"I'll give it to you, if you want"

Van Lear was a coal town in Johnson County, Kentucky in the early part of the 20th century, belonging to the Consolidation Coal Company (now Consol Energy). James Ward's family moved to Van Lear in 1925 when he was four. He later became a miner himself.

James C. Ward interviewed by Glenna Graves, 1988, November 18. Interview by G. Graves. Appalachia: Family and Gender in the Coal Community Oral History Project. Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries, Lexington. 

Did you hear any of the women complaining about prices at the company store? Do you think they were fair?

I never did hear anything said about the prices. The thing is, they just didn't hardly have any money to buy it with. They'd go to the store, and if their husband that day had loaded some cars, some coal, and they'd been weighed, then he'd have some credit in the store. They'd send that word down. They'd come in. They had what you called scrip, you know, company money. And they'd go up to the window. 'Could I get two dollars?' 'I'll let you have one dollar, maybe.'

Are you saying a woman would go to the store, to buy bacon for instance, or coffee. To buy coffee. They couldn't just figure on getting coffee. They'd have to check to see that very day how much --

See if there was any credit in the store that day.

That seems so ... I would hate to go to Kroger's store, and before I start shopping, ask somebody how much my husband worked that day to see if I could get two boxes of Cheerios or one box of Cheerios. 

Well, that's what you did at the company store.

Day by day.

They'd go to the scrip office, and find out if they -- there's plenty of times they wouldn't be able to get a thing to eat. "There's no credit. He's not got any coal left." And so on. "There's no credit here." Lots of times, many times, plenty of times [inaudible] draw any money. They'd call -- what they call overdraft. They'd maybe leave owing the company something. They'd take out insurance, and what they call smithing. That's to sharpen their picks and augers, whether they need them sharpened that month or not, they'd still take the money out for it. [Inaudible]. You had to have your coal and everything, your Monabell, your shooting stuff, you bought --

What was that?

Monabell, they call it. That's what you shoot coal with. That was the old mining.

Like little bits of dynamite?

Like dynamite, same thing, except little.

Could you spell it? Monabell?

I found one of those old coins, that says 'Monabell' coins. I think I can find it for you in a few minutes. I'll get it for you. I'll give it to you, if you want. That's what you got to give to get the Monabell with. Sold you the sticks. Of course, a little later on, after I went to work, they didn't do so much of the hand loading. Some sections did, but then they were mostly starting with the machinery and mechanical loading.

But you're saying that half a shift's gone -- say it's noon. Half a shift's gone, and the check layman has picked a few checks off of coal cars. Say your coal car -- or say your dad's coal car. Somehow he'd report that down to the story at one o'clock, and your mom could go down there at one thirty, and she could only get the four hours worth, or the four loads of coal worth of groceries?

Well, whatever amount it added up to. Maybe not even get that much out of coal. Maybe those four car loads of coal -- [inaudible] might be but two or three dollars clear, maybe a couple dollars clear. You know, maybe not even that. Maybe he already owed for it, when you take out for all the different overheads, you know, you might say.

So a smithy overhead, even though a person's auger tools might not need it done?

Might not need sharpening that ...

Couldn't a miner sharpen his own tools anyway?

Yep. You still had to pay for it. They'd treat you just the same. My dad did do that. We had a blacksmith's shop, my dad sharpened his own tools.

[Recording interrupted]

You're saying your dad had a blacksmith's shop, and would sharpen tools for other people. Would he charge other people?

No, he didn't charge them. He would do a good job. In other words, he could sharpen these augers [inaudible] the coal with them. Seemed like the [mine's] blacksmiths really didn't care or wasn't very good at it. It'd be hard -- they wouldn't sharpen them with the right turn, they wouldn't cut the coal real good.

You mean the company one, blacksmiths?

Uh-huh. He'd sharpen a lot of fella's augers just as friendship. Out of friendship for them. He was good at it, he could make them good.

