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Bodies imprisoned by law.A review of Yann Moulier Boutang’s From slavery to wage labourFranco Barchiesi
Il Manifesto 12/01/03 |
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The general significance of such a complex work, From slavery to wage labour (manifestolibri, pp. 717, 49 Euro) by Yann Moulier Boutang, finally translated in Italian, can be grasped from the subtitle to the original edition: ‘economic history of the bridled proletariat’ [the original is: De l’esclavage au salariat. Economie historique du salariat bridé, PUF (Actuel Marx/Confrontations), novembre 1998., tr.]. The expression economic history is the appropriate one for the author’s epistemological project. From this perspective the aim of the book is precisely to trace the outline of a total rethinking of Marxian political economy (or, in the author’s words, to ‘bring politics’ back to Marxian economics), starting from the normative and institutional forms through which the ‘wage labour’ relation was constituted, in a process lasting centuries that largely predates the origin of capitalism itself. Moulier Boutang accomplishes the task via an impressive series of excursus that combines a research of yet unequalled breadth of temporal periods and diversity of case studies with an exceptional command of the terms of the theoretical debate. The genesis of the capitalist labour relation is analysed by means of an enquiry that runs from the XIVth century to the first half of the XXth century with rigour and coherence of exposition. It takes into consideration extremely diversified contexts such as the formation of the wage labour market in Western Europe, slavery in the Americas, the mining and plantation economies in Brazil, the contracted migrations of the coolies, up until the birth of South African apartheid. In the course of this trajectory, Moulier Boutang establishes several conceptual points of reference that mark innovative and often surprising results. In this sense, the work rightly deserves to be described as ‘monumental’.
The urgency of this labour of conceptual renovation is dictated to the author by the awareness that he is confronting what he himself calls a ‘new continent’ that had been excluded from the official maps of the varyingly codified Marxist orthodoxy for a long time. The historical field of capitalist accumulation is developed in the book according to coordinates that challenge consolidated structuralist (or, to use Moulier Boutang’s words, ‘externalist’) positions. The latter had confined the codification of the labour relation under capitalism to the terrain of the ‘superstructure’. In this perspective, the function of formal guarantees of individual worker’s rights and freedoms, with corresponding duties was to enable whilst simultaneously masking the exploitation inherent to the selling of labour power that, in relation to those rights and freedoms, is prior and constitutive in its essentially economic dynamic of expropriation and domination. Thus wage labour was presented in this light as a more refined, cumulatively perfectioned and necessary universal form of capital’s employment of the proletariat. Moulier Boutang completely overturns the terms of the issue and demonstrates how the wage labour relation was historically constituted only as one of the forms of subordinate labour which capital has employed since long before the birth of capitalism in the attempt to attend to its central imperative and challenge: namely, to immobilize the body of the proletarian, to tie it to the labour relation and to prevent its flight, the breach of contract and the refusal to work. Thus, within global capitalism other forms of exploitation have coexisted in an often unstable and changing manner with ‘free’ wage labour, and unfree labour often occupied a complementary position with the latter in the vast field of strategies aimed at disciplining subaltern classes. Forms of servile, enslaved or indentured labour are far from representing mere archaisms, transitory adjustments or residues of backwardness in ‘traditional’ societies destined to be wiped out by ‘modernisation’ in the name of which a large part of last century’s reformisms supported various colonial and neo-colonial regimes-. On the contrary, they played a constituent role in the historical trajectory of capitalism, and the author suggests that they keep playing one in so far as the industrialised West combines the freedom and right to citizenship enjoyed by autochthon workers, as conditions to ‘entrust’ them into a productive process of increasing ‘human capital’, with the persistence of policies of bureaucratic control of migration trends and limitation of juridical status and mobility, through which the new migrant multitudes are, vice versa, tied to their labour in occupations that are more vulnerable, subject to blackmail and oppressive. As the important work Citizen and Subject by Mahmood Mamdani (Princeton University Press, 1996) shows, the coexistence of ‘citizenship’ and coercive and undemocratic forms of ‘subjection’ constitutes a distinctive trait of capitalism in its global making even in what continues to be referred to as the ‘South’ of the globe. The questioning of the concept of ‘wage labour’ leads Moulier Boutang to a conclusion that has an enormous theoretical relevance and political significance: the proletariat as abstractly unitary subject of capitalist oppression intended in Marxian vulgate as the premise of liberation and teleological horizon of resistance tends to disappear from view. In its place, we find multiple subjectivities that exercise a right to resist to the discipline of labour on the basis of a common strategy that can be seen throughout the centuries: that of flight. The relevance of the flight, of desertion, of the breach of the labour contract, of migration as the collective movement of a labour force that is opposed to becoming proletariat and does not see such a condition as the basis for future social progress, leads to author to a reading of capitalism that no longer makes the moment of domination central whilst confining ‘resistance’ to a purely reactive role of preparation to the occurrence of some ‘historical necessity’. At the same time, it allows Moulier Boutang to avoid falling into the opposite trap, that of supporting an Enlightenment view of individual freedom or of idealising a dimension of ‘micro-historical’ evidence of community as a residue of social forms that are extraneous to capitalism. On the contrary, it is the historical trajectory of the latter that comes out of the book as uneven, tortuous and largely incomplete in so far as the antagonistic insurgency of the subjectivity that is to be put to work determines the emergence of new normative and contractual forms, a hierarchisation of rights and new combinations of free and unfree labour, that are in turn suddenly invested by the emergence of new forms of flight, of refusal of the multitude to be codified into what is wished to be an ordered division, now global, of labour. By underlining the role of norms and institutions in the definition of contractual forms of codification of the law, Moulier Boutang marks a second, decisive point of separation from the tradition of ‘structuralist Marxism’. In other words, capitalism is not primarily regarded as the unstoppable extension of the market and of the universal commodification of the conditions of subsistence transformed into productive factors, in the face of which the law and institutions essentially fulfil a role of codification, perpetuation and mystification. Curiously, the Leninist version of the extinction of the State, the Keynesian reading of the State as a corrective for the unreliability of the market and the liberalist approach of the ‘minimal state’ and the centrality of self-regulating markets all share this particular view. According to Moulier Boutang, here in open polemic with Karl Polanyi (similarly to Mark Granovetter’s analysis of capitalist market as profoundly ‘rooted’, or embedded, in social forms), institutions and regulative norms do not intervene merely ex post, to remedy to the undesirable social consequences produced by an ‘unregulated’ market. On the contrary, juridical and political forms of control on labour are given in this book a central position in the vast weaponry of strategies through which capital continuously tries to solve, with only partial success, the dilemma posed by the worker’s ‘faculty to flight’. Moulier Boutang premises his reasoning on this issue on an absolutely original reading of the methodological tradition of ‘neo-institutionalism’, of the economy of conventions and of transaction costs as systematised by, amongst others, Oliver Williamson. From this critical reelaboration of mainstream theoretical trends there emerges a reading of capitalism far from the impersonal and ordering one of its apologists- as a mode of production that rather than adopting ‘optimal’, from the standpoint of rationality and efficiency, methods and strategies of employment of labour, must constantly resort to barriers and limitations juridically imposed in order to control ‘externalities’ that are independent from its design. As Ashwin Desai shows in We are the Poors. Community Struggles. Post-apartheid South Africa (Monthly Review Press) by means of a rich repertoire of daily strategies of social subversion, the most resistant of these ‘externalities’, which any reading of capitalism that does not wish to push the subjectivity of the multitude to the margins must refer to, is given by a constant desire to flight animated by a world of sociality, affects and sensuality that are simply refractory to the paradigm of labour. Translated by Arianna Bove |
| In Italian:
“Il manifesto”, 12 gennaio 2002
Corpi prigionieri per legge Esce finalmente in Italia «Dalla schiavitù al lavoro salariato», la monumentale opera dello studioso francese Yann Moulier Boutang. Un lungo e ambizioso lavoro storico che mette al centro dell’analisi la produzione normativa volta al controllo delle figure sociali interessate dal processo capitalistico
FRANCO BARCHIESI Il senso generale di un’opera assai complessa come Dalla schiavitù al lavoro salariato (Manifestolibri, pp. 717, € 49) di Yann Moulier Boutang, finalmente tradotta in italiano, si può cogliere a partire dal sottotitolo dell’edizione originale: «economia storica del proletariato imbrigliato». Economia storica è, infatti, un’espressione particolarmente adeguata a rendere conto del progetto epistemologico dell’autore. Da questo punto di vista lo scopo del libro è né più né meno che tracciare i lineamenti di un ripensamento complessivo dell’economia politica marxiana (o, nelle parole dell’autore, di «restituire la politica» all’economia marxiana) a partire dalle forme normative e istituzionali attraverso cui, in un percorso secolare che in larga parte predata l’origine stessa del capitalismo, si è andato costituendo il rapporto di «lavoro dipendente». Il compito è svolto da Moulier Boutang attraverso una serie impressionante di excursus che ad una padronanza eccezionale dei termini del dibattito teorico combina una ricerca la cui vastità di orizzonti temporali e diversità di casi trattati rimangono ineguagliate. La genesi del rapporto capitalistico di lavoro è infatti affrontata attraverso un’indagine che si dipana, con rigore e coerenza espositiva, tra il XIV e la prima metà del XX secolo, prendendo in considerazione contesti estremamente diversificati come la formazione del mercato del lavoro salariato nell’Europa occidentale, la schiavitù nelle Americhe, le economie minerarie e di piantagione in Brasile, le migrazioni a contratto dei coolies, fino alla nascita dell’apartheid sudafricano. Nel corso di questa traiettoria, Moulier Boutang fissa alcuni punti di riferimento concettuali che marcano risultati innovativi, spesso sorprendenti. In questo senso, l’opera può ben meritare l’appellativo di «monumentale».
