Theory Underground gets its name from the fact that it aims to serve the emerging scene of underground theory. Its name and existence are owed to the fact that this scene exists. The question is, can this scene rise to something more?
I gave a talk on this recently at Philosophy Portal’s conference Logic for the Global Brain. You can check that out here. The rest of this post is what I wrote before giving that talk for Cadell’s conference, so if you like what you read here, then you will enjoy my talk, and if you instead listen to and enjoy my talk first, then you will want to read the rest of this post.
The term “intellectual milieu” might be new for some, but the idea is something about which everyone should be at least vaguely familiar. Intellectual milieus are the contexts out of which all great thinkers and movements have grown. Without organic intellectual milieus there would never have been “empiricism,” “German Idealism,” “phenomenology,” “existentialism,” or even Marxism. These are not just ideas, but the rich contexts that give rise to movements. We tend to lose focus of the context or movements, and instead focus on some great thinker produced therein. For now, let’s turn away from all those European movements and focus on the United States for a moment, home to both pragmatism and transcendentalism. Neither of these two movements in literature and philosophy would have been possible without the intellectual milieus from which they sprung.
Take, for instance, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Most people are familiar with them both as being great authors, but these two do not come from a vacuum. Beyond their own personal friendship, which was crucial, there were their fellow travelers: Margaret Fuller, Orestes Brownson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, and James Freeman Clarke, as well as George Ripley, Bronson Alcott, the younger W.E. Channing, and W.H. Channing, to only name a few. But even then, this is not sufficient, because they were all cashing in on a wealth of intellectual roots and connections struck and built upon by the pragmatists before them, meaning William James and C.S. Pierce, who likewise did not come from a vacuum but had a rich constellation of interlocutors engaged over decades in sustained dialogue.
But sustained dialogue is not just “chatting” online, dropping comments under videos or, when meeting up, just talking at one another about one’s own opinions. Sustained dialogue , in this richer sense, includes reading one another’s thought in books, letters, and then the other books that those books and letters referenced.
So the question for us is this: Can a genuine intellectual milieu arise from the currently emerging theory scene? An “underground scene” is a metaphor borrowed from art, specifically music, and theory is itself not reducible to art. Without answering any such questions definitively, I aim to get the conversation started. I will have succeeded if I help some of my followers understand the difference between following and being a fellow traveler, between being a scene kid and belonging to a genuine intellectual milieu.
What makes a scene? What makes an intellectual milieu?
The necessary conditions for a scene are also the necessary conditions for an intellectual milieu, except that the latter has additional requirements. Not only does an intellectual milieu have prerequisites that go far beyond a mere scene, but these must themselves be deliberately constructed and maintained to counter the prevailing tendencies of the overall situation.
The “situation,” what hippies called the status quo, speaks to the context within which scenes crop up. What are the constituent factors of the context that makes the scene what it is? No scene can be understood outside of the new media environment within which it is a response. Any history or theory about music that does not look at the conditions of possibility that made it what it was, materially and ideologically, is missing the point. The medium is the message, and the medium is the environmental referential context of equipment. But how the technology develops and the ways humans adapt are not only interesting for how artists react, resist, and experiment with the new affordances rendered possible by evolving means of production. Those means of production are themselves in a relational context not reducible to a referential totality of equipment that we can either use or be used by for mediating, modulating, and modifying our immediate conscious states… more important are the “relations of production,” i.e. the socio-politico-economic referential totality. Power relations have a fundamental role to play in the construction of knowledge, as Foucaultians are likely to remind us, but beyond the construction of messages taken as power/knowledge exists the medium itself. The mediums we find ourselves immersed in would not be what they are without it serving power, meaning that beyond the message, and even beyond the medium, is the Leninist question: Who does this serve?
Because the means of production and whatever new kinds of media these usher in tend to serve power, and not artists, artists are always first to work through the bullshit. Artists have a gut sense for the situation and its dynamic tendencies. They experiment with the master’s tools while strategically countering those tendencies that are most corrosive of the human spirit. That is why no artist, especially musicians, can be understood or even appreciated in a serious way without some understanding of their fundamental relational context.
No artist comes from a void. Artists come from scenes. Ideally, they come from fine art milieus. Whether an artist is indeed an artist or not has little to do with whether they limit themselves to a discernible medium, intelligible style, or whatever… what matters is that they feel the situation and attempt to articulate it for others who are also in it, trying to cope with it, or likewise articulate, express, and experiment.