Now he's a miner, living in a town, but he has hogs on the hill and --

No, we had the hogs on out of the corporation now. We couldn't have them inside the corporation.

Oh.

But the corporation reached right down here, the town did. We had a cousin. My cousin lived on down there, so we could raise hogs down on his property. But we did have cattle. We had cows.

In the corporation land?

Uh-huh.

And the blacksmith place -- I know it wasn't a shop, it couldn't be a big shop.

A little room in a barn. [Inaudible] He had the tools and so forth.

Now that's a favor, sharpening somebody's augers and stuff. Did anybody in town do any kind of favor for him in turn?

Not that I ever remember. 

But if somebody mining a lot of coal, and not well off, but maybe comfortable, would he maybe take a little money to sharpen their auger?

I never did know him charging any money to sharpen his auger. I never did.

The bits with the crown

In The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (anonymous):

HENRY 5: Ah Harry, thrice unhappie, that hath neglect so
long from visiting of thy sicke father, I will goe. Nay but why
doo I not go to the Chamber of my sick father, to comfort the
melancholy soule of his bodie: his soule said I, here is his ...
bodie indeed, but his soule is whereas it needs no bodie.
Now thrice accursed Harry, that hath offended thy father so much,
and could not I craue pardon for all. Oh my dying father,
curst be the day wherin I was borne, and accursed be the
houre wherin I was begotten, but what shal I do? if weeping
teares which come too late, may suffice the negligence neglected
too soone, I wil weepe day and night until the
fountaine be drie with weeping. [Exit.]
[Enter Lord of Exeter and Oxford.]

EXETER: Come easily my Lord, for waking of the King.

HENRY 4: Now my Lords.

OXFORD: How doth your Grace feele your selfe?

HENRY 4: Somewhat better after my sleepe,
But good my Lords take off my Crowne,
Remoue my chaire a litle backe, and set me right.

BOTH: And please your grace, the crown is taken away.

HENRY 4: The Crowne taken away,
Good my Lord of Oxford, go see who hath done this deed:
No doubt tis some vilde traitor that hath done it,
To depriue my sonne, they that would do it now,
Would seeke to scrape and scrawle for it after my death.

[Enter Lord of Oxford with the Prince.]

OXFORD: Here and please your Grace ...
Is my Lord the yong Prince with the Crowne.

HENRY 4: Why how now my sonne?
I had thought the last time I had you in schooling,
I had giuen you a lesson for all,
And do you now begin againe?
Why tel me my sonne,
Doest thou thinke the time so long,
that thou wouldest haue it before the
Breath be out of my mouth?

HENRY 5: Most soueraign Lord, and welbeloued father, ...
I came into your Chamber to comfort the melancholy
Soule of your bodie, and finding you at that time
Past all recouerie, and dead to my thinking,
God is my witnesse, and what should I doo,
But with weeping tears lament the death of you my father,
And after that, seeing the Crowne, I tooke it:
And tel me my father, who might better take it then I,
After your death? but seeing you liue,
I most humbly render it into your Maiesties hands,
And the happiest man aliue, that my father liue: ...
And liue my Lord and Father, for euer.

HENRY 4: Stand vp my sonne,
Thine answere hath sounded wel in mine eares,
For I must need confesse that I was in a very sound sleep,
And altogither unmindful of thy comming:
But come neare my sonne,
And let me put thee in possession whilst I liue,
That none depriue thee of it after my death.

HENRY 5: Well may I take it at your maiesties hands,
But it shal neuer touch my head, so long as my father liues. ...

[He taketh the Crowne.]

HENRY 4: God giue thee ioy my sonne,
God blesse thee and make thee his seruant,
And send thee a prosperous raigne,
For God knowes my sonne, how hardly I came by it,
And how hardly I haue maintained it.

In King Henry IV Part 2 (by Shakespeare):

WARWICK. Will't please your Grace to go along with us?

