How Culture is Remade: A Review of a Review

I thought I'd put up some thoughts on culture by way of a review I just read of Andy Crouch's book Culture-Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. The review is by John Seel, writing for the journal of The Trinity Forum, a website I haven't finished exploring but which looks interesting and relevant.

Let's start with a quote I like from Crouch's book:

If we want to transform culture, what we actually have to do is to get into the midst of the human cultural project and create some new cultural goods that reshape the way people imagine and experience their world.

Seel agrees with this, but uses it to introduce a running criticism of the book, which is that Crouch seems to overemphasize the material aspect of culture. (He also notes that this is primarily a problem with the book alone, not with Crouch's thought as a whole.) He quotes Ken Myers' definition that "Culture is the cultivation of created nature" to point to the immaterial nature of culture, and that items that have become cultural artifacts (everything from iPods to specialty lattes) have a certain meaning even without, well, meaning to. The responsibility of those who create such artifacts, as well as of anyone who wishes to influence culture, is to understand the cultural background and meaning of each cultural "thing".

Seel spends a lot of time making up for Crouch's overemphasis on the "thingness" of cultural artifacts. So to make up for Seel's own emphasis, I'll balance the two by saying that those who wish to remake culture must be experts at both: at understanding the deeper significance of cultural things, and at making really good things.

For example: It's one thing to wish to inject a sense of respect for a Higher Power in, say, the American poetry scene; it's quite another to write a really good poem, as a poem (not just in content). You may go so far as to start your own poetry journal where every poem is about the baby Jesus or the life of St. Jadwiga, but to be good culturally (again we're not talking about content) is that it displays works that actually work as poems. And given the state of our culture, it may not be the time to dedicate the next edition of your journal to saints of medieval European royal families. We might start out to better effect with one brilliant, worldview-changing poem that takes place on the R-train in Brooklyn.*

Having made up for Seel's overemphasis, I am now free to say I like formulations like the following, on the necessity to understand the meaning of cultural items:

cultural artifacts ... require discernment both in their making and using. If we are to avoid the worldliness of being “squeezed into the world’s mold” (Romans 12:2), then we must understand its contemporary contours and develop disciplines of cognitive and embodied resistance.

The Cultural Elites

Seel's sharpest disagreement with Crouch concerns the channels throug which cultural influence occurs. In short, Crouch sees culture influenced from the bottom up, and Seel from the top down. Crouch's view, as Seel describes it, is that we simply create new items of culture, but cannot dictate how they will be accepted. The missing element that Seel supplies is that there are factors that do influence how cultural contributions will be accepted, and these factors can be manipulated.

"The actor on the stage of cultural change is institutions, not individuals," according to Randall Collins as saying. (See, conservatives are learning from Gramsci!) Seel agrees with this idea, calling those running such institutions the cultural elites:

If this is the case, then cultural change does not happen according to the rules of market exchange, as Andy [Crouch] suggests, but on the basis of institutional access. Thus, cultural change does not happen from the bottom-up via mass markets, but top-down via gatekeeping elites. The tactical implications are enormous. For if a particular social group is not a part of the cultural gatekeeping conversation, then they are not a part of the conversation that shapes culture.

I think Seel is mostly right, even if he runs a slight risk of overemphasis again here. In a free market, as in a free society, there is free will even though there are also myriad subtle influencing factors upon the exercise of that free will. (Collectively called "propaganda" in society; "advertising" in the market.)

A theory of culture must acknowledge the role of cultural elites, as Seel says (indeed, if you hope to change culture, becoming a cultural elite yourself is one great way to do it). But it need not minimize the role of market-like patterns of cultural exchange that Crouch emphasizes. If you make a good product (Crouch) and advertize it well (Seel), you are taking one solid step toward redefining people's worldview, and therefore culture.


Becoming an Influencer of Culture

Seel's last point is about scale: Influence on a small scale is just as legitimate for its scope, and works the same way, as influence on a large scale. "In fact, it is only at the local level or at the smaller scale that a person can explore his or her abilities and be effectively apprenticed in becoming a winsome contributor to culture making. It is faithfulness in small places and little things that equips one to be faithful in bigger arenas and larger things."

This is true. And very well-known among conservatives. Too well known, perhaps. Considering Seel's points about the need to be among the elite in order to influence culture, it is surprising he does not seek to emphasize the stepping-stone nature of the small scale. In my experience, conservatives are too willing to put in a little local effort and "leave it in God's hands". But I don't see a lot of national coordination for cultural influence; most national-level efforts are for "process" struggles like elections, despite the fact that who people vote for are only symptoms of their worldview -- a worldview which could be changed more directly and effectively by coordinated efforts to influence culture and change hearts and minds. As another contributor to the Trinity Forum writes: "the most important need is not on Pennsylvania Avenue but in the hearts and minds of the governed. "


* This is also why I was very underimpressed by the movie Thérèse as a cultural artifact. Why should Catholic movies have to rely for success on desperate campaigns to mobilize Catholic movie-goers? Why can't they earn success from simply being good movies? I think Passion of the Christ was successful for this reason: it was good cinema, which tends to include a deep sense of challenge to one's perception of reality. (This makes a great potential venue for remaking culture: people expect good cinema to be challenging. Yes, there will always be successful mindless movies, but even many who enjoy these also appreciate the respect to their intellects shown by movies like The Matrix and Dark Knight.)

