Technologies are not neutral and never innocuous. We prioritize, focus, value and engage very different aspects of the world depending on our particular technic extensions and technological orientations. These life-priorities are framed (structured) and unfold in relation to our infrastructural conditions and the resultant cognitive skills and technical procedures.Heidegger talked about the ge-stell to describe what conditions come into being when technology arises and how certain technic configurations frame (or enframe) what we do, think and how we relate. McLuhan was pretty clear about how technology extends and augments human life. And several people, not the least of which Braudel, Serres and Foucault, have laid bare the power relations involved in acquiring and maintaining certain technological regimes.
We could talk about all this in terms of ‘modes’: modes of production, modes of communication, modes of semantic evaluation (cultural schema), modes emotional regulation (habitus), modes or energy utilization (extraction and deployment), etc., etc. The key is that any change in a particular mode can affect the overall configuration of modes. So if we change particular technic modes there is a change in certain cognitive modes (skills, assumptions, values, etc.).
Supplemental to this point, if different modes of being or social assemblages generate different aesthetic-existential relations, and therefore ways of understanding the world, then particularly dominating modes of being and becoming foreclose the possibility of honoring and incorporating beneficial instances of alterity. That is to say, the sprawling technical regimes of late capitalism (“the machines”) have proven to be brutal interventions into so many intrinsically valuable – although never completely positive or healthy - life-ways that have existed on this planet. The vicious expansion of capitalistic technic modes have decreased the diversity of modes in general and therefore decreased our capacity for recognizing and generating alternatives.
Moreover, Marxism, broadly conceived, is a paradigm that also originates from within the matrix of brutal ethnocentric technical and cultural assumptions. Evidence of this comes from Marx’s own writing on India and his denigration of non-urban, non-industrial life. And Marxists of many variations have continued to denounce different modes of being as mere “backwardness”. This, coupled with Marxism’s metaphysical faith in technology and the progressive dialectic of history, is in many ways both a reaction to and continuation of historically dominating techno-cultural modes of being. Marxist imperialism is still imperialism it would seem.
But we need not bow down to the master narrative (religion?) of Marxist doxa, in order to be against capitalism or against brutalizing modes in general, but, instead foster an openness for hybrid narratives and more complex understandings on the way towards materially instantiating more mutualistic modes of being.
A reinvigorated revolutionary stance, then, would interrogate the assumptions and ontology of existing paradigms and modes, and open itself to minor revisions viz. alternative (non-western, non-phallocentric) ways of knowing, being and relating. Far from being an “unthinking”, a pluralistic ethical and practical assessment of oppression and politics would be a conscious and multi-rational projekt of reflexivity and praxis that attends to the most appropriate and pragmatic practices and insights of all available modes.
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Excellent, interesting post -- though I obviously disagree. You make your case well. Expect a detailed reply from me, which will draw primarily upon the works of Marx, Adorno, Horkheimer, Mumford, and Ellul, all part of the radical tradition. Unlike, I am sorry to say, Heidegger, who was always a reactionary.
These are just notes Ross, sparked by our conversation below. I look forward to your response - which will continue to put me in an awkward position since I owe you about a 1000 replies already (some of which are in draft on my laptop now).
Just remember, I adore Marx’s thought and admire Adorno's work greatly. I just don't want to limit my thought by strict adherence to their categories/logic. I would feel as though I’m a kind of post-marxist, who respects that tradition despite its flaws and deep modernist assumptions.
Don't worry about any of the really old posts you "owe" me responses to, haha. I can carry on and be needlessly combative and verbose.
Just as a general self-description, not that you probably haven't inferred this about me already, I consider myself a Marxist in the critical theory tradition, working within modernist parameters. I'm not an "orthodox" Marxist or a sectarian; I don't belong to any Maoist, Trotskyist, or Schachtmanite groups, though I am part of the Platypus Affiliated Society (a relatively new Marxist group). My biggest influences outside of the figures of classical philosophy (Plato-Aristotle-Spinoza-Leibniz-Kant-Hegel-Nietzsche) are of course Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotskii, Max Weber, Freud, Lukacs, Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer, Harvey, and Postone.
My interpretation of the hundred years or so since that last truly great revolutionary upheaval among the major capitalist powers, is that society -- in terms of its politics, art, and ideologies -- has regressed significantly, even if the technologies of production are more suited than ever to usher in a postcapitalist society of abundance. Beginning with the radical hope and numerous revolts throughout Europe following 1917 and lasting until 1923, the greatest window of opportunity for global revolutionary change was cruelly closed after the largest crisis in parliamentary democracy and all of economic history, the worldwide Great Depression, ended not in revolution but in catastrophe around 1932 -- Nazism, Stalinism, and FDR-style big government capitalism. 1968 was a mild tremor compared to this period, and the leftist ideologies that were spawned from this failure left the political state of society even more confused, disjointed, and hopeless than ever. Since the 1980s we have entered the post-modern, "post-political," "post-ideological" malaise. So my historical consciousness is far from the stereotyped Bernsteinian Marxist optimistic view of linear progression; I would probably call my view of history "catastrophic," in the sense of Benjamin's "Angel of History."
