The obsessive concern with’ the object’ is what I would call schizothymic dilemmas within cultural production. These both form a whole entity within the precious esoteric creations as well as the general body of the social and popular culture of the time. Jamison locates qualities (not the same as that of its mental illness of the same name and its dysfunctional effect on patients) of schizophrenia within the dialectical extremes of culture, and this condition can be seen in the arbitrary fragmentation of time into a series of vivid and perpetual presents and the transformation of reality into instant images. Both accomplish a dematerialisation of the ideal model of reality and become its substitute in both the high arts of Post Modernism and in consumer advertising for the masses. They are different sides to the same face.This later is a schizothymic syndrome in so far as it fixes the public’s consumerist gaze obsessively on the usually hedonistic desire for the absolute possession of an object. Buy this new four wheel drive or new washing machine and it will change your life it says. The car or washing machine isn’t just a functioning technological machine, but an enchanting, magical image, that exists in mythical time. Look closely at the Coca-cola logo, all you need is finance and a desire for the acquisitive ‘having’ for this magical world’ to be yours!’ It’s really just a crude cash transaction for objects that sometimes created by the cheap labour from third world workers countries.
There are many reasons why this fractured culture could not predict the coming of economic and financial crisis. It was looking and was directed by all the wrong forces Neither the obsession with ‘the object’ or ‘the subject’ bought it within deep range of awareness. The object was generally assumed to be the acquired and desired commodity, whilst the subject had spun away towards the corrupt, subjective language of idiolects within Post Modernism. Both were shallow cultural experiences and could not mature. Within time both were sucked dry by a process of secular self emptying known as kenosis. The pleasures of owning the new four wheel drive would be supplanted by the new desire for a better vehicle, and on the opposite hand the rare esoteric pleasure of experimenting with idiolects of subjective language would evaporate because it couldn’t really be shared and tested.
Within both world viewpoints the real world tended to dematerialise and become hyper abstract. This could be another reason why en toto there is so much narcissism and solipsism around in the high and low culture of consumer societies at the moment.
The result is that the culture cannot really know itself, nor create great art with all of its overblown resources.
