Llosa has lots of very interesting things to say in this short book. Trying to put to one side his views on religion and Islam in particular since I don't think he's saying much here that is either new or particularly insightful. But it does strike you that if he'd have thought more carefully he might have been drawn to some unpalatable conclusions.
One of the main thrusts of his argument in the book/essay is the idea that culture is, at least in part, about prohibitions, barriers (this echoes, of course, Rieff). So, for instance, culture had, in previous times, acted as a bulwark against the corrosive forces of the markets. And any culture sets up shared norms of evaluative judgement (what Fuller once called a 'shared symbolic order'). This amounts to saying that culture embodies ideas, values and spiritual realities in particular forms. To say 'forms' is already to suggest limitations (at least from one perspective, the dominant one in late modernity).
Instead, we live in an age of spectacles where an image grabs our attention for a brief moment and then releases us back into our mundane life. No image must be allowed to inhere or relate to the true Image of Man. The ephemeral nature of the image is, in fact, what allows for its commercial success and is also foundational to how one thinks about the type of power it exerts over us: the aura of the dazzling, hypnotic image depends on its ability to fragment our consciousness, its ability to isolate. There is no time for anything to gestate; instead, what is required (required by the system, I should add) is a temporary suspension of disbelief, a passive acceptance of what is fed to you. As Freud might say: Mother!
Whence the disappearance of eroticism (not sure I completely agree with that (see the picture in the previous post)) but in terms of trends Llosa is surely correct. The erotic has been transformed into the pornographic since the erotic depends on a fine balance between transgression and limitation. Or, to put it in the negative: without limits the erotic becomes trashy, devoid of any imaginative effort (the shameless spectacle that doesn't linger in the memory)
To an older generation the striptease was, you suspect, something of an art form. That's pushing it a bit, but you can see what Llosa means. Culture always mediates the biological. Without that mediation it can descend into the purely mechanical or a horror show.
So, here's the point Llosa misses out on: the veil (or the burqa) may be freely chosen (of course, the word 'free' is subject to the usual need for qualifications since a woman may not be directly co-erced into wearing one). If it is a free choice then doesn't it express a point of view that isn't simply reactionary but that is, instead, critical of the very tendencies that he thinks are leading to the dissolution of culture? The idea that a woman's body and sex is private and that not everything is for show or consumption..surely that militates against the spectacular society?
The second flaw of the book-and this, unlike the previous one is more substantial-is that he really doesn't follow his thoughts to their logical conclusion or join up the dots. It's all very well saying that culture can curtail the corroding influences of the market (its short-termism, its emphasis on greed, its inability to distinguish price from value). What Llosa never adequately discusses is the way in which those very same market forces have helped generate the modern-day culture that he thinks is replacing genuine culture. To think along those lines would get him into all sorts of tangles.
At times he displays a dim recognition of the pickle he's in since it is the very freedom of market democracies, the freedom of the Enlightenment, that is in large part responsible for what we're seeing now. If the dominant strain of thinking has been to emphasize freedom (over solidarity and equality) and if the particular notion of freedom that takes root is that of being 'free from' (an abstract or 'formal' notion of freedom) then is it any wonder there is so little resistance to the desire-machine that is capitalism?
Having said all of that, the book has lots of profound insights.
When considerable sections of a society feel that nothing is of consequence..then the ground is clear for the wolves and hyenas.
Seurat (from the previous post) was 24 years old when he painted that!
The whole of Seurat's life was a slow, stubborn, timeless and fanatic preparation to reach the formal perfection he achieved in his two masterworks.
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