[iDC] Re: a critique of naturalized capitalism

[Nicholas Ruiz III]

Hi Cecil/all,

We cannot expect to do old thinking for new
circumstances.  Indeed, that will never do.  No
philosophy is that superior.  Deleuze: “The time is
coming when it will hardly be possible to write a book
of philosophy as it has been done for so long: ‘Ah!
the old style...!’”   That time has come.
  
Will it be enough to speak of Cinema? Culture?
Theater?  Capital?  Code?  Will we need to ‘speak’ in
other multimediated ways?  Ours is an age of media
bio-synthesis, a political sculpture of flesh.  The
rank and file are asleep.  The masses slumber.  The
biometric trajectory is fixed and the designer
sequences are being loaded.  We roll the dice.

For the West, alas we have decided: who needs culture,
when we have economy?  We hide; in our offices, in our
buildings, in our exchanges, in our lives which have
been mortgaged to the flow of price.  We have always
hidden, for out in the open, out on the plain, beneath
the trees, there is but one constant—the danger of
loss.  We rarely feel.  But if we feel, we feel
cheated.  Such is a culture of celebrity.  Too fat,
too tall, too thin, too small...we look to surgery.  A
celebrity culture that thrives upon the editing of
bodies; biomediation as enculturation in a suspended
resolution of evolutionary angst: a society of
particles uncertain, a snowball of flakes; such a
solved sterility will be easily melted and evaporated
by a fate we cannot even imagine.

Production is never first a social body—that point
comes after the fact of singular biotic production. 
One cannot sequester and capitalize on oxygen (i.e.
breathe) for someone else, though we do have
mechanical respirators.

NRIII



--- Cecil Touchon <touchon at sprynet.com> wrote:

