www.youtube.com/watch?v=98X2_JYbhos

After having established the “determinate functioning” and systematic appearance of the Cecafumo cityscape shot in relation to the narrative of Mamma Roma – “The shot is inserted each time Mamma Roma or Ettore begins or concludes a line of action meant to improve his or her social position” (116) – Rhodes now argues the opposite, that its repetition is uncontrolled and unprovoked – which is to say, incessant (”it keeps returning” [121]) and therefore symptomatic of a “maddening” disavowal.

“Furthermore, the shot’s power extends out of its own indeterminate functioning in regards to the narrative. Again, its muteness and repetition and detachment from the characters’ point of view all contribute to make the shot ever more strange. Meanwhile, it brushes so close to familiarity (it ‘recalls’ neorealism; it almost suggests subjectivity grounded in point of view; it keeps returning) that it maddeningly seems to solicit and refuse comprehension through the simple fact of its mute, insistent reappearance. This shimmering opacity induces a restless, uncertain experience that draws us into the register of the sublime.” (121)

Drawing upon vaguely psychoanalytic concepts (trauma, disavowal, the uncanny) to characterize this shot, or the repetition of this shot, Rhodes describes the repetition as the effect of a kind of “organizing intelligence” (127) or subjectivity coextensive with the film itself (and not with Mamma Roma). Thus the image’s recurrence is described in terms of an affective, experiential subject, as a matter of traumatic repetition – “It is something not so much understood as suffered” (120); it marks “the ‘pain’ of a ‘failure of expression’” (121) – but its appearance, “diegetically,” is non-subjective. For Rhodes, that is, this shot specifically resists attaching itself to a character or assuming a point of view.

Rhodes then turns to Micciché who argues that the shot does not correspond to a strong and completed narrative nucleus, that it is “discontinuous” within “the diegetic fabric of the film,” and that it is therefore not a “subjective image,” but an “ideological image.” “Thus the image’s logic and its message belong to the organizing intelligence of the film, to Mamma Roma, if you will, but not to Mamma Roma.” (127) Though it’s safe to say that this particular logic of repetition does not find its means of expression in a character, neither do most shots: which is to say, it’s simply not clear why this logic should secure the impossibility of that shot (which is not, mind you, the same exact shot) becoming “inhabited” by a character, by a point of view – or at least opening onto that possibility, rather than specifically canceling it out. Rhodes, however, defines point of view in opposition to repetition, as if subjectivity itself – and, by extension, shots that represent subjectivity through point of view – cannot only not be ideological but is by definition insulated from pregiven forms, patterns, and repetitions.

“But we would be wrong to ascribe the landscape image to Mamma Roma’s point of view. First, this shot has been repeated too often at too many different moment following too many different types of shots for us legitimately to believe that it belongs to any character’s point of view. It has established its own autonomous functioning.” (126)

In point of fact, arguing that the final instance of the “sublime” panorama is also not a point of view shot is especially difficult because it is the first instance where the shot does approximate, and rather clearly suggests, the point of view of Mamma Roma. Which is why Rhodes is forced to admit that the point of view of Mamma Roma is at least “solicited.” However, following a rather contorted logic, Rhodes declares outright his agreement with Micciché, who “argues forcefully, and I agree, that the shot ‘is never – not even when it seems to be – a subjective image but is instead always an ideological image, and it does not function within the film as a diegetic surplus (which would enrich the story) but rather an ideological surplus (which enriches the meaning of the film).’” (127) So even where the shot “seems to be” subjective, it’s not “really” subjective – which is a fancy way of rendering this argument unfalsifiable (and unverifiable).

