Is Fetishisation a Problem?
Rosanna Mclaughlin, Double-Tracking: Studies in Duplicity
Carcanet Press / Little Island Press, 120pp, £9.89, ISBN 9780995705227
reviewed by Eleanor Green
Double-Tracking is, aptly, side-splitting. Its discursive structure and its cynical tone place it as a diametrically opposite text to, for example, Andrea Long-Chu’s Females (Verso, 2019). Whereas a review of Females entitled ‘The Limits of the Bit’ in the LA Review of Books criticised how seriously it took, and was able to take, a subject that seems absurd (‘everyone is female and everyone hates it’), Double-Tracking takes a very straightforward subject and refuses to take it seriously. Indeed, Andrea Long-Chu is demonstrating the very duplicity that Rosanna Mclaughlin aims to denigrate — but that’s another review, for another time. Double-Tracking is split into two sections: a series of essays, followed by a series of ‘Just So’-style short stories, each as deadpan as the last.
The question that Double-Tracking seems to be posing is: to what extent, and in what context, is fetishisation a problem? That is, when something is both itself and something else; when something seeks to undercut the immediate or visible for good or ill, how should we respond? Mclaughlin takes the concept of double-tracking from Tom Wolfe’s 1975 book The Painted Word, bounces off Judith Goldman’s critical review thereof and, oddly, back into the curious political doldrums and false dichotomy that Wolfe created. Mclaughlin states, ‘[t]o double-track is to be both: counter-cultural and establishment, rich and poor, Maldon Sea Salt of the earth.’ Except, it isn’t—to double-track is not to be rich and poor. It is to be rich and pretend that you are poor. That is what the book continues to assert.
Judith Goldman’s review of The Painted Word (‘Who’s Afraid of Tom Wolfe?’ ARTnews, June 2018) observes that ‘Wolfe’s sociology is easy, fast and inaccurate. He sets sociological subjects up only to put them down, and often his language implies the subject’s fate, a moralistic fate determined by Wolfe.’ This might just as easily be levelled at Double-Tracking. For example, its assertion that a person is ‘a long-term resident of the borough of Hackney’: the unnecessary pomp of ‘the borough of’ leans gladly into the comfortable sphere of presentist hipster critique. Also, if I hear another white, middle class Londoner try to talk about gentrification as if they aren’t complicit, I will throw eggs at them. Maybe a little smoked salmon, too.
I’m desperate for some psychoanalysis, despite knowing that this is not what the book wants to engage with. The fact that Mclaughlin has read some Jacqueline Rose is altogether too tantalising (‘Ana Mendieta: Artist or Martyr?’ ArtReview, April 2018). I am not fundamentally against the argument of Double-Tracking (rich people = bad) but in practice it comes across as a misdirected tirade against posh posing, rather than against the inequality that it masks. It seems to run up against the same problems that Wolfe himself foundered on, namely a harsh criticism of the left without any constructive suggestions as to how its problems might be solved. It is possible that I am subjecting this book to the ‘cold shower of theory’ where it isn’t welcome (‘Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus’, The White Review, April 2019), but if we’re going to bathe in the warm bath water of casual rhetoric forever then eventually it’s going to get cold anyway, so why not expedite the process? The concept of the armchair socialist was invented long before this book was published, so it’s hard to see what exactly it hopes to achieve.
Before expanding on Tom Wolfe’s concept of double-tracking, Mclaughlin offers a gloss on Norman Mailer’s essay The White Negro (1957), written at a time when whiteness was becoming commoditised and prioritised in a uniquely modern way: specifically, through technology, gender, and a reframing of abstraction in contemporary art. The White Negro is an essay about what, today, would be called cultural appropriation: Mclaughlin identifies that this is a one-way street, designating it perceptively as an ‘immersive type of role play.’ She then launches haphazardly into the book’s first extended historical case study: Ancient Rome — the pretended location of the birth of the white race. Considering the importance of race in an argument about gentrification, this seems a little careless; a sustained critical treatment of race might be beyond this book’s remit.