Allo stesso tempo, l’urgenza di questo lavoro di rinnovamento concettuale è dettata all’autore dalla consapevolezza di trovarsi di fronte a ciò che egli chiama un «nuovo continente» rimasto a lungo escluso dalle mappe ufficiali dell’ortodossia marxista variamente codificata. Lo scenario storico dell’accumulazione capitalistica si sviluppa nel libro secondo coordinate che sfidano consolidate versioni strutturaliste (o «esternaliste», per usare ancora le parole di Moulier Boutang). Queste ultime avevano confinato la codificazione del rapporto di lavoro nel capitalismo al terreno della «sovrastruttura»: la garanzia formale di diritti e libertà individuali del lavoratore, con obblighi corrispondenti, svolgeva in questa prospettiva la funzione di rendere possibile e mascherare allo stesso tempo lo sfruttamento inerente a una compravendita di forza-lavoro che, rispetto a quei diritti e libertà, è antecedente e costitutiva nella sua dinamica essenzialmente economica di espropriazione e dominazione. Il lavoro salariato si presentava quindi, in quella luce, come la forma più compiuta, cumulativamente perfezionata e necessariamente universale di messa al lavoro del proletariato da parte del capitale. Moulier Boutang ribalta completamente i termini della questione e mostra come il rapporto di lavoro salariato si sia storicamente costituito solamente come una delle fattispecie di lavoro dipendente attraverso cui il capitale, sin da molto prima della nascita del capitalismo, ha cercato di rispondere al proprio imperativo, e sfida, centrale: immobilizzare il corpo del proletario, legarlo alla relazione di lavoro, prevenirne la «fuga», la rottura del contratto, il rifiuto del lavoro. All’interno del capitalismo globale, altre forme di sfruttamento sono quindi coesistite in maniera spesso instabile e mutevole a fianco del lavoro salariato «libero» e il lavoro non libero si è spesso trovato in una condizione di complementarità con quest’ultimo nel vasto ambito di strategie miranti a disciplinare le classi subalterne. Lungi dal rappresentare meri arcaismi, aggiustamenti transitori o residui di arretratezza in società «tradizionali» destinati ad essere spazzati via dalla «modernizzazione» – in nome della quale larga parte del riformismo novecentesco appoggiò vari regimi coloniali e neocoloniali – le forme di impiego servili, schiavistiche o di indentured labour hanno svolto un ruolo costituente nella traiettoria storica del capitalismo. E, suggerisce l’autore, continuano a svolgerlo nella misura in cui l’Occidente industrializzato combina l’affrancamento e i diritti di cittadinanza goduti da lavoratori autoctoni, quali condizioni per «fidelizzarl» a processi produttivi a crescente intensità di «capitale umano», con la permanenza di politiche di controllo burocratico dei flussi migratori, limitazione di status giuridico e di mobilità attraverso cui le nuove moltitudini migranti vengono, viceversa, legate al loro lavoro in occupazioni maggiormente vulnerabili, ricattabili e oppressive. D’altronde, come mostra l’importante Citizen and Subject di Mahmood Mamdani (Princeton University Press, 1996), la coesistenza di «cittadinanza» e forme coercitive e non-democratiche di «soggezione» costituisce anche in ciò che continua ad essere riferito come il «sud» del mondo un tratto distintivo del capitalismo nel suo farsi globale. La messa in discussione del concetto di «lavoro salariato» conduce Moulier Boutang ad una conclusione di grande rilevanza teorica e portata politica: il proletariato come soggetto astrattamente unitario dell’oppressione capitalistica inteso nella vulgata marxiana come presupposto della liberazione e orizzonte teleologico della resistenza tende a scomparire dall’orizzonte. Al suo posto troviamo molteplici soggettività che, a partire da condizioni affatto specifiche, esercitano un diritto di resistenza alla disciplina del lavoro sulla base, nondimeno, di una strategia comune e riscontrabile attraverso i secoli: la fuga. La rilevanza della fuga, della diserzione, della rottura del contratto di lavoro, della migrazione come movimento collettivo di una forza-lavoro che si oppone a divenire proletariato, e comunque non vede in tale condizione la base di futuri progressi sociali, porta l’autore a una lettura del capitalismo che non ne mette più al centro il momento della dominazione, confinando la «resistenza» ad un ruolo puramente reattivo o di preparazione all’inverarsi di una qualche «necessità storica». Allo stesso tempo, ciò consente a Moulier Boutang di evitare di cadere nelle trappole contrapposte di assecondare una visione illuministica della libertà individuale o di idealizzare una dimensione di testimonianza «micro-storica» della comunità come residuo di forme sociali «estranee» al capitalismo. E’ invece la traiettoria storica di quest’ultimo a uscire dal libro come accidentata, tortuosa, largamente incompleta nella misura in cui l’insorgenza antagonista della soggettività che si vuole mettere al lavoro determina l’emergere di nuove forme normative e contrattuali, una gerarchizzazione di diritti e nuove combinazioni tra lavoro libero e non libero, le quali sono però subito dopo investite dall’emergere di nuove forme di fuga, di rifiuto della moltitudine a lasciarsi codificare in quella che si vuole come un’ordinata divisione, ormai globale, del lavoro. E’ proprio nel sottolineare il ruolo delle norme e delle istituzioni nella definizione di forme contrattuali di codificazione del diritto che Moulier Boutang segna un secondo, decisivo punto di separazione dalla tradizione del «marxismo strutturalista». Il capitalismo non è, cioè, visto innanzitutto come l’estensione inarrestabile del mercato e della mercificazione universale delle condizioni di sussistenza tramutate in fattori produttivi, nei cui confronti il diritto e le istituzioni svolgono una funzione essenzialmente di codificazione, perpetuazione, mascheramento. Curiosamente, su una tale visione concordano tanto la versione leninista dell’estinzione dello stato, quanto la lettura keynesiana dello stato come correttivo all’inaffidabilità dei mercati, quanto l’approccio liberista dello «stato minimo» e della centralità del mercato autoregolato. Secondo Moulier Boutang, qui in aperta polemica con Karl Polanyi (in maniera simile all’analisi di Mark Granovetter del mercato capitalistico come profondamente «radicato», o embedded, nelle forme sociali), le istituzioni e le norme regolative non intervengono meramente ex post, a rimediare alle indesiderabili conseguenze sociali prodotte da un mercato «sregolato». Al contrario, le forme giuridiche e politiche di controllo sul lavoro riacquistano in questo libro una posizione centrale nel vasto armamentario di strategie attraverso cui il capitale cerca costantemente di venire a capo, potendo vantare solo successi parziali, del dilemma posto dalla «facoltà di fuga» del lavoratore. Moulier Boutang sviluppa il suo ragionamento su questo punto a partire da una lettura assolutamente originale della tradizione metodologica del «neo-istituzionalismo», dell’economia delle convenzioni e dei costi di transazione così come sistematizzata, tra gli altri, da Oliver Williamson. Da questo ripensamento critico di correnti teoriche appartenenti al mainstream esce confermata una lettura del capitalismo – lontana da quella impersonale e ordinatrice dei suoi apologeti – come modo di produzione che, ben lungi dall’adottare metodi e strategie di impiego del lavoro «ottimali» dal punto di vista della razionalità e dell’efficienza, deve costantemente ricorrere a vincoli, barriere, limitazioni giuridicamente imposte per controllare «esternalità» indipendenti dal suo disegno. Come mostra attraverso un ricco repertorio di strategie quotidiane di sovversione sociale anche un recente e fondamentale libro di Ashwin Desai, We Are the Poors. Community Struggles. Post-apartheid South Africa (Monthly Review Press), la più resistente di queste «esternalità», a cui ogni lettura del capitalismo che non voglia relegare la soggettività della moltitudine ai margini deve fare riferimento, è data da una costante volontà di fuga animata da un mondo di socialità, affetti, sensualità semplicemente refrattari al paradigma del lavoro. see also an interview with the author in French on: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/marxiens/politic/revenus/ymb.htm |
| see also:
Movimenti verso la libertà Migranti e non solo Le tesi delle studioso francese alla prova delle diverse legislazioni europee sull’immigrazione che subordinano i diritti di cittadinanza al lavoro SANDRO MEZZADRA