  PRINCE. No; I will sit and watch here by the King.
                                       Exeunt all but the PRINCE
    Why doth the crown lie there upon his pillow,
    Being so troublesome a bedfellow?
    O polish'd perturbation! golden care!
    That keep'st the ports of slumber open wide
    To many a watchful night! Sleep with it now!
    Yet not so sound and half so deeply sweet
    As he whose brow with homely biggen bound
    Snores out the watch of night. O majesty!
    When thou dost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
    Like a rich armour worn in heat of day
    That scald'st with safety. By his gates of breath
    There lies a downy feather which stirs not.
    Did he suspire, that light and weightless down
    Perforce must move. My gracious lord! my father!
    This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep
    That from this golden rigol hath divorc'd
    So many English kings. Thy due from me
    Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood
    Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,
    Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously.
    My due from thee is this imperial crown,
    Which, as immediate from thy place and blood,
    Derives itself to me. [Putting on the crown] Lo where it
sits --
    Which God shall guard; and put the world's whole strength
    Into one giant arm, it shall not force
    This lineal honour from me. This from thee
    Will I to mine leave as 'tis left to me. Exit

  KING. Warwick! Gloucester! Clarence!

Re-enter WARWICK, GLOUCESTER, CLARENCE

  CLARENCE. Doth the King call?

  WARWICK. What would your Majesty? How fares your Grace?

  KING. Why did you leave me here alone, my lords?

  CLARENCE. We left the Prince my brother here, my liege,
    Who undertook to sit and watch by you.

  KING. The Prince of Wales! Where is he? Let me see him.
    He is not here.

  WARWICK. This door is open; he is gone this way.

  PRINCE HUMPHREY. He came not through the chamber where we
stay'd.

  KING. Where is the crown? Who took it from my pillow?

  WARWICK. When we withdrew, my liege, we left it here.

  KING. The Prince hath ta'en it hence. Go, seek him out.
    Is he so hasty that he doth suppose
    My sleep my death?
    Find him, my lord of Warwick; chide him hither.
                                                    Exit WARWICK
    This part of his conjoins with my disease

    And helps to end me. See, sons, what things you are!
    How quickly nature falls into revolt
    When gold becomes her object!
    For this the foolish over-careful fathers
    Have broke their sleep with thoughts,
    Their brains with care, their bones with industry;
    For this they have engrossed and pil'd up
    The cank'red heaps of strange-achieved gold;
    For this they have been thoughtful to invest
    Their sons with arts and martial exercises;
    When, like the bee, tolling from every flower
    The virtuous sweets,
    Our thighs with wax, our mouths with honey pack'd,
    We bring it to the hive, and, like the bees,
    Are murd'red for our pains. This bitter taste
    Yields his engrossments to the ending father.

Re-enter WARWICK

    Now where is he that will not stay so long
    Till his friend sickness hath determin'd me?

  WARWICK. My lord, I found the Prince in the next room,
    Washing with kindly tears his gentle cheeks,
    With such a deep demeanour in great sorrow,
    That tyranny, which never quaff'd but blood,
    Would, by beholding him, have wash'd his knife
    With gentle eye-drops. He is coming hither.

  KING. But wherefore did he take away the crown?

Re-enter PRINCE HENRY

    Lo where he comes. Come hither to me, Harry.
    Depart the chamber, leave us here alone.
                          Exeunt all but the KING and the PRINCE

  PRINCE. I never thought to hear you speak again.