Antonio Gramsci and the Reinfiltration of Culture

Antonio Gramsci was a Marxist with a twist. His twist--a brilliant insight, actually--is something conservatives should be studying since it was the ideological basis for the wildly successful cultural revolution that American society underwent in the 1960s.

You can get the details of Gramsci's life here if you like. Being a Marxist meant several things: Economically, it meant he was a communist, hoping for a utopia where all material needs were met by holding all means of production in common (no private property). Being a Marxist also meant Gramsci was implicitly a materialist, meaning that empirical matter was the only reality (i.e., no afterlife). This makes the quest for an earthly utopia the highest good, one that justifies all means undertaken to attain it. (Compare the frightening devotion of al-Qaeda, an aspect that liberals fear without distinction in all persons of religion.)

Gramsci's insight was characteristic of Western Marxism's focus on political and cultural issues: namely, that the worldwide economic Revolution had not taken hold in the West because of the strength there of non-economic ideologies. Some of the non-economic ideologies that resisted communism were:

1. Theism, including a belief in an afterlife where we are judged;

2. A morality that holds immaterial goods higher than material ones -- that the good of giving, for example, is more beneficial to man than the acquisition of material goods.

3. A view of human dignity that respected individuals enough to leave them in charge of the material goods they produced, even while calling them to better themselves by the act of giving to their fellow man.

Ask yourself how prevalent these are in our society today, or how comfortable you would feel talking about them out loud, and you will see the success of the cultural revolution. Antonio Gramsci's insightful twist on Marxism was that these ideologies were in fact hindering communism by being so entrenched. He called this "cultural hegemony."

So Gramsci came up with a plan.

Quite simply, the plan was that in order to prepare Western society for the economic revolution of communism, communists needed first to focus on reversing these important, indeed characteristic Western concepts. In other words, communists needed to undermine the ideological basis for Western morality, and really for Western Civilization. In this way Gramsci is the true father of the cultural revolution in the West, because it was Gramsci that called for a conscious, deliberate, "infiltration" of the institutions of civil society (as opposed to political society) that strengthen, promote, and pass on (the meaning of the word tradition) these important Western ideals. We know it worked: the educational system has been so masterfully taken over, and those vital Western ideals are therefore not being passed on. Even more, the literature and agenda of the National Education Adminstration make it the strongest, most obvious modern-day standard-bearer of Gramscian ideology. The cultural and moral achievements of Western civilization have been not refuted, but replaced nonetheless.

What should conservatives take from the study of Gramsci? Two things, at least:

1) It means we must beware of focusing too much on process, to the neglect of the personal. Gramsci drew a clear distinction between political society and civil society, and his liberal ideological heirs have understood and assimilated its significance far better than conservatives. To wit: the anti-abortion movement's number one goal is one of (political) process -- overturning Roe v. Wade -- while things like presidential election losses are counted the biggest setbacks. Meanwhile liberals are famous for being "community organizers" and address their propaganda more successfully to the average working guy--Joe the Plumber notwithstanding. (I use the term propaganda impartially, since our side needs to use propaganda better: more on this in another post.)

If there is one thing I took with me from my years in the Legion of Mary, and keep to this day, it is an appreciation for personal contact. We cannot simply reason our way to a society that sees the evils of things like abortion, since it is not mainly reason that has led people astray; the rationalization comes after the decision has already been made in most cases. Nor can we have any hope of ultimate victory at the level of president, congress, supreme court, or anything else, as long as the society that keeps electing them (or those who appoint them) continues on the path it is on.

McCain in his concession speech was right: the American people did speak clearly in the 2008 election. Which means the next step isn't just to try and win another election, but to educate and convince the people. This is a difficult challenge, to be sure, but it is exactly the one that Gramsci's followers faced, which leads me to the second thing conservatives should learn from Gramsci.

2) We must plan to infiltrate the institutions of civil society that now maintain "cultural hegemony" in favor of the Left. As Gramsci's people did before them, we should try to encourage conservatives in large numbers that if they are serious about fighting the culture war, they should keep their heads down and their mouths shut until they are actually in charge of schools, newspapers, film companies. And not just versions of these things that barely, technically count, but ones in the mainstream.

This is an ambitious plan, and I don't know if it will ever happen, mainly because the various groups of conservatives are so frustratingly difficult to unite (look at how many anti-abortion and pro-life groups there are, all following their own strategies with no coordination with the others--what a waste of resources!) In fact it has been tried in part in the past, but failed usually because it was executed in a crude, obvious, or harsh manner. But the more we are willing to adopt strategies that work, in ways that are tailored to a truly understood target audience, the more we will truly do justice to the causes we say we wish to fight for.