Chi volesse trovare un esempio concreto del raffinato discorso di Yann Moulier Boutang sull’«imbrigliamento» del lavoro, sulle «forme difformi» di regolazione del rapporto lavorativo e sull’effetto che esse hanno sulla condizione complessiva del lavoro e della cittadinanza, non ha da guardar lontano. Con limpida prosa il legislatore italiano, all’articolo 6 della legge 189/2002 (meglio nota come Bossi-Fini), ci offre questo esempio attraverso l’introduzione della figura giuridica del «contratto di soggiorno». Che cosa significhi per il migrante il sottile slittamento linguistico dal permesso al contratto di soggiorno lo spiegano egregiamente, tra gli altri, Alessandra Ballerini e Alessandro Benna nel loro Il muro invisibile. Immigrazione e Legge Bossi-Fini (Fratelli Frilli Editori): nella misura in cui la stipula del contratto di lavoro diviene esplicitamente condizione per l’ottenimento del permesso di soggiorno, lo status giuridico dell’immigrato è reso in tutto «dipendente dalla sussistenza del contratto di lavoro e quindi, in ultima analisi, dalla volontà del datore di lavoro». Si badi: non è che le cose stessero molto diversamente con la precedente legge voluta dal centro-sinistra. Ma siccome i reazionari hanno spesso il pregio di parlar chiaro, ora è sancito dalla legge che esiste nel nostro paese una classe di uomini e donne per cui l’arendtiano «diritto ad avere diritti», e dunque un elemento per eccellenza pubblico, deriva da (ed è logicamente subordinato a) un contratto privato, quello di lavoro. Anziché funzionare come principio di «scioglimento» e di dinamizzazione delle relazioni sociali, secondo quanto da tempo immemorabile non si stanca di ripetere il discorso politico liberale, il contratto è qui appunto all’origine di una condizione di imbrigliamento. Non dovrebbe essere la cosa più facile del mondo, almeno formalmente, rinunciare a un posto di lavoro per cercarne un altro, in una società capitalistica? Dipende, per qualcuno significa contare i giorni in attesa del momento in cui uno zelante poliziotto può presentargli un deportation order. Il libro di Moulier Boutang, che a buon diritto Franco Barchiesi definisce «monumentale», non è certo soltanto un libro sulle migrazioni. Tuttavia, proprio nell’indicare il rilievo cruciale dei movimenti migratori nella storia e nella struttura del capitalismo sta uno dei suoi aspetti più rilevanti. E’ auspicabile che non solo la ricerca teorica, ma anche la pratica politica legata alla condizione dei migranti tragga profitto nel nostro paese dalla meritoria opera di traduzione intrapresa dalla manifestolibri. Moulier Boutang, infatti, offre sia al ricercatore sia all’attivista strumenti preziosi con cui rivolgere lo sguardo a quegli spazi di frontiera nei quali, come scrivono Stefano Galieni e Antonella Patete in un bel libro da poco pubblicato per le Edizioni Città Aperta (Frontiera Italia), «l’adrenalina è alta e la vita scorre turbinosa»: lungi dall’essere teatro di vicende marginali, questi spazi, al pari dei centri di detenzione per migranti in attesa di espulsione, sono veri e propri laboratori in cui viene quotidianamente fabbricata la filigrana della cittadinanza europea. Ma non è tutto. Forse ancor più importante è l’enfasi posta nelle pagine di Dalla schiavitù al lavoro salariato sulla dimensione soggettiva della mobilità del lavoro. I migranti, che molti anche a sinistra continuano a considerare vittime inerti della «mobilitazione globale» del capitale neoliberista, emergono dall’analisi di Moulier Boutang come soggetti sociali a tutto tondo, protagonisti di una vicenda secolare, e nondimeno sempre segnata da caratteristiche peculiari che si tratta di volta in volta di porre in rilievo, di rifiuto del dispotismo e di contestazione di quella tentazione autoritaria permanente che accompagna come un basso continuo lo sviluppo del mercato del lavoro tra la rivoluzione industriale inglese, l’«età liberale» e il capitalismo di welfare novecentesco. «Migranti e rifugiati stanno ormai facendo saltare in tutto il mondo le barriere territoriali e sociali»: con queste parole si apre un prezioso volume collettivo uscito un paio di mesi fa in Germania (Die Globalisierung des Migrationsregimes. Zur neuen Einwanderungspolitik in Europa, Assoziation A, ordinabile attraverso il sito www.scwarzerisse.de), che, riprendendo esplicitamente le tesi di Yann Moulier Boutang, apporta un primo contributo al grande compito di tracciare una cartografia «globale» dei movimenti migratori contemporanei che valorizzi la loro dimensione soggettiva. Più in generale, in ogni caso, è opportuno segnalare che negli ultimi tempi è andato crescendo a livello internazionale il numero sia dei ricercatori sia degli aggregati militanti (dai tedeschi di Kanak Attak ai francesi del Mouvement d’Immigration et Banlieu, dal network transnazionale NoBorder alle reti di attivisti che lavorano attorno alla cintura della maquilladora, al confine tra Messico e Stati uniti, o che si battono contro i centri di detenzione in Australia) che utilizzano con diversi accenti la formula, in buona misura derivata dalle analisi di Moulier Boutang, dell’«autonomia delle migrazioni». Sia chiaro: questa formula non intende porre in secondo piano le cause «oggettive» che continuano ad agire all’origine dei movimenti migratori, né proporre un’immagine estetizzante della condizione dei migranti. E’ ovvio che non si possono comprendere le migrazioni contemporanee senza tenere conto di guerre e miserie, di carestie e dispotismi sociali e politici, così come la soggettività dei migranti non può essere ricostruita prescindendo dalla sofferenza, dalla paura e dagli stigmi che ne segnano il profilo: chi parla di una autonomia delle migrazioni non si sogna minimamente di negarlo. E tuttavia, nel porre l’accento sui comportamenti autonomi delle donne e degli uomini che delle migrazioni sono protagonisti, evidenzia da quali potentissime tensioni, da quali istanze materiali e da quali complesse trame simboliche sia attraversato lo spazio sociale in cui la condizione del migrante prende forma. Ricordando al tempo stesso come «la defezione anonima, collettiva, individuale» delle moltitudini in fuga di cui parla Yann Moulier Boutang ci racconti qualcosa di fondamentale sulla libertà, e ci sfidi anzi quotidianamente a sottrarre questo prezioso concetto alle esauste retoriche dominanti. |
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REVIEW ESSAY
The micro-physics of theoretical production and border crossings
Jason Read, The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the
Pre-history of the Present (New York: SUNY Press, 2003)
Angela Mitropoulos
The encounter between the flows of money and those who have nothing
but their labour power to sell is constitutive of and constituted by new desires,
new habits and new subjectivities.
—Jason Read, The Micro-Politics of Capital.
1. If for Althusser it seemed necessary to read “to the letter”—by which he did not mean a kind of punctilious scholasticism but alertness to both overt meanings and hesitations—it was just as important to declare what sort of reading one is guilty of. This is as much a review of a book that brilliantly puts that approach to work reading a number of theorists as it is a reading with regard for particular struggles and debates. What interests me here, given that I share the theoretical perspectives which inform The Micro-Politics of Capital, are what I see as the more troublesome details of those perspectives as they are brought to bear on political practices, specifically recent struggles around border policing and the writing of them.
2. The connection between these theories and political practices is hardly incidental; however, this is far from asserting that those political practices derived from these theories. In any case, the emergence of the noborder networks and associated protests (such as that at Woomera in 2002) are inseparable from a wider dissemination of the theories referenced by MPC. Briefly put: the movements of undocumented migrants have disrupted forms of subjectivity and representation bestowed by the nation-state, calling for a political practice and solidarity adequate to this challenge. Therefore, theories that speak to these questions are assured of importance. Nevertheless, in the struggles against border controls what is at stake in the detail of those analyses becomes more pronounced.
3. In 1999, xborder was formed by a handful of people as a space in which to explore the practical and theoretical implications of the autonomous movements of the undocumented. At minimum, this amounted to reversing the usual sociological-political definitions of what a movement is, entailing an insistence on a materialism of physics over a demographics of visibility and mediation—which is to say, requiring an attentiveness to the physics of class composition (as elaborated by Sergio Bologna). Because of this regard, xborder shared an idiom with some others in the noborder networks (from the Netherlands, Germany and Mexico) who assembled a conjunction between newer forms of work and communication and undocumented movements by adopting the language and topography of the net: xborder, makeworld, border=0, etc. The conjunction was deliberate and strategic: the development of a shared dialect of mobility, precarity and escape expressed in both vernacular and organisational forms.
