File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0301, message 116


From: "Glen Fuller" <glenfuller-AT-iinet.net.au>
Subject: Re: global meta-narratives no local narratives yes...
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2003 21:03:04 +0800


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Steve,

First I should ask two questions: How are you defining 'local' and 'global'? By 'greater flows' do you mean flows quantitively or qualitively greater? I think it would be premature to separate the different elements of the dynamic social process of consumption into a collective a priori 'things that people do' and a reworking of a frankfurt school critique of the (failed) attempts at capitalists to peddle (unwanted) drug-commodities to the masses. My reading of D&G is the opposite of yours, that manouvres of capital are far too close to what they mean by flows.

Massumi in (Real then Real http://www.anu.edu.au/HRC/first_and_last/works/realer.htm) offers a great critique of the Benjamin 'copied-copy'/simulacrum commodity:

"The alternative is a false one because simulation is a process that produces the real, or, more precisely, more real (a more-than-real)on the basis of the real. "It carries the real beyond its principle to the point where it is effectively produced" (Deleuze and Guattari, AO). Every simulation takes as its point of departure a regularized world comprising apparently stable identities or territories."

Further, into the piece Massumi deconstructs the flick 'The Fly' and uses it as example of: "The goal is to reach into one's world's quantum level at such a point and, through the strategic mimickry of double becoming, combine as many potentials as possible. Deleuze and Guattari, of course, are not suggesting that people can or should "objectively" become insects. It is a question of extracting and combining potentials, which they define as abstract relations of movement and rest, abilities to affect and be affected: abstract yet real."

Hearing an interview with Hardt  <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html> discussing Empire before fame found the text and its authors, he makes the explicit point that the Local and the Global cannot be separated nor placed in an oppositional relationship. This point is important to any analysis of consumption, as the individuals that form the collective populations of either the local or global (and both) should be broken down to their constituent parts, indivudal vs mass, etc.

However, I think what perhaps can be setup in a complementary/oppositional relationship with local/global realities is the notion of everyday life. Paradoxically within such a relationship, everyday life (lets define it as the domain over which an individual has a level of control) is relatively static, or perceived to be, while the local/global could be seen as a constituting the world as a 'much more complex place than anyone previously imagined' as Eric put it. Debord writes something similar to this (in Chapter 2 of Society of the Spectacle):
"In the spectacle's basic practice of incorporating into itself all the fluid aspects of human activity so as to possess them in a congealed form, and of inverting living values into purely abstract values, we recognize our old enemy the commodity, which seems at first glance so trivial and obvious, yet which is actually so complex and full of metaphysical subtleties." (35)

'Inverting living values into purely abstract forms' reads almost Baudrillardian, my reading of Debord is that through the spectacle the consumer connects with the 'fluid' local/global miasma by way of the 'congealed' staticness of the everyday. And to get even more Baudrillardian:

"The fetishism of the commodity - the domination of society by "intangible as well as tangible things" - attains its ultimate fulfillment in the spectacle, where the real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it, yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality." (SotS 36)

Related to what I wrote below is this further extract from SotS

"Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. At this point the humanism of the commodity takes charge of the worker's "leisure and humanity" simply because political economy now can and must dominate those spheres as political economy. The "perfected denial of man" has thus taken charge of all human existence." (43)

I am not sure what Debord means by 'perfected denial of man' except perhaps in a loss-of-the-subject kind of way (???). However, the 'humanism of the commodity' relates directly to what I intended below. Instead of a butterfly flapping its wings to make a storm on the other side of the world, a storm on the other side of the world makes a butterfly flap its wings. 'Humanism' is an unfortunate word...

but I must be off, (video store is closing) I will write more later.

Glen.


  ----- Original Message -----
  From: steve.devos
  To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 7:32 PM
  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:

Steve,
 
First I should ask two questions: How are you defining 'local' and 'global'? By 'greater flows' do you mean flows quantitively or qualitively greater? I think it would be premature to separate the different elements of the dynamic social process of consumption into a collective a priori 'things that people do' and a reworking of a frankfurt school critique of the (failed) attempts at capitalists to peddle (unwanted) drug-commodities to the masses. My reading of D&G is the opposite of yours, that manouvres of capital are far too close to what they mean by flows.
 
Massumi in (Real then Real http://www.anu.edu.au/HRC/first_and_last/works/realer.htm) offers a great critique of the Benjamin 'copied-copy'/simulacrum commodity:
 
"The alternative is a false one because simulation is a process that produces the real, or, more precisely, more real (a more-than-real)on the basis of the real. "It carries the real beyond its principle to the point where it is effectively produced" (Deleuze and Guattari, AO). Every simulation takes as its point of departure a regularized world comprising apparently stable identities or territories."
 
Further, into the piece Massumi deconstructs the flick 'The Fly' and uses it as example of: "The goal is to reach into one's world's quantum level at such a point and, through the strategic mimickry of double becoming, combine as many potentials as possible. Deleuze and Guattari, of course, are not suggesting that people can or should "objectively" become insects. It is a question of extracting and combining potentials, which they define as abstract relations of movement and rest, abilities to affect and be affected: abstract yet real."
 
Hearing an interview with Hardt  <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html> discussing Empire before fame found the text and its authors, he makes the explicit point that the Local and the Global cannot be separated nor placed in an oppositional relationship. This point is important to any analysis of consumption, as the individuals that form the collective populations of either the local or global (and both) should be broken down to their constituent parts, indivudal vs mass, etc.
 
However, I think what perhaps can be setup in a complementary/oppositional relationship with local/global realities is the notion of everyday life. Paradoxically within such a relationship, everyday life (lets define it as the domain over which an individual has a level of control) is relatively static, or perceived to be, while the local/global could be seen as a constituting the world as a 'much more complex place than anyone previously imagined' as Eric put it. Debord writes something similar to this (in Chapter 2 of Society of the Spectacle):

"In the spectacle=92s basic practice of incorporating into itself all the fluid aspects of human activity so as to possess them in a congealed form, and of inverting living values into purely abstract values, we recognize our old enemy the commodity, which seems at first glance so trivial and obvious, yet which is actually so complex and full of metaphysical subtleties." (35)

'Inverting living values into purely abstract forms' reads almost Baudrillardian, my reading of Debord is that through the spectacle the consumer connects with the 'fluid' local/global miasma by way of the 'congealed' staticness of the everyday. And to get even more Baudrillardian:

"The fetishism of the commodity =97 the domination of society by =93intangible as well as tangible things=94 =97 attains its ultimate fulfillment in the spectacle, where the real world is replaced by a selection of images which are projected above it, yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality." (SotS 36)

Related to what I wrote below is this further extract from SotS

"Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. At this point the humanism of the commodity takes charge of the worker=92s =93leisure and humanity=94 simply because political economy now can and must dominate those spheres as political economy. The =93perfected denial of man=94 has thus taken charge of all human existence." (43)

I am not sure what Debord means by 'perfected denial of man' except perhaps in a loss-of-the-subject kind of way (???). However, the 'humanism of the commodity' relates directly to what I intended below. Instead of a butterfly flapping its wings to make a storm on the other side of the world, a storm on the other side of the world makes a butterfly flap its wings. 'Humanism' is an unfortunate word...
 
but I must be off, (video store is closing) I will write more later.
 
Glen.
 
 
----- Original Message -----
From: steve.devos
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 7:32 PM
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.

  


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