mixed_biscuits
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Right, I've been away on a quizzing mission - has anybody come up with a workable plan, yet?
If not capitalism then what exactly?
- Thread starter Mr BoShambles
- Start date
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I'd suggest the CEO of Global MegaCorp PLC forgoing that ivory backscratcher he wanted in order to pay the poor cunts who make his products 10p an hour instead of 5. Why is this so concept so abhorrent to you? If the pace of industrial development is slowed slightly but the lives of the people living there is immeasurably improved in the process, isn't that a worthwhile trade-off? What use is 'development' if all that happens is a bunch of people go from being miserable, over-worked peasants living in huts to being miserable, over-worked factory laborers living in slums?
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
What I don't understand is why don't those who feel strongly about these abuses by MNCs get off their backsides and use their noddle to work towards positions high up in MNCs, where they can change things from the inside. Get a grad position in a big company, work hard and in 10/20 years you can start steering things in the direction you want.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well there all sorts of Fair-Trade companies in existence now, presumably run by just such people as you describe. Although I'm sure Vim is about to tell me how terminally deletarious it is to third-world economies to pay people enough money so they can educate their kids and afford medicines...
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
Well, I assume that there are many intelligent, serious and ethically-concerned people working for MNCs as it is.
I personally know investment bankers, big-shot lawyers and people in politics who are decent people - perhaps even more decent than me!
I think the 'them and us' mindset is counter-productive.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
I do too, to some extent. But unfortunately, it's illegal for them to act based on their morals rather than in the strict interests of the shareholders.
Also this goes to underline the point that someone made upthread that an organization or system can do things that no one individual involved in it would want to happen.
Thank you so very much --- this is my entire point- that thru such over-identification strategies (ie- the conversion of the capitalist "other" into a delightfully perverse amoral agent of deconstruction) the genuinely radical anti-capitalist will draw his/her strength- by accelerating the de-territorializing aspects and decelerating the re-territorializing aspects of Capital we might begin to reach the point of rupture, the event horizon of The Event (in Badiouian terms- altho of course he shrinks from such a conception) whereby the new may begin to be thought once more- and a genuinely, bizarrely un-thinkable new, entirely outside of our perception right now can begin, a new time outside of the late consumer-capitalist po-mo time-fold...
IdleRich
IdleRich
Yes we know your entire point as far as it goes, which isn't very far - where next though?
I'm noticing a pattern now, you say this, I ask you to explain what you mean, you disappear for a few days without answering and then pop up with the same empty rhetoric again. Do you mean anything or is it the mark of the "genuinely radical anti-capitalist" to pointlessly repeat the same abstract ideas with a few different wordy phrases thrown in without actually doing anything so bourgeois as saying what you mean?
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
I guess I'll let you in on the secret, IR, since you're so persistent. You have to take a copy of Badiou's Ethics, slice it into the shape of a ouija planchette, and run it over a printed out copy of gek's blog posts (I find 16 point arial font works best). Try doing this by natural light (sun or moon) or you'll get excessive neologisms.
Interestingly enough, if you make the planchette out of any Zizek book, it'll just keep spelling out "I am the walrus" again and again.
Interestingly enough, if you make the planchette out of any Zizek book, it'll just keep spelling out "I am the walrus" again and again.
allow me to attempt to paraphrase:
by speeding up the process by which meaning is stripped away/deconstructed, and by slowing down capitalist co-optive re-mapping of signs, there forms a gap, in which might emerge genuinely new conceptions of life and the world.
and we are supposed to be able to do these 2 things through not "renunciation", but an "over identification"... which has something to do with deconstruction but I'm not sure what
this doesn't really help does it
hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
On Overidentification
"'Overidentification' is a kind of 'utra-orthodoxy', taking a regime more seriously that it takes itself, relentlessly implementing the letter of its Law, unconditionally following its avowed beliefs, in a way that is radically embarrassing to the regime. This of course entails the idea that the ruling ideology doesn't take itself seriously. But if the ruling ideology doesn't 'take itself seriously', then how exactly does it operate?"--Mark Kaplan
"Overidentification works because it draws attention to the way the overt message in art, ideology and day-dreaming is supplemented by an obscene element, the hidden reverse of the message that contains the illicit charge of enjoyment. When overidentification brings that double-sided ambivalent aspect of the message to light it can be a more subversive strategy than simple avoidance."---Ian Parker
"The big question that everybody is asking himself or herself a-propos of Laibach of course is: Are they taking themselves seriously or is this meant in an ironic way? Well, I think of course that this is the wrong alternative. Because the automatic assumption of this question is that if your attitude towards a certain social system, system of social values, etc., is ironic then you are subversive; you take it seriously, you are a conformist, etc. I think that the whole point, the basic underlying premise of Laibach strategy is that -- and this holds not only for Slovenia but let's say generally, for so-called late capitalism in general even -- that the system itself has as its inherent condition of functioning that its own ideology must not be taken seriously. In other words, cynicism as today's prevailing mode of ideology means that it is the positive condition of the functioning of the system that its own ideology must by its own subject not be taken seriously. An ideal subject today is the one who has ironic distance towards the system, etc., etc. And the reverse of this is that the only way, I would even say, to be really subversive is not to develop critical potentials, or ironic distance, but precisely to take the system more seriously than it takes itself seriously."---Slavoj Žižek
A simple - but in some ways more powerful - example: the collapse of the Catholic Church's power in a number of Western countries in the 1990s, particularly Ireland. Up to the 1990s just about every member of the Cathol Church pretty much knew that many members of clergy, especially the clergy themselves, engaged in activities contrary to official Catholic theocratic teaching, including on-going affairs with women, fathering children, child abuse, etc. This was widely known for decades but could never be openly discussed [the few that attempted to do so were invariably demonized and ostrasized] or confronted (the Big Other might notice!). As soon as a growing constituency of practicing Catholics demanded that the regime of the Catholic Hierarchy implement its own codes according to the Letter of its own teachings, all hell broke loose. The Big Other now sat up and noticed, was informed, and once so informed has to Act, so paradoxically guaranteeing its own downfall. The number of new ecclesiastical recruits - nuns and priests - into the Church has now fallen to zero.
