In his book The Philosophy of Living Experience Bogdanov is not really trying to write philosophy so much as to hack it, to repurpose it for something other than the making of more philosophy. Philosophy is no longer an end in itself, but a kind of raw material for the design and organizing, not quite of what Foucault called discourses of power/knowledge, but more of practices of laboring/knowing. The projected audience for this writing is not philosophers so much as the organic intellectuals of the working class, exactly the kind of people Bogdanov’s activities as an educator-activist had always addressed. Having clearly read his Nietzsche, Bogdanov’s decision is that if one is to philosophize with a hammer, then this is best done, not with professional philosophers, but with professional hammerers.To write and speak and work for those that might ignite their own passions towards revolutions in lifestyle and polity..? What a fantastic idea. But are there those willing to read, hear and work with us among the precariat classes and marginal peoples? The "hammerers" I know are more interested in getting more vacation time and keeping their lousy jobs than struggling against authorities or sparking an "organic" uprising. Capitalist realism runs deep as the masses sooth themselves in entertainment and major to minor intoxicants.
Wark thinks the "labor perspective" is a point of leverage, but I'm not so sure.
Addressing the Anthropocene is not something to leave in the hands of those in charge, given just how badly the ruling class of our time has mishandled this end of prehistory, this firstly scientific and now belatedly cultural discovery that we all live in a biosphere in a state of advanced metabolic rift. The challenge then is to construct the labor perspective on the historical tasks of our time. What would it mean to see historical tasks from the point of view of working people of all kinds? How can everyday experiences, technical hacks and even utopian speculations combine in a common cause, where each is a check on certain tendencies of the other?
Technical knowledge checks the popular sentiment toward purely romantic visions of a world of harmony and butterflies—as if that was a viable plan for seven billion people. Folk knowledge from everyday experience checks the tendency of technical knowledge to imagine sweeping plans without thought for the particular consequences—like diverting the waters of the Aral Sea. Utopian speculations are that secret heliotropism which orients action and invention toward a sun now regarded with more caution and respect than it once was. There is no other world, but it can’t be this one
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shared this over @ publicseminar
https://vimeo.com/17459969
With and Beyond Merleau-Ponty
Hey Mike,
But there are such people and they are doing this kind of work. The labour point of view doesn't suggest that all working class people have the answer ready made (obviously they don't and that would be a bit hopelessly romantic). It suggests something, I think, more akin to an ecology of practices. It asks how we co-labor-ate and deal with the frictions of our knowledge-practices as we go about the process of trying to construct the world differently. The point as I see it is to situate ourselves in the position of our practices and not of high theory, of the knowledge we gain from working upon the world and not merely of ontological speculation in which we look down upon the world from the comfort of our metaphysical speculation. We indeed must get down and dirty and grapple with the making of the world with that disparate and motley crew of others that we share the world with, for better or worse. Not because it will show us how to overthrow the system but because as it collapses we need to ensure that we have a different and more horizontal approach to how we make the world with others. That's the point. One's contribution then resides in the practical abilities one has to work with others and to act in and upon the shared world in ways that are responsive to it and yet transform it... not merely to describe it...
Dunno, but I found the book deeply stimulating (especially chapters on Bogdanov and Platonov), including for thinking about my own experiences of living collectively with others and seeking to change the world. Not without reservations, of course, but I don't think he makes such a simplistic case for the labour point of view... For example, he emphasises that Bogdanov saw the labour point of view as the view that resides at the heart of Marx's work, that made his entire work possible. Clearly not run of the mill 'hammerer' thought... Don't we need some low-grade dirty philosophers who are in there amongst the hammers and farms and the laboratories and the fab-labs working out practical solutions to material problems?
Would like to hear more from you about this if you get the time.
Best,
Andre
I think this is posing a false dichotomy: Totally lowbrow blue collar workers vs. high brow academics. I think there is vast potential in an already existing subject maybe to call "dissenfranchised intellectuals". If you look back this is the narrative I see: From 1950 to maybe 2000 the illusion was that if we all "educate" ourselves and work hard we can all be journalists and sociologists and authors. Now that illusion is breaking down, the academy can't take in all those intellectual identities.
There is vast potential there but I still think you have to see that if you want to tap into this potential you have to create a very different discourse than is common now in continental circles. The discourse I see is still very exclusionary in the sense that it requires a level of education that in most cases can only be achieved by people doing this professionally.
So you can see this anti-intellectual blue-collar might already be a distraction, there is already a huge segment of actually very intellectual blue-collars, the clicheed star-bucks barista (who might be a narcissist, but might also be the most humble Foucault-scholar), but to acknowledge this subject would of course mean to the franchised, academic subject to acknowledge their vast priviledge. Its pretty obvious to me why it doesnt happen. The contradictions are in the identity of the academic subject itself and to truly feel them out would be a very painful endeavor.
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