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<DIV>I too have found the discussion stimulating, although hard to find
the time-space in which to speak or speak-up. Thanks to John Sobol
for an invite to mix it up. I too am more than a technological
determinist or rather less one than a lover. No more or less
than human beings, the technical object as Gilbert Simondon would call it,
is an invention an individuation that has granted ongoing ontogenesis by
also creating a milieu of self determination (or further indetermination) so let
it continue to grant and be loved . While technology differs
from the technical object along the lines John Sobel suggests
below, that is, the potential is perhaps captured in
technology, but still or even so, it is the domain of the technical object
modulating what John refers to as "the head of the curve" as well as the
fun and love of the kids. So I am presently teaching a
graduate course on Freud and Deleuze and felt shocked at Jonathan (whose
work is much appreciated by me) when he asked<FONT
color=#400040> <FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica; COLOR: #0026dc"
face=Helvetica size=3>"How do you get capitalism into the psyche, and how do you
get the psyche into capital?" <FONT color=#000000> I assume what is
meant here is: How do "they" do that? I was shocked because I
thought that different technologies are emanations of a dynamic
ground where the potentialities can inform or invent different
relations for psyche and technology, psyche and energy or force
and thus force, energy and the market , capitalist governance, work labor
sex etc. With this assumption I would say, there is no 'in' of
psyche Perhaps there never was (Derrida says so but so does
Deleuze who does a really interesting theft of Freud's
work) but more important there is no 'in' of the psyche
(or not only an 'in' ) now in relationship to the digital, the
emergent in relationship to the digital. Psyche (its presently
rethought energies and forces) has escaped the individual, has
dropped back down through the pre-individual to
ground or in-<EM>form</EM>ation as a material force an
ontogenetic force. This is an ontology for affect and affect economies,
among them capitalism. This points I think away from the
cognitive-ism or consciousness (albeit unconsciousness) of Jonathan's question
and sends his own focus on "attention" or the labor
of attention toward the body and to the transformation of the
body-as-organism to a full body of desiring. One reason I love
the digital is that is makes all of this seemingly abstract stuff
so-not-abstract but accessible when we allow it to shift
criticism away from the given-ness of a capitalist logic
that always knows what's coming next and seeks to show how it will be our
fault that it did. Instead a way is offered to respect the
temporalities at play, which are put in play often by capital
(perhaps not often capitalism or capitalist governance). The
life-itself that digital has enabled and which shows up in discourse about
biopolitics and necropolitics is not easy to capture without
producing the fringe of indeterminacy that is life-y. Even in this
awful times of war and terrorism torture poverty and death, the life-y at
least is good news and asks us to pay more attention to
measuring or capturing and its politics which is non-organic and
surely non-human as well as human. Well this is only a start for
me More to come Patricia Clough.
</FONT></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><EM></EM></STRONG> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 9/12/2009 6:21:05 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
john@johnsobol.com writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 0px"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>This has been - as usual here on iDC - a highly stimulating discussion. I
hope my contribution contributes to its quality, though it does come at this
question from quite a different perspective. </DIV>
<DIV><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>I wish to return us to the outset of this thread, wherein Brian quoted
Jonathan thusly:</DIV>
<DIV><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica; COLOR: #0026dc"
face=Helvetica color=#0026dc size=3>"How do you get capitalism into the
psyche, and how do you get the psyche into capital?" asks the philosopher
Jean-Joseph Goux. Drawing on key insights from Gramsci, Simmel and Benjamin --
and radicalizing the work of film critic Christian Metz in the process --
Jonathan Beller gives this quite astonishing reply:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV
style="MIN-HEIGHT: 14px; MARGIN: 0px; FONT: 12px Helvetica; COLOR: rgb(0,38,220)"><FONT
face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial
size=2></FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT style="FONT: 12px Helvetica; COLOR: #0026dc"
face=Helvetica color=#0026dc size=3>"Materially speaking, industrialization
enters the visual as follows: Early cinematic montage extended the logic of
the assembly line (the sequencing of discreet, programmatic
machine-orchestrated human operations) to the sensorium and brought the
industrial revolution to the eye.... It is only by tracing the trajectory of
the capitalized image and the introjection of its logic into the sensorium
that we may observe the full consequences of the dominant mode of production
(assembly-line capitalism) becoming 'the dominant mode of representation'
(cinema). Cinema implies the tendency toward the automation of the subject by
the laws of exchange.... Understood as a precursor to television, computing,
email, and the World Wide Web, cinema can be seen as part of an emerging
cybernetic complex, which, from the standpoint of an emergent global labor
force, functions as a technology for the capture and redirection of global
labor's revolutionary social agency and potentiality."</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#0026dc><BR
class=webkit-block-placeholder></FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#000000>I will
begin by saying that I do not believe that this historical trajectory gets to
the heart of the matter. Valuable as it is in certain respects in shedding
light on our evolving world, I nonetheless believe that it is a heuristic
model that seems to fit the facts, yet elides them. I will do my best to
explain why I think this. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">I have not read your book, Jonathan, so if I am way
off the mark in my interpretation of your words than that will be my fault.