The 'scandal' for the regime (or most of the Catholic-practicing public) was not the unorthodox practices, not the widespread abuses, not its 'obscene underside', of which it was acutely aware and which practices were structural to the institution's inherent functioning, but their being made public as scandals, entering the realm of the symbolic via internal overidentification. Ironically, the Catholics destroyed their own Church ...
"'Overidentification' is a kind of 'utra-orthodoxy', taking a regime more seriously that it takes itself, relentlessly implementing the letter of its Law, unconditionally following its avowed beliefs, in a way that is radically embarrassing to the regime. This of course entails the idea that the ruling ideology doesn't take itself seriously. But if the ruling ideology doesn't 'take itself seriously', then how exactly does it operate?"--Mark Kaplan
"Overidentification works because it draws attention to the way the overt message in art, ideology and day-dreaming is supplemented by an obscene element, the hidden reverse of the message that contains the illicit charge of enjoyment. When overidentification brings that double-sided ambivalent aspect of the message to light it can be a more subversive strategy than simple avoidance."---Ian Parker
"The big question that everybody is asking himself or herself a-propos of Laibach of course is: Are they taking themselves seriously or is this meant in an ironic way? Well, I think of course that this is the wrong alternative. Because the automatic assumption of this question is that if your attitude towards a certain social system, system of social values, etc., is ironic then you are subversive; you take it seriously, you are a conformist, etc. I think that the whole point, the basic underlying premise of Laibach strategy is that -- and this holds not only for Slovenia but let's say generally, for so-called late capitalism in general even -- that the system itself has as its inherent condition of functioning that its own ideology must not be taken seriously. In other words, cynicism as today's prevailing mode of ideology means that it is the positive condition of the functioning of the system that its own ideology must by its own subject not be taken seriously. An ideal subject today is the one who has ironic distance towards the system, etc., etc. And the reverse of this is that the only way, I would even say, to be really subversive is not to develop critical potentials, or ironic distance, but precisely to take the system more seriously than it takes itself seriously."---Slavoj Žižek
A simple - but in some ways more powerful - example: the collapse of the Catholic Church's power in a number of Western countries in the 1990s, particularly Ireland. Up to the 1990s just about every member of the Cathol Church pretty much knew that many members of clergy, especially the clergy themselves, engaged in activities contrary to official Catholic theocratic teaching, including on-going affairs with women, fathering children, child abuse, etc. This was widely known for decades but could never be openly discussed [the few that attempted to do so were invariably demonized and ostrasized] or confronted (the Big Other might notice!). As soon as a growing constituency of practicing Catholics demanded that the regime of the Catholic Hierarchy implement its own codes according to the Letter of its own teachings, all hell broke loose. The Big Other now sat up and noticed, was informed, and once so informed has to Act, so paradoxically guaranteeing its own downfall. The number of new ecclesiastical recruits - nuns and priests - into the Church has now fallen to zero.
The 'scandal' for the regime (or most of the Catholic-practicing public) was not the unorthodox practices, not the widespread abuses, not its 'obscene underside', of which it was acutely aware and which practices were structural to the institution's inherent functioning, but their being made public as scandals, entering the realm of the symbolic via internal overidentification. Ironically, the Catholics destroyed their own Church ...
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
The Catholic Church example is really thought-provoking, thanks... It's like... hardcore killing punk or something.
The thing is, there are plenty of people who sign on to the racialized violent domination of the West/U.S. over the Middle East, call for the wiping out of Arabs for oil, naked use of military force in pursuit of resources (check the comments section of any news/politics site), but it always seems like a weird disavowal to me, like they don't actually want what they call for, that in a way it's just another kind of cynical or ironic distancing from what is actually happening.
I keep thinking of Lynndie England and the Hirst skull for some reason. Especially the former, those pictures really are the obscene underside to the war and occupation encapsulated so neatly... but unfortunately too easily passed off on "bad apples," the "hicks" who are really bearing the brunt of this whole mess.
The thing is, there are plenty of people who sign on to the racialized violent domination of the West/U.S. over the Middle East, call for the wiping out of Arabs for oil, naked use of military force in pursuit of resources (check the comments section of any news/politics site), but it always seems like a weird disavowal to me, like they don't actually want what they call for, that in a way it's just another kind of cynical or ironic distancing from what is actually happening.
I keep thinking of Lynndie England and the Hirst skull for some reason. Especially the former, those pictures really are the obscene underside to the war and occupation encapsulated so neatly... but unfortunately too easily passed off on "bad apples," the "hicks" who are really bearing the brunt of this whole mess.
hundredmillionlifetimes
Banned
I should qualify the remarks about the collapse of the Catholic Church: it collapsed as an effective symbolic power, but it still exists as a rump ie. it has entered postmodernity, it is now - along with practicing Catholics - a free-floating token institution of cultural nostalgia (immediately after its effective collapse, Catholics voted in droves for the introduction of divorce in a referendum. "Let the Pope really believe instead, believe for us" etc).
Perhaps, in the case of the US foreign policy, violence toward the foreign other is the overt practice whose obscene underside is the sexual dimension (very much evident in those Abu Ghraib photos), which is very much suppressed by US institutions to 'protect' the Big Other ie via all its main institutions, from the White House to the mainstream media, from corporate and religious powers to the military (homosexuality in the latter case): as K-punk observed, "It is clear that the appalling Abu Ghraib photographs were already intensely eroticised stagings whose scenarios were derived from cheap American pornography. Love and Napalm: Export USA, indeed. Part of the reason that the Abu Ghraib images were so traumatic for a deeply conflicted American culture which combines religious moralism with hyper-sexualised commerce, and which is united only by a taste for megaviolence, is that they exposed the equation between military intervention and sexual humiliation that the official culture both depends upon and must suppress."
haven't the time for proper response but for now:
mainstream hiphop?!?!?!
mainstream hiphop?!?!?!
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
Which may explain Zizek rooting for the Spartans in 300... Overidentify with the homoeroticized porno-violence for what it is, not disavow it through some sort of critique. Of course half the time I think Zizek just enjoys horrifying liberals with his "dialectical reversals".... "No, we must ally with the homophobe Christian gym-nut Republican, no really, I swear I'm not grinning under my beard."
Speaking of Frank Miller, I'm also reminded of the gay Nazi militia in the Martha Washington comics, Aryan Thrust... I had a colleague rather bravely try to defend that protrayal as not simple homophobia (as if it really makes sense as homophobia) at a conference, but the "liberal" grad students weren't having it... I always thought they were more a critique of the obscene center of the military, not a jab at gays.
And I'm still wondering...As shocking as the Abu Ghraib pictures were, I don't really think it had much effect on overall policy here, where now the "surge" is "working"... Although it probably got rid of Rumsfeld in the end, it took years and as you said earlier, that's more ruling class musical chairs. I think it may have had a galvanizing effect on the resistance though. If Abu Ghraib photos can't cut through the extraordinary self-delusion in the U.S. I'm not sure what will...
Speaking of Frank Miller, I'm also reminded of the gay Nazi militia in the Martha Washington comics, Aryan Thrust... I had a colleague rather bravely try to defend that protrayal as not simple homophobia (as if it really makes sense as homophobia) at a conference, but the "liberal" grad students weren't having it... I always thought they were more a critique of the obscene center of the military, not a jab at gays.
And I'm still wondering...As shocking as the Abu Ghraib pictures were, I don't really think it had much effect on overall policy here, where now the "surge" is "working"... Although it probably got rid of Rumsfeld in the end, it took years and as you said earlier, that's more ruling class musical chairs. I think it may have had a galvanizing effect on the resistance though. If Abu Ghraib photos can't cut through the extraordinary self-delusion in the U.S. I'm not sure what will...
Gavin
booty bass intellectual
EXACTLY.
Isn't the black cultural practice of signifyin' basically exaggerating the embarassing aspects of power?
To deliberately take capitalism at its word, take the ideology and through your own labours and those of like minded individuals embark on what effectively amounts to a multifarious form of terrorism, or as it might be better termed asymmetric warfare. This aims not only to attack capitalism by creating massive globalised market failure, but equally to attack the idea of capitalism through its own means, its most advanced perverse and imaginative means, which at present would appear to me to be the labyrinthine financial systems. The workings can then be taken into new realms of cartoonish excess, which will result in two things: The system attacking itself (as in classic Takfyri activity)and the system slowly being transformed into a death-mechanism. By accelerating the processes of capitalism, and specifically engineering through its workings the increasingly limited power of the state, which acts always to restrain and stunt capitalistic processes from their fullest velocity, the point at which collapse becomes real is approached.
This is a push-with solution to the problem, when most push-against solutions result merely in the extended bedding in of the very thing which is opposed.
The actual interventions will be welcomed precisely because they are a push-with solution- operatives initially will appear as no more than super-traders, incredibly creative bankers capable of yielding vast profits for their masters via a total absence of ethics and innovative schemes (which ironically expose capital both on a real and ideological level).
That wasn't his actual point tho- if memory serves me correctly his point was that the left ought to learn from their ultra-discipline.