Today the situation is complicated because any “scene” popping up is likely constructed for the sake of sign value and consumer identity, not artists genuinely trying to cope and make sense of, express, or experiment with the new media forms. It is indeed “art” when we see something like hardcore mumble drill trap come out of SoundCloud, made mostly by Latino or White Trash face tattoo having rejects, though most don’t get much from it and arguably in a lot of cases the media being experimented with is more software and platform based. A scene can nonetheless arise from such efforts. Even if it’s not your scene, it is a scene, and it is generative of new sounds, genres, and projects that help us understand what is possible outside of mainstream avenues of cultural production.
But so far no genuinely 21st century artistic movement has come into being because to respond to the current situation in any serious way requires more than just experiments with software programs. I’m glad hardcore kids learned how to sound like Lil Wayne, Lil Jon, and Drake, and to do it themselves on SoundCloud, but this is only a baby step on a long path to a new sound, vibe, or movement that will usher in something beyond genres and artistic specialization altogether.
This brings us back to the main question; What are the conditions of possibility for a scene, and then, what additional measures must be in place to help that scene become more than just a place wherein affinity groups form? As in, how does the scene become a robust and dynamic milieu capable of producing either artists or activists worth a damn? The answer today is, indisputably, critical media theory. Without it, artists are in the same boat as the rest of us: consumers hacked at the most basic level of our brain. Never before has the precondition for great art, or genuine strategic action, been more absent. That precondition is solitude. But solitude is dependent on solicitude, and neither has ever been possible without close interpersonal relationships that are not mere “boredom insurance,” literacy, and timenergy. But today we lack digital literacy, social etiquette, or any genuinely shared understanding outside of distraction addictions and timenergy lack.
But beyond theory and self consciousness, or any single movement defining event or project, there are necessary conditions such as a shared understanding of the field. Whatever stands out from the field is in dialectical development with both the contextual situation and a circumspective understanding of all the other meanings.
In defense of scene kids
Scene kids have always been mocked by outsiders to any music scene. Even the bands might condescend in the general direction of scene kids. What are the virtues and vices or scene kids, and what can we learn from them in application of this music scene metaphor to the emerging theory scene? First we will have to define what is meant by scene kid, and then figure out how much of this metaphor carries from music into theory, but only after establishing that there is indeed similarity.
For theory, insofar as it has “scenes,” undoubtedly has scene kids. Theory Tube, Theorygram, whatever they call theory TikTok, and all other social media based theory marketing demographics form scenes. These scenes are made up of influencers and followers. Fandoms form around specific influencers, rarely are these fandoms truly dedicated to themes, topics, or subject matters in-themselves. A discord dedicated to a platform influencer might have discussion areas for specific topics, but the general point is the influencer is the master signifier who quilts the discussion topics and fan identities.
Fans rarely have their entire identity held together by a single influencer, but instead curate themselves together like a patchwork quilt made up of different hashtags and search terms that the algorithms have found hold attention. This forms an idiosyncratically filled out big Other, which singular influencers become stand-ins for, representatives of, or proxies.
A good scene is not just made up of consumers curating their identities, but of regulars who love music, friends of band members, and a rich constellation of different local bands that play on a regular basis. These bands don’t gain traction without mainstream bands close to their sound bringing new lifeblood into the scene. If “scene kids” exist outside of real scenes and are instead just super online consumers, then what occurs is something similar to what we saw on MySpace, which we currently see on Instagram’s “theorygram.” Music takes back seat to social signaling, just as theory does to memes and group chats. In both cases the aesthetic production value, artistic originality, and the overall constellation of either bands or thinkers, is made slave to the socies (socialites).
“Socie” is a term like “Normie.” Back in the 60s there were Socies, Normies, and Fringe Kids. The Normies are people who more or less go with the flow, whereas the Socies were considered the leaders, the most beautiful, the Greek Life students. The Fringe kids were the intellectuals and shop kids, freaks and geeks.
Species take over everything online, as well as in music scenes. Socies do not necessarily create affinity groups, but they turn the focus of any scene against the conditions of the scene itself and all emphasis gets put on their own little clique, their own little affinity group, against all the others. But I’m not going to go into “socies” any more here, leaving that for later. For now we turn to affinity groups.