I wonder if Mclaughlin has read Pretentiousness: Why it Matters (2016), written by the editor of frieze, to which she has also contributed. As Dan Fox suggests, ‘[t]o understand the artistic process is to accept that pretentiousness is part of the creative condition, not an affliction.’ Mclaughlin states at one point, ‘double-tracking requires dedication, and most importantly of all, it requires belief.’ It seems difficult to separate double-tracking from aesthetics in general. The second section of the book shows how this belief bleeds into the economic aspect of the art world as well as the creative one. The problem is that posturing of all kinds is disavowed, from Etonian gallery owners to ‘art students dressed like they’d just escaped from a gym class at clown school.’ Any attention to countercultural forms of aesthetic that use the act of duplicity against cultural hegemony is absent.
Mclauglin’s fluid, glib style is witty and charming. She’s your friend at the boring party, whispering cynical disparagements in your ear to remind you that you’re much better than everyone else. However, I would appreciate assistance in reading the following sentence,
Sometimes, you might begin to suspect that your friend has had too much of the free Prosecco. Perhaps this is a statement about the ‘pink pound’? Do gay folks have a connection with the arms trade to which I’ve been as yet uninitiated? What does coming out have in common with revealing one’s wealth? Help me, please — as the art school ‘clowns’ might say — ‘I can’t even.’
A study on Hannah Cullwick is distinctly lacking in any recognition of sexuality or, more worryingly, women’s agency. While perhaps not named as such in the Victorian era, photographs and correspondence show that versions of sexuality encompassing bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism certainly existed. Viewing fetishism as a form of duplicity overlooks the importance of the fantasy itself: these practices aren’t blind to the inequalities that undergird them, they are conscious of and moved by that very fact. Indeed, Mclaughlin recognises this consciousness later in the book: why is it not considered here? BDSM hinges on awareness, and it is for this impalpable reason that it is so broadly misunderstood. The practice of fisting, for example — for anyone who’s tried it, one of the most slow, gentle and intimate forms of sex — can appear violent outwardly, but the dynamics require constant communication, care and attention.
Mclaughlin uses Hannah Cullwick as an example of a downtrodden woman who is exploited by Arthur Munby without considering her role in their affair. I’m sure plenty of Andrea Dworkinites will read this chapter and feel upset and alarmed by Cullwick’s slave collar and boot licking, but I know a whole host of queer babes living their best lives — admittedly in the Bay Area, but the point still stands — who would feel otherwise. In fact, Mclaughlin’s mother’s dog seems to get more consideration for its own feelings and agency: ’I look at his coat, a colour I have heard my mother describe as champagne (notably when the dog himself is not present).’ While the dog might be aware of its own pretentious coat, Cullwick — a human woman — is painted as an ignorant pawn for Munby’s illicit perversions.
Continuing in the campaign against fetish, Mclaughlin addresses what is termed an ‘historical workwear fetishisation’. There is no attention paid to the aspects of the ‘workwear’ trend that play into the more insidious aspect of late capitalism: ‘self-care’ or the neoliberal onus to make oneself comfortable in an unbearable political and economic situation. The workwear that might be somewhat disingenuous with regard to its historical extraction seems to make a little more sense when considering that the widening boundary of the middle class now comes to encompass modes of existence that are also untenably precarious, albeit in their own middle class manner. Wearing fake Comme des Garçons, navigating four ‘temporary’ jobs, crying into your Buddha bowl and overdosing at 34: that sort of thing. Something that was originally designed to be as comfortable as possible during some sort of back-breaking manual labour task might mean the difference between your ability to summon up enough wherewithal to make dinner for yourself when you arrive home at 8pm before falling into bed and passing out in front of your chosen streaming service.
The second section of the book, ‘Case Studies,’ is much better because it is not in essay form. The first of the fictional case studies, Tobacco and Cedar, reads like watching Michael Haneke’s Funny Games US: it implicates. Primed by the first half of the book to snigger impotently at rich idiots, the hilarious and utterly empty sophistry of Will describing the importance of a functional aesthetic while in the same paragraph drawing our attention to a fake air duct he’s had installed specially can’t help but elicit laughter. I felt guilty, however, because what use is it laughing at fools when they’re setting the world on fire? Perhaps this is the killjoy attitude that the first half of the book has brought upon me. Still, I’ve laughed out loud, which is a great feat in this economy.
