By Namrata Pathak
How would we define freedom of expression without getting trapped in the inconsistencies inherent in the term itself? What is it all about? All of us are aware of the fact that the constitutional right to express ourselves is shackled by various restrictive agendas. What happens if we place our right of expression in the chasm between consumerism and the culture-ideology offset? In the spectrum of consumerism, what role does public speech play?
Following Sklair, we can contend that the things that we possess add a meaning to our life. The criterion to be fully alive, as maintained by Sklair, is to consume. Sklair has deftly intersected the need to be fully alive with the act of consumption. Apart from it, the urge to commodify is at the heart of all cultural systems. However, the mode of converting cultural contents into a political message is quite complex. This axis of transformation is also envisaged in our day to day life when a valuable cultural artefact turns into kitsch at a shopping arcade; this is seen in the spaces of most international airports. But, is this act of transformation shadowed by diverse orientations of the reciprocity, sociability, and spontaneity of exchange? Moreover, we cannot forego the nuances associated with the “objectification of persons” and “personification of things” in a commodity market. According to Ertman and Williams, it will be an ignorant move to overlook how cultural things move in phases—the movement can be normative or deviant, reversible or terminal etc. But in such a situation, is there any room for the “individual”? The liquidation of the individual gives birth to a situation where real signature is manipulated for reasons of marketability. As such, speech matters most than the individual who has spoken it, partly because the speech can be tailor-made to suit the demands of the market.
The icons, symbols and practices of culture, in the domain of the present risk-acceptant capitalism and market economy, transform themselves into “opportunities.” Market demands, en route the network of information technologies, entrepreneurship and other economic ventures, make cultural values and objects lean on profits. These are the profits that they make the most among the category of transnational business class. However, as the new political realities wash over us in a country like India, the mode of expressing oneself also helps people deal with the magical word called “survival.” It teaches people to “survive” at least in a domain that is at the receiving end of public glare, thus confining the situation to the dynamics of “who is seeing whom from what angle?” Intention and perspective are the mantra of the onlooker, and the same rule applies to the speaker.
Speech, at times, acts as merchandise. Dialogues, interaction, and mediation in public forum are evenly “distributed” by electronic media. They cater to all the classes, from elites to the middle class to the poor. Speech is an instrumental prop in the buyer-user spectrum, used as a tool to consolidate economies of expansion. This tool wields power through a vital supply of mass-produced reaction. There is no doubt about the fact that it is a political action that provides resources for consumption. The diverse self expression can be used as a weapon to establish the self and the other binary. It needs to be noted that an appetite for the product determines the prime motor behind its popularity, and speech is no exception. We need to be aware of the consumption of speech as it is designated both as a practice and a system, an identity and a social construct. Thus, self expression can never be isolated from an array of material contradictions, power struggles, and willful action. In this context, Arjun Appadurai opines, “…focusing on the things that are exchanged, rather than simply on the forms or functions of exchange, makes it possible to argue that what creates the link between exchange and value is politics, construed broadly…commodities, like persons, have social lives”. Hence, speech is intricately connected to politics.
Through speech we can establish a cultural morality. But the profound mystifying force is the exclusion of some people from the realization of political goals. This act can perversely keep some people away from the restorative belief of creating a new social system. We need to study it in the context of expectations of poor countries, their inadequate social welfare programmes and infrastructure, inept governments etc. Ironically, states crippled by violence, exploitation, epidemics, drugs etc. need new scales of execution. Of course we need non-governmental organizations, foreign aids, and healing and caring programmes to combat the dreadful diseases of the society. Against this backdrop, how can self expression be a potent tool for socio-economic forces of liberalism? Perhaps we need to reflect on it.
(The author is Assistant Professor, English at NEHU Tura campus )