4. Yet the particulars of the relationship between representation, media and visibility remained to be worked out in practice, often through oblique debates over the specifics of organisational structure and methods. That is, while the noborder networks were indeed distinguished (as Illuminati wrote in a discussion of unrepresentable citizenship) by “a ‘letting-be’ that is set against institutional arrogance”, in actual terms this meant that there co-existed both the not-yet-represented (which searches in lobbyist fashion for representation) and the radical refusal of representation” (Illuminati 1996:167). That said, we can consider the book at hand and the theoretical register in which those discussions were often articulated.
5. Much of MPC is taken up with an examination of the concepts of transition, specifically Marx’s treatment of the transition from pre-capitalist to a specifically capitalist mode of production. Pivotal to this analysis are the concepts of formal and real subsumption, in whose distinction Marx sought to indicate an historical metamorphosis in the form of labour and, as its correlate, changes to the forms of command, exploitation and violence. The analysis sought to describe a shift from the violence of mastery to that of self-regulation which characterises wage labour and its putative contractual freedoms in a more contemporary idiom: the processes of habituation, the engagement of affects and formations of identity. In short: the production of subjectivity, at once subjugated and subjectified, presenting as the agentic subject of the wage contract and exploited in so doing. Alongside these transformations in the character of labour come changes to both the scope and form of capitalist exploitation, the social diffusion of capital into spaces and activities (such as theoretical practices) that previously existed outside the immediate relations of production, even if occasionally applied to it.
6. This analysis of real and formal subsumption has been influential among variously ‘heretical’ Marxists (e.g., Negri and Althusser), while any reference to affects, subjectivation and habituation raises many of the questions that preoccupied Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari. Yet, as Read shows, what brings the aforementioned writers to bear here is not their political or philosophical conformity but their contemporaneity. As Warren Montag remarks on the cover of MPC, “This represents the perspective of a generation no longer constrained by the notion of opposing theoretical camps so prevalent in the 1980s and ’90s.” More acutely than this, MPC indicates the perspective of a generation for whom the standard academic distinctions between the economy, society, politics and culture—or between analyses of subjectivity and labour- make little tangible sense. Drawing on various writers associated with Potere Operaio andAutonomia (Negri, Tronti, Virno), as well as Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Read deploys a number of concepts such as immaterial labour, general intellect, social capital, immanent causality and the multitude so as to elaborate on the subjective transformations that might be said to characterise the present conjuncture. The concept of immaterial labour, for instance, specifies the rise of informational, communicative and affective labour in the organisation of capitalist valorisation and exploitation. Therefore it, along with other changes Read carefully describes, assumes “capital’s direct involvement in the production of subjectivity” (2003: 159). This book is an important and often quite brilliant work.
7. To underscore what is at stake in this contemporaneity: while the above analysis poses the question of transformations within capitalism, it thereby complicates the related question—if one feels obliged to ask it—of what against might consist of. For if capitalism works directly on the affects, desires and through habituation, and if both the creativity and exploitation of immaterial labour functions on and through this terrain, then, to the extent that this analysis is not always directed and diverted elsewhere (at others), two simple yet perilous questions should present themselves: Why does one take up a book (any book) to read and why might one write? This echoes one of Althusser’s reasons for paying homage to Spinoza, but restates it explicitly as a problem of the affective, subjective disposition of intellectual and political practices in a context of immaterial labour. To foreground those perils: how might one even begin to answer those questions given that knowledge, desire, subjectivity, and therefore the practices of reading and writing are part of the circuitry of capitalist production, when it is no longer (simply) a question of recuperation but of entanglement?
8. In opening MPC with this citation from Althusser—that “Marxist theory can fall behind history, and even behind itself, if it ever believes that it has arrived”—Read signals a politics of reading (and writing) which promises to exceed the conditions of its (or any books) production and reception. As Read puts it in a discussion of Foucault and Marx, if subjectivity is not exterior to power but constituted as a moment of it, then the question of resistance is a question of “invention irreducible to its conditions” (2003: 90). To put the above in an other way: the least disquieting way to approach MPC is as a comparative study of a number of more or less well-known theorists whom we might feel obliged to cite, either indifferently or as markers of theoretical accomplishment. In this sense, the book could function as handy canonical summation or, equally comfortably, as proof of the worst hopes of those who prophesied against the rise of ‘postmodernism’: evidence of a deep intellectual complicity between Althusser, Foucault and Deleuze in a scheme to liquidate humanity and destroy the revolutionary integrity of Marxism. But differentiation here was at the same time a gesture of constitution: the category of autonomist marxism was produced in the organisation of an Anglophone political-academic franchise; so too was the designation of Althusser and Balibar as structuralists, and of Foucault and Deleuze as poststructuralists or postmodernists. For English-language readers, the writings of Deleuze, Negri, Althusser et al could only be received by way of translation, through exegeses written in the realist mode of the textbook, and (until the expansion of the internet) within the circumferences of the academic publishing industry. Here, both assertions of distinction and the assembly of imagined communities are at a premium, forming the reigning covenant under which markets (rather: niche markets) are constituted and academic or intellectual labour is put into circulation and valorised.
9. In other words, the physics of translation functioned here as a deterritorialisation of idioms that were transacted and given expression through acts of re-territorialisation. This marshaling of distinguished communities, of course, finds its political analogue in factions and parties, whose arrangement behind proper names (such as Marx, Trotsky, Negri and so on) and assertions of fidelity to them likewise operate as a form of niche-marketing, as markers of a habitus in which potential readers are also potential consumers/recruits. Read, however, is quite clear that he is neither concerned to “distinguish between proper and improper interpretations of Marx nor to produce a sort of intellectual counter-history” (2003: 7 & 15). Nor does he wish to “adjudicate between Marxism and post-structuralism as methods or antagonistic camps within academia.”MPC is, thankfully, not another guidebook for inter-disciplinary harmonisation or bridge-building, a programme for smoothing over the antagonisms where they do appear. The symptomatic reading that Althusser elaborated was not presented as a better form of analysis as such, but as a means to open up a text to the radical creativity of antagonism, to explore how writing—and reading too—continually conflicts with its own internal limits (2003:160) and those of its mode of production.
10. Nevertheless, it is quite conceivable that by setting aside its politics of reading, MPCmight well be received as an instance of a new political denomination rather than the disruption of academic or political habits. After all, as Read contends—following Althusser—habits are indeed the means by which particular forms of subjection are naturalised, the ways in which contingency is transformed into necessity. Academics in order to continue being academics must publish; political factions must persuade and recruit to be maintained as such. The content of such does not really matter, just as—or rather: because—capitalist valorisation is indifferent to content. “In the case of both the commodity form and abstract labour the issue is how things, or practices, in their diverse or heterogeneous particularity” (2003: 70) are related, exchanged and made exchangeable.
11. This too is a matter of physics rather than the manifestation of (unconscious) beliefs which may then be overturned through, as Leninists would have it, a struggle against forms of ‘false consciousness’. Physics, then: it is above all a question of bodies in motion (and thus of resistances, stasis, inertia, entropy and direction) well before it assumes the semblance of any ethical or political dilemma. Immaterial labour is no less materialised or given effect through its quotidian practices, however linguistic or communicative those practices are, than is the labour that through its motions produces paper. But unlike the latter, immaterial labour is characterised by the requirement to—as Lazzarato has argued—’become subjects’, which entails reposing the hierarchy between autonomy and command at a higher level rather than abolishing it, thus mobilising and “clashing with the very personality of the individual worker”. It is not a question therefore of the external imposition of power but of a pressure given public expression in the imperative to communicate, the demands to be active, to communicate, to relate to others which admonishes and materialises the subjective forms of immaterial labour (Lazzarato cited in Read 2003:148). Not at all surprising, then, that silence or a refusal to compete (rather than dissent) is here registered not only as impolite, but as aggressive—above all, the conversation must continue, the game of exchange must be adhered to. (A notable instance of this imperative appeared in the case of Merlin Luck, who rather than speak at his televised eviction from Big Brother and thank his host for the product placement, opted to tape his mouth and hold up a note calling for refugees to be freed from Australia’s internment camps. He was accused of being aggressive, to which he responded by re-entering the game of communication (tv interviews, radio talkback, etc) and, subsequently, talking about how much he loved Australia and wished to become its citizen.)
