[iDC] Michael Jackson and the death of macrofame

Sun Jul 5 12:32:55 UTC 2009

Hi Julian, Christian:

but isn´t that the general condition of an increasing number of ´knowledge workers´? We are salaried workers one day, freelance the other day, then we may decide to launch our own venture, often returning to a salaried position again ...

Any too rigid class definition would fail to see this reality which is furthermore one in which we knowledge workers control a large amount of our own means of production, i.e. our brains, computers and access to the socialized networks ...

Michel

----- Original Message ----
> From: Christian Fuchs <christian.fuchs at sbg.ac.at>
> To: Julian Kücklich <julian at kuecklich.de>; idc <idc at mailman.thing.net>
> Sent: Friday, June 26, 2009 8:55:58 AM
> Subject: Re: [iDC] Michael Jackson and the death of macrofame
> 
> And how is this category of playbour or play-labour connected to Michael 
> Jackson? Was Michael Jackson a playbourer, a capitalist, an immaterial 
> worker, or something else? If there is no theoretical way that allows us 
> to distinguish the class position of Michael Jackson from the class 
> position of a precarious call center agent or a precarious 
> singer/dancer/writer etc, and we consider them all as part of one 
> "class" or describe them all with one category such as "playbour", then 
> such categories do not make sense because they too much intermingle 
> different socio-economic life worlds. So what categories should we use 
> for describing the political economy of Michael Jackson? Is playbour a 
> sufficient category=
> 
> Christian
> 
> Julian Kücklich schrieb:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > Trebor asked me to write "a succinct, one paragraph definition of 
> > playbour." Okay, here goes:
> >
> > If we assume that play is distinct from "ordinary life" (Huizinga), 
> > and that it constitutes an "occasion of pure waste" (Caillois), then 
> > playbour is the re-entry of ordinary life into play, with a 
> > concomitant valorization of play activities. Insofar as life (bios) is 
> > always productive, and be it only in the sense that it produces waste, 
> > the extraction of value from play can be seen as a form of waste 
> > management; and insofar as play can be seen as a waste of time, the 
> > logic of playbour demands that time be wasted efficiently. In this 
> > sense we could also call playbour the Taylorization of leisure. Like 
> > other forms of affective or immaterial labour, playbour is not 
> > productive in the sense of resulting in a product, but it is the 
> > process itself that generates value. The means of production are the 
> > players themselves, but insofar as they only exist within play 
> > environments by virtue of their representations, and their 
> > representations are usually owned by the providers of these 
> > environments, the players cannot be said to be fully in control of 
> > these means. Playbour is suffused with an ideology of play, which 
> > effectively masks labour as play, and disguises the process of 
> > self-expropriation as self-expression. However, exploitation and 
> > empowerment, subjectification and objectification, wastefulness and 
> > efficiency coexist in the ambiguous "third space" of playbour, where 
> > these binary oppositions break down, and thus open up new 
> > possibilities of intersubjectification.
> >
> > Hmm, maybe not so succinct, but it'll have to do for now. I'll try to 
> > condense it to 140 characters and tweet it later.
> >
> > Julian aka @cucchiaio
> >
> > 2009/6/25 Trebor Scholz >
> >
> >    Hi Julian,
> >    Great, could you re-join the discussion with a succinct, one
> >    paragraph definition of playbour
> >    and a very short argumentation of why neither play nor labor
> >    easily fit the situation?
> >    Cheers,
> >    Trebor
> >
> >    ----
> >    Written tersely, typed imperfectly, and then sent from my phone
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
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> 
> -- 
> - - -
> Priv.-Doz. Dr. Christian Fuchs
> Unified Theory of Information Research Group
> University of Salzburg
> Sigmund Haffner Gasse 18
> 5020 Salzburg
> Austria
> christian.fuchs at sbg.ac.at
> Phone +43 662 8044 4823
> http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at
> http;//www.uti.at
> Editor of 
> tripleC - Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation | Open Access Journal for a 
> Global Sustainable Information Society
> http://www.triple-c.at
> Fuchs, Christian. 2008. Internet and Society: Social Theory in the Information 
> Age. New York: Routledge. 
> http://fuchs.icts.sbg.ac.at/i&s.html
> 
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