Nothing but Questions... Sigh.

I thought tonight’s class was very interesting and thought provoking, but very, very confusing as well. If dominant culture appropriates the dominated culture can we perhaps see some significance in this? Kipnis’ mention of “cracks” in the dominant ideology/culture makes me understand that the meaning and function may change but in some sense may still provide some representation of the dominated classes within hegemony. Also, is there meaning produced behind this appropriation that empowers the dominated, or does all meaning just collapse like Baudrillard suggest? Tonight I am just full of questions so here is another: if image and reality collapse and the meaning associated with it collapses, what is left; anything useful? What I am especially confused about is Kipnis’ concept of the conscious subject. The reasoning behind it that I see is that, because we respond to the “Hey you!” call and assume a subject position and are interpellated, we are all a conscious subject; but what is necessarily conscious about it? (I could very well just be in left field with this concept). I see more of a Marxist false consciousness when antagonistic discourse is taken up and changed to remove the antagonism.

A second thing I am unsure of is a connection I want to make between Baudrillard and Kipnis. I see Baudrillard’s concept of the slowing down of the masses into apathy and indifference as a possible cause of Kipnis’ claims of provisionality as actions and images are provisional because we ‘loose interest’ or become indifferent to them. I think Benjamin can also be brought into this with the idea of originals being reproducibility with Kipnis suggesting that the reproductions are also provisional. An example might be “reality” T.V.; the ‘original’ survivor (– there are no longer originals?) has been reproduced into other ‘reality’ shows (big brother, amazing race) all eventually loosing their appeal and becoming provisional. But maybe I am wrong, after all there has been seven seasons of big brother; does this make sense to anyone else?