is associated with "Fighting Bob" La Follette and the Progressive movement. City voting patterns have supported the Democratic Party in national elections in the last half-century. Detractors even refer to Madison as the "Left Coast of Wisconsin," or as "70 square miles surrounded by reality." In 2005 even, Madison was included in Gregory A. Kompes' book, 50 Fabulous Gay-Friendly Place to Live. The Madison Metro area is also credited as the most liberal in the state, and has a higher percentage of gay couples than any other city in the area outside of Chicago and Minneapolis.
It is precisely these misunderstood contexts that the East and West Coasts ignore, and it is their own reification of their own conceptual tool kit that give them the wrong impression of the Midwest and prevent them from hearing the voices that do not quite fit into their discourse. There is little doubt in my mind that the history of the Midwestern culture has suffered from the shadow of the “master narrative” of the Coasts, as though ‘we are suppose to suffer the same fate’ of our Coastal siblings. Perhaps the greatest divide in America is not between the religious and non-religious, but between traditionalist or modern and progressive and postmodern.• Tony, I was just at your blog site,...I can't help but respond to the midwest cultural export thing. I think there is some truth to the idea of midwest cultivation and then exportation of culture, and yes, the midwest is not devoid of culture. It has come to my attention that Wisconsin could in fact be one the most intellectual, forward thinking, artistically competent places on earth. The midwest has a constancy that the coasts lack. I've been involved with environmentalism both here on the west coast and back in Wisconsin, and I have to say the midwest is where the real change is going to happen and is happening. The northwest "ecotopia" environmentalism is experimental, flakey, and unsophisticated. The ideas themselves more often than not come from midwesterners (above all other regions) who moved to the westcoast recently or decades ago to creatively experiment with diferent ideas. The discoveries themselves once they have reached a mature form return to the midwest (Wisconsin), where there is little danger of a cultural collapse. How does this apply to visual arts? I think I might start a blog, this seems like a provocative first entry. How are you Tony? Platteville? Liam |
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