This explains why I am so disappointed with most of the theory, politics, and art/architecture floating around today. Nietszche, Adorno and Manfredo Tafuri offered critiques of modernity while remaining modern. This is probably why I turn to them the most, besides Marx.
anytime that we can move away from on the page reifications like Capitalism to real-world/case examples all the better for creating working alternatives.
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/video-games-gender-and-regimes-of-attraction/
@Dirk - Agreed. Specificity matters. This post was just a note for me to come back and fill in the details. I do think, however, that Capitalism is a definite set of discourses, practices, equipment and associations – a regime of attraction, or what William Connolly has called the “capitalist resonance machine”.
In the case of thinking through how Marxist ideology is a partial entailment of capitalist ‘modes’, we might point out the role of private media (in Marx’s case newspapers) plays in revolutionary activities, or how the capital funded railroads created a stronger connection between “town” and “country”, thereby affording the process of proletarianization so important to creating a class of workers capable of actualizing revolutionary consciousness.
Most importantly for my argument, however, is Marx and Engels’ acceptance of the technocratic machinations of industrial production as the royal road to mechanizing society and creating hitherto unrealized and supposedly beneficial leisure culture. For Marx the equipment of capital would have been a major part of his “scientific” utopia.
"In the age of lies, even the clumsiest frankness is preferable to the best-orchestrated ruse." - Albert Camus
m, certainly economic/class factors should be examined/at-play but I can't see any One thing as Capitalism that "is A definite set of discourses, practices, equipment and associations" to my mind/experience these kinds of generalizations just don't bear out in our daily lives/interactions, and so the need for a post-structuralist mode of thinking/working.
frankness is always welcome but we need ideas/approaches that can do extra-academic work, on a more meta-note I take the whole blogging thing/exchange as rough drafts/working-docs.
"Avoiding the state was, until the past few centuries, a real option. A thousand years ago most people lived outside state structures, under loose-knit empires or in situations of fragmented sovereignty. Today it is an option that is fast vanishing…
The final two stages of this massive enclosure movement belong, in the case of Europe, to the nineteenth century and, in the case of Southeast Asia, largely to the late twentieth century. They mark such a radical shift in the relationship between states and their peripheries that they fall largely outside the story I tell here. In this last period, “enclosure” has meant not so much shifting people from stateless zones to areas of state control but rather colonizing the periphery itself and transforming it into a fully governed, fiscally fertile zone. Its immanent logic, unlikely ever to be fully realized, is the complete elimination of nonstate spaces. This truly imperial project, made possible only by distance-demolishing technologies (all-weather roads, bridges, railroads, airplanes, modern weapons, telegraph, telephone, and now modern information technologies including global positioning systems), is so novel and its dynamics so different that my analysis here makes no further sense in Southeast Asia for the period after, say, 1950. Modern conceptions of national sovereignty and the resource needs of mature capitalism have brought that final enclosure into view."
[James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, p 9-11]
As I posted over at my blog, in answer to you and Chris:
I think the important thing that Marx realized is that, although society has become increasingly alienated as its has gradually “civilized” itself (this definitely fits with the Freudian idiom as well), it cannot be disalienated by simply reverting to a hunter-gatherer mode of subsistence living, or to earlier stages of mainly agrarian production. Marx understood that a postcapitalist society must be the overcoming of capital by working through its contradictions, not by retreating from them. It must be a negation of a negation, in the Hegelian sense, the sublation of capitalism and the fulfillment of the promises of liberalism and the French Revolution: liberty, equality, internationality. That which presently enchains us at the same time has opened up unprecedented emancipatory potential. The question is, can society become sufficiently self-conscious and autonomous to liberate and rescue itself from capitalism in time?
Michael, expect an epic and programmatic post of terrifying, Cyclopean proportions from me in the next couple days on Marxism and the problem of technology. Obviously, the old theme of humanity’s relationship to the rest of nature will be involved in this as well.
@Ross - And here we completely agree. I think the important thing is that we look at what overcoming capitalist modes actually entails and means - in terms of practical adjustments, infrastructure, vocabularies, values, cultural symbols, etc,. And from this angle “civilization” should be deconstructed, with those parts that don’t work, or alienate, or are unsustainable being abandoned, and those aspects which enlighten, advance or enhance maintained.
Perhaps, then, we might want to adopt some Paleolithic practices, or some cultural elements from Native American heritages, while ALSO incorporating science and engineering. Again, I think we are at a point in our cumulative history where it is possible to make the required lateral movements towards new assemblages that include the best of humanity’s “primitive” and “advanced” elements. But I seriously doubt our collective capacity to enact the needed adjustments in time.