The bile towards wealth is just palpable: ‘[b]est of all, like an anarchist fancy dress party in a hedge-fund office, was the potential to have all of this while making vast sums of money.’ While it is probably not a bad thing to be made aware of the trappings of wealth, there is a degree to which, I think, this flagrant visibility is part of the problem. Everyone who reads this book will be painfully aware of the truth in these scenarios: they aren’t a shock. If you listen to a radio shock jock every morning who plays amplified fart sounds, eventually you won’t be surprised by them. This is what contemporary society has done to our injustice receptors, and this book seems to be saying ‘these farts are more shocking than the others.’ I’m not sure that they are.
The book feels a bit like a ministerial visit to a coal mine in the 1980s. The narration cosies up to working class experience while simultaneously pigeonholing it in an extremely elitist way. For example, in one of the satirical pieces, this critique is launched: ‘it is perhaps unsurprising that when Gertler lists her favourite exhibits at Frieze to date, the list should include three exhibits that are less obviously commercially viable, and which all also involved waiting in line – an experience of thrilling mundanity, one can only assume, for those unacquainted with Lidl on a Sunday afternoon.’ This is no doubt amusing, but it also assumes that representations of mundanity in art do not speak to working class people because their lives are that very mundanity. This is one of the cruxes of the performative way in which the avant-garde is branded elitist by patrons and, in their very doing so, it is made elitist. A piece of art is not recalcitrant to the uninitiated because it does not explain itself; it is classist to assume that someone without a working knowledge of art requires explanation. I believe that’s what Tom Wolfe was trying to say.
The kind of satire that Double-Tracking offers is, at times, redolent of Brass Eye:
I can almost forgive Mclaughlin the lax social commentary for this gem, and several others. Her humour is undeniable, and having read other pieces that she’s written online, I feel as if the first half of this book just needs further development or clarity, especially with regard to how fetishism relates to double-tracking, if at all. Sorry, Mclaughlin, you made me laugh and all I’ve done is sneer. Still, somehow, it seems like that’s exactly what is expected of me.
The question that Double-Tracking seems to be posing is: to what extent, and in what context, is fetishisation a problem? That is, when something is both itself and something else; when something seeks to undercut the immediate or visible for good or ill, how should we respond? Mclaughlin takes the concept of double-tracking from Tom Wolfe’s 1975 book The Painted Word, bounces off Judith Goldman’s critical review thereof and, oddly, back into the curious political doldrums and false dichotomy that Wolfe created. Mclaughlin states, ‘[t]o double-track is to be both: counter-cultural and establishment, rich and poor, Maldon Sea Salt of the earth.’ Except, it isn’t—to double-track is not to be rich and poor. It is to be rich and pretend that you are poor. That is what the book continues to assert.
Judith Goldman’s review of The Painted Word (‘Who’s Afraid of Tom Wolfe?’ ARTnews, June 2018) observes that ‘Wolfe’s sociology is easy, fast and inaccurate. He sets sociological subjects up only to put them down, and often his language implies the subject’s fate, a moralistic fate determined by Wolfe.’ This might just as easily be levelled at Double-Tracking. For example, its assertion that a person is ‘a long-term resident of the borough of Hackney’: the unnecessary pomp of ‘the borough of’ leans gladly into the comfortable sphere of presentist hipster critique. Also, if I hear another white, middle class Londoner try to talk about gentrification as if they aren’t complicit, I will throw eggs at them. Maybe a little smoked salmon, too.
I’m desperate for some psychoanalysis, despite knowing that this is not what the book wants to engage with. The fact that Mclaughlin has read some Jacqueline Rose is altogether too tantalising (‘Ana Mendieta: Artist or Martyr?’ ArtReview, April 2018). I am not fundamentally against the argument of Double-Tracking (rich people = bad) but in practice it comes across as a misdirected tirade against posh posing, rather than against the inequality that it masks. It seems to run up against the same problems that Wolfe himself foundered on, namely a harsh criticism of the left without any constructive suggestions as to how its problems might be solved. It is possible that I am subjecting this book to the ‘cold shower of theory’ where it isn’t welcome (‘Ariana and the Lesbian Narcissus’, The White Review, April 2019), but if we’re going to bathe in the warm bath water of casual rhetoric forever then eventually it’s going to get cold anyway, so why not expedite the process? The concept of the armchair socialist was invented long before this book was published, so it’s hard to see what exactly it hopes to achieve.