In anticipation of the more predictable objections, Rhodes lingers on this last scene, struggling to recast the shot sequence as one that specifically neutralizes the possibility of a point of view. So, though the shot does “solicit our identification of the sequence as point of view,” it is only a simulation:

“I want to add to Micciché’s analysis the further consideration that the work of this shot sequence (shot/countershot, character looking/putative object of vision) is precisely to solicit our identification of the sequence as point of view. Furthermore, an identification of the sequence as such solicits our identification with Mamma Roma. These solicitations, however, are lures, ideological snares. We are meant to understand that such a pursuit of identification (of shot with character’s vision, of our emotions with those of Mamma Roma) is exactly what this film means to disrupt, to interrogate.” (127)

Rhodes here cleverly turns the appearance or possibility of the point of view in the final shot into the lure, or snare, of ideology itself, and in such a way that to affirm the shot as suggestive of a point of view (and not a “point of view” qualified by quotes) is to fall for the trap, the trap of “sentimentality.” For Rhodes’ argument, to be sure, much is made to hang on this final shot not being subjective, to the extent that subjective means “sentimental,” as in the comparable scene in Umberto D where the image dramatically assumes the character’s point of view (looking down, out a window) (127), though for this viewer the comparison seems overly literal and rather inappropriate. Yes, it’s a shot looking out a window; but beyond that, it’s hard to see how the one and other relate to the same object or the same state of affairs. (One could just as well refer to the final scene of Germany: Year Zero, though to what end, I don’t know.)

In any event, the more obvious, or less counter-intuitive, reading of the final shot would make room for the possibility that it does in fact suggest, or “solicit,” Mamma Roma’s point of view. This seems to me not only intended, but essential to the film’s trajectory: it marks a final, dramatic coincidence of the film’s and Mamma Roma’s points of view. As Rhodes himself points out, “The shot [of the Cecafumo cityscape] is inserted each time Mamma Roma or Ettore begins or concludes a line of action meant to improve his or her social position.” But in each case, the damning representation of the cityscape or the INA Casa Tuscolao project – beginning with the “ironic” nod to Renaissance architecture – contradicts the optimism and false hopes of Mamma Roma’s dialogue. It’s as if she has not yet learned that her “dreams [are] fostered by the INA Casa Tuscolano project’s masquerade of progress and social equality” (125), a critique reflected or anchored in the framing and representation of the projects.

In other words, as a viewer, we are consistently clued-in, behind Mamma Roma’s back, to the fate that awaits to her. Thus, in the final image, Mamma Roma finally “gets it”: the ideological image to which we have been privy all along is suddenly, through her loss and wretchedness, “inhabited” by her, subjectively. Or, from another perspective, this image which was previously extra-diegetic becomes diegetic; the “organizing intelligence” of the film now coincides with her “intelligence.” That the image is not entirely or exclusively a point of view shot does not seem to me evidence of a “lure” or “solicitation”: aside from the fact that point of view shots don’t have to be strictly or exactly from the point of view of a character to approximate it or reference it, the framing of this final shot seems to be strategically oriented to mediate or convincingly “span” subjective and objective views. In being loosely centered on Mamma Roma, it prevents the “ideological image” from being eclipsed, and vice versa. In this way, without devolving into a pure sentimentality, Mamma Roma and Mamma Roma do finally coincide.

295 pp. | 6 x 9
Available November 2009

FORTHCOMING

from Zone Books:

The pirate is the original enemy of humankind. Before humanitarian organizations, human rights, and the establishment of international law in the early modern period, the Roman statesmen already made this point perfectly clear. As Cicero famously remarked, there are certain enemies with whom one may negotiate and with whom, circumstances permitting, one may establish a truce. But there is also an enemy with whom treaties are in vain and war remains incessant. This is the pirate, whom the ancient jurists considered to be “the enemy of all.”

Departing from Cicero’s account of foes, The Enemy of All reconstructs the shifting place of the pirate in legal and political thought from the ancient to the medieval, modern, and contemporary periods. Antiquity already encountered the sea thief in politics as in the law. Classical letters from Homer to the end of the Roman Empire contain ample accounts of pirates of various sorts. The Roman jurists assigned to the pirate as a legal person an exceptional position in civil and international law. Their theory was to be the point of departure for the Christian jurists of the Middle Ages, who defined the pirate as “the enemy of the human species.” Later, the thinkers and statesmen of modernity went one step further. Elaborating a new international code of law and ethics, the writers of the Enlightenment represented the pirate as the ultimate “enemy of humanity.” Today, as Heller-Roazen argues, the pirate furnishes the key to the contemporary paradigm of the universal foe. This is a legal and political person of exception, neither criminal nor enemy, who inhabits an extraterritorial region. Against such a foe, states may wage extraordinary battles, policing politics and justifying military measures in the name of welfare and security.

Drawing on the diverse materials of several disciplines, from law and history to political theory and literature, The Enemy of All brings to light a single paradigm that defines the act of piracy. This “piratical paradigm” consists in the conjunction of four traits: a region beyond territorial jurisdiction; agents who may not be identified with an established state; the collapse of the distinction between criminal and political categories; and the transformation of the concept of war. Whenever we hear of regions beyond “the line of the law,” in which acts of “indiscriminate aggression” have been committed “against humanity,” we must begin to recognize that these are acts of piracy. Long said to be a person of the distant past, the enemy of all is closer to us today than we may think. Indeed, he may never have been closer.

The Future of Work

As the latest instance of a major media outlet prescribing mass surrender of even the most limited workplace rights, the cover copy for the May 25, 2009 issue of TIME Magazine reads:

“Throw away the briefcase: you’re not going to the office. You can kiss your benefits goodbye too. And your new boss won’t look much like your old one. There’s no longer a ladder, and you may never get to retire, but there’s a world of opportunity if you figure out a new path.”

The cover image, for its part, gives form to the distasteful idea that a young dope fresh out of college could soon be your boss, not for his wits and skills, but because experience, knowledge, wisdom – the costly corporate ladder, in short – has been pulled out from under everyone climbing it. The young guy – and the boss, for TIME, does indeed seem to be generally male – may not know much about what he’s doing, but he costs less and is cheaper to insure.

What TIME seems to be explicitly endorsing here is the no holds barred, free-for-all, openly oppressive corporate model (or non-model, really) emerging in the wake of the collapse of the already-tenuous, already-insufficient system of benefits, promotion, and reward. TIME may not have anything to say about the mechanisms facilitating the collapse, but they’re happy to describe with pep the new world order and “what this means for you.” Can we really call this journalism, even with the most liberal sense of the term?

Sure, this worldview may now be a reality, but what is so reprehensible about TIME’s description of it is not the world it references, but the carefree manner in which its emergence is taken as an irreversible, and ultimately acceptable, state of affairs. The phrase “kiss your benefits goodbye too” could hardly be more collaborative in spirit, and detached from the full painful effect it engenders. It comes off like it’s no big deal that people will rather suddenly no longer have access to basic medical care. Just adjust and adapt; that’s all.

Furthermore, as anyone who has suffered or survived a mass layoff or company restructuring can attest, these measures are neither necessary nor evenly distributed. Companies are happy to lay off thousands of people, and slash benefits for the rest, before touching the salaries, bonuses, or stock options of the management class, which of course already soak-up an overwhelmingly-disproportionate percentage of company income.

Indeed, the slashing of benefits and further precipitous drop in wages comes as the swift achievement of a long-restrained attempt to permanently crush labor power, to squeeze workers even more than they already were. The financial collapse merely provides the alibi or excuse for implementing a labor arrangement that will persist long past the recovery and which was already in effect well before the “official” September 2008 collapse. The pay gap between executive/management and labor is increasing, not decreasing, and with greater, not lesser, speed.

Just where the “world of opportunity” has been relocated, as TIME insists it has, remains a mystery, but, like Xanadu, we cannot be helped or advised on our journey to “figure out a new path” to this mythical place. And yet, there’s no doubt we’ll continue to encounter, with much greater frequency, vague references to these new paths and alternative means of enrichment, which will have to remain as elusive as they are fictive. The need for this myth is, however, itself a symptom of the strategic refusal to acknowledge the scale with which the labor force is currently being robbed, squeezed, and turned-out for the benefit of a very small group of people. It’s only a matter of time, then, before these upbeat, disillusioned pep talks ring dangerously hollow.

Employers looking to cut personnel costs can either lay people off or lower their wages. Though there are exceptions, employers are generally more willing to do the former.

Truman Bewley, a professor of economics at Yale University, has shown that’s because they fear low worker morale and even sabotage. Basically, they don’t want unhappy people around who may cause trouble.

So if your job really is in danger (and you’d rather have less money than no money) you need to address that fear head-on. Let the big guy know you’re willing to work, contentedly and productively, at a lower wage than you currently receive.

Some possible openers: “I don’t consider salary a final measure of my self-worth.” Or “My friend Peter stayed on at his job at lower pay to help keep his company afloat. I really admire that.”

Gladly, there are others with a different idea of “pragmatic” advice for today’s worker:

* At the FM Logistics Co. in Woippy, France, 125 workers charged into a meeting of five company managers and held the poor creatures hostage for a day. At least 475 workers at FM Logistics, which is owned by Hewlett-Packard Co., were facing the specter of “redundancy” as HP sought to move its printer packaging operations to the cheaper labor pool in Malaysia. By midnight, the company promised “”new proposals on redundancy talks,” according to Reuters.

* At 3M’s pharmaceutical factory in Pithiviers, 50 miles from Paris, workers exploded upon hearing that 110 of them were to lose jobs. They surrounded the manager and forced him into his office, where he was held hostage for 24 hours until 3M agreed to resume negotiations.

* The president of Sony France in March was locked in his office by employees who barricaded the doors and windows with tree trunks.

* Angry factory workers at the Caterpillar plant in Grenoble took four managers hostage on April Fool’s Day.

Point and Shoot, 2008, by Martha Rosler

It’s a common accusation of the left that politics, liberal and conservative alike, becomes “aestheticized” through persistent suspensions of law and declarations of emergencies. But what, exactly, Neil Levi asks, in a timely, subtle paper on Carl Schmitt, is so “aesthetic” about political decisionism, a doctrine still fresh on our lips in the Obama era. The following, well-known quote from Schmitt’s Political Theology sums up this philosophy succinctly:

“The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust of a mechanism that has become torpid by repetition.” (PT, 15)

Richard Wolin, whose interpretation of this passage is widely shared, finds the image of politics promoted here “aesthetic” in spirit, on account of its celebration of “rupture, discontinuity, and shock, which Wolin describes as ‘aesthetic values.’

“Yet Wolin never tells us why Schmitt’s interest in exceptions, hardly unusual in the humanities and social sciences, is ‘quasi-aestheticist,’ never explains why rupture, discontinuity, and shock are especially ‘aesthetic values.’ He takes their status as such for granted and does not ever seem to find it necessary to explain what he means by the term aesthetic.” (Neil Levi, “Carl Schmitt and the Question of the Aesthetic,” New German Critique 34, No. 2 (Summer 2007): 27-43: 35)

But on the other hand, perhaps there is something ‘aesthetic’ about transgression, ‘breaking through the crust’:

“Yet Wolin’s sense that there is something ‘aesthetic’ about Schmitt’s proclamations on the state of exception is understandable. The notion of the extreme has a certain fascination that one might compare to that exerted by certain transgressive works of art. To dwell on the state of exception is obviously to dwell on the more dramatic aspects of political life, on moments that are conflictual and intense. But do these considerations make an interest in the extreme situation quasi-aesthetic?” (35)

Levi indeed observes that Schmitt’s image of transgression “evokes the Russian formalists’ idea of estrangement, or ostranenie“, except that instead of “calling into question [...] outmoded moral and political conventions [...] Schmitt’s estrangement seems designed rather to give one a sense of the awesome sovereign power authorizing and enforcing the laws that govern everyday behavior. Shklovsky’s estrangement ruptures everyday conventions to change the status quo; Schmitt’s exception works to reinforce it” (Levi “Schmitt” 36). Is this, then, the mode of “aesthetics” critics of Schmitt have in mind when they use the term pejoratively?

It would seem not, in that the more progressive theories with which Schmitt’s is contrasted do “not assume that the aesthetic component of a political idea automatically disqualifies it from the realm of politics proper”. Benjamin’s much-touted remarks in “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” are for this reason largely inapplicable here, a fact Levi conveys succinctly when he observes that Benjamin’s point was that, for some — e.g. Marinetti, — war, specifically, was “already a work of art”. “Aestheticization” was thus, for Benjamin, more a “mode of perception” than a component of political theory per se (at least in this instance), although, in a different sense entirely, Schmitt does at times define the political “as an intensity, so that any conflict or opposition, once it attains a certain degree of existential antagonism, becomes political” (Levi “Schmitt” 30), a proposition with which Benjamin would most certainly have agreed.

With the more polemical understandings of “aestheticization” out of the way, Levi then turns to Schmitt’s own views on the matter, noting in passing that, “As it happens, Schmitt takes great pains to encourage his readers not to think about politics as aesthetic. What is ultimately so interesting, even amusing, about the charge of aestheticization against Schmitt is that it targets precisely those situations that Schmitt himself thinks distinguish the political from the aesthetic” (Levi “Schmitt” 37). Schmitt in fact spends a great deal of time trying to separate the latter from the former. “The aesthetic,” Levi observes, “functions as a kind of disturbing presence that Schmitt repeatedly disavows” (Levi “Schmitt” 37).

Linking this phenomena to “contemporary diatribes against postmodern irony, especially during the soul-searching that took place in the United States for a few weeks after September 11, 2001” (39), Levi then proceeds to enumerate Schmitt’s identification of “aesthetics” with decadent European bourgeoisie “arts and entertainment”, which for Schmitt categorically functions as the fundamental obstacle to the political. Though Schmitt, and perhaps decisionism in general, does view the arts as a purely negative force, they are nonetheless seen as a powerful and inextricable force acting on, or within, political forces. For Schmitt, the dominance of an “aesthetic perception” announces and prepares political defeat.

“Schmitt sees the aesthetic as the existential negation of the political in two apparently contradictory ways. On the one hand, he suggests that the dominance of aesthetic perception is a precursor to destruction of the Lebensform, to political defeat: “Everywhere in political history the incapacity or the unwillingness to make [the] distinction [between friend and enemy] is a symptom of the political end” (The Concept of the Political, 68). For example, before the Revolution the Russian bourgeoisie romanticized the Russian peasant, he says, while “a relativistic bourgeoisie in a confused Europe searched all sorts of exotic cultures for the purpose of making them an object of its aesthetic consumption” (CP, 68). For Schmitt, romanticization and exoticization of the other are modes of aestheticization. Aesthetic consumption, he thinks, is a condition, like [page] consumption proper, with fatal consequences. It negates political perception—negates, that is, the ability to recognize a mortal threat when one sees it.” (Levi “Schmitt” 38–39)

This final point, which concludes Levi’s piece, points to the limits of the “aestheticization” hypothesis — in several ways. For one, it shows how explicitly-militant political doctrines like Schmitt’s must in the end rely upon a paradoxical relation between aesthetic forms and political disavowals thereof. The bourgeoise romanticiziation of the Russian peasant, much like, say, contemporary American exoticizations of the Middle East, was a form of enmity, not a distraction from it. Indeed, in light of the extensive work on cultural mechanisms of colonial control, represented most forcefully by Said’s Orientalism, Schmitt’s opposing of “romanticization” to “enemy” seems symptomatic of his own clearly militant (not to mention proto-Nazi) political doctrine. Levi’s paper serves to highlight this important distinction, and in the process re-focuses attention away from the aesthetic image summoned up by political discourses to the cultural role of art and aesthetics assigned by those theories, which is something else entirely.

Textile display, 1972, Eaton's Department Store

There are, it would seem, two kinds of novelty: the one that breaks from tradition, ushering in a new order, and the one that perpetuates the same under the guise of change. The latter, associated with fads and trends, marks the logic of consumption, whereas the former, querying the new and indeterminate, suggests a revolutionary break from the status quo. Distinguishing the two may, however, prove more difficult than the language suggests. Even for Adorno, the first to really bracket-off the commodity in this fashion, breaks from tradition dangerously compare to the logic of tradition itself:

“It (the concept of Modernism) does not negate earlier artistic exercises as styles have always done; however it negates tradition as such. To that extent, it ratifies the bourgeois principle in art. Its abstractness is linked to the commodity character of art.” (Theodor W. Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, ed. Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann. (Frankfurt, 1970), 38; quoted in Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, tr. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 59.)

The “abstractness” common to the negation of tradition and the bourgeois principle of art is the ‘questioning’ integral to tradition itself – which appears, in retrospect, as a succession of fads, styles, aesthetics. Peter Bürger, the philosopher of the avant-garde, so too defers to Adorno’s claim that “In an essentially non-traditionalist society (the bourgeois), esthetic tradition is a priori questionable. The authority of the new is that of the historically ineluctable” (Adorno, Ästhetische Theorie, 38; quoted in Bürger, 59). Distinguishing the commodity-novelty from the emancipatory-novelty becomes accordingly difficult, if not categorically impossible. Which is to say, if art, too, is driven by a need for “newness”, then the commodity (in this regard at least) may not fundamentally, only substantially, differ from the artwork.

Bürger, for his part, notes this in passing – “It must be remembered that where art does in fact submit to the coercion to bring what is new, it can hardly be distinguished from a fad” – but goes on to accredit the ‘fad effect’ solely to projections of “the person who wants to see it there” (Bürger, 61). Here, in a sharp change of direction, the failing of the artwork is attributed to its apparent over-openness to interpretation, which is to say, the viewer’s appropriation of the work toward ‘whatever’ end. The work as fad – Warhol’s 100 Campbell soup cans, he gives as an example – serves as a projection screen for the subject’s specifically consumerist desires. So, it would seem, novelty is really a function of interpretation and falls squarely on the side of the subject, not the work. (But if it’s only a problem of interpretation, then how is it that certain works are regularly susceptible to this subjective error?)

Bürger moreover attribrutes this form of meaninglessness to the Neo-avant-garde in particular, “which stages for a second time the avant-gardiste break with tradition [and] becomes a manifestation that is void of sense and that permits the positing of any meaning whatever” (61). It is in this sense that the historical avant-garde is perceived as itself sliding into novelty; even the name, neo avant-garde, is designed to mark this empty repetition. The concept of the new, he adds, is “too general and nonspecific [… and] provides no criteria for distinguishing between faddish (arbitrary) and historically necessary newness” (63). Indeed, for Bürger the concept of the new can only fail to adequately “designate what is decisive in such a break with tradition”; it hence remains on the side of “the means of artistic representation” (63).

Bürger’s attitude toward the question of newness in avant-garde works here approaches Gianni Vattimo’s oft-quoted condemnation of the commodity character of the new:

“in a consumer society continual renewal (of clothes, tools, buildings) is already required physiologically for the system simply to survive. What is new is not in the least ‘revolutionary’ or subversive; it is what allows things to stay the same.” (Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 7; quoted in Leslie Paul Thiele, “Postmodernity and the Routinization of Novelty: Heidegger on Boredom and Technology,” Polity 29, no. 4 (1997): 511.)

Vattimo, in this way, extends something of a ‘traditional’ view of novelty, stressing sameness and continuity across non-revolutionary, non-decisive innovations, thus posing a definite choice between a newness that renews and a newness that breaks. Indeed, it is only on account of novelty’s failure to measure up to the absolute break (which never comes) that it is able to appear as a ruse, simulation, or superficiality. Very much in keeping with the Frankfurt School strain that defines as the “surface” of culture that which, with respect to the “objective structure,” appears only as an “expression” of it (–to the extent where, for instance, Adorno can observe that “Baudelaire’s relationship to Wagner is as dialectical as his association with a prostitute” [1]), Vattimo’s position seems to return us to an absolute distinction between surface and structure, sameness and revolution.

Change, however, never comes, and anything that does is, by definition and ‘in advance’, ‘commodified’, ‘absorbed’, ‘appropriated’. This general schema itself seems to have changed very little since Adorno. Nina Power recently summarized Alain Badiou’s opening remarks, for the Communism conference at Birkbeck, as holding-out for just this kind of revolution:

“Nobody represents a party at the conference, everyone is representing his or herself. No party/power. No Kim Jong-Il, no Fidel Castro. There is a collective search for new use of the word communism after terrible experiences of the last century. Collection of phil/pol singularities – we are on the side of novelty, creativity. We are on the side of communism in its newness.” (”on the idea of communism, birkbeck, 13-15 March 2009“, IT 18 March 2009)

This position of course goes hand in hand with a total disavowal of capitalism, the ’surface’ of culture, the actual, day to day events (with a small ‘e’) ’sustaining’ the ’system’. Steven Shaviro captures well this pseudo-libertarian denunciation – of ‘the State’, political economy, economics — that continues to paralyze this region of the Left.

In particular, not only did Badiou leave out political economy from his descriptions of how the revolutionary event might challenge the capitalist status quo; but also, when questioned on this score, he explicitly denounced any attention to political economy as being the sin of “economism”. All this is caaptured in the video here. Badiou claims that economics can only be part of “the situation” which it is the business of a new “truth,” produced in an event and by fidelity to that event, to disrupt. Badiou shows his Maoist pedigree (as Ken Wark remarked to me) in this insistence on politics as the ultimate ruling instance. Instead of engaging in the critique of political economy, and seeing the political as so intimately intertwined with the economic as to makie any separation of them impossible, Badiou relegates economy, in a nearly Gnostic sort of way, to the realm of the irretrievably fallen. His notion of a pure politics (and a pure philosophy) unsullied by any contact with, or ‘contamination’ by, the economic, is really the mirror image of today’s neoclassical economics which imagines itself to be value-neutral and apolitical. What this comes down to is that Badiou is a Maoist without the Marxism — a stance that I find rather terrifying.

At his best, Badiou is a kind of no-Kantian — this is an appelation that he would reject, of course, and one that most contemporary philosophers would find damning (though I mean it as a sort of praise). What I mean by Badiou’s neo-Kantianism is that his whole notion of the event, and of the ethics of remaining loyal to the event, is something like a late-modernist version of the categorical imperative. The event is singular, and yet of absolutely universal import — it commands our obedience, regardless of our merely personal, “pathological” implications. Badiou even defines the event, and the way we are called to be faithful to it, in entirely “formalist” terms — we are commanded by the very form of the event, rather than by anything having to do with its specific content. (Steven Shaviro, “Communism at Birkbeck“, The Pinocchio Theory 17 March 2009)

This attitude would be harmless enough on its own, but to the extent that it necessitates a kind of blanket rejection of, and accompanying disdain for, the world, its effects can be drastic, sweeping. Alex of Splintering Bone Ashes for his part takes the Badiouean line to its conclusion. Since everything that comes into existence is ‘new’, and since there is no intrinsic worth to ‘newness’ per se, everything under the sun is a pointed agent of specifically-capitalist subjectivation — even Badiou’s Event, it would seem.

“But this has further implications, that there is no necessary reason that music for example should change at such rates, that there is no intrinsic moral worth in “the new” per se in the slightest. Pop music is entirely a creature made possible by capitalism. For many thousands of years folk and Art musics likewise changed only very slowly, but since the economic systems built around them (localist minstrels or music for ritual, or the institutional support of wealthy patrons) did not demand endless novelty this was entirely unproblematic. This is a point upon which I believe we might wish to take Badiou to task, (and perhaps modernism as a whole). The valorisation of the new seems to be an artifact of a certain kind of capitalistic subjectivation, and as Nick Srnicek of Accursed Share pointed out here, why change at all? Why not slow emergence instead of rapid revolutionary change? Why not absolute stasis? Why valorise the new? Capitalism’s endless turn-over of products and services serves an obvious purpose within its own terms, but the claim towards inherent worth (whether capitalistic or modernist) is on shaky ground (i.e.- is a massively under-theorized discursive a priori).” (Alex, “Rupturing as foundation“, Splintering Bone Ashes 20 February 2009)

"Ads" (Antje Peters, 2008) refers to typical advertisement compositions. "Through not showing actual brands the focus is on stereotypic style elements and color."

The commodity, in this view, is but a form or function whose content by definition lacks importance or revolutionary relevance. Which brings to the fore a number of easily-debunked assumptions about the commodity, the first being that the folk arts, by contrast, ”changed only very slowly”. No matter that this assertion is, for all intents and purposes, immeasurable, not to mention speculative, it is a myth necessary for the Badiouean blanket rejection to operate. But if the folk arts could be shown to change rapidly all the same, the thesis that capitalism is at heart an engine of constant change, for change’s sake, would begin to fall apart. After all, isn’t the ‘demand for endless novelty’ a feature of art, and culture, that literally predates capitalism? (To take just one example, Francis Bacon wrote of this problem well before capitalism, much less commodity capitalism, existed.) Which is why, to prevent these kinds of objections from being raised, the ’surface’ of culture must be constantly separated-out from the structure beneath it, lest the ‘contents’ of the commodity, or the actual succession of changes, start to matter. Nick of The Accursed Share expresses this necessity succinctly:

“It is a common place today to note that capitalism is more than capable of integrating any culturally revolutionary subjects - in many cases, it even produces them, or at least actively incites novelty. So a resistance to capitalism and a viable alternative can’t be found on a cultural level — it needs to operate on the economic structures of modern capitalism.” (Nick, “Crisis and Change“, The Accursed Share 26 September 2008)

Voidmanufacturing, for their part, breaks-down the Platonic assumptions lurking behind this surface-structure binary, which is indeed derived from Adorno. Though the structure is supposed to be invisible or non-manifest (otherwise it would just be part of the surface), for the culture industry to be described or assigned some kind of a power dynamic, the structure must eventually be associated with a real-world practice, with authorities and institutions. And when this is invariably achieved through a characterization of the corporation, a strictly top-down, hierarchical process is described, one in which a “smooth supply” runs downward, with total determination.

“A constant sameness governs the relationship to the past as well. What is new about the phase of mass culture compared with the late liberal stage is the exclusion of the new. The machine rotates on the same spot. While determining consumption it excludes the untried as a risk. The movie-makers distrust any manuscript which is not reassuringly backed by a bestseller. Yet for this very reason there is never-ending talk of ideas, novelty, and surprise, of what is taken for granted but has never existed. Tempo and dynamics serve this trend. Nothing remains as of old; everything has to run incessantly, to keep moving. For only the universal triumph of the rhythm of mechanical production and reproduction promises that nothing changes, and nothing unsuitable will appear. Any additions to the well-proven culture inventory are too much of a speculation. The ossified forms – such as the sketch, short story, problem film, or hit song – are the standardised average of late liberal taste, dictated with threats from above. The people at the top in the culture agencies, who work in harmony as only one manager can with another, whether he comes from the rag trade or from college, have long since reorganised and rationalised the objective spirit. One might think that an omnipresent authority had sifted the material and drawn up an official catalogue of cultural commodities to provide a smooth supply of available mass-produced lines. The ideas are written in the cultural firmament where they had already been numbered by Plato – and were indeed numbers, incapable of increase and immutable.” (voidmanufacturing, “Adorno and Horkheimer’s classic essay on bullshit“, Void Manufacturing 8 September 2008)

Though Adorno’s (and Badiou’s) model is problematic at best, paralyzing at worst, we are still left with the problem of capitalist appropriation, the general theoretical contours of which I remain largely unconvinced. Or, to put it differently, I don’t see this phenomena as by any means exclusive to capitalism. Is it heightened through a certain market logic? Probably. But, again, I don’t see how ‘appropriation’ is not a constant, and therefore highly ambiguous (perhaps unhelpful), dynamic of history in general. Pre-capitalist medieval art, for example, could easily be described in terms of aesthetic appropriations governed by various cultural dominances. Resistances of all kinds — heretical sects, say, throughout the pre-Protestant era – have always been strategically, and unstrategically, incorporated into the institution resisted, be it through deliberate tactics or sustained interaction. To describe capitalist appropriation is only to describe a species thereof, provided that we even want to maintain the theoretical predominance of this concept. Why is this distinction so important? Because without it resistance to capitalist systems in particular would seem dramatically, perhaps programmatically, futile. Furthermore, to confine the powers of ‘appropriation’ to late capitalism alone would give it an almost metaphysical power – according to which everything in resistance is ‘absorbed’ ‘in advance’ – that inflates its already formidable capacity to crush opposition.

The ongoing debates over the difference between immaterial production and classic industrial capitalism have in many