29 March - 4 April 2001
Issue No.527
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 29 March - 4 April 2001 Issue No.527 |
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Rubberised perceptions
The appearance of an ever growing number of opinion articles on the pages of newspapers of almost every hue exhorting readers to radically change their spending habits are one manifestation of the concern currently felt not only over the vast balance of payments deficit but also over the abysmally low savings ratio. That, at least, appears to be the sub-text underlying the arguments though it is seldom, if ever, made explicit. And that is something of a shame since so adept have people become at isolating and extricating the sub-textual that it has ceased to become anything other than a reflex, a vegetative action, not quite associated with the conscious exercise of the higher functions of the intellect. Nothing breeds contempt quite like familiarity, and the reading public appears to have grown far too familiar with reading between the lines.
It is far more fun, after all, a far more fulfilling exercise, to fall in with the blatant inconsistencies. Remember those odd advertisements that appeared to announce the opening of Arkadia, selling the place as not only the acme of the shopping mall experience but also as somehow spearheading the export drive. No one quite bothered to elucidate how this particular circle might be squared, how an emporium that was marketing itself on the number of outlets it contained specialising in luxury -- ie imported -- goods could at the same time -- and this was said by quite senior officials -- be having a positive impact on the balance of payments deficit. Here there was no sub-text, no message to subliminally convey, just a crude inconsistency stated as fact. And so blasé have people become about the kind of excavations necessary to make sense of almost everything that when it becomes nonsensical it provides a whiff, a palpable whiff, of excitement.
You could, of course, put the two together, take the two of the exhortation to change your spending habits (the majority of people, after all, do not frequent shops specialising in imported luxuries for the simple reason that they cannot afford to) and add to it the two that insists that Arkadia promotes local exports and come up with the 525 that will justify blowing the family's monthly budget on a couple of fine bone china cups and saucers manufactured somewhere just south of the Black Forest. And when faced with hungry faces around the dinner table you could always occupy meal times with an edifying and thorough argument about national duty, hardships to be borne, better times ahead, all of which will, of course, be predicated upon a carefull reading of the press.
It is all too easy to bemoan opacity, and the absence of transparancy has become the catch all excuse for every possible ill in the benighted stage of globalisation through which we are all forced to live. Greater transparancy is presented as the key to a brighter, better future, a future in which investments will blow across the nation like particles of sand in an endless Khamasin, and in their wake the good times will roll. But one man's transparancy is another man's over-simplification, and given a long-honed ability to read between the lines the absence of transparancy is not necessarily a problem. Far more problematic are those statements that have abandoned the opaque, that have divorced themselves from the need to embed sense, however many layers beneath the surface, so as to better align themselves to non-sense. Far more worrisome is the abandoning of the meaning between or beneath the lines in favour of no meaning at all.
Don't knock it if it works -- an annoying platitude, perhaps, but one that contains rather more than a germ of good sense. In the parlance of international capital, concentrate on your comparative advantages, which is really just one more way of saying play to your strengths, build on what you are good at. And if a particular, and valuable, skill has been built up over decades, don't undermine it. Abandoning the sub-text in favour of a faux-transparancy is tantamount to pulling the carpet from beneath oneself, of leaping off the tightrope without having first checked that a safety net is in place.
The truth is seldom simple -- it is a position with which increasingly few would argue -- though those whose idea of fun it is to play the Devil's advocate might have a better chance taking on the second half of the Wildean dictum, that that same truth is never pure. The fact, though, that the second half of the statement is more easily contested precisely because it is so bald itself constitutes an interesting paradox, in this instance a successful squaring of the circle that serves simply to underline the prescience of Wilde's observation.
By way of expansion, one can easily become used to the news -- that peculiarly modern entity -- never being simply stated. This in no way compromises its validity, though any acknowledgement of this would almost certainly lead to mass redundancies. Press agencies -- specialists in the vacuous single sentence paragraph -- would fold overnight. Twenty-four hour news bulletins would become a thing of the over-simple past. Indeed, the whole sound-bite, cutting edge culture of globalisation could easily come to look as outmoded as The Forsyth Saga.
It is a dangerous thing to abandon density in favour of transparancy if that transparancy is merely the product of a vacuum. And within the press, it can serve only to alienate the intelligent reader, whose hard won discourse analysis skills would undoubtedly be more highly-valued in foreign institutes of higher education. The less adept reader, though, mistaking this sudden propensity to make bald statements for something that might approximate to the truth, is in danger of being seriously misled. He or she, having through sheer force of habit comprehended the sub-text, could be all too easily confused by its sudden absence, mistaking this latter as a purer, simpler truth. In which case one might witness a sudden expansion of the local market for imported fine china, imported fruits and vegetables, imported gherkins, and be treated to the strange sight of watching people save up for ever just to splash thousands of pounds on a little Dolce and Gabbana halter-neck dress in a valiant attempt to help the local textile industry.
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