Study Questions
What is the realm of culture? Bell seems to be renewing the case against historical materialism that Weber opened, but now it is "culture" not religion that dominates over "social structure." What does Bell have in mind by saying, "today culture has clearly become supreme" (431). Is he right? Bell characterizes today's culture (keep in mind that this essay was first published in 1970) as having "an unprecedented mission: it is an official, ceaseless searching for a new sensibility" (431). What evidence of this do you find in our present-day culture? Peter Taylor's "The Old Forest" involves, like Bell's essay, a reflection on the social upheavals of the Sixties, some roots of which he finds already back in the Thirties. Are there indications of the search for a new sensibility in Taylor's Memphis of 1937? Bell contends that modern art and culture "would never permit itself to serve as a 'reflection' of an underlying social structure" (432), but couldn't the modernist rebellion against established forms and its fascination with the new be seen as complementary to capitalism attitude toward traditionalism (Weber) and its imperative to capture new markets through technical advances and product innovations?
Here is one statement of Bell's thesis of the "cultural contradictions of capitalism": "The social structure today is ruled by an economic principle of rationality, defined in terms of efficiency in the allocation of resources; the culture, in contrast, is prodigal, promiscuous, dominated by an antirational, anti-intellectual temper. The character structure inherited from the nineteenth century--with its emphasis on self-discipline, delayed gratification, restraint--is still relevant to the demands of the social structure; but it clashes sharply with the culture, where such bourgeois value have been completely rejected--in part, as we shall see, and paradoxically, because of the workings of the capitalist system itself" (432-433). Does the final observation here suggest that culture may not be so independent after all, that the anti-Puritanical turn of culture may be serving the "new capitalism"?
What are the two major social changes of the nineteenth century that Bell sees as giving rise to modernism? Bell speaks of a "deeper crisis in the human spirit, the fear of nothingness" (435). Does this bring to mind anything from "The Old Forest"? (HINT: Why did Lee Ann Deehart call Nat on that fateful Saturday? Why, in Mike Nichols' film The Graduate, does Ben Bradley finally call Mrs. Robinson?) Does the following ring any bells (excuse me): "Behind the chiliasm of modern man, is the megalomania of self-infinitization. In consequence, the modern hubris is the refusal to accept limits, the insistence on continually reaching out" (435)?
Bell conceives of post-modernism as the culmination of modernism. How so? And how does he differentiate post-modernism from modernism?
How does Bell conceive of "the bourgeois world-view" (438)? Is Bell correct in thinking that bourgeois values have been routed? Are we all living in "Woodstock Nation"?
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