Critical Studies in Mass Communication VOLUME1~)~N~U~M=B=ER~1 ____________________________M~A~R~C~H __ 19~9~8 The Politics of Authenticity in Postmodern Rock Culture: The Case of Negativland and The Letter 'U' and the Numeral '2' Andrew Herman and John M. Sloop 0-Based on recent concerns with the notion of authenticity and effective politics in contemporary popular culture and scholarship on culture, this essay uses a case study ofthe legal and popular controversy surrounding the Negativland recording, "The Letter 'lj' and the Number '2 '. " The analysis points to the organic development ofalternative logics in the changing landscape ofpopular culture. Moreover, we point to the relationship between the ''pastiche'' style ofthe Negativland recording as a metaphor for authenticity and justice in postmodern rock culture. I have often recalled with fondness and just getting along without such a place, of admiration what Kant has said about ethics conceding that things are just "dec en­ and the stars. Nothing so filled Kant with tered," "disseminated," "disastered." Still, awe than the starry skies above and the I would say, obligation happens, the obliga­ moral law within, the stars being for Kant tion of me to you and of both of us to (and Aristotle too) obedient to the highest others. It is all around us, on every side, and most surpassing lawfulness, and Law constantly tugging at our sleeves, calling being for Kant a kind of star to guide us on us for a response. In the midst of a through the swirl of appearances .... To disaster. suffer a disaster is to lose one's star (dis­ -John Caputo (1993, p. 6) astrum), to be cut loose from one's guiding or lucky light. Laying claim to neither the Keep Reaching for the Stars! logos nor the nomos of the stars, I suffer a -Casey Kasem dtsastronomic, disastrolog1cal, deconstruc­ Our U2 was a spy plane full of secrets tive setback.... It is not a question of intruding into the self-righteous and com­ knowing what to put in their place, but of placent image-world of the polite pop of the stars. We did it as an example of some­ thing not being what it seems to be. We did Andrew Herman is assistant proftssor o[sociol­ it because we are all subject to too much ogy and cultural studies at Drake University. media image mongering. We did it did it John M Sloop is assistant proftssor o[communi­ because tricksters and jesters are the last cation studies at Vanderbilt University. best hope against the corporate music bu- Critical Studies in Mass Communication Copyright 1~)98, NCA 'j ( (9) --' 0 1'( )LlTICS OF ,\1· HI F,NTTClT"'r reaucracies that havp all blll killed the cal reproduction to Jean Baudrillard\ most interesting thing in popular IIlusic­ (1983) more recent celebration of simn grassroots inspiration. vVe did it for laughs. lation and cultures of excess, "authen We did it so vou could read this. - ticity" and the possibility of a politics -Negativland. "Negativland's First Press of meaning have been intimatelv tied Release. November Ill, 1'l~II" (I!)'I:), p. ~.+) together. More recently, Grossberg has placed his focus on "authenticitv" The Stars Down to Earth: within the fandom of (post)mod':rn Postmodemity, Authenticity rock culture. As he (1992, I 99:i) notes, and the 'Ground' ofJudgment the so-called "ideology of authentic ity" has provided the basis for aesthetic and political judgment in rock culture T has become almost axiomatic in since its emergence in the 19!1Os.T'his discussions of contemporary post I ideology worked impliCitly and expiic (-structural, -Marxist) theory to be­ itly to produce a tapas of alteritv and moan the inability of the academic difference, a map of intersubjective and political left to make judgments tied to collective identity for postwar youth affirmative social change. Dubbed the "crisis of authority" by Lawrence culture. The ideology of aUlhenticit\ Grossberg (1992), the crisis is said to be has provided the ground for a practice a condition in which those who make of judgment through which musicians, "post" assumptions expend their ener­ fans and critics were able to distinguish gies refuting the Viability of any essen­ between "authentic rock," which was tial ground (personal or Archimidean) transgressive and meaningful, and "in­ upon which to make judgments. The authentic rock" (or "pop"), which was academic and political right, on the co-opted and superficial. Inauthentic other hand, has no need for such persis­ rock was mere commercial entertain­ tent self-reflection, and hence its views ment; authentic rock was "something gain currency as it posits a stable space more-an excess by virtue of which for authority in a fragmenting world. rock can become a significant and pow­ As Elspeth Probyn (199:1, p. 58) notes, erful investment" of pleasure and "As the left continues to attack itself meaning in everyday life (1992, p. 2021. from within, a growing public dis­ To paraphrase