Before expanding on Tom Wolfe’s concept of double-tracking, Mclaughlin offers a gloss on Norman Mailer’s essay The White Negro (1957), written at a time when whiteness was becoming commoditised and prioritised in a uniquely modern way: specifically, through technology, gender, and a reframing of abstraction in contemporary art. The White Negro is an essay about what, today, would be called cultural appropriation: Mclaughlin identifies that this is a one-way street, designating it perceptively as an ‘immersive type of role play.’ She then launches haphazardly into the book’s first extended historical case study: Ancient Rome — the pretended location of the birth of the white race. Considering the importance of race in an argument about gentrification, this seems a little careless; a sustained critical treatment of race might be beyond this book’s remit.
I wonder if Mclaughlin has read Pretentiousness: Why it Matters (2016), written by the editor of frieze, to which she has also contributed. As Dan Fox suggests, ‘[t]o understand the artistic process is to accept that pretentiousness is part of the creative condition, not an affliction.’ Mclaughlin states at one point, ‘double-tracking requires dedication, and most importantly of all, it requires belief.’ It seems difficult to separate double-tracking from aesthetics in general. The second section of the book shows how this belief bleeds into the economic aspect of the art world as well as the creative one. The problem is that posturing of all kinds is disavowed, from Etonian gallery owners to ‘art students dressed like they’d just escaped from a gym class at clown school.’ Any attention to countercultural forms of aesthetic that use the act of duplicity against cultural hegemony is absent.
Mclauglin’s fluid, glib style is witty and charming. She’s your friend at the boring party, whispering cynical disparagements in your ear to remind you that you’re much better than everyone else. However, I would appreciate assistance in reading the following sentence,
‘[Double-tracking] even sprinkles the heady mix of suspense and elation over those who adopt the time-honoured act of coming-out, stepping out of the closet and into the warm embrace of acceptance, when revealing to their friends that they own the squat they live in, or that their family inheritance was acquired by dubious means (arms sales or oil fortunes, anyone?).’
Sometimes, you might begin to suspect that your friend has had too much of the free Prosecco. Perhaps this is a statement about the ‘pink pound’? Do gay folks have a connection with the arms trade to which I’ve been as yet uninitiated? What does coming out have in common with revealing one’s wealth? Help me, please — as the art school ‘clowns’ might say — ‘I can’t even.’
A study on Hannah Cullwick is distinctly lacking in any recognition of sexuality or, more worryingly, women’s agency. While perhaps not named as such in the Victorian era, photographs and correspondence show that versions of sexuality encompassing bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism certainly existed. Viewing fetishism as a form of duplicity overlooks the importance of the fantasy itself: these practices aren’t blind to the inequalities that undergird them, they are conscious of and moved by that very fact. Indeed, Mclaughlin recognises this consciousness later in the book: why is it not considered here? BDSM hinges on awareness, and it is for this impalpable reason that it is so broadly misunderstood. The practice of fisting, for example — for anyone who’s tried it, one of the most slow, gentle and intimate forms of sex — can appear violent outwardly, but the dynamics require constant communication, care and attention.
Mclaughlin uses Hannah Cullwick as an example of a downtrodden woman who is exploited by Arthur Munby without considering her role in their affair. I’m sure plenty of Andrea Dworkinites will read this chapter and feel upset and alarmed by Cullwick’s slave collar and boot licking, but I know a whole host of queer babes living their best lives — admittedly in the Bay Area, but the point still stands — who would feel otherwise. In fact, Mclaughlin’s mother’s dog seems to get more consideration for its own feelings and agency: ’I look at his coat, a colour I have heard my mother describe as champagne (notably when the dog himself is not present).’ While the dog might be aware of its own pretentious coat, Cullwick — a human woman — is painted as an ignorant pawn for Munby’s illicit perversions.