But it sounds to me like a causal relationship is being established in the
above analysis, between cinema's evolution as a global cultural force and the
parallel advance of certain socially prescriptive aspects of modern and
post-modern industrial capitalism. The cybernetic loop you describe suggests
that cinema and capitalism are engaged in a form of dance, impelled, once
begun, by the alarmingly potent logic of "<SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="COLOR: rgb(0,38,220)">assembly-line capitalism"</SPAN>, that
incriminates cinema as both agent and victim. Certainly cinema, (and
cineastes) in your analysis appear as not just one of these two things,
but as both.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">With regard to the question of causality, I am
unconvinced that cinema's economic or epistemological architectures – as
opposed to its narrative themes or stylistic vagaries – played such a
fundamental causal role in the unfolding of the social dynamics of "<SPAN
class=Apple-style-span style="COLOR: rgb(0,38,220)">assembly-line capitalism".
</SPAN><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#000000>The reason I think this is
that I also reject, at a more basic level, the argument that 'industrialism
enters the visual via cinema' at all. In fact I think this articulation
entirely misses the essential relationship between industrialism and the
visual.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">The key to this relationship is the understanding
that industrialism is the more-or-less direct result of increased
literacy. It is of the eye, and it largely replaced the experiential techne of
the ear that preceded it, just as literate capitalism replaced the economies
of the ear that preceded it). As simplistic as this sounds, it is, in my
opinion, accurate and fundamental. It is no accident that Scotland in the 18th
century had the world's highest literacy rate and was also the world's
industrial incubator. It is no accident that the popularization of literacy in
Britain coincided with its imperial rise. Nor is it an accident that the peak
in world literacy today coincides with the death of most of the world's oral
languages. The industrial age is a visual age. It is the triumphant age of
text, in which reading and writing come to rule the world through their
manifold representations in maps, constitutions, lawbooks, forms, contracts,
ledgers, deeds - and, of course - blueprints, patents, technical
specifications, reports, schemata, manuals and the myriad textual tools that
enabled industrialization (i.e. the raster grid that Sean rightly
indicates is so historically definitive), as well as their resulting man-made
mechanical universe. And here I seem to hear the familiar "pshaw, this is
determinist claptrap" (though not perhaps from your lips, reader), to
which I reply: just take writing out of the equation and see what degree
of industrialism you are left with. Try it and see. There is nothing
left. Without the widespread dissemination of literacy, industrialism crumbles
utterly.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">Cinema, seen in this light, is a mere actor in the
larger drama that is literate culture's struggle to achieve global hegemony,
and is not the primary cause of anything, except perhaps an infinity of shared
dreams (no small thing, I admit). It is just one of many monological
industrial media shaped by the technical and psychic architectures
of print. Just as television would become as well. Neither is anything
but a talking book from my perspective. And so to answer Goux's question: you
get capitalism into the psyche via the printing press, you get it via the
rigid, powerful, monological imperatives of print. As with industrialism,
extract print from the evolution of capitalism and nothing at all remains, not
even a trace. I don't even talk about capitalism myself, only of literate
capitalism, for capitalism is epistemologically indistinguishable from
literacy. (Though strangely, so in many respects is Soviet socialism).</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">The second part of your paragraph, Jonathan, is
important too. </DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><SPAN class=Apple-style-span
style="COLOR: rgb(0,38,220)">Understood as a precursor to television,
computing, email, and the World Wide Web, cinema can be seen as part of an
emerging cybernetic complex, which, from the standpoint of an emergent global
labor force, functions as a technology for the capture and redirection of
global labor's revolutionary social agency and potentiality."</SPAN></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#0026dc><BR
class=webkit-block-placeholder></FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#000000>As I have
