Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2003 08:12:33 +0100
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: The Matrix - Reloaded


eric/all

"to subvert the process of allopoietic complexication into that of 
autopoietic complexification...." Re-reading the entire text below and 
enjoying the text more this time - I would like some clarity as to how 
this works in the contemporary political practice?

How would you link this back to your  previously expressed interest in 
linking Lyotard and the work of Zizek/Badiou ?

regards
stev e





Eric wrote:

>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  
>
>
>  
>