Fandom Affinity Groups vs. an Emerging Underground Intellectual Milieu
Sometimes the person who most strongly claims they do not want something is letting air a strong desire to actually do the thing being disavowed. For instance, to repeatedly assert that one is opposed to affinity groups and seeking something more real, might indicate a strong desire to participate in affinity groups. If we are indeed split subjects, then what might be happening is that the enunciated subject (the utterance) is something the ideal ego relates to and seeks, whereas the emphasis put on this desire (to NOT be a part of an affinity group) is actually what the unconscious drive has been pushing one towards. So you keep finding yourself in affinity groups even though that runs counter to your ideal ego, ultimately leading to a series of grand “leaving” events. If this is the case then the opposite of what normally occurs is operative. Normally we seek belonging in an affinity group, but then death drive comes along to fuck that up—e.g. strict adherence to unrealistic ideals, expectations, knit picking about the behavior of others, gossip, etc., the general tendencies of socies.
The person who is explicitly against affinity groups, on the other hand, talks loudly against such things while nonetheless operating in the mode of an affinity groupie. Such strong identifications with affinity groups, or being against their existence, is normal and fine. Obvious, even. We all have oddly strong feelings about such matters because we were put through a schooling system that artificially constructs and ranks competitive peer groups for the most formative time of our lives—or if you’re like me you missed out on all that and now feel weirdly out of joint with everyone else who seemed to learn that they belong to some set of arbitrary categories that don’t really make sense outside of the confines of a mass interned compulsory schooling system.
My position is neither for nor against affinity groups. Instead, I think we need to understand the conditions for affinity groups critically. What are they, what material, cultural, psychological, symbolic, and structural dynamics give rise to our desire to be involved in or avoid inclusion in them?
The short answer that comes out of my research in CMT and related research at Theory Underground is this: The attention economy is structured by a profit model that relies on harvesting data, which means keeping our eyeballs engaged. We are thus famously sold entertainment. But it goes far beyond mere entertainment. We are alienated. Nothing so simple as “alienated” merely from a supposed natural essence or even one another.
I mean alienated in a threefold sense:
1. We are structurally stultified from timenergy.
2. We are in a position where most of our efforts and information have little to do with personal agency, concrete action, or ownership over results. We thus don’t get to know ourselves, others, or the world.
3. If being virtually-purposive creatures is in fact our essence, which means being the kind of creatures who need to self-direct and create in order to become something other than what everyone else tells us to be, then we are alienated from our talent, potential, and agency. This means we have little to offer others beyond being mere participants of affinity groups. Relatively passive participation in such communities feels better than nothing and grants short-term fulfillment without longer-term ways of countering the immediately soul-sucking tendencies of the attention economy.
Affinity groups proliferate because we need them, in the sense that we need a sense of belonging in an increasingly fractured world. Fair enough. The point is simply this: we are not just sold entertainment. We are sold belonging. In-group identification with a consumer demographic. We are granted a variety of ways of cultivating our identities through mixing different identities, belonging to different affinity groups, which are opened up and maintained by cultural products and influencers. None of these require much deliberateness, focus, or action, and insofar as they do those tend to run counter to the prevailing tendencies of platforms that foster non-committal curiosity, distracted tuning in and out, and passive scrolling and opinion exercising.
That’s just the reality of the situation we have been habituated to. I have no grand solutions or fundamental hatred of these tendencies, but tarry with these as serious problems worth being honest about and figuring out how to navigate strategically. Navigating doesn’t always mean negating or avoiding, but can mean utilizing fundamental tensions or tendacious flows. The goal is not to burn out swimming against the flow, but to harness and direct impulses tied to the flows of some tendencies in such a way so as to counter the worst tendencies of the overarching situation.
