File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0301, message 110


Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2003 11:32:49 +0000
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: global meta-narratives no local narratives yes...




Glen

I tend to think 'commodities' through Debord and Benjamin both of whom 
are more entranced by the fetishism of the commodity  and restrict my 
understanding of the d-line and reterritorialisation to the greator 
flows. I remain therefore uncertain whether the below suggestion that 
commodities, or perhaps a singular commodity can  reterritorialise us in 
the way that the below implies.  In a sense the explosion of mobile 
phones is a case in point - were we reterritorialised by the commodity 
(the mobile phone) or was it rather that it enabled us to do what people 
do - communicate and talk to one another. The current failure of the 3G 
phones seems to confirm this as they are blatent attempts to sell the 
excess at the expense of the human need to communicate and talk to one 
another.

It's clear that Deleuze and Guattari's borrowing of the 
deterritorialisation/reterritorialisation couplet from Virillo is a 
profoundly un-postmodern gesture in that it is definitively 
universalising - almost classically so. Perhaps the problem with the 
couplet is that it is intuitively too close to representing how capital 
works? But it is non-reversible.

regards
steve

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

Glen Fuller wrote:

>Steve,
>
>  
>
>>So can someone explain to me how global capitalism can be understood
>>through local narratives when the local is merely used, on an everyday
>>basis, as a means of constructing rather marvellous commodities for
>>globalisation and capital?
>>    
>>
>
>Some quick and rough thoughts I was having about something entirely
>unrelated ('lacan, lynch, cinema and cultural pathology' is something like
>the title of the work) got me thinking about your question. It's hinge is
>the objectification of whatever capital deterritorialises and then
>reterritorialises into a commodity. Why can't the flows of capital operate
>in the same regard as narrative fiction (or film), a kind of 'interpolation
>of a lacanian-lack' experience by the commodity/audience?
>
>There are multiple flows, trajectories, at the nodal intersections of which
>constitute a pragmatic real. Reterritorialise the commodity in the
>'direction' of flows of desire/power, just as an astute member of the
>audience can pick the explicit/implicit methods of subjectification, at the
>local manifestations of the 'trajectories' desire/power within flows of
>capital of the Empire's globalising tendencies. Like a reverse
>de/reterritorialisation of whatever process is occuring to trace the
>pragmatic template of power relations, which then can be made explicit (and
>if anyone is listening) used as a fulcrum for resistance.
>
>Although this would involve 'thinking' like capital to make capital's 'ego'
>complete, ie trace the trajectory of its lack in time (in a dynamic system).
>So succeeding (and preceeding) templates would exist over multiple layers of
>complexity and time... and then it would be an ethical question to which
>nodes of flows and which 'threads' of de/reterritorialisation are traced and
>then deconstructed.
>
>Which then sends me off on another tangent, about a paper by massumi called
>the realer-than-real or something. but I must go back and fuinish putting my
>damned motor in my car.
>
>Hmph,
>Glen.
>
>  
>


HTML VERSION:

Glen

I tend to think 'commodities' through Debord and Benjamin both of whom are more entranced by the fetishism of the commodity  and restrict my understanding of the d-line and reterritorialisation to the greator flows. I remain therefore uncertain whether the below suggestion that commodities, or perhaps a singular commodity can  reterritorialise us in the way that the below implies.  In a sense the explosion of mobile phones is a case in point - were we reterritorialised by the commodity (the mobile phone) or was it rather that it enabled us to do what people do - communicate and talk to one another. The current failure of the 3G phones seems to confirm this as they are blatent attempts to sell the excess at the expense of the human need to communicate and talk to one another.

It's clear that Deleuze and Guattari's borrowing of the deterritorialisation/reterritorialisation couplet from Virillo is a profoundly un-postmodern gesture in that it is definitively universalising - almost classically so. Perhaps the problem with the couplet is that it is intuitively too close to representing how capital works? But it is non-reversible.

regards
steve

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

Glen Fuller wrote:
Steve,

  
So can someone explain to me how global capitalism can be understood
through local narratives when the local is merely used, on an everyday
basis, as a means of constructing rather marvellous commodities for
globalisation and capital?
    

Some quick and rough thoughts I was having about something entirely
unrelated ('lacan, lynch, cinema and cultural pathology' is something like
the title of the work) got me thinking about your question. It's hinge is
the objectification of whatever capital deterritorialises and then
reterritorialises into a commodity. Why can't the flows of capital operate
in the same regard as narrative fiction (or film), a kind of 'interpolation
of a lacanian-lack' experience by the commodity/audience?

There are multiple flows, trajectories, at the nodal intersections of which
constitute a pragmatic real. Reterritorialise the commodity in the
'direction' of flows of desire/power, just as an astute member of the
audience can pick the explicit/implicit methods of subjectification, at the
local manifestations of the 'trajectories' desire/power within flows of
capital of the Empire's globalising tendencies. Like a reverse
de/reterritorialisation of whatever process is occuring to trace the
pragmatic template of power relations, which then can be made explicit (and
if anyone is listening) used as a fulcrum for resistance.

Although this would involve 'thinking' like capital to make capital's 'ego'
complete, ie trace the trajectory of its lack in time (in a dynamic system).
So succeeding (and preceeding) templates would exist over multiple layers of
complexity and time... and then it would be an ethical question to which
nodes of flows and which 'threads' of de/reterritorialisation are traced and
then deconstructed.

Which then sends me off on another tangent, about a paper by massumi called
the realer-than-real or something. but I must go back and fuinish putting my
damned motor in my car.

Hmph,
Glen.

  


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