12. Content does not matter so much; what matters is the form. As Read argues with more than a nod to Deleuze and Guattari: “There is no possible contestation at the level of code or belief.” Antagonism does not take place through a conflict or competition between beliefs, this or that form of consciousness, however false or true they may be declared in the constitution of brand names. Capitalism operates through the axiomatic, the “differential relation between abstract and quantitative flows.” Capital produces an indifference to and abstraction of concrete labours, the qualitative differences between the creation of this or that. Pluralism is perpetually flexible—codes can be added and exploited in an infinite categorical and innovative expansion. It does not really matter what anyone believes, even less because public assertions of belief habitually indicate a cynical or opportunistic adherence to ‘whatever’—a condition that Virno has argued characterises the ‘general intellect’. For Read:
The epochal distinction between precapitalist and the capitalist mode of production is not only a distinction between subjective and objective domination but also a shift in how this domination is lived. Whereas prior to capitalism it is lived through the codes, structures of belief and personal subjugation, in capitalism it is lived through abstract operative rules, which are not necessarily believed or grasped. (2003: 71)
13. Given all this, it is useful to press at the limits of MPC. In the first instance, this is to specify what Read identifies as the limits of a more traditional reading of Marx, namely, humanism and economism, that is: the reduction of the movement of history to (and therefore the constraint of possible futures by) essence and teleology—the one cause, declared as either the immutable form of labour, human nature, the economy or so on. The question that follows from this, then, is to what extent MPC escapes (or at least irritates) these limits, including the limits which flow from and are related to the above analysis of immaterial labour, real subsumption and so forth. Read says:
In a way I have perhaps mirrored Marx’s own error. He became so engaged with his ‘critique of political economy’ […] that he often neglected to propose much with respect to the difficult questions of political organisation and struggle. (2003:160)
14. He does not mean by this that theory should assume the role of announcing blueprints: “there is no theoretical resolution to the problem of antagonism in real subsumption” (2003:151). What I take this as is a frustration with the limits of the mode of exposition: (a) the historical schematisation of capitalism, which arranges the subsequent investigation into the problem Read identifies initially as “the paradoxical conjunction of the expansion of capital and the exhaustion of any critical vocabulary with which to confront it” (2003:2); and, (b) the recourse to proper names. In this sense, MPC’sdistance from particular struggles becomes manifest not as an irrelevance—far from it—but as a hesitation before the difficulties of an antagonistic theoretical practice which produces not a hermeneutics but an intervention into specific struggles and the conditions of their writing and theorisation.
15. The quote from Althusser that opens MPC is not simply a disclaimer of systematicity. It is a claim for a materialism of theoretical practice: thinking, no matter how much it seeks to assign to itself a pre-eminent status in history, is only intelligible and creative through “the precariousness of history”—of movement; it is always endangered and made dangerous through this flux. (Althusser, 1983: 17) Historical schema—even if only intended for expositional purposes—tend to calm this flux and, in the presentation of the epochal, stage a hermeneutic subject who can declare the new and thereby distinguish itself from both this complexity and “the indistinct masses who supposedly inhabit the ruins [of that declared superseded by the new] without knowing it” (Ranciere 1991: 246). The assertion of a new epoch, whatever else its advantages might be, serves to implicitly divert the force of the analysis elsewhere: being able to declare the new is to assume the pose of an agentic subject rather than explore one’s own subjection. Raising this question might have allowed for a discussion of the substantial differences between Virno, Lazzarato and Negri on the question of immaterial labour and the multitude, of the extent to which Negri and Hardt, for instance, invest the latter with the character of a (newer more adequate) vanguard.
16. What is the relationship between the declaration of the new, the epochal, and what Lazzarato discerns as the form of exploitation particular to immaterial labour: the slogan ‘become subjects’, the compulsion to communicate, network, to constantly circulate and be visible within the marketplace of ideas as it were? Many of the debates among those in the noborder networks rested on the specific answers given to this question: was no borders a slogan; a demand (and, if so, on whom?); a means to recruit people to an organisation with ostensibly better ideas than other organisations in the political marketplace; a form of consciousness-raising; a cynical or whatever declaration of belonging and identity—a brand name—with no implications for the form of political organisation or practice? More sharply, and with particular reference to Woomera2002: do political actions aim to alter what people think or to disrupt the physics in which they have been habituated? In many ways, these debates occurred because the composition of noborder struggles was premised on a conjunction between immaterial workers and undocumented migrants. It was, therefore, not only a debate about the difficulties involved in the relation between the two—which could never be asserted as commensurate in their misery—but a debate about the contradictory dispositions within the former.
17. Even if the periodisation of the new is not, as Read notes, an argument for any wholesale displacement, it is an answer to the question of the pertinence of particular forms of labour for the organisation of capitalism. Lurking behind this question of pertinence is the rather traditional marxian search for the effective subject of history and of revolution. We know that the answer given here—the multitude—has shaken its explicitly humanist and economistic formulations. However, it has not, for all that, quite abandoned its teleological or pluralist-synthetic dynamics in some instances. For Negri and Hardt, the multitude reveals the destiny of global citizenship—which is to say a global state or, in Spinozian terms: absolute democracy. I have discussed global citizenship and rights previously in Borderlands and elsewhere. Suffice to note here that this absolutisation of democracy expresses the universalisation of abstract labour in its juridical formand rights are indeed the correlate of abstract labour, as Read notes (2003: 150). The “social factory” that Tronti analysed is, in the proposition of global citizenship, transformed into the juridical conditions of the global factory.
18. If, as Marx says, communism is the movement which abolishes the present state of things, it is not a question of seeking out an ontological consistency (Negri) but of working on the inconsistencies, in the flux (and reflux) of history rather than engaging the rather Hegelian formula of “recognition, consciousness, revolution” which distinguishes Negri’s analyses of class composition from those of, say, Bologna (Negri 1991: 162). For Negri—and the Tute Bianche (White Overalls) who gave the closest practical expression to his analyses—the aim was therefore one of recognition and visibility, of making undocumented migrants visible on the plane of mediation. For the Tute Bianche “the white overalls give us visibility in the spectacular/mediatic space” (White Overalls). All this gestures toward long-standing disagreements within European ‘autonomist’ circles: Sergio Bologna’s disposition toward ‘the tribe of moles’ has been echoed by Yann Moulier-Boutang who, reflecting on the Italian movements of the late 1970s, stated that of the “invisible party of Mafiori” he much preferred the invisible to the party aspects. These differences over recognition, visibililty and mediation continue to mark recent struggles. Franco Barchiesi, among others, has argued persuasively against the self-evidence of “inclusion” approaches in migration struggles. Moreover, the concrete practices of tactical media which predominated among the noborder networks (Garcia and Lovink 1997) diverged between a tactical media applied alongside a tactical clandestinity; or media as strategy, as a form of lobbying of the not-yet-represented.
19. Moreover, if computerisation and the net displace the centrality of the university in the elaboration of intellectual practices (and the development of the general intellect), just as the restructuring of the labour process and forms of labour generally make Leninism and the Party obsolete, these changes do not abolish, as Lazzarato says in relation to immaterial labour, the hierarchy of command and autonomy which inflects such prior formulations, but reposition it at a higher level. Therefore, the destitution of those forms of representation recognised by the nation-state and the forms of politics which remain tributary to it, and their inadequacy to the current conjuncture cannot therefore simply be declared. A critique of Fordist forms of political practice is not sufficient. It is also a matter of noting the limits of that declaration (the “perverse perseverence” of what is deemed past—see Burke 2002 and Caffentzis 1998) and the ways in which that hierarchy is reinstated in the declaration.
20. The hierarchy between command and autonomy—while dispensing with its outdated versions such as the party cadre—becomes diffused in the form of a practice which re-asserts versions of that hierarchy in the distinction between activists-intellectuals and everyone else, whom apparently neither think nor act politically. The identity of the activist (or intellectual) is meaningless without the assertion of a specialised, transcendental status in relation to the world and to others. And, in its particular manifestation around border struggles, it rendered two responses to the movements of the undocumented, which are distinguished only by the stratum of their juridical recourse: national and global. The first, irreversibly shaken and therefore in decline, but dogged in its calls for a nation-state that might somehow be capable of going beyond the limits of national recognition; the second, pressing for a more adequate de jure recognition of those global undocumented movements through the de facto proposition that ‘no one is illegal’.
21. Arguing against the overture of the ostensible benefits of inclusion—and not perhaps because of a familiarity with Agamben’s arguments on the intrinsic relationship between inclusion and exclusion as it manifests in the nomos of the camp—Borderhack from Tijuana responded: Somos Todos Ilegales / We Are All Illegal (Fran Illich, Borderhack 2002 Panel discussion, makeworld conference, Munich). In 2001, the slogan for the European Border camp was changed from ‘No One Is Illegal’ to ‘Everyone Is Illegal’. In the same year, another group calling itself ‘No One Is Illegal’ was established in Melbourne.
22. It was always a question of physics, spatial organisation and representation, including the presentation of the connection between the two in the understanding of the transitional. Here, Marx’s discussion of the violent origins of capitalism—the enclosures, laws against vagabondage, etc—cannot be relegated to the past but need to be restated as mechanisms held in perpetual reserve by capital, through which it transforms the organisation of space and exploitation. The enclosures, the poorhouses and forced labour are not in some Dickensian past—they alter in form but their centrality to the processes of violent reconstitution and the restoration of exploitation remain. That is: they become globalised as people attempt to escape previously dominant manifestations of the enclosures which are thereby rendered inadequate by that exodus. The millions of undocumented migrants have provoked not only a frenzy of national border controls but also the extension of the jurisdictional reach of particular nation-states and the emergence of a militarised, global humanitarianism, always threatening to intervene on their behalf if people spill over the appropriate lines on the map. The development of a global jurisdictional reach—or more affably put: global citizenship—is an innovation in the organisation of the enclosures; it is not a challenge to them. “The social rights State distributes legality in order to reintegrate the underprivileged within the fiction of a guaranteed community in exchange for renouncing the virtual subversiveness of difference” (Illuminati: 1996: 176). The exodus has already prompted the juridical, military and fiscal organisation of a global state architecture from which no exodus will be possible except, to put it in Agamben’s terms, at the sheer threshold between life and death. The possibility of flight assumes conflicts between jurisdictions—the hypothesis of global jurisdiction makes such flight impossible.