The reason I want to strategically harness or counter tendencies in the attention economy is I want to be a part of a robust intellectual milieu, which is not possible to achieve within a mere affinity group. That’s why Theory Underground is a “lecture course-gated social media app and publishing house.” I consider every word in that sentence to be a necessary condition of a robust intellectual milieu, but these are not sufficient. The rest of the description is “by and for working class blue collar intellectuals, dropouts, autodidacts, and renegade academics.” This is not because “we” hate or resent normie academics or non-working class people, much less those who did well in school. Rather, the prioritization of workers who obsessively learn via earbuds, retired autodidacts, and politically or academically disaffected burnouts, is because if something is useful to “us” then it will be for anyone, “we” don’t have anything made to give us the structural conditions for lively participation in a based intellectual milieu, and ultimately “we” “get it” concerning the concept that symbolizes our shared lack: timenergy. A ruthless critique of everything in existence, but for those with limited timenergy, is only possible with the meta-discourse and countering-tendencies being cultivated at TU. What follows are what I consider to be essential traits of affinity groups juxtaposed to the necessary conditions for an intellectual milieu.
Traits of affinity groups:
- Belonging to the group gives you a special quality that doesn’t belong to others who don’t do this…
- Consumers whose form of consumption is cultivating modes of expression (including fashion and opinion) that function as signs of distinction e.g. “what makes us special is we look like this, listen to this, or share certain opinions…”
- The focus is on the consumer commodities that are quilted by idols (ideal egos), master signifiers, and some sense of a big Other…
- Conspicuous consumption signaled by referencing and name-dropping without any felt need to unpack or work through, tarry with, or strike roots.
- This is a work in progress and will be added to over time… what you are reading is technically a draft.
Necessary conditions for an intellectual milieu
- Multimedia communication relationships (… with at least some basis in interpersonal interactions?)
- Shared reference points (fundamental texts) that trace the contours, tarry with problems and questions, and equip its thinkers with the concepts of the field, all in conjunction with a meta-discourse on method aiming to recognize the limits or parameters of the field and think the criteria considered valid for the field in question…
- A shared understanding of how different figures in the field conceptualize the field vs. how one’s fellow travelers (interlocutors) interpret the same subject matter…
- Something about contradictions, perspectives, interpretations, and the meta-discourse…
- This is a work in progress and will be added to over time… what you are reading is technically a draft.
Any class room full of students is the condition for an affinity group, but not an intellectual milieu. The latter is only ever developed over time, with a lot of attention paid to establishing shared references and a mutual understanding of differences and contradictions.
The student who expects rich dialogue on-demand from the immediately present “peers” is deluded. Rich and robust discourse only happens over time. The goal of TU is not to instantly unlock profound discussions, but to help everyone get a basis in texts, problems, concepts, and methods, through a medium that gives people long-form lectures, exegetical reading discussions, and forums so that those who are most passionate about a topic or course can, over time, develop a sense of familiarity with others who have been through the same or similar content, so that discussions can gain depth. But this only works after enough people have been filtered out, after many cohorts, what remains will be those most committed to the subject-matters and developing legit proficiency.
Theory Underground and its founder/director, David McKerracher, AKA me, is just one site where the “theory scene” might, through trial and error, develop some roots. If it is successful, then lots of other such sites will eventually spring up. But these sites, in order to work, cannot be some media mission that rushes forward to offer its own slightly different twist on everything that is already there. The goal of Theory Underground is to help the scene move beyond its tendency towards mere affinity groups and towards a thriving intellectual milieu. This cannot be simply wished into existence, but will require thoroughgoing effort. Personally, I don’t believe it is possible without mechanisms in place like the ones that Theory Underground is experimenting with. The courses are the shared reference points for a potential intellectual milieu, but without them, I believe everyone will stay in their little consumer bubbles and this scene will pass away like so many before it, leaving no impact greater than some fond memories.
If you want to get involved and take it seriously, if you want to rise above mere consumption of theory content that is meant to curate your identity, but instead seek to challenge yourself with great texts, profound concepts, and others who are committed to the long-term approach to theory; if you are tired of being a mere follower and seek to become a genuine fellow traveler, then don’t hesitate from diving in on active courses and binging the past ones. Don’t just try to talk to me, and don’t just seek out instantaneous feedback. Get to know the co-instructors, topics, and key concepts from all the courses. Get to know the texts that form the constellation of our shared references, engagement with which is one sure condition of what I hope to see emerging from this scene: a rich, robust, and dynamic intellectual milieu.
Bibliography:
I didn’t cite anything in those post but I am mostly thinking with Marx, Heidegger, McLuhan, and Baudrillard, though 2016 Peter Coffin and my fellow traveler Michael Downs get big credit for how I think of consumer demographics as the basis for affinity groups online.