  KING. Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought.
    I stay too long by thee, I weary thee.
    Dost thou so hunger for mine empty chair
    That thou wilt needs invest thee with my honours
    Before thy hour be ripe? O foolish youth!
    Thou seek'st the greatness that will overwhelm thee.
    Stay but a little, for my cloud of dignity
    Is held from falling with so weak a wind
    That it will quickly drop; my day is dim.
    Thou hast stol'n that which, after some few hours,
    Were thine without offense; and at my death
    Thou hast seal'd up my expectation.
    Thy life did manifest thou lov'dst me not,
    And thou wilt have me die assur'd of it.
    Thou hid'st a thousand daggers in thy thoughts,
    Which thou hast whetted on thy stony heart,
    To stab at half an hour of my life.
    What, canst thou not forbear me half an hour?
    Then get thee gone, and dig my grave thyself;
    And bid the merry bells ring to thine ear
    That thou art crowned, not that I am dead.
    Let all the tears that should bedew my hearse
    Be drops of balm to sanctify thy head;
    Only compound me with forgotten dust;
    Give that which gave thee life unto the worms.
    Pluck down my officers, break my decrees;
    For now a time is come to mock at form --
    Harry the Fifth is crown'd. Up, vanity:
    Down, royal state. All you sage counsellors, hence.
    And to the English court assemble now,
    From every region, apes of idleness.
    Now, neighbour confines, purge you of your scum.
    Have you a ruffian that will swear, drink, dance,
    Revel the night, rob, murder, and commit
    The oldest sins the newest kind of ways?
    Be happy, he will trouble you no more.
    England shall double gild his treble guilt;
    England shall give him office, honour, might;
    For the fifth Harry from curb'd license plucks
    The muzzle of restraint, and the wild dog
    Shall flesh his tooth on every innocent.
    O my poor kingdom, sick with civil blows!
    When that my care could not withhold thy riots,
    What wilt thou do when riot is thy care?
    O, thou wilt be a wilderness again.
    Peopled with wolves, thy old inhabitants!

  PRINCE. O, pardon me, my liege! But for my tears,
    The moist impediments unto my speech,
    I had forestall'd this dear and deep rebuke
    Ere you with grief had spoke and I had heard
    The course of it so far. There is your crown,
    And he that wears the crown immortally
    Long guard it yours! [Kneeling] If I affect it more
    Than as your honour and as your renown,
    Let me no more from this obedience rise,
    Which my most inward true and duteous spirit
    Teacheth this prostrate and exterior bending!
    God witness with me, when I here came in
    And found no course of breath within your Majesty,
    How cold it struck my heart! If I do feign,
    O, let me in my present wildness die,
    And never live to show th' incredulous world
    The noble change that I have purposed!
    Coming to look on you, thinking you dead—
    And dead almost, my liege, to think you were—
    I spake unto this crown as having sense,
    And thus upbraided it: 'The care on thee depending
    Hath fed upon the body of my father;
    Therefore thou best of gold art worst of gold.
    Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,
    Preserving life in med'cine potable;
    But thou, most fine, most honour'd, most renown'd,
    Hast eat thy bearer up.' Thus, my most royal liege,
    Accusing it, I put it on my head,
    To try with it—as with an enemy
    That had before my face murd'red my father—
    The quarrel of a true inheritor.
    But if it did infect my blood with joy,
    Or swell my thoughts to any strain of pride;
    If any rebel or vain spirit of mine
    Did with the least affection of a welcome
    Give entertainment to the might of it,
    Let God for ever keep it from my head,
    And make me as the poorest vassal is,
    That doth with awe and terror kneel to it!

