Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2003 22:31:40 +1100
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: The Matrix - Reloaded



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eric" <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>
To: <lyotard-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 2003 11:26 AM
Subject: The Matrix - Reloaded


> Hugh, Steve, All:
> 
> Ever since I first read the Inhuman, I thought Lyotard's formulation of
> complexification was a surprising, but fruitful turn. One of the
> problems with Marx's analysis of capitalism in the popular mind is that
> it appears to be limited to a kind of economic reductionism. One of the
> problems with the popular journalistic interpretation of
> complexification is that it appears to be limited to a kind of
> naturalistic reductionism that tends towards the a-historical and
> a-political.
> 
> What Lyotard accomplishes by joining the terms capitalism and
> complexification together is to state what in hindsight appears to be
> rather obvious. Marx was really describing under the rubric of
> capitalism a process of complexification which encompasses economics,
> technology, information, militarization and ecological devastation into
> a world system which acts according to its own dynamic and imperatives.
> Undeveloped nations such as India and China do not exist outside of
> capitalism. Rather they function as subordinate entities, subaltern
> nations, which provide a source of cheap labor and the promise of future
> markets, allowing development to continue. The nature of the system can
> be defined as a plutocracy, but this is merely a tautology since
> profitability and accumulation are the very drivers which allow
> complexification to proliferate. 
> 
> In the sixties Foucault made the famous analogy about the concept of Man
> being like a vanishing footprint made in the sand and Barthes talked
> about the death of the author. It can be argued that the precise point
> at which complexification converges with postmodernity is to be found in
> this very transition from the human into the posthuman.  
> 
> Lyotard's famous definition of the postmodern as "incredulity towards
> metanarratives" fits this equation perfectly once it is recognized that
> by metanarratives, Lyotard didn't simply mean stories, but rather
> stories of human emancipation and liberation.  Postmodernism coincides
> with the moment when Man becomes obsolete and the posthuman arrives to
> take his place.  The continued development of capitalism supercedes
> human development. Man then becomes an also-ran.
> 
> Certainly the manner in which Lyotard and others have argued for this
> significant change takes place at a fairly high level of abstraction,
> one that places it outside the orbit of ordinary social discourse. What
> is not understood intellectually, however, is nonetheless felt at an
> intuitive level and it is here that popular mythology steps in to fill
> the void. 
> 
> The series of movies entitled the Matrix is just this kind of mythology.
> It represents humans as literally a kind of coppertop battery who
> function merely to keep the machines running for reasons that are vague
> and ambiguous precisely because the humans are no longer in charge. Thus
> the movies illustrate the very concepts of complexification and
> posthumanism that Lyotard discusses, presenting a very melancholy
> dystopian future in glossy cinematic Technicolor.
> 
> What hope does exist in the Matrix is presented ideologically in almost
> Gnostic terms.  Once the mind understands the illusory nature of the
> Matrix, the fact that it is a simulacrum, it can practice a kind of
> detournement upon the virtual commodifications that the spectacle
> presents. This is coupled of course with Busby Berkley-Esther Williams
> inspired karate choreography, a kind of lonely Ghost Dance at the edges
> of the eschatolon.      
> 
> The problem with this, however, is that such a weak conception of the
> political tends to obscure the only revolutionary practice which remains
> viable today in contemporary terms, namely, to subvert the process of
> allopoietic complexication into that of autopoietic complexification.
> 
> eric  
> 
> 
>