Cultural Degradation Experts

On page 257 of his Convergence Culture book, Jenkins introduces the opposing viewpoint to the "realizable utopia" he and Pierre Lévy introduce throughout the book, Calling it "critical pessimism" and allegedly lead by scholars like Michael Crispin Miller and Noam Chomsky, this opposition stresses the same things, such as participatory culture, but on a different basis: "victimization" instead of "empowerment." Jenkins criticizes this thought by attacking its lack of faith in the engaged and active consumer of culture, but also by attacking the stranglehold that critical pessimists claim big media corporations have on the cultural landscape.

In the conclusion of Convergence Culture, where Jenkins presents the notion of these "critical pessimists" on pages 258-259, he rather quickly dismisses critical pessimists' merit and moves on from their opinions as soon as he introduces them. But is this fair? Does he give their point of view enough thought? Is Jenkins so different from them throughout the book?

In short, no, no, and actually yes. Based on Jenkins' very rough and unique explanation of their viewpoints (critical pessimism exists nowhere in cultural scholarship outside of that paragraph in Convergence Culture's conclusion), one may gather a very limited view of scholars like Chomsky, McChesney, and Miller. Chomsky is a monumental name in modern thought, linguistics, philosophy, activism, and culture in general; it is true that his writing has villainized large media, but he has done so in order to paint a portrait that connects the large media corporations to the filtered information that we receive. Thus, he does as Jenkins proposes use victimization as a basis for participatory culture, but he also suggests empowerment. To rely solely on victimization in order to spark any sort of progress would be counterproductive, and Chomsky recognizes this: it was the power of (corrupt) people that set up the media climate, but it is also average people that have the power to have a profound change on the role of the media in our lives. Miller is another example of a misrepresented scholar when describing critical pessimism. Much of Miller's writings present case studies that effectively lay out the abilities of large conglomerations to affect our media and culture in frighteningly powerful ways. Miller works in the concrete while Chomsky works largely in the abstract and theoretical, but they are arguing the same idea in principle. However, to simply state that Miller too presents the current media climate as impossibly oppressive is inconsistent with the direction of his writings. He has just been straightforward with the scenarios in which powers above us have had a profound impact on general culture without our ability to exert influence. It is true that Miller uses these scenarios he lays out as reasons for us to participate more heavily in culture, but Miller writes for the purpose of exposing our missteps in hopes of us later on being able to reign in these large media and cultural organizations that we've let grow without any real restraint or attention from the public – not to present victimization and use impending doom as a valid basis for out participation.

As far as Jenkins' perspective is concerned, there is little doubt at a superficial level that he presents a theory that is different from that of Chomsky or Miller: Jenkins presents empowerment and they present victimization. But they don't present irrational victimization; instead they present metered prose and reasonable, well-developed examples of situations where cultural machines out of our current reach have been able to have an impact on our life without our influence. So, a second look might suggest that these critical pessimists only provide a more realistic view of the fight we are up against. However, a third and final analysis of what is going on brings us to a final conclusion – Jenkins truly does have a different point and perspective. What Miller and Chomsky and McChesney lack in their writing is example of people having overcome that barrier and beginning to truly participate in culture in new ways that they hadn't before. Jenkins presents mostly encouraging information and toys with wonderful possibilities with measured expectations throughout Convergence Culture. He does acknowledge what critical pessimists spend much of their scholarship on, but he presents the solution as well. Thus, critical pessimism is a bit of a misleading term. Chomsky and Miller and McChesney are not pessimistic in their outlook: they are just more thorough in their evaluation of the negative.

Perhaps they need a new name: cultural degradation experts.