File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_2004/lyotard.0411, message 90


Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2004 20:42:03 +0000
From: "steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: sideways - consciousness


geof/eric

the 'multitude' =  'capacity of incapacity' ... i really didn't know how 
to read this or respond to it...

The least the multitude can be considered as is mere site of resistance 
against globalised capital - the problem we have not addressed is the 
issue of identifying what the multitude excludes to enable it to 
function and exist. What is outside the multitude ? According to H&N the 
new network based logic of political operations calls for a multitude of 
political agencies and related ideological positions, particularisms  
that will inevitably be incompatible with one another because their 
ideological and political concerns will always already be in conflict.  
This is doomed to remain merely a resistance - ultimately the 
particularisms will have to merge into something more unified, at least 
as unified as globalised capital if it is to have the merest chance of 
moving from resistance to power. Otherwise once they can no longer 
define themselves against globalised capital they will of course 
disintergrate.

Which I would suggest is the point about consciousness - if as radical 
subjects, singularities, we cannot identify with being inside the 
multitude, of being a part of it,  then it is always going to be a 
redundent concept useful to describe others but not ourselves. In the UK 
last year a substantial survey was carried out  which resulted in the 
surprising fact that some 70-80% of the adult population thought of 
themselves as 'working-class' somehow I can't imagine anyone describing 
themselves as being part of the multitude. (Perhaps as N&H describe it 
but never as Virno does ) For in some sense it will fail to achieve what 
Agamben commenting on and  praising the work of Debord said : "... They 
should be used rather as manuals, as instruments of resistance or exodus 
- much like those improper weapons that the fugitive picks up and 
inserts hastily under  the belt (according to  a beauiful \image of 
Deleuze/Gauttari...."   I imagine that the multitude may indeed exist in 
this latter sense at some stage but not just yet - thus far nobody 
appears to believe that they are within the 'multitude as 
consciousness'  it's always someone else...

I think it should be clear that I don't think that Virno's use of the 
'general intellect'  in his text 'multitude as subjectivity'  is 
addressing the same issue at all. One problem is that he makes the 
strange and mistakern assumption that we, that is to say the entirity of 
humans live in a post-fordist economic system (obviously we do not)  and 
that as such it has the further implication that the arguments about the 
'multitude' are identifying as significant a change as Debord identified 
with the arrival of the Spectacle in the mid 1920s.  This is not to say 
that the multitude cannot become synonomous with the notion of the 
proletariat, as the new and fabled historical subject under the 
hegemonic figure of the immaterial labourer.  The  post-fordism that 
Virno uses to construct the 'multitude'  may not even exist,  and if you 
assume that the analysis may be as mistaken as all other economic 
analyses are then the entirity of his theoretical ediface collapses. The 
post-fordist version of Virno is more conservative and more frightened 
by the spectacle of the empire than Negri and Hardt's version. They 
argue that the 'empire' is the consequence of  the resistance of the 
oppressed and that the 'empire' is not only a new means of rule but also 
contains hardwon concessions....

enough - later

steve




gvcarter-AT-purdue.edu wrote:

>Arendt.  Separate spheres... You know, according to Agamben, Arendt wrote --
>citing Rilke-- that love "is the possibility for each to veil his destiny to 
>the other.")
>
>Agamben-Rilke-Arendt-... veils...  separate spheres... veils...
>
>Agamben continues (--perhaps in regards to politics/and/or/an implicit audience-
>-):  "...there is no sense in distinguishing between authentic love and 
>inauthentic love, heavenly love and pandemios love, the love of God and self-
>love." 
>
>And culminates:  "...human beings are those who fall properly in love with the 
>improper, who--unique among living beings--are capable of their own 
>incapacity."  
>
>A new consciousness, in other words... "the dynamic potencia of the 
>multitude."  
>
>The Multitude = The Capacity Of Incapacity...
>
>The Multitude (Joyce's H.C.E.?)... 
>
>..the incapactity to come...
>
>geof
>
>
>Quoting Eric <ericandmary-AT-earthlink.net>:
>
>  
>
>>Steve,
>>
>>Where I think this question you raise about consciousness is relevant to
>>the multitude is precisely with regard to the point Virno raises in
>>connection with the general intellect.
>>
>>In "The Postmodern Condition" Lyotard pointed to the growing importance
>>(and danger) of what he called the performative.  His focus was on
>>science and knowledge, but certainly the transition to the postmodern
>>(post-Fordist) society brought about changed condition of work and labor
>>relations. 
>>
>>Virno discusses the concepts of the virtuoso is ways that clearly echo
>>Lyotard's performative. In the classic world defined by Aristotle and
>>developed by Arendt, labor, action and intellect are separate spheres.
>>Action was the sphere specifically concerned with politics, as it had to
>>do with an implicit audience.  
>>
>>One of the changes today is that labor has become linked to action in a
>>nonpolitical way through the concept of the virtuoso.  Labor is no
>>longer concerned with just an end product.  More commonly, the virtuoso
>>now subsumes labor relations since the desired result is not merely an
>>end product, but a performance. Consider someone like a sommelier who
>>displays her knowledge in front of an audience of patrons.
>>
>>Traditionally, the virtuoso performs a script or score, but, as Virno
>>points out, the virtuoso in the realm of labor differs from this
>>traditional image. As he says, "General intellect should not necessarily
>>mean the aggregate of the knowledge acquired by the species, but the
>>faculty of thinking; potential as such, not in its countless particular
>>realizations. The "general intellect" is nothing but the intellect in
>>general."
>>
>>Here is where the general intellect dovetails on the question of
>>knowledge you raise. Currently the general intellect is tied to labor as
>>virtuosity.
>>This leads to the dilemmas of 'false consciousness.'  The question is,
>>however, if the general intellect were to unite instead with political
>>action in the guise of radical disobedience and exodus or (exiting from
>>the system), then a new consciousness would emerge, one that would
>>express the dynamic potencia of the multitude. 
>>
>>It is by virtue of this shift, this breakthrough that the multitude
>>becomes something like the fabled proletariat in an age of immaterial
>>labor under the sign of the spectacle.
>>
>>Eric
>>
>>
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>
>  
>


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