I look forward to you larger post.
"I think the important thing is that we look at what overcoming capitalist modes actually entails and means - in terms of practical adjustments, infrastructure, vocabularies, values, cultural symbols, etc,. And from this angle “civilization” should be deconstructed, with those parts that don’t work, or alienate, or are unsustainable being abandoned, and those aspects which enlighten, advance or enhance maintained."
amen, so then I think that we need to start with particular cases and start tinkering/reflecting, we are all in various systems/relations and can start where we are, perhaps even with who we are. if we go into this all hyped up and aggro/hubris, with chips on our shoulders than this will poison everything we do, so how to embrace a level of ignorance, openness, and humility that matches the vast unknowing that comes with doing something new?
"The vicious expansion of capitalistic technic modes have decreased the diversity of modes in general and therefore decreased our capacity for recognizing and generating alternatives."
I disagree with your use of "therefore" in this passage. Are capacities for generating alternatives the sorts of stuff that decrease in the irreversible fashion you imply? Nay.
Perhaps our capacity for recognizing and generating alternatives could atrophy, or could hybridize with capitalist technologies. I would suspect that the generative impulse toward alternatives is somehow deeper than capitalism, as in, present before-during-and-after any modes of capitalism.
You make capitalism more hegemonic and totalizing than it ever could be. And I'm not some bourgeois apologist.
Perhaps what I mean to allude to is Hegel's very own notion of the organic.
Let me grant your proposal: The capacity to generate alternatives may decrease, as you say. This may also be seen as a prelude to concentrated organic irruptions of alternatives. Perhaps vast numbers of indigenous modes have been slaughtered. Their ghosts may yet possess we the walking dead. Death certainly isn't the end of the story.
@Dirk - That's a good point, but I would also caution that we shouldn't reject tentative macro-description in favor of micro-concerns, because although I ultimately agree with you about local enactions I think we can force both into a dialogical relationship, primarily as a means of attempting to foster the widest as well as the most specific view ("map") possible. In this way we can trace our influences, our environments and those structures which dominate, but also afford us our wayward trajectories.
Again, I think capitalism is a concrete regime of attraction - a sprawling grid of technology, practices, institutions, value complexes and discourses - and in order to effectively sensitize ourselves to its diverse parts we need both macro and micro (and meso) understandings and strategies.
That is to say, the various interlocking objects, systems, habits, discourses, etc., that penetrate our lives and prompt our behaviors must be analyzed on various scales and engaged at various levels lest it roll over us (and through us) on the way to total hegemony ("the end of history") and devour the earth.
As you have reminded my in the past, and I agree with you here, it is as much about DOING as it is being. And "doing" is really about becoming in my opinion, because every action affects us as much as it does the world. The process of enaction is, in this sense, a world-making that generates particular materialities and expressions.
And it is this "doing something new" that most concerns me. How can we do something new when the machines of profit continue to reprocessed all biotic and cultural life into generic commodities and consumption chains?
CAMERON: Are capacities for generating alternatives the sorts of stuff that decrease in the irreversible fashion you imply? Nay.
Perhaps our capacity for recognizing and generating alternatives could atrophy, or could hybridize with capitalist technologies. I would suspect that the generative impulse toward alternatives is somehow deeper than capitalism, as in, present before-during-and-after any modes of capitalism.
MICHAEL: Isn’t irreversibility part of this thermodynamic universe?
We will never again be able to tap into a “pure” Cree cultural milieu, we will never again be able to immerse ourselves in the pre-Christan pagan sensibilities of European clan life, and we can no longer negotiate with Sparta. These life-ways are now lost to us.
My point about diversity and alterity is just that there are less and less genuine options for developing alternatives to capitalist modes of production and mass consumer culture. Capitalism (and yes I do believe it is in some sense a hyper-object) is indeed a resilient and dynamic force that obliterates alternative modes of being as it rolls through resources and people of all sorts. And if we don’t come up with some alternative, or at least some fairly divergent hybrids soon we will be forced to endure whatever stratified and brutal regimes come after capitalism’s inevitable post-ecological collapse demise - because consumer capitalism cannot survive without the steady stream of booty plundered from our remaining ecosystems.
When all the world is a parking lot, sitcom, carnival ride and shopping mall where will we turn for sustenance when the grid goes down?
CAMERON: Perhaps what I mean to allude to is Hegel's very own notion of the organic.
Let me grant your proposal: The capacity to generate alternatives may decrease, as you say. This may also be seen as a prelude to concentrated organic irruptions of alternatives. Perhaps vast numbers of indigenous modes have been slaughtered. Their ghosts may yet possess we the walking dead. Death certainly isn't the end of the story.