  KING. O my son,
    God put it in thy mind to take it hence,
    That thou mightst win the more thy father's love,
    Pleading so wisely in excuse of it!
    Come hither, Harry; sit thou by my bed,
    And hear, I think, the very latest counsel
    That ever I shall breathe. God knows, my son,
    By what by-paths and indirect crook'd ways
    I met this crown; and I myself know well
    How troublesome it sat upon my head:
    To thee it shall descend with better quiet,
    Better opinion, better confirmation;
    For all the soil of the achievement goes
    With me into the earth. It seem'd in me
    But as an honour snatch'd with boist'rous hand;
    And I had many living to upbraid
    My gain of it by their assistances;
    Which daily grew to quarrel and to bloodshed,
    Wounding supposed peace. All these bold fears
    Thou seest with peril I have answered;
    For all my reign hath been but as a scene
    Acting that argument. And now my death
    Changes the mood; for what in me was purchas'd
    Falls upon thee in a more fairer sort;
    So thou the garland wear'st successively.
    Yet, though thou stand'st more sure than I could do,
    Thou art not firm enough, since griefs are green;
    And all my friends, which thou must make thy friends,
    Have but their stings and teeth newly ta'en out;
    By whose fell working I was first advanc'd,
    And by whose power I well might lodge a fear
    To be again displac'd; which to avoid,
    I cut them off; and had a purpose now
    To lead out many to the Holy Land,
    Lest rest and lying still might make them look
    Too near unto my state. Therefore, my Harry,
    Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
    With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out,
    May waste the memory of the former days.
    More would I, but my lungs are wasted so
    That strength of speech is utterly denied me.
    How I came by the crown, O God, forgive;
    And grant it may with thee in true peace live!

  PRINCE. My gracious liege,
    You won it, wore it, kept it, gave it me;
    Then plain and right must my possession be;
    Which I with more than with a common pain
    'Gainst all the world will rightfully maintain.

There's actually a three-way comparison available here, if we also include Hal's speech over the sleeping King, compared with how he recounts the incident later. Without necessarily doubting the sincerity of Hal's general gist (he loves his dad, he doesn't want him to die, he's going to mend his ways etc. etc.), we can clearly tell that his recollection embellishes, conceals, and transforms. Hal is not performing his socks off in hope of a moment of cognitive and affective sharing. He's doing something he learned from the best, from Sir John Falstaff: he's coming up with a cover story. The length of the King's lament -- and the kinds of excuses it implicitly pre-empts -- gives the actor playing Hal plenty of tense silence in which to be furiously devising.

(In a similar vein, Falstaff's companions seem to delight in nudging Falstaff into tight corners: Let's see him talk his way out of THIS one. The otherwise ponderous objections his companions tend to raise to Falstaff's excuses confirm this is what's going on: they like to play it straight, and push Falstaff to extremes of brazen and nimble wit).

In view of the theme of debt and indebtedness that runs so prominently throughout Part One and is still doing interesting things in Part Two, it is interesting that what Hal elides is who owes what to whom:

[...] My gracious lord! my father!
    This sleep is sound indeed; this is a sleep
    That from this golden rigol hath divorc'd
    So many English kings. Thy due from me
    Is tears and heavy sorrows of the blood
    Which nature, love, and filial tenderness,
    Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously.

Tuition fees in the UK

Whoever moderates The Spectator message boards obviously felt this comment was too long or too high-horsey, so fwiw:

Btw, on the University of Life, I think I agree. I wonder how it fits in with the wider question of social mobility? The prospect of going into loads of debt puts people off going to university. Especially so if, for instance, nobody in that young person's family has ever been to university.

Now, the question for me is, are those young people -- the ones who are put off by debt -- are they just being divas?

After all, if they went to university, chances are they'd get a better paid job. If they didn't, they wouldn't have to pay back the loan. So anyone who can't see the value of investing in a university degree must be a deranged savage, incapable of basic financial calculation -- right? Or else some kind of pathetic, skittish self-sabotaging fraidy cat?

No, I don't think so.

I think we ought to give these school-leavers a little more credit. For a start, they know their own lives are much more than some financial instrument reducible to risk and return. Above all, they know what it would FEEL like to be so deeply in debt. The pressure of regular assessment at university -- endlessly being poked and prodded and told how good or bad you are, endlessly being reminded that your level of academic achievement is going to determine on some fundamental level who you are in later life -- that pressure can be amplified tremendously by the experience of being in debt.

It's really crucial to recognise this.

When you're up against a deadline and then the printer jams and you hand it in late and you lose 10% automatically, how does that feel? It might feel annoying and frustrating and pointless. Or it might feel like this: "I gambled thousands of pounds that aren't mine trying to be something I can never be and now I have inevitably fucked up and soon everybody will know. I want to die."