> That is a very cool statement Nicholas. Can you
> elaborate on the aesthetics
> of the " beauty of utility"? Perhaps in relation to
> the flow of Capital and
> the conservation of Capital. Or perhaps in terms of
> general principles.
> Thanks,
> Cecil Touchon
> http://cecil.touchon.com
> 817-944-4000
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net
> [mailto:idc-bounces at mailman.thing.net]
> On Behalf Of Nicholas Ruiz III
> Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 7:05 PM
> To: Ryan Griffis; idc at mailman.thing.net
> Subject: Re: [iDC] Re: a critique of naturalized
> capitalism
> 
> Hi Ryan/all:
> 
> We should note here that certain factions of genetic
> Code are more represented by Capital, than others.
> Most analyses of Capital are myopically obsessed
> with
> this small part of the world equation of exchange;
> indeed, it is the part most often categorized as
> some
> form or other of 'capitalism'...in any event, the
> part
> of 'it' we are most affected by in life.  Polity
> involves this segment of exchange, modulating its
> activity, while modulated by it.
> 
> Many are under the spell of history, which provides
> Capital with a birth, a Beginning, but Capital was
> always present in its basic form: a capitalizing
> Code.
>  We might even say, in our lighter moments, that
> Capital is the dream of the Code; its macrolevel
> extension in to the world, from its micro/molecular
> proximity in the biological cell.  Where Culture
> dreamed of beauty, Capital yearned to be effective. 
> At last, Capital learned to effect beauty, so as to
> assimilate beauty as a veneer.  
> 
> Today, Capital is beautiful-operationally, and that
> is
> the aesthetic we revere; the beauty of utility.  The
> problem with the recognition of Capital's enduring
> omnipresence is that there is no one to indict of
> the
> crimes Capital commits-do we indict ourselves, that
> is
> to say, human society? And then, do we punish
> ourselves?  After all Freud, already tried to issue
> such a judgment:
>  
> "But with the recognition that every civilization
> rests on a compulsion to work and a renunciation of
> instinct and therefore inevitably provokes
> opposition
> from those affected by these demands, it has become
> clear that civilization cannot consist principally
> or
> solely in wealth itself and the means of acquiring
> it
> and the arrangements for its distribution; for these
> things are threatened by the rebelliousness and the
> destructive mania of the participants in
> civilization."   
> 
> What Freud missed here is that the human instinct is
> precisely to work at something (even nothing); there
> is not a renunciation of instinct in that activity,
> but rather an embrace of an instinct to survive, to
> produce, to replicate (and if not replicate,
> certainly
> to copulate-where replication becomes incidental for
> most of the species)-that is the Code's agenda-the
> Code is as the Code does.  In addition, civilization
> can consist of Capital accrual and defense-and it
> has
> and does so-increasingly, via the "world-widening of
> the world" (i.e. globalization).  It is not wealth
> that most seek, but rather, production of a life or
> lives.  
> 
> Capital makes itself known, among other ways, as a
> function and a tool of precisely the "rebelliousness
> and destructive mania" of which Freud speaks. 
> Though
> circumstances are novel, the inception point of all
> of
> this is not contemporary, nor modern, or medieval,
> or
> even ancient. We are merely molecular progeny in
> perpetual flux. Our possibility came into being from
> the point at which molecules began to self-organize,
> conserve, replicate: that is the beginning of
> utilitous Code, a material manifestation of which
> today, is Capital; notice how it too,
> self-organizes,
> conserves, accumulates, replicates, etc.  It is in
> that sense, that Capital, and increasingly today,
> global Capital, represents and implements the Code,
> and is a tool of it.  
> 
> 
> NRIII
> 
>  
> --- Ryan Griffis <ryan.griffis at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Apr 7, 2007, at 8:25 AM, Nicholas Ruiz III
> wrote:
> > 
> > > I'm not sure I understand the question...could
> you
> > > elaborate a bit...?
> > >
> > > NRIII
> > 
> > i'm questioning the use of the phrase "decided by
> > virtue of our birth  
> > as living capitalized beings, driven by the
> currency
> > of the Code..."
> > There are two paths that seem to be suggested by
> > this language, but  
> > correct me if i'm wrong:
> > 1. This (capitalism) is Nature as code, an
> > indifferent system that is  
> > not explainable through social/cultural systems,
> but
> > is a phenomenon  
> > of the Universe that is reducible only to
> observable
> > mechanisms.
> > 2. This (capitalism) is Nature as metaphysical
> > "Code", written into  
> > the specifically "human nature" as sin is
> attributed
> > to all humans  
> > "by virtue of our birth" in Judeo/Christian terms.
> > 
> > Either way, capitalism (as both an ideology and
> > material system) is  
> > unavoidable and evolutionary, as well as
> totalizing.
> > As if there is/ 
> > cannot be other ideologies/systems parallel to it,
> > that are not  
> > merely false or mythical.
> > If this is the case being stated, i'm not sure
> what
> > the meaning of  
> > the term "capitalism" might be, as in either case,
> > it becomes  
> > synonymous with "Nature" and/or "Human."
> > Obviously, i would disagree with such an assertion
> -
> > hence my  
> > recalling of Dawkins' "selfish gene" theory
> (which,
> > to simplify, is  
> > the notion that the behavior we call "selfish" or
> > "self- 
> > interestedness" (the traits, not coincidentally,
> > most celebrated by  
> > capital) is "hard-wired" into us genetically).
> > If what's being stated is not this, and is just
> > using the language of  
> > "Code" (the capital "C" is part of what caught my
> > attention) and  
> > "genetic protocol" rhetorically and
> metaphorically,
> > then i think it's  
> > a bit problematic as a critical gesture, as it
> > evades critically  
> > through naturalization. It seems, to me, to
> dismiss
> > the importance of  
> > the political, rather than locating it.
> > best,
> > ryan
> > >
> > >
> > > --- Ryan Griffis <ryan.griffis at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >>
> > >> On Apr 2, 2007, at 11:03 AM,
> > >> idc-request at mailman.thing.net wrote:
> > >>
> > >>> Herein lies the importance of the political. 
> It
> > >> is
> > >>> not that we will not be capitalists--this has
> > >> already
> 
=== message truncated ===


Dr. Nicholas Ruiz III
Editor, Kritikos
http://intertheory.org