Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
guide a multitextured, complex club owner production of knowledge about the club and
its relation to personal goals, values, and desires. These interconnections are crucial:
they intermix the owners' drive to commodify the club with desires to embolden their
identities, upgrade their enriching as cultural beings, and service fellow “subaltern”
people.Theresultsarecontradictory,conflictingdesiresthattearattheconsciousnessof
clubowners.Theprocessofclubcommodification, Iconclude,isanythingbutadomin-
ant, hegemonic imposition on agency-bereft people. The interconnections of neoliberal
subject realities, governmentality, and class-race identity ultimately embed the drive to
commodify in produced stocks of knowledge that also carry other ideals, aspirations,
and “imperatives” in them.
Finally, why do I take on the issues of how commodification operates on this floor
space and blues club survivability in their present forms? These blues clubs and com-
munities face, one more time, turbulent times. In their currently formation, the core
groupofclubs,thinnedbyeconomicattritionovertimeandalsonowafocusforaffluent
upscaling, may soon disappear or be substantially altered. This would prove damaging
to these South Side neighborhoods; these clubs are a substantive social and cultural re-
source. Whether “authentic” or not, these clubs continue to be an important social glue
in their communities. Yet, I am not convinced that stepped-up attempts to commodify
them will be successful, the forces of resistance may prove stronger. The remarkable
survivability of these nine Blues clubs, with their staunch club owners and dominant
club populations, may be sufficient to thwart capital's overtures. The power of capital to
transformallplacesinourcitiestotheirspecifications,inthefinalanalysis,continuesto
meetdeftandadroitoppositioninunlikelyplacesandinunlikelyways.Predictingthese
clubs' evolution, then, is difficult, and we must re-examine this deepened interface of
capital and community in the upcoming months and years.
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks to France Winddance Twine and Bradley Gardener for offering im-
portant, constructive comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Special thanks to
Matt Wilson for making the figures that accompany this chapter.
Notes
ues—commodified social relations, market solutions to individual and societal ills, atomized and
individually causative beings—that have become imperceptibly internalized by many (Wilson
2004;EnglandandWard2007).GovernmentalityreferencestheFoucaultiannotionofpowerbeing
exercised by current power regimes in the mundane every day (Larner 2003). This “government
fromafar”notionidentifiesameaning-richeveryday—modesofdress,manner,gesticulation,body