For anyone who has tendencies toward self-doubt and self-recrimination, it may be very rational, sensible, and realistic just to avoid that kind of constant psychological pressure. You might just know yourself well enough to know that you wouldn't flourish under those circumstances.

Again, this is something that disproportionately affects young people according to the class and wealth of family and friends, and the overall bounciness of your safety net. Second, I think young people considering whether or not to go to university know that stress on the soul slowly re-shapes the soul. Almost as frightening as the possibility of not being able to cope with debt is the possibility of learning to cope with it ... and the kind of person you might become in the process. Crudely put, somebody who always thinks about things in monetary terms. Yes, money influences every single aspect of our daily lives. That doesn't mean that obsessing about it makes you a better person. Even if you do think it makes you a better person, you can see why school-leavers might not see it that way.

Third, perhaps school-leavers who are put off by debt have a good handle on the opportunity cost of a university degree? This is the main University of Life point. Let's say that the sole purpose of university is preparation for work -- a notion which the loan system inevitably propagates -- well then, a young person may quite reasonably identify some less risky way of entering the workforce. Again, this is something that disproportionately affects young people according to the class and wealth of family and friends.

I don't actually know that much about media studies degrees, so I wouldn't knock them just out of prejudice. What really interests me about this whole aspect is: what if somebody suspected that they would face greater obstacles at university because of their race or class or regional accent, or the education they've received to date...? If somebody suspects that the transferable skills that they might acquire in a History/Sociology joint honours degree would not be valued by employers, unless additionally catalysed by certain class markers...? Well, I think I'd try to argue with that young person and persuade them otherwise, but I wouldn't be sure of myself. And I would completely see their point.

Fourth, they may be justifiably sceptical that the terms of repayment will never change. To be in debt is to be in somebody else's power. Loopholes loom. Laws change. Does that sound paranoid to you? Spend a little time contemplating, for instance, the bizarre cack-handed grooming and Kafkaesque cruelty many benefits claimants have faced over the past decade. Do you know anyone who has been a victim of, let's say, one of those murderous Atos-outsourced "fit to work" decisions? If not, pretend you do. To add just a little more context: the most extreme forms of debt are almost indistinguishable from chattel slavery.

But take it all a step further. Finally, school-leavers are able to extrapolate from all the factors that influence their individual decision. From this, they are able to come to a judgement about who goes to university, and why, and what kind of place university is. Is it a crucially formative place filled with new freedoms and new challenges? Is it a place where you can test out your own latent qualities, and experiment a bit with who you are? Discover what you're good at, what fascinates and excites you? School-leavers might guess no. Or is it a land of debtors, many of them struggling to get by, their debts mixed up in their very spirits? Filled with hardworking, slightly haunted consumers of higher education, who have skipped a significant amount of self-discovery and self-fashioning, in favour of an off-the-shelf pro forma adulthood, partly designed for them by the sector where they hope to find some economic security, plus a debt they drag around that will make at least some of their decisions for them, and whose highest hope is that they may one day earn enough money to pay it back in small instalments? They may quite reasonably guess yes. Universities are not like that -- I was about to say "yet", but actually, I kind of hope it may never become that, no matter how hard the Conservatives try to make it into that.

BTW: in Europe, the UK is a real outlier. I think we should talk more about that.

Elsewhere: passive control rights

I came across the intriguing notion of the "passive control rights" of bondholders, which strikes me as one way in which the strict distinction between debt and equity need not always be as strict as we tend to think.