MICHAEL: I’m unfamiliar with Hegel’s notion here, but if I understand you correctly you are saying that a monolithic hegemony may result in what Badiou calls an Event – a spontaneous rupture that ushers in a new reality not entirely obvious from previous conditions. Maybe. But I think the notions of the Event or “concentrated organic irruptions of alternatives” are abstractions that operate more like wishful thinking.
We live within a finite ecological niche and once our global capitalist civilization reaches certain thresholds and begins to move towards collapse, and towards disintegration into units of neo-feudal despotism, the material conditions that would have afforded a change in course, or to develop alternative social forms will no longer exist.
Again, irreversibility is built into the cosmos and once finally we disrupt the major planetary systems (the climate, fresh water cycles, forests, etc.) our options for new social formations become limited. And, likewise, because we have already lost the majority of our species cultural diversity (languages, social practices, governmentalities) – basically a cultural apocalypse – the material and symbolic resources which we might draw on are ever more depleted.
Once all homo sapiens babies grow up within the sterile confines of a consumeristic technomoderated mode of existence there will be no other imaginal registers tap into – no alterity with which to affect change and instantiate novel, more sustainable regimes of attraction.
"[A]ny revolution against capitalism worth its salt will have included nonhumans.
Marx definitely means a qualitative distinction between humans and nonhumans when he says that there is a bright line separating “the worst of architects” from “the best of bees.” Nuts to that. If anything the distinction is only quantitative. And sometimes humans are worse than nonhumans on a quantitative reckoning.
Nonhumans are already on “this” side of social space. What does this tell us? Simple. Social space was never totally human." - Tim Morton
For giggles:
“The development of the human sciences must be accompanied by a logical-epistemological self-reflection, that is, by the philosophical consciousness of the way in which the intuitive-conceptual system of the human-socio-historical world is formed on the basis of the lived experience of what has happened.” (Wilhelm Dilthey, The Formation of the Historical World, p.24)
To be sure, Capitalism as an assemblage is a “non-totalizable sum” (Bennett, Vibrant Matter, p24), but in naming is so we (over)emphasize the force of its presence in the world as a way to keep it squarely in sight.
my original reply got lost in the intervoid but Bogost says it well:
"Philosophy should be a kind of tinkering as much as a kind of thinking. And not just an abstract, idealist mental bricolage, not just the deconstruction of ideas and comportments, but a literal tinkering, the actual disassembly and creation of things of all kinds. Metaphysics should be the practice of metaphysicians, who get their hands dirty with the details of being. Philosophy thus becomes a kind of engineering"
http://fracturedpolitics.com/2011/07/09/20110709.aspx
As someone who works a lot on the history of architecture, I can say that Tim Morton's objection to Marx's valorization of the "worst of architects" over the "best of bees" is patent nonsense. The difference is obvious. Bees build their hives and honeycomb out of sheer natural instinct, while human beings set to work architecturally by drawing up specific plans, with both intentionality and a base of historical knowledge available for reference on how to build buildings. I've been reading a lot of Rousseau lately, and while he clearly exalted humanity in the state of nature, he recognized that any sort of permanent building or agriculture clearly began out of man's alienation from this state of nature into "moral" society.
Ah yes, and my post on Marxism and technology should be coming either today or tomorrow.
@Dirk - hell yeah. Ian nailed it there. I can't wait to get my mits on his Alien Phenomenology. Pragmatist Speculative Reailsm anyone!
Also, this notion of tinkering is exactly why I think the notion of infrastructure is the issue of the present. In my view everything connects with the infrastructure of the world.
And I don't mean 'infrastructure' in the sense that Harman seems to be moving towards, because I'm more inclined to view it synthetically through ecology, assemblage theory and Marx's more specific notions of base/superstructure.
I believe it is up to us primates, (at least those with weird frontal lobes) to figure out how to enact more eudaimonic infrastructures. Key to that projekt is both a rethinking of how things hang together at the deepest levels (ontography) and a willingness to "tinker" and create new forms of praxis.
Incidentally, I would rather be a philosophical mad scientist run amok in the wilderness than an any sort of typical theory engineer.
@Ross - Again, I think the difference is a matter of degree not kind. A beaver dam, or bower-bird's nest, or ant hill is constructed from a differently configured sentience and not ontologically dissimilar to human architecture. We just go about the job a different way.
Same goes with "Morals". Hominid morality is animal altruism taken to new levels of abstraction. Does this mean that its existence is insignificant? Absolutely not. Human morality is a wondrous achievement - but it is continuous with nature, and in large part generated from genetic and neural capacities evolved over thousands of years. Morality is not some definitive metaphysical break from the most vulgar forms.
Michael,
I have posted some of my own notes toward a longer post on Marxism and technology on my blog. It's the most recent entry.
Best,
Ross
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