As a synecdoche for the tragedy of our historical moment, consider a news item about the murder of nineteen schoolchildren in Uvalde, Texas. One victim, ten-year-old Maite Rodriguez, was identifiable only by the green Converse sneakers she wore. She had drawn a heart on her right shoe. After the actor Matthew McConaughey, for some reason delivering a press briefing at the White House, made this detail known to the public, the shoes sold out as appalled consumers ordered them online.It is impossible to understand a society whose response to the slaughter of children is to purchase green Converse sneakers as anything other than psychotic. It is impossible, I believe, to wish for such a society to continue—a society that is also bent on murdering as many other forms of life as possible, driving entire species extinct, rendering the planet uninhabitable.
Excerpted from Apocalypse Nowish in the December 2022 issue of Harper's. Embedded image via NPR.
Really? Impossible to understand? Outside my office there is an American Flag. It has little meaning or value as a piece of cloth, but it invokes ideas in people about the country that it represents. Green Converses? Perhaps those are meant to invoke something for the people who've bought them. They sold out. Big deal. This is a harbinger of social collapse?
ReplyDeleteLife is a process of meaning making, and maybe this is what it looks like right now - particularly since the level of violence in these school shootings is something that is difficult to understand and that people may reasonably feel powerless about.
To call so many of one's readers "psychotic" is nothing less than insulting. To assume that this is some sort of consumerist effort to make things better is to insult the intelligence of people who are trying to make sense of tragedy. The clinical definition of ACTUAL (not hyperbolic) psychosis is essentially grossly disorganized or distorted thought patterns. I feel like this is represented more to the self-indulgent, pop-psychology of Robbins than it does to people who committed the cardinal sin of ordering shoes to help connect themselves with something and make meaning of tragedy. Is it worse to buy a pair of sneakers than to judge a grieving country in a elitist-leaning magazine with a history of tripping over itself while trying to grab the moral high ground?
"It is impossible to understand a [publication] whose response to the [sell-out of a symbolic consumer product] is to [rush to have the most extreme take] as anything other than psychotic. It is impossible, I believe, to wish for such a [publication] to continue—a [publication] that is also bent on murdering as many [arguments] as possible, driving entire [rational discourses] extinct, rendering the [culture] uninhabitable."
DeleteWe are truly at the apocalyptic end-stage of the take-haver economy. All the oxygen has been sucked out of every room.
Synecdoche - a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special.
ReplyDeleteExamples at the wiki link:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche
Not sure what the synedoche is in the post (green sneakers?), but I learned a new word.
I believe it is the kind of thing people do when they feel powerless to do anything else.
ReplyDeleteAs we'd expect in a late capitalist era, with all reduced to production and consumption, political culture goes down the toilet. Hitting Amazon and ordering shoes is empowering; it yields an endorphin rush, as does all purchasing. This sort of empowerment is compatible with the cultural inertia of our time. A deep and meaningful national conversation on the question of what's at the root of these shootings? A conversation challenging our values? That's not only work, but it's work we seem increasingly less capable of doing. The best Democrats do is demand more gun control. Well, that's hardly going to arrest the psycho-spiritual decline of a civilization. Columbine sent us a message. It wasn't received.
ReplyDelete