Grossberg, authentic course of 'new traditionalism' actively rock made a difference in everyday life articulates care and community to the precisely because it enabled members New Right. ... Transparent as it may of the rock community to evoke and seem ... the right's reclaiming 'funda­ conjure a place of difference hom main­ mental' values constitutes an appealing stream culture, a culture which made platform. " no difference to the alienation, terrof One avenue into a discussion of the and boredom of postwar youth. demise of "author-ity" would certainly Of course, the imaginary boundary be the theoretical and critical line that dividing and distinguishing authentic has traced ou t the links between and inauthentic has always been fluid changes in media and reproduction to and mobile; today's transgressive band, transitions in authenticity and aura. genre, style, label or subculture is tu­ From Walter Benjamin's (19:16/1968) morrow", co-opted "sell-out." Indeed, concerns with the undermining of aura as Grossberg points out, this instability and authenticity in the age of mechani- or specific definitions of authenticity 3 CSMC HERMAN AND SLOOP has been central to rock culture's vital­ an apparently homogenous mainstream. It ity as a source of meaningful difference marks the collapse, or at least the rel­ in popular culture and everyday life: evance, of the difference between the au­ "[rock] must move from one center to thentic and inauthentic. It siguals the ab­ another, transforming that which has sence of alternative spaces; we are all in the same space, co-opted (1992, pp. 225- been authentic into the inauthentic, in 227). order to constantly project its claim to authenticity" (1992, p. 209). However, In other words, since in the postrnod­ Grossberg and others (cf. Bloomfield, ern we are always already co-opted, 1993;Jones, 1993) argue this constant rock as a cultural practice can no longer re-territorializing of the topos of authen­ be excessive or the site or scene of ticity within rock culture has been prob­ resistant judgment in any efficacious lematized by the postrnodern medias­ way apart from the transitory pleasures cape within which the distinction of the moment a pose is struck. Or, to between a surface of representational use Grossberg's words, with the post­ images and the "depth" of reality has modern collapse of authenticity, collapsed. For Grossberg, the advent Rock can only produce an endless mobil­ of postrnodernity spells the end of the ity, spaces without places, a paradoxical ideology of authenticity as a resource strategy by which people live an impos­ for resistant judgments within rock cul­ sible relation to their own lives. Rock will, ture, because differences between forms by placing you within its own spaces, free of rock as cultural practice are now you from the moment, but it will not prom­ understood and embraced as nothing ise any alternative spaces" (238). more than differences in artifice, style The question posed, then, and the and pose. one this paper investigates, is that of Indeed, according to Grossberg, the authenticity and judgment. If, as Gross­ dominant form of cultural practice and berg claims, the lOgic of authenticity judgment within postmodernity is what has given way to a logic of authentic he terms a "logic of authentic inauthen­ inauthenticity, on what basis are judg­ ticity." As Grossberg explains this logic, ments made in everyday life, if they authentic in authenticity is are at all? Has authenticity as a concept indifferent to difference. It does not deny been evacuated or its meaning simply differences, it merely assumes that since transformed? What is the impact of there are no grounds for distinguishing potential transformations? In order to between the relative claims of alternatives, investigate these questions, we offer a one cannot read beyond the fact of invest­ material study of a struggle over the ment. To appropriate, enjoy or invest in a concept of "authenticity" as it arose in particular style or set of images no longer the discourse surrounding the lawsuit necessarily implies any faith that such in­ that barred the release and manufac­ vests will make a siguificant (even affec­ ture of "sound artists" Negativland's tive) difference .... If every identity is single, "The Letter and the Nu­ equally fake, a pose taken, then authentic 'u' inauthenticity celebrates the possibility of meral '2' ," poses without denying that is all they One of our guiding methodological are . ... Authentic inauthenticity, then, un­ assumptions is that to understand "au­ dermines the very possibility of a privi­ thenticity" and judgments made on the leged marginality which can separate itself basis of authenticity, especially resis­ from and measure itself (favorably) against tant judgments, one must turn away POLITICS OF "~I'THE"JnClii \1,\ !{( '11 1'1'1;-: from treatises about judgment and con­ with U2 band members.