23. As is the case with all theory, MPC lags behind events and struggles, which in no way makes it a less important or intelligent work. But that falling behind is discernible in the all-too-brief discussion on the common that concludes MPC. Divested of MPCs critique of the wage-form and capital, ‘the common’ may well be taken as license for the establishment of consolatory forms of belonging and identity, if not simply more brand names. The ‘inoperative community’ (as described by Blanchot and Nancy) seems a more accurate description of the experience of the multitude, which is for some—as Illuminati wrote—”the practical beginnings of communism and for others a liberalism of the market. The movement of the exodus is ambiguously marked by the opposition to dominant ideas and their molecular renewal” (Illuminati 1996:168-71). That renewal takes shape in the failure to disrupt the form and micro-physics of wage labour, which includes—in the global factory—its diffusion as particular forms of intellectual and political practice.
24. To conclude what cannot be a conclusive discussion: the antagonistic force of much of the abovementioned analyses (Foucault, Althusser, Potere Operaio, Autonomia, Guattari) does not I think rest in their declaration of the epochal but in their attention to the transitional. Crossing the border is a permanent condition of critical practice, especially insofar as the particular position of that border is in the process of shifting in response to the wave of border crossings which have been occurring for over twenty years now.
Angela Mitropoulos has been involved in and written on border struggles since 1998, including producing the websites for xborder, woomera2002 and flotilla2004.
Bibliography
Althusser, L. & Balibar, E. (1983). Reading Capital, London: Verso.
Burke, A. (2002). ‘The Perverse Perseverance of Sovereignty’ Borderlands 1:2 athttp://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol1no2_2002/burke_perverse.html
Caffentzis, C. (1998). ‘The End of Work or the Renaissance of Slavery? A Critique of Rifkin and Negri’ at http://korotonomedya.net/otonomi/caffentzis.html
Garcia, D. & Lovink, G. (1997) ‘The ABC of Tactical Media’ at http://www.waag.org/tmn
Illuminati, A. (1996). ‘Unrepresentable Citizenship’ in P. Virno and M. Hardt (eds) Radical thought in Italy Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press pp.166-85.
Mitropoulos, A. (2004) “Precari-Us?” Mute n.29
Negri, A. (1991). Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse, New York: Autonomedia.
Ranciere, J. (1991). ‘After What?’ in E. Cadava, P. Connor, and J-L. Nancy (eds) Who Comes After the Subject? New York: Routledge, 246-252.
Read, J. (2003). The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Pre-history of the Present, New York: SUNY Press.
No border sites
border=0: http://www.tmcrew.org/border0
http://borderhack.org
http://kein.org/makeworld
http://noborder.org
One Is Illegal: http://antimedia.net/nooneisillegal
http://thistuesday.org
Bianche (Disobedienti): http://nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/tute/index.htm
http://antimedia.net/xborder
© borderlands ejournal 2004
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Between Disobedience and Exodus
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Perhaps it is distance, combined with a doubtlessly original thought, is what allows us Paolo Virno to see a link, a principle of comprehension, that unites the Argentinian cacerolazos with antiglobalization protests. “There is a line that connects the Argentinian revolt with the protests in Seattle and Genoa in 1999 and 2001”, he affirms. And he adds that, beyond the singular, the Argentinian case shares with the antiglobal movement the eruption of a new political subject, the multitude, which emerges with the postfordist mode of production and resists delegating its powers to the state. “Unlike the people,” explains the Italian philosopher, “the multitude is plural, it refuses political unity, it does not transfer rights to the sovereign; its resists obedience and is inclined to form non-representative democracy.”
Currently a professor at the University of Cosenza, Virno’s ideas have been formed at the intersection of the philosophy of language and political theory, poetic experimentation and Marxist workerist militance. Together with Giorgio Agamben he founded the journal Luogo Comune. Today he is referent for the “new left” together with Toni Negri and Michael Hardt, the authors of Empire, the poetic political manifesto that has already had over a dozen editions. Here Virno responded to questions from Cultura.
Flavia Costa: In your last book, Grammatica della moltitudine (Grammar of the Multitude, tr), you affirm that to understand contemporary social behaviors it is necessary to return to the notion of “multitude”, which today replaces the “people” as fundamental historical subject. When and why does thus mutation from people to multitude occur?
Paolo Virno: The decisive fact was the end of the fordist factory and its assembly line, and the arrival of intellect, perception, and linguistic communication as the principle resources of production. Saying that work today has become communicative means that it absorbs the generic human capacities that, until recently, unfolded during time outside of work. Aesthetic tastes, ethical decisions, affects, and emotions converge today in the world of work, and thus it becomes difficult to distinguish between “producer” and “citizen”, “public” and “private”. In this indistinction the multitude affirms itself.
FC: You followed events in Argentina attentively. Do you believe that the protests, with a strong anti-political sentiment, are an example of “multitude in action”?
PV: Certainly: multitude in action. The Argentinian revolt laid bare the most sensitized zone of so-called globalization. The other side of the moon. A line connects Seattle and Genoa, through an anti-state and anti-political sentiment that is proper to the multitudes. On the other hand, certain images remind me of the Paris Commune of 1871. Not because there are comparable events, but rather because they make me think of a phrase from Marx: “This is the political form finally discovered”. He warned that they were at the time facing a form of atheist, materialist miracle: the advent of something absolutely unforeseen, a new form of life. And he saw also that it was necessary to create a thought and a praxis equal to the task of this new reality. Thus the revolts of Seattle, Genoa, or Buenas Aires reveal the existence of new forms of life and subjectivity, and challenge us to create new political forms that harmonize with them.
FC: What does a “non-representative democracy” mean? Put differently, what political exit are you beginning to see for these multitudes?
PV: In speaking of non-representative democracy I am not referring to a form of simplified democracy, of direct democracy, of assemblies. I think for example of the post-Genoa social forums of citizens, that assemble diverse collectives and individuals that organize themselves to think about alternatives to problems; I think of the laborious avenue of re-appropriation and re-articulation by the multitude of the knowledges and powers that until now have been congealed in the administrative apparatuses of the State.
FC: If the key to the epoch is the passage from Fordism to postfordism, what happens in countries like Argentina, where Fordism was precarious; where today, more than communicative work, the dominant trait is a dreadful level of unemployment?
PV: Yes, each case is particular, my impression is that where Fordism was precarious there was a passage to postfordism without the Fordist precedent. A central element of the new mode of production, as much in the Third World as in Germany, is the existence of a chronic unemployment that trains a large mass of workers for flexibility, the availability that the just-in-time system demands. The true training for postfordist production does not take place in the school but rather when the potential worker looks for work. It is there that he or she becomes opportunistic, adabtable, not fixed: when the worker acquires the aptitudes that the new mode of production requires.
FC: You say that the multitude is “ambivalent.” What is the danger in this ambivalence; what is the “salvation”?
PV: To say it is “ambivalent” alludes to those distinctive characteristics of the multitude that can manifest themselves in opposite ways: as servility or as liberty. The multitude has a direct link with the dimension of the possible: each state of things is contingent, no one has a destiny – understanding by destiny the fact that, for example, no one is sure anymore that they will have the same job for life. This contingency is structural in this epoch and can have opposite developments: it can favor opportunism, cynicism, the desire to take advantage of the occasion in order to prevail over others; or it can express itself as conflict and insubordination, defection and exodus from the present situation.
FC: What do you understand by exodus? Because today this word for us has a special meaning: a great quantity of Argentinias leave the country, and even immigrants from neighboring countries are returning to their countries.
PV: No, I am not referring necessarily to a territorial exodus, but rather to desertion in one’s own place: the collective defection from the state bond, from certain forms of waged work, from consumerism. Some authors, like Albert Hirschman, affirm that sometimes in protests, the voices don’t manage to reach a change and are then only able to leave the game, run away. For that it is not only necessary to destroy certain things but also to construct, to have a positive proposal, so that exodus will no remain a solitary act.
FC: In relation to the changes in subjectivity, you have written in different texts that the human today is a stranger, a child, a lover of “common places”. How do these three modes of being and inhabiting our epoch relate?
