DISTINCTION : A SOCIOLOGY OF MUSICAL TASTE IN SINGAPORE

Abstract

Social life comes with an irresolvable enigma, the need for subjective expression and distinctiveness conflicts with the societal demands for objectivity and conformity. In a world overrun by objectivity and Zweck-Rationality, we are forced to withhold our subjectivity. The arts, usually recognised as an arena of utmost subjectivity, thus become an important refuge for the modern subject and the social expression of one's intractable essence or Taste. Yet the arts and especially the consumption of the arts has an objective reality. Distinction, inspired by Bourdieu, thus aims to study on how taste juggles the irreducible dialectic of objectivity and subjectivity while providing a social critique and re-evaluation of the nature of taste and distinction in our society. A Reminder Distinction should not be seen as evidence for stereotypes or as a consumer's guide to clever signalling. The foremost agenda of Distinction-to rethink the politics and aesthetics of taste -- stems in part from my inability to resolve the "real" aesthetic experience I feel as an artist with the supposed "social constructedness" of this "reality". Distinction is thus should not be seen as pro- or anti- ideology/reality in the final analysis, but rather as anti-pro-ideology/reality and anti-anti-ideology/reality.