mentioned, I do not think that cinema and television are more than accidental
precursors to computing, email and the World Wide Web. (Kind of the way Gil
Scott-Heron seems to be the godfather of rap, whereas his work is not directly
related at all, only indirectly.) And as I see it there are two cybernetic
complexes in effect here anyway; one hegemonic, one emergent; one literate and
one digital. Each of these two looped universes is indigenously highly
distinct from the other, yet bright minds with vast resources are desperately
trying to colonize the emergent one on behalf of the ruling one, with some
success. And of course defending the fort – and actively taking the battle to
these hungry entrepreneurs – are revolutionaries of all shapes and sizes, your
friends and mine, seeking to counteract this unfeeling assault with art,
autonomy, activism and more. Much more.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">However, what matters is not necessarily how
successful we and our idealistic friends turn out to be. What seems to matter
most is the march of time, and technology. When Negativland pioneered its
remix work it caused outrage and conflict. With the passage of time, however,
the mashup has become a staple of everyday life. Not because Negativland (or
John Oswald or Bryan Gysin for that matter) 'won' but rather because they
turned out to be doing stuff ahead of the curve. It was not a case of the good
guys winning due to hard work, the righteousness of their message and
the political maturation of 'the people'. It just turned out that when the
tools advanced enough to make it easy and fun for kids to do, kids did it. And
that's basically all that revolution took to succeed. And soon the kids will
grow up. Lots already have.</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">In this sense I am an unrepentant technological
determinist. Not that I think, for example, that the transition to
post-literate capitalism is a given. On the contrary, I expect things to get
more and more dangerous and bloody and I am not happy about that at all, as
the evolutionary conflict between the efficient and the hyperefficient gains
demographic momentum. So there is in fact an urgent need for leadership, and
by this I mean intercultural leadership that constructively bridges the
emergent and hegemonic cybernetic loops in the pursuit of
sustainable and judicious compromises (to say nothing of also reaching
out and inviting into the dialogue the colonized oral peoples of the world who
have a crucial role to play here, particularly in helping to stave off
literate capitalism's imminent ecocide.) Antagonizing the corporate world for
the sake of personal catharsis is fun and all, and I have done it plenty in my
art, aimed at 'bad guys' who couldn't have cared less, but more useful I now
believe is an engagement that respects and enlightens, rather than unmasking
villainous archetypes in (our) everyday life. There just too many of us.
:)</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">Literacy too has certainly functioned<SPAN
class=Apple-style-span style="COLOR: rgb(0,38,220)"> "as a technology for
the capture and redirection of global labor's revolutionary social agency and
potentiality." </SPAN><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#000000>Except when
it wasn't. Except when it was something else. For </FONT><FONT
class=Apple-style-span color=#000000>it has also made possible wondrous and
wonderful achievements (for some – the many and/or the few). Drawing hard and
fast boundaries between this or that idea, this or that system, this or that
morality, is a favourite literate game. But I think it has served its purpose.
Let's mix things up a little more, focusing on what we have in common rather
than where we differ; trying to find a way forward that balances the benefits
that each cybernetic vortex can offer while also seeking to offset its ill
effects. And then look to the kids to make it happen.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><FONT class=Apple-style-span color=#000000>That
sounds to me like a truly revolutionary program.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">(All of the above offered with the utmost respect for
the pleasure and privilege of this conversation and hopefully not sounding as
bitchy as I sometimes feel...)</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">Thanks for listening,</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px">John Sobol</DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN: 0px"><BR class=webkit-block-placeholder></DIV>
<DIV
style="MARGIN: 0px">www.johnsobol.com</DIV></DIV>=<BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>iDC
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