Continuing in the campaign against fetish, Mclaughlin addresses what is termed an ‘historical workwear fetishisation’. There is no attention paid to the aspects of the ‘workwear’ trend that play into the more insidious aspect of late capitalism: ‘self-care’ or the neoliberal onus to make oneself comfortable in an unbearable political and economic situation. The workwear that might be somewhat disingenuous with regard to its historical extraction seems to make a little more sense when considering that the widening boundary of the middle class now comes to encompass modes of existence that are also untenably precarious, albeit in their own middle class manner. Wearing fake Comme des Garçons, navigating four ‘temporary’ jobs, crying into your Buddha bowl and overdosing at 34: that sort of thing. Something that was originally designed to be as comfortable as possible during some sort of back-breaking manual labour task might mean the difference between your ability to summon up enough wherewithal to make dinner for yourself when you arrive home at 8pm before falling into bed and passing out in front of your chosen streaming service.
The second section of the book, ‘Case Studies,’ is much better because it is not in essay form. The first of the fictional case studies, Tobacco and Cedar, reads like watching Michael Haneke’s Funny Games US: it implicates. Primed by the first half of the book to snigger impotently at rich idiots, the hilarious and utterly empty sophistry of Will describing the importance of a functional aesthetic while in the same paragraph drawing our attention to a fake air duct he’s had installed specially can’t help but elicit laughter. I felt guilty, however, because what use is it laughing at fools when they’re setting the world on fire? Perhaps this is the killjoy attitude that the first half of the book has brought upon me. Still, I’ve laughed out loud, which is a great feat in this economy.
The bile towards wealth is just palpable: ‘[b]est of all, like an anarchist fancy dress party in a hedge-fund office, was the potential to have all of this while making vast sums of money.’ While it is probably not a bad thing to be made aware of the trappings of wealth, there is a degree to which, I think, this flagrant visibility is part of the problem. Everyone who reads this book will be painfully aware of the truth in these scenarios: they aren’t a shock. If you listen to a radio shock jock every morning who plays amplified fart sounds, eventually you won’t be surprised by them. This is what contemporary society has done to our injustice receptors, and this book seems to be saying ‘these farts are more shocking than the others.’ I’m not sure that they are.
The book feels a bit like a ministerial visit to a coal mine in the 1980s. The narration cosies up to working class experience while simultaneously pigeonholing it in an extremely elitist way. For example, in one of the satirical pieces, this critique is launched: ‘it is perhaps unsurprising that when Gertler lists her favourite exhibits at Frieze to date, the list should include three exhibits that are less obviously commercially viable, and which all also involved waiting in line – an experience of thrilling mundanity, one can only assume, for those unacquainted with Lidl on a Sunday afternoon.’ This is no doubt amusing, but it also assumes that representations of mundanity in art do not speak to working class people because their lives are that very mundanity. This is one of the cruxes of the performative way in which the avant-garde is branded elitist by patrons and, in their very doing so, it is made elitist. A piece of art is not recalcitrant to the uninitiated because it does not explain itself; it is classist to assume that someone without a working knowledge of art requires explanation. I believe that’s what Tom Wolfe was trying to say.
The kind of satire that Double-Tracking offers is, at times, redolent of Brass Eye:
‘At fourteen, he was the bass player in the grunge band twisted ankle, followed by a brief career as MC Roach Rider, and was renowned among his friends for his daring feats as a graffiti artist, spraying his tag, BigBongz, onto the side of the train tracks at Chiswick and at Kew. (. . .) All things considered, Frank was horrified to be labelled an establishment man.’
I can almost forgive Mclaughlin the lax social commentary for this gem, and several others. Her humour is undeniable, and having read other pieces that she’s written online, I feel as if the first half of this book just needs further development or clarity, especially with regard to how fetishism relates to double-tracking, if at all. Sorry, Mclaughlin, you made me laugh and all I’ve done is sneer. Still, somehow, it seems like that’s exactly what is expected of me.