[iDC] Class and the Internet, New Capitalism, and (True New) Socialism for the 21st Century/ Peak Biopower?
Sean Cubitt
scubitt at unimelb.edu.au
Sun Jun 28 08:18:59 UTC 2009
That¹s hugely important thinking Marty. Two thoughts: one is the UN
population report this year indicating the scale of population flows into
the cities. With the extraordinary exception of the Chinese gerontocracy,
who appear to have learned from the savage deregulation if the USSR and have
determined to make changes slowly, no government I¹m aware of has plans to
reduce that flow. The urbanisation - thinking Mke davis¹ Planet of Slums
is probably more bare life than slumdog mllionaire. This is where politics
arises, according to ranciere: in the realisation that there is a population
previously excluded from the citizenry who must be dialogued with, even
tough they are Œexternal¹. In Europe, this is the case with migrants, who no
longer have ex-colonial ties, linguistic commonality, separation from Œhome¹
or any usefully static type of community (being very ready to move from
Ireland to Poland as the money goes). The presence of a vast newly urban
population will do the same for the megacities and many regional cities.
They in turn will impact on the still vast numbers who remain. If we haven¹t
burned the planet by the, there might be the most outrageous changes.
The second is probably more appalling: Castells short, terrifying chapter
on sub-Saharan Africa suggesting that unless the Republic of Sough Africa
succeeds, and can become the regional hegemon, the vast majority of the
population are surplus to requirements.
The race is on
S
On 28/06/09 4:50 AM, "Martin Lucas" <mlucas at igc.org> wrote:
>
> Peak Biopower
>
> Today the standing-reserve is not just the unconscious material world. It
> includes the human as population, as biomass, as mechanism of aggregate
> consumption. Sean C.
>
> I am trying to relate Sean¹s thoughts to insights I¹ve gained engaged with
> video and mobile media activism in Africa. One reality that Africans confront
> is the end of a global peasantry, one that historically existed outside of the
> economic system of capital in certain ways, as subsistence farmers.
> Basically, peasant farmers cannot compete, even at the most severe levels of
> self-exploitation, with a system that combines global agribusiness with the
> subsidization of agriculture in the industrialized nations.
>
> About two years ago the planet crossed a point where peasants are no longer
> the largest part of the population. Put another way, more people live in
> cities now than in the countryside. So as a reserve in the Œreserve army¹
> sense and in the sense of being part of a world that is a buffer for
> capitalism, in the sense of Œnature¹ or Œstanding-reserve¹, we¹re talking
> about a shrinking resource.
>
> Saul Ostrow points out most people with computer access are middle class by
> some definition. But people with mobile access are a vastly broader group,
> one that includes large numbers of subsistence farmers. Currently tens of
> millions of Africans are investing in mobile devices and infrastructure in a
> way that allows them in a certain way to occupy what Hegel called Œthe stage
> of history.¹ They can at least potentially be considered Œplayers¹ in a way
> that the Iranian people are at the moment for instance. Put another way, the
> human part of the standing-reserve is now a Œmechanism of aggregate
> production¹, at least in potential. That would be where class consciousness
> emerges, and it is not a classic Œworking¹ class or middle class, but a class
> that is emerging and defining itself in action, putting itself past the
> worker/middle class split that is so effectively exploited here in the US (and
> clearly delineated in this thread.)
>
> Africans pay a high price for globalization both in terms of environment and
> economics, both in the destruction of non-commodity agriculture and in having
> it replaced with the most egregious forms of industrial (and cultural)
> exploitation. Their desire to embrace modernity in the form of communications
> tools bears thinking about.
>
> As a media activist I have always believed that access to communication tools
> offers a liberatory potential, and acted on that belief. Clearly, what you
> do with the tools is part of the deal. If an Iranian woman sends a post from
> a demo in Teheran, that can be a political act, a Œproduction of truth¹ in
> Badiou¹s sense. In a similar vein, a 13 year old girl in rural Africa posting
> an SMS question about sexuality and AIDS is inserting herself into a global
> discussion and enlarging the public sphere in a way previously unimaginable.
>
> The question that hit me, in the context that Sean Cubitt frames, is: Haven¹t
> we reached a point where that biopower reserve is starting shrink? What might
> that mean? Could it be the end of a system of exploitation that depends on
> both cultural consciousness reserves and on natural reserves?
>
> As Christian points out we¹re in a moment that is the least communist from a
> point of control, and a most communist from a point of the potential for real
> politics/economics. To go back to Marx, the notion of capitalism¹s chaos
> means that as more and more of everything gets incorporated into a capitalist
> system, the more things will tend to hugely chaotic moments, something that
> Sean refers to. The response from a class that definitely does exist Œfor
> itself,¹ the ruling class, is visible around us. But if we are increasingly
> all plugged in, as I suggest, then there is no turning back.
>
>
> Marty Lucas
>
>
>
>
> On Jun 27, 2009, at 12:35 AM, Sean Cubitt wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Slowly mulling the class-consciousness thing, and also reminded otherwise of
>> Roy Ascott¹s facsination with consciousness in another sense, I began to
>> wonder whether there is mileage in the rather passé but still geologically
>> presumed heideggerian thesis of the standing reserve (no, I¹m not a
>> heideggerian, on the contrary but the idea has constantly to be struggled
>> with in history of media/technology)
>>
>> Today the standing-reserve is not just the unconscious material world. It
>> includes the human as population, as biomass, as mechanism of aggregate
>> consumption. The question about conscdiousness is whether (to use another
>> heiddegger word) Œthinking¹ is already party to this conversion of humanity
>> into standing-reserve, either when, as in de Landa¹s case, we popularise the
>> idea of humanity as biomass etc; or when by refusing to self-publish the
>> self-censor the virtuality (capacity to create the new) of new thinking? Ie,
>> again, damned if we do and damned if we don¹t
>>
>> If we understand the standing-reserve as biopolitical and commodifying, we
>> can add some terms: it concerns averages, and it concerns whole-number
>> enumeration. It thus misses both the specificity and the Œstarting¹
>> micro-conditions and so opens itself up to cascading chaotic and emergent
>> structures in spite of itself. This is one way of thinking the schiz as a
>> political consciousness which is nonetheless neither unified nor pleasant to
>> experience. The periodic return to order from such chaotic episodes (as I
>> think happened in the disciplining and monetarisation of the pre-dot-bomb
>> web) may then be predictable but nonetheless not without influence (see also
>> post-countercultural hip capitalism)
>>
>> Sorry to blip in and out of existence like this: I appear to be powered by
>> an improbability drive
>>
>>
>> Prof Sean Cubitt
>> scubitt at unimelb.edu.au
>> Director
>> Media and Communications Program
>> Faculty of Arts
>> Room 127 John Medley East
>> The University of Melbourne
>> Parkville VIC 3010
>> Australia
>>
>> Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
>> Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494
>> M: 0448 304 004
>> Skype: seancubitt
>> http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/media-communications/
>> http://www.digital-light.net.au/
>> http://homepage.mac.com/waikatoscreen/
>> http://seancubitt.blogspot.com/
>> http://del.icio.us/seancubitt
>>
>> Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series
>> http://leonardo.info
>>
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>
>
>
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Prof Sean Cubitt
scubitt at unimelb.edu.au
Director
Media and Communications Program
Faculty of Arts
Room 127 John Medley East
The University of Melbourne
Parkville VIC 3010
Australia
Tel: + 61 3 8344 3667
Fax:+ 61 3 8344 5494
M: 0448 304 004
Skype: seancubitt
http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/media-communications/
http://www.digital-light.net.au/
http://homepage.mac.com/waikatoscreen/
http://seancubitt.blogspot.com/
http://del.icio.us/seancubitt
Editor-in-Chief Leonardo Book Series
http://leonardo.info
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