Traktion Aftermath

I didn't post the video here, so you may not know what I'm talking about, but recently some kids made a video called Traktion about the fixed-gear scene somewhere in SoCal, and posted it to Vimeo. In the video, which has since been deleted, one of the kids says something about how he "rides a fixed-gear because he loves to ride his bike, and he wishes the poseurs would stay away." Prolly picked up on the little piece of presumptive and exclusionary negativity expressed by the word “poseurs,” and his post attracted a lot of comments lambasting the video makers and the riders depicted.

So now BikeSnob has gotten hold of the "scandal." Well, I don't really get Bike Snob's post. He seems to think that the uproar over the Traktion video shows how elitist and snobbish (the irony!!) the track bike "scene" is. He seems to think that Traktion got slapped down because it was people new to the scene daring to make a video. Hence his side-by-side post of tricks from Macaframa and tricks from Traktion, which was his way of saying "see, the kids in Traktion are doing the same tricks as the kids in Maca, but they're getting hated on because they're noobs!" In my opinion, Bike Snob just doesn’t get it.

In reality, Traktion got slapped down because in the video a kid presumes ownership over fixed-gear cycling, and people reacted against that. The reaction was not, as Bike Snob thinks “who do these kids think they are, making a video of themselves doing tricks?” The reaction was, I think, “who do these kids think they are, talking about poseurs and casting aspersions on other riders, setting themselves up as the arbiters of who is, and who is not, an authentic cyclist, which is particularly ironic because they themselves seem to be pretty new to bikes.” Bike Snob then used his post, which was a misreading, to go off on a tirade against how there isn't a fixed-gear "scene" and it's all a con and a marketing scam to sell hats.

To be generous, I suppose there could be some interesting issues hidden under his unreflexive self-righteousness, like the extent to which forms of activity around which identities coalesce can be co-opted by companies who suddenly see an opportunity to make $$$. But, does commodification really mean the necessary refication of an identity, or is it more complex than that? Do identities formed in a capitalist moment change when they are "co-opted?" If so, how?
I think that, in essence, Bike Snob’s post reproduces a conservative and inherently Romantic notion of identity that depends very much upon a notion of purity, and upon the notion of the degenerative force of capitalism. It’s understandable, to a degree. The Romantic notion of the corrupting influence of bourgeois capitalism is as old as, well, bourgeois capitalism, as is the Romantic notion of a pure and unadultered cultural existence that pertained before the advent of bourgeois capitalism.

All this is not to defend capitalism or capitalist exploitation. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. My point is to suggest that people like Bike Snob can’t conceive of capitalism as a totality, and thus they miss the extent to which it is a force on all forms of practice, including identity formation. They still think there are realms of cultural “purity” that exist outside the structures of capitalism, and so it’s only when Nike, say, decides to jump on the fixed-gear bandwagon that the fixed-gear scene becomes compromised. Yes, companies seek to exploit pre-existing groups and identities. It’s so easy for Nike to sell windbreakers to an exiting “market.” Just learn the cultural codes and shared signs of the “group” and build a marketing approach out of that material. Yes, it’s problematic. But does it mean that a group or an identity or a scene are hopelessly corrupted? Rubbish. The fixed-gear “scene,” to the extent that there even is one coherent scene, is born of capitalism. It’s inherently bound up in the relations of production that has cheap frames made from from Indian steel by migrant workers in Taiwanese factories shipped across the Pacific on Nigerian registered freighters crewed by Indonesian sailors, unloaded by Polish dockers in the United States and bought by kids in SoCal from the "local” bike shop that is financed by a small business loan from a Swiss bank. It’s a totality. We exist within it, and to some degree it shapes (though it doesn’t define) our habitus, our opportunities for action. It seems to me that Bike Snob is a hopeless Romantic, longing for the days of Rousseauian purity, all the while seeing capitalism as something “out there,” something alien. That’s why he uses the word “appropriation” so much, as if things, practices, identities, groups exist beyond capital first, and are only later appropriated by it and thus rendered invalid. Well, I’ve news for you, capitalism is corrupting, but it touches everything, and identities must be formed from within its totality. Maybe those identities are not as explicitly revolutionary as we might like them to be, maybe they’re inherently reactionary, but the point is, they don’t start outside the realm of capital and then get co-opted. They are formed inside the realm of capital. But, even though they are formed inside that realm doesn't mean that they won't or can't seek to move beyond it. An identity or a group or a practice is never one or the other, it’s never outside capital and pure, or inside capital and corrupted. It’s always, to some extent, both. For a theorist like deCerteau, even just walking around the city could be an expression of liberty against the tyranny of the scopic gaze, so why not fixed-gear bikes? Maybe even if the riders are wearing Nike?