File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2003/lyotard.0301, message 124


From: "Glen Fuller" <glenfuller-AT-iinet.net.au>
Subject: Re: global meta-narratives no local narratives yes...
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 17:10:31 +0800


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.


Steve,

Perhaps I missunderstood your original question?

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?

And which obvious problems do you mean?

Perhaps my understanding of local/global is way off? Do you mean in more of a structuralist sense? I find such terms as local and global troublesome, mainly because of their multiple uses. From the few pieces that I have read it seems that suggesting that 'this' or 'that' is local is very dangerous as the 'local' as a signifier of something 'good' could be (re)appropriated and/or commodified by the global. That is, if there is a trend of globalisation, and, in turn, this leads to further processes of localisation, then, in terms of the effects of power/desire relations, I do not see how they are at all separate or can be separated.

Also the processes of over/coding cannot be separated from those of de/reterritorialisation, including, for example, movements in time so that the transitory is overcoded with a narrativised past to produce a relative duration in time compared to a collection of instants. Perhaps my reading of D&G is obtuse but I took any 'truth' or figment of reality to involve complex (de/re)territorialisations, including the territorialisation of common sense.

Glen.

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: steve.devos
  To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 6:34 AM
  Subject: Re: global meta-narratives no local narratives yes...


  Glen

  The local now constitutes the 50,000 mile sphere of space that we commonly use, in the center of which exists the small and insignificant planet on which we live. I was initially using the terms global and local specifically in relation to the initial question, but understand we have moved far beyond the obvious problems with the contradictions with postmodernism.  I'm reasonably convinced that you cannot easily apply notions of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation to the microsocial processes of  consumption or indeed to  production.

  Whereas Debord's analysis of the Spectacle including the work on consumption and the commodity is more appropriate and related more directly to Benjamin and Lukac's positions. It's more accurate to say the Baudrillard is Debordian...

  regards
  steve

  Glen Fuller wrote:

    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/





HTML VERSION:

Steve,
 
Perhaps I missunderstood your original question?
 
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?
And which obvious problems do you mean? 
 
Perhaps my understanding of local/global is way off? Do you mean in more of a structuralist sense? I find such terms as local and global troublesome, mainly because of their multiple uses. From the few pieces that I have read it seems that suggesting that 'this' or 'that' is local is very dangerous as the 'local' as a signifier of something 'good' could be (re)appropriated and/or commodified by the global. That is, if there is a trend of globalisation, and, in turn, this leads to further processes of localisation, then, in terms of the effects of power/desire relations, I do not see how they are at all separate or can be separated.
 
Also the processes of over/coding cannot be separated from those of de/reterritorialisation, including, for example, movements in time so that the transitory is overcoded with a narrativised past to produce a relative duration in time compared to a collection of instants. Perhaps my reading of D&G is obtuse but I took any 'truth' or figment of reality to involve complex (de/re)territorialisations, including the territorialisation of common sense.
 
Glen.
 
----- Original Message -----
From: steve.devos
To: lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Sent: Monday, January 20, 2003 6:34 AM
Subject: Re: global meta-narratives no local narratives yes...

Glen

The local now constitutes the 50,000 mile sphere of space that we commonly use, in the center of which exists the small and insignificant planet on which we live. I was initially using the terms global and local specifically in relation to the initial question, but understand we have moved far beyond the obvious problems with the contradictions with postmodernism.  I'm reasonably convinced that you cannot easily apply notions of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation to the microsocial processes of  consumption or indeed to  production.

Whereas Debord's analysis of the Spectacle including the work on consumption and the commodity is more appropriate and related more directly to Benjamin and Lukac's positions. It's more accurate to say the Baudrillard is Debordian...

regards
steve

Glen Fuller wrote:
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/


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