PV: The three things go together. Humanity is no longer available as a substantial ethos, or rather, a repertoire of repetitive uses and customs that reassure us and order our praxis. Due to this, one no longer feels “at home” anywhere. One is a permanent stranger. Thus there arrives at the first level the biological condition of the species: lack of specialized instincts, constant disorientation, a high degree of uncertainty. As in infancy, this is a stage of learning that today takes on a chronic character. Infancy, which loves repetition (the same story, the same game), extends into the technical reproducibility of art and of all experience. And we come thus to the “common places”. When we use this expression today, we understand a banality, a stereotype. But is original meaning is different. Aristotle called “common places” those forms of fundamental discourse that are present in each enunciation, like the relation between before and after, reciprocity. These logical forms are the skeletal structure of the mind. To the “common places” there are opposed the “special places”, the discourses that function only before a specific audience. Well then, the stranger as much as the child, in order to orient and protect him- or herself from the unforeseen counts only on the generalized structures of the mind, which is to say, the “common places”. The “special places”, over which the traditional ethics are articulated, are today disappearing or becoming empty simulacra.
Translated by Nate Holdren
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The bag
(Vilem Flusser)
*Omnia me mecum porto*. In plain English: Everything that I've written and
published in the last 18 months is kept in a bag. The bag was stolen
recently from a car parked outside a Paris hotel. It was found again in a
nearby street with the contents intact. The thief found no value in them.
A discarded literary judgement.
The bag can be seen as a part of my *memory*. Whoever reads the papers it
contains and the way they are ordered will recognise me, in a limited
though intense way. I intend here to examine and analyse the bag. Not as
if I myself were interesting but because the thief, if he had inspected
the contents more carefully, would have found himself in the company of
historians, archeologists, palaeontologists, psychoanalysts, and similar
researchers.
What is at issue here is a yellow leather bag equipped with a zipper. It
contains different coloured folders. One contains my correspondence from
june 1972 until now, including copies of my letters and letters addressed
to me. Some of my letters have remained unanswered, and some of those that
I have received I have never replied to. The letters are ordered
chronologically. Another folder is titled: "unpublished papers". It
contains about 30 essays in Portuguese, English or German concerning art
criticism and phenomenology, the originals of which were sent to
newspapers. These papers are unordered. Another folder is titled
"published papers". It contains about ten essays published during my stay
in Europe. They are arranged according to their date published . A further
folder is titled "La Force du Quotidian" and contains a book manuscrpit -
fifteen essays about things in our environment - it will be released in
December in Paris. Another is titled "Ca existe, la Nature?" and contains
eight essays. Both folders are arranged according to their content. A
further is titled "New York" and contains outlines for a lecture about the
future of television that I plan to hold next year at the Museum of Modern
Art. Another is titled "Rio" and contains essays that my publisher in Rio
de Janeiro will bring out soon. Another is titled "Talks" and contains
outlines for lectures that I have held and will hold in Europe. They are
not ordered. Another is titled "Bodenlosigkeit" and contains 100 pages of
an autobiography that I began and never completed. Another is titled
"Biennal" and contains references to the "XII Bienal des Arts" in Sao
Paulo. The last has the title "Documentatos" and contains
'self-referential' certificates from government offices, universities and
other institutions. This is then the semantic and syntactical dimension of
the bag.
The folders are firstly arranged *syntactically*. They are arranged in
three classes:
[A] Dialogues (the correspondence folder)
[B] Discourses to others (lectures and manuscripts)
[C] Discourses
about myself (documents) The first class would have given the thief a view
into the structure of my relationships with others, what connects me to
them, who rejects me, and who I reject. The second class would have
allowed the thief to see me from "within", and how I try to make myself
public. The third class would have allowed him to see me in the way the
establishment does, my mask, via which I play my public role. The
knowledge that the thief thus gains would be problematic for the following
reasons: (1) The authenticity of the papers would need to be checked (2)
The authenticity of the documents contained therein would have to be
checked. The thief would be required to make a close reading of the texts
and of their contexts. The folders are also arranged semantically.
Again they are arranged into three classes:
[A] Factual information (documents, sections of letters, lectures and
manuscripts).
[B] Interpretations of facts (lectures and manuscripts)
[C} Expressions of emotion and value (letters, and beneath the surface
in most manuscripts).
The first class would have offered the thief a view into my
"objective-being-in-the-world". The second the way in which I maintain a
distance therefrom. The third a view of my "subjective and
intersubjective-being-in-the-world. From this he might have held the keys
to the subjective and objective position we find ourselves in. All this,
of course, cautiously. The facts could be misunderstood or misinterpreted,
and the emotions and values expressed dishonestly, as much by me as by
others. The thief would have to "decode" and "de-ideologise" the messages
contained in the bag.
The folders are also arranged structurally. Again there are three classes:
[A] Chronological arrangement
[B] Logical arrangement
[C] Disorder.
The first structure puts us in mind of geological and botanical
formations. The second of encyclopaedia and computers . The third of
genetic information. Together they reveal a picture of the structure of
the human memory. What is missing however is a "formal structure" of the
kind found in "alphabetical arrangement". Without this the thief might
have concluded a defect in my way of thinking. The interaction of the
ordered and disordered structures in the bag would have given the thief
the opportunity to contribute to Jaques Monods problem "coincidence and
necessity". The bag is a fertile hunting-ground for "structural analysis".
Finally the folders are arranged according to their relationship to the
bag itself. Two classes result:
[A] Folders that are in the bag so that they can be kept in mind.
[B] Folders that are there to keep things that are not there in mind.
The letters, manuscripts, and essays belong to the first class, the
unfinished autobiography to the second. This reveals two functions of the
bag(and of memory): to keep things in the present and to bring things into
the present. The real situation is nevertheless much more complex. Some
papers in the bag point to the future (the "New York" folder and the
unpublished manuscript); thus proving the function of memory, namely to
construct designs for the future. The thief could have recognised all of
this. Not, however, this: This article itself which the reader has before
him is found in the bag in the folder titled "published papers". The
article is not only concerned with the bag, it is not just a "meta-bag"
but a part which the thief could not have studied. The thief could never
have recognised this aspect of the bag.
I always carry the bag with me. We all do this only my bag is more readily
available. The question is: can our bags be stolen from us? Or would they
always be found again a few blocks away, intact? Put differently; firstly:
are we lighter and therefore progress more quickly into the future when
our bags are lifted from us? And secondly; are these living or dead
weights in our bags? The bag is too complicated to give a satisfactory
answer to these questions. In any case it's good that from now on the
questions themselves are kept safely in the bag.
[From Vilem Flusser, Nachgeschichten, Bollmann Verlag, Duesseldorf, 1990.
Translated from German 1998 by Michael Stapley for nettime-zkp5]
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Ed Ruscha
«Twentysix Gasoline Stations»
The book contains photographs of 26 gas stations, with one-line references stating the stations’ name and location. The page layout varies: a photograph sometimes fills a two-page spread, sometimes a single page, sometimes a half page. Ruscha took these photographs of gas stations on the legendary Route 66 highway which connects Oklahoma to Los Angeles. Here, however, one senses none of the ‹On the road feeling› of the ‹motorized flaneur,› as in Robert Frank’s famous book of photography «The Americans» (1965). The images are registered with an indifferent, almost bored gaze, and the view of the road has an economic aspect. From the standpoint of traditional photographic aesthetics, the individual photographs seem unsuccessful and more like works of ‹bad photography›: too much empty space in the foreground, poorly chosen perspectives, and faulty contrasts, etc.. Through this deliberate lack of style, which is how Jeff Walls interprets it, Ruscha draws attention «to the estranged relationship of people to their rural environment, but without staging or dramatizing the estrangement».
Black offset printing on white paper. 17,9 x 14 x 0,5 cm (closed). 48 pages, 26 photographs. First edition: 400 numbered copies; second edition, 1967: 500 copies, third edition, 1969: 3000 copies. The title appears in red lettering on the cover and spine. [From: Ed Ruscha, exhibition catalog, eds. Neal Benezra and Kerry Brougher, Zürich, a.o. 2002]
here the other text of rosler+ frames sttory
In her work in video, photo-text, performance, critical writing and installation, Martha Rosler constructs incisive social and political analyses of the myths and realities of contemporary culture. Articulated with deadpan wit, Rosler's video works investigate how socioeconomic realities and political ideologies dominate ordinary life. Presenting astute critical analyses in accessible forms, Rosler's inquiries range from questions of public space to issues of war, women's experiences, and media information.
Questioning the relation of the corporation, the state and the family, media information and the individual, and public and private, she exposes the internalized oppression that underlies such cultural phenomena as the objectification of women (Vital Statistics of a Citizen, Simply Obtained, 1977); anorexia and starvation (Losing: A Conversation With The Parents, 1977); and surrogate motherhood (Born to be Sold, 1988).
Densely layered, her tapes merge performance-based narrative dramatizations, documentary elements, mass-media images and factual texts, and often employ litanies of statistics, systems of classification, and enumeration to disrupt the signs of the everyday. For example, of the classic Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), Rosler writes that an "anti-Julia Child replaces the domesticated 'meaning' of kitchen tools with a lexicon of rage and frustration."
Writing about her work, Rosler has stated: "I want to make art about the commonplace, art that illumines social life. I want to enlist video to question the mythical explanations of everyday life that take shape as an optimistic rationalism and to explore the relationships between individual consciousness, family life, and the culture of monopoly capitalism. Video itself isn't 'innocent': it is a cultural commodity often celebrating the self and its inventiveness. Yet video lets me construct, using a variety of fictional narrative forms, 'decoys' engaged in a dialectic with commercial TV."
Martha Rosler was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she lives and works. She received a B.A. from Brooklyn College and an M.F.A. from the University of California, San Diego. She has taught at the Städelschule in Frankfurt and at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Her works in several media are in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Guggenheim Museum in New York; Art Institute of Chicago; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Long Beach Museum of Art in California; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Tate and V&A in London; Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona; Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and Australian National Gallery, Canberra; and hundreds of colleges, universities, and independent centers around the world. Her work has been exhibited at the 50th Venice Biennale; 2004 Taipei Biennial; documentas 7 and 12, Kassel; several Whitney Biennials, New York; SkulpturProjekte Münster 07; and many other group exhibitions. The Martha Rosler Library toured from 2005 to 2009. A career retrospective, Positions in the Life World, was exhibited at 5 European cities and at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, and Institute of Contemporary Photography, New York, from 1998 to 2000.
Rosler was awarded the Spectrum International Prize in Photography for 2005 and the Oskar Kokoschka Prize in 2006. She received an Anonymous Was A Woman Award in 2007 and in 2008 was the United States Artists Nimoy Fellow. In 2009 she held a residency at Civitella Ranieri in Umbertide, Italy. She received a Guggenheim Museum Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. In 2011 she was a DAAD Artist in Residence in Berlin. In 2012, Rosler will present Meta-Monumental Garage Sale, her first solo exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
http://www.robertsmithson.com/essays/palenque.htm
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Ο όρος “terrain vague” χρησιμοποιήθηκε από τον ισπανό αρχιτέκτονα Ignasi deSola–Morales και αφορά ξεχασμένους χώρους μέσα στην πόλη όπου κυριαρχεί η έλλειψη χρήσης και δράσης, αλλά και η αίσθηση ελευθερίας, διαθεσιμότητας και η πιθανή εναλλακτική χρήση των χώρων αυτών.
Το αρχείο μας συγκεντρώνει τέτοιους ιδιαίτερους χώρους από την πόλη της Πάτρας που έχουν αφεθεί στο χρόνο και έχουν μείνει απρόσωποι. Πολλοί από τους χώρους στέκουν απαρατήρητοι από τους περαστικούς και χρησιμοποιούνται περιοδικά είτε ως παρκινγκ, ως αποθήκες, ως σκουπιδότοποι είτε δεν έχουν κάποια χρήση.
Με επίκεντρο της διαδρομής μας την οδό Γεροκωστοπούλου φωτογραφήσαμε ένα πλήθος εγκαταλελειμμένων, κενών χώρων. Αποτυπώνοντας αυτούς τους χώρους με τη μορφή 3d μοντέλων, τους απλοποιήσαμε και τους κατηγοριοποιήσαμε σε κλειστούς και ανοιχτούς χώρους. Οι κλειστοί περιλαμβάνουν τους περιμετρικά κλειστούς χώρους και τους χώρους «τρύπες», και οι ανοιχτοί περιλαμβάνουν κάποιους ελεύθερους χώρους, τους υπέργειους χώρους και τους χώρους που είναι κενά οικόπεδα. Κριτήριο για την κατάταξη τους, ήταν το σχήμα τους, κάποια βασικά χαρακτηριστικά της θέσης τους (αν βρίσκονται δίπλα από σκάλες ή στα δώματα υπαρχόντων κτιρίων κτλ.), το αν περιβάλλονται από κτίρια ή περιφράζονται από τοίχους, και από ποιές πλευρές.
Κατά τη διάρκεια της περιήγησης του επισκέπτη στο blog μας εναλλάσονται 3dμοντέλα και φωτογραφίες. Με σκοπό τη μερική αποκάλυψη της υπάρχουσας κατάστασης του οικοπέδου και την έξαψη της φαντασίας του επισκέπτη γύρω από τον κάθε χώρο χρησιμοποιούμε φωτογραφίες από αναγνωρίσιμα αντικείμενα των χώρων αυτών. Παρατίθονται συγχρόνως ηχητικά αποσπάσματα από γνωστές ταινίες που είναι διάλογοι μεταξύ 2 ατόμων. Οι διάλογοι αυτοί ποικίλουν σε συναισθηματική διάθεση. Δηλαδή ο επισκέπτης μπορεί να συναντήσει διαλόγους που εκφράζουν ερωτική διάθεση, χαλαρές συζητήσεις φίλων ή ακόμη διαλόγους με φορτισμένη ατμόσφαιρα λόγω εκνευρισμού ή δυσαρέσκειας.
Το αρχείο απευθύνεται σε άτομα που προβληματίζονται γύρω από τους κενούς χώρους και τους απασχολεί η πιθανή αξιοποίηση των χώρων αυτών. Άτομα με αναζητήσεις γύρω από γενικά ζητήματα αρχιτεκτονικής, γύρω από ζητήματα των πλήρων και των κενών του αστικού τοπίου, καθημερινοί άνθρωποι που αναρωτιούνται για τους κενούς χώρους της πόλης τους ή και άλλων πόλεων μπορεί να επισκεφτούν το blog μας.
Ο συνδιασμός των παραπάνω έχει στόχο την κατανόηση του χώρου από τον επισκέπτη και την έξαρση της φαντασίας του γύρω από πιθανές δράσεις που μπορούν να γίνουν σε αυτόν. Θέλουμε να εισάγουμε τον επισκέπτη στους χώρους αυτούς για να τους αντιληφθεί πως είναι στη σημερινή τους κατάσταση και να σκεφτεί εναλλακτικές χρήσεις του χώρου ή ακόμη και πρωτότυπες δράσεις που θα μπορούσαν να συμβούν σε αυτόν. Τα στοιχεία που του δίνουμε, ήχοι, video, φωτογραφίες, αποτελούν βοηθητικό υλικό και τροφή για περαιτέρω προβληματισμό.
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http://www.crankygirl.com/archive/
http://www.alphabetsynthesis.com/
http://www.alphabetsynthesis.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi
This film is the result of a series of connections created as part of my ongoing digital archive. The archive builds on seemingly random connections between objects, text, imagery and places.
‘The emperor of the moon’ is the final sentence from Norman Mailer’s book ‘The Fight’ (1975) It is also the name of a cruise ship that is listed as an entry in the ever expanding digital archive. This particular archive entry (the film) was created as a method of linking ‘Norman Mailer’ to the following entry ‘ships’.
Through using search engines a list was compiled of Norman Mailers best selling books:
- The Executioners Song
- The Fight
- The Naked and The Dead
- Why Are We At War?
- An American Dream
- Ancient Evenings
- Oswalds Tale
- Unholy Alliance
- The Castle in The Forest
- Harlots Ghost
- The Spooky Art
- The Deer Park
- The Gospel According to The Son
- Why Are We in Vietnam
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http://www.crankygirl.com/archive/ information design . Information diagram
http://www.paetau.com/picturepeople/
Here we have archives to listen to, not to look at. Audio experience, different from the visuals, gives listeners a sense of embodiment. Exhibition space for art could be a white cube that isolates exhibition content from the outside like computer screen display does. The Web reaches homestead interiors the way household appliances or painting being introduced in the past. Replaying of Audio archive is assumed to invade sites and coexist with ambient sound, a sense of embodiment into receiver’s environment the way information infiltrates our daily living.
http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/glWeb/Projects/sl/slice.html
http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/glWeb/Projects/projectslist.html
“Making Visible the Invisible” Dewey Data Research
“Making Visible the Invisible” is a data analysis project at the Seattle Public Library active from 2005 to 2014. During this period, the circulation of books and media leaving the library are analyzed and visually mapped on an hourly basis. Visualizing the statistical information about what titles and topics are circulating provides a real-time living picture of the community in which the library is situated. (Project Description)
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2199 books out of 4031 items checked out at 15:00, 12.08.2012
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Dewey Decimal Classification Graph
This map highlights current circulating books according to their Dewey classification category in Generalities [0-99]; Philosophy & Psychology[100-199]; Religion [200-299]; Social Science [300-399]; Language [400-499]; Natural Science & Mathematics [500-599]; Technology & Applied Sciences [600-699]; Arts [700-799]; Literature [800-899]; Geography & History [900-999].
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http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/glWeb/Projects/spl/dewey/dewey.html
http://qohtaiwoo.net/
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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y9qSKln7Is]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRuYIX8rjnw]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UblJAEvHpu8]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdMsEg-2XkU]
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