I'm gathering evidence to support the unpopular opinion that money, which is sometimes seen as a form of debt, might also be fruitfully approached as a special form of equity. This aspiration belongs to my broad sense that more needs to be done before money comes properly into focus as, in Geoffrey Ingham's words, a social relation. Ingham writes in The Nature of Money:

by a ‘sociology of money’ I intend more than the self-evident assertion that money is produced socially, is accepted by convention, is underpinned by trust, has definite social and cultural consequences and so on. Rather, I shall argue that money is itself a social relation; that is to say, money is a ‘claim’ or ‘credit’ that is constituted by social relations that exist independently of the production and exchange of commodities

Anyway, the rather dry excerpt about passive control rights is over at the Economic Humanities blog.

Another case where debt and equity may become blurred, by the way, is in the case of very short term money market securities, especially where issuers are continually rolling over their commercial paper-type debt. Such relationships can be short-term in one sense and long-term in another: that is, a company borrows money, pays it back, borrows it again, pays it back again, perhaps even on a daily basis, perhaps for years. So the lenders may not have any voting rights or collateral, but they may still be respected and even feared stakeholders with influence over the company's dealings. One thing I don't really understand yet is the extent to which a group of lenders in an arrangement like this really can be thought of as an agent or actor or even a continuous (albeit evolving) entity over long spans of time.

It's also interesting that whereas "debt" always implies "credit" -- to the extent that in certain contexts the terms become interchangeable, although always with distinct nuance -- there doesn't seem to be any equivalent language that differentiates equity as either owning or being owned by. Or perhaps there is but I just don't know about it?

From "The Aesthetic Dimension: Aesthetics, Politics, Knowledge," by Jacques Rancière

In each of these fields it is possible to differentiate the aesthetic approach from the two forms of an ethical approach.

Let us start from what I call the politics of aesthetics, which means the way in which the aesthetic experience—as a refiguration of the forms of visibility and intelligibility of artistic practice and reception—intervenes in the distribution of the sensible.

In order to understand this, let us return to my starting point, that is, to Kant’s analysis of the beautiful as the expression of a neither/nor. The object of aesthetic judgment is neither an object of knowledge nor an object of desire. In the political translation made by Schiller this neither/nor was interpreted as the dismissal of the ethical opposition between the class of those who know and the class of those who desire. This way of framing a politics of aesthetics has been contested by two forms of ethical criticism.

[...]

The opposite form of ethical criticism has been voiced by Jean-Jean-François Lyotard. For Lyotard, too, disinterested judgment is a philosophical illusion. It is a logical monster, he argues, that tries to translate into terms of classical harmony the loss of any form of correspondence between the norms of the beautiful and a socially determined public of art connoisseurs.

This monstrous replastering of a lost world of harmony conceals the true essence of modern art, which is nevertheless spelled out in Kant’s critique: the modern work of art obeys the law of the sublime. The law of the sublime is the law of a disproportion, of an absence of any common measure between the intelligible and the sensible.

In a first stage, Lyotard identifies this disproportion with the overwhelming power of the matter of sensation: the singular, incomparable quality of a tone or a color, of “the grain of a skin or a piece of wood, the fragrance of an aroma.”

But in a second stage he erases all those sensuous differences. “All these terms,” he says, “are interchangeable. They all designate the event of a passion, a passibility for which the mind will not have been prepared, which will have unsettled it, and of which it conserves only the feeling—anguish and jubilation—of an obscure debt.”

All the differences of art add up to one and the same thing: the dependency of the mind on the event of an untameable sensuous shock. And this sensuous shock in turn appears as the sign of radical servitude, the sign of the mind’s infinite indebtedness to a law of the Other that may be the commandment of God or the power of the unconscious.

Elsewhere I have tried to analyze this ethical turn that put the sublime in the place of aesthetic neutralization and to show that this supposed a complete overturning of the Kantian concept of the sublime. I will not resume that analysis here. What I would like to focus on is the core of the operation: Lyotard dismisses the heterotopy of the beautiful in favor of the heteronomy of the sublime. The result of this operation is the same as that of the sociological critique, though it is made from a very different angle; in both cases the political potential of the heterotopy is boiled down
to a sheer illusion that conceals the reality of a subjection.