<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hi all,<div><br></div><div>Sorry for the abrupt entry into this discussion -- i'm finally getting set up again after two weeks gone -- but i've got to weigh in on Michael Bauwen's side here in this very brilliant exchange. As someone who wrote one book on the emergence of new media as a technology of value extraction and then a second book that was a direct response to the challenges I felt by years of living and working in the Philippines to make my what is now called media theory relevant in a third world/global south context, i have to agree that the (world-) systemic dimensions of exploitation are on par in terms of importance with the violent instances of the most recognizeable and brutal expressions of exploititive practices: defacto agrarian slavery, the radical dispossesion of casual workers in the slums, the captured bodies of prostitutes, etc. To hypostasize: each is a condition of the other.</div><div><br></div><div>For what its worth, I think that one of the great problems of our time is to make manifest the myriad links between the pleasures available in global society -- pleasure which certainly include but are not limited to screen pleasures -- and systemic murder, i.e., the willed/automatic/unconscious deprivation of life (it is all of these) that is the sine qua non of global capitalist perpetuity. What are the mediations?</div><div><br></div><div>In my own experience of exchanges with members of the radical left, if you will, in the Philippines (exchanges which I feel at once humbled by and honored to partake in), there is great interest in terms of strategy and tactics to understand the logistics of media-exploitation as well as possible. This interest is manifest by those who organize protests and public actions against, for example, disappearances sometimes called political killings launched illegally by the Macapagal-Arroyo regime in the Philippines in order to preserve the rule of law by assassinating those who threaten its legitimacy (more than 800 since GMA took office), as well as protests in solidarity with Jeepney drivers against escalating gasoline prices, and many many other forms of protest. This interest in a mediological analysis of sociality has deep roots in the university and in the long-term anti-fascist and anti-imperialist struggles and it informs scholarship, pedagogy, cultural theory, filmmaking, art practice, and political strategy.</div><div><br></div><div>I'll close this all too brief account with two points: first, the expropriation of the cognitive-linguistic as well as the sensual by media-capital means that the struggle for the production of consciousness as a moment in the overall struggle for the democratic control of the means of production that informs the very possibilty of social justice is at least as important as it has been in the past, if not more so. Second, the high theory of media studies, academic marxism (to use a pejorative term), feminist and queer theory, like the wealth and culture of the great Western metropoles, rightfully belongs to the third world/ global south. All these terms ("rightfully," "belongs," "global south") are subject to modification, but you get my drift -- consciousness itself, and the world that sustains it, is produced on the backs of those who are most radically dispossessed. Personally, I am haunted by an enduring question: how to be adequate to such a reality?</div><div><br></div><div>Best,</div><div>Jon<br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Jonathan Beller</div><div>Professor </div><div>Humanities and Media Studies</div><div>and Critical and Visual Studies</div><div>Pratt Institute</div><div><a href="mailto:jbeller@pratt.edu">jbeller@pratt.edu</a></div><div>718-636-3573 fax</div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Times" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; "><br></span></font></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br><div><div>On Jul 17, 2009, at 1:01 PM, Michael Bauwens wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div><br>Hi John,<br><br>Look again to the exploited worker that you mention ... and amidst whom I live in this working class neighborhood in bangkok ...<br><br>He/she is often heavily in debt, this represents a double exploitation<br><br>Then look at his employer ... they too are heavily in debt, and their rate of profit is actually not that high ...<br><br>Then look at the people lending to both the worker and his employer ... their profit rates are higher ...<br><br>Through debt and compound interest, there is a direct flow of money from the poor to the rich, from the productive sectors to the 'unproductive' financial sectors ...<br><br>This is just as real a face of exploitation ...<br><br>I'm not at all afraid to say this to the worker in the extractives industry ... he/she is just as aware of the reality of this form of exploitation ... look at the farmer's suicides in India .. they kill themselves not because they are being exploited, they have always been, but because very specifically of their debt situation ...<br><br>I think this is where your yikes should be directed at, not at those correctly pointing out the financial exploitation,<br><br>Michel<br><br><br><br>----- Original Message ----<br><blockquote type="cite">From: John Hopkins <<a href="mailto:jhopkins@tech-no-mad.net">jhopkins@tech-no-mad.net</a>><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">To: <a href="mailto:idc@mailman.thing.net">idc@mailman.thing.net</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Sent: Friday, July 17, 2009 3:07:25 AM<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Subject: Re: [iDC] iDC Digest, Vol 55, Issue 31<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Michael Bauwens wrote:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Thanks Douglas for explaining this, we are on a pretty similar wavelength,<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Hallo Michael:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">nothing like resonance; but I have to dissonate with the following <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">statement (whilst otherwise only able to occasionally scan the contents <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">of the iDC box -- Trebor, you need to write something more or less <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">precise/poetic about how you *do* your facilitation work here on iDC and <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">perhaps what your own personal desires are around it! :-)<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">We could argue that today, a very large part of surplus value extraction is <br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">not done directly at production, but indirectly through the financial system<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Yikes, really, say that to someone working in the extractives industry, <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">at the lower levels of the techno-social pyramid as it were... That <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">argument comes from looking too long at view-point-limited/ing screens! <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"> You are luxuriating at a level of abstractions that are subsidized <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">("brought-to-you") by a massive globe-spanning process of concentrating <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">and refining basic material energies -- a process which is run via human <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">bodies, at its most fundamental level. And it is precisely there, at <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">the level of embodied life-energies and life-times, that surplus value <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">(energy) accumulates and becomes directly available to the service of <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">those up higher in that pyramid... When one gives ones attention <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">(Michael Goldhaber...) in the form of life-time and life-energy to <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">anyone (regardless of mediatory path), that energy or surplus, as you <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">call it, is, in real-time, transferred...<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">cheers,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">John<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">_______________________________________________<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity <br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">(distributedcreativity.org)<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc">https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">List Archive:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/">http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">iDC Photo Stream:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">RSS feed:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc">http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">iDC Chat on Facebook:<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647">http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647</a><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref<br></blockquote><br><br><br><br>_______________________________________________<br>iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (distributedcreativity.org)<br><a href="mailto:iDC@mailman.thing.net">iDC@mailman.thing.net</a><br>https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc<br><br>List Archive:<br>http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/<br><br>iDC Photo Stream:<br>http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/<br><br>RSS feed:<br>http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc<br><br>iDC Chat on Facebook:<br>http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647<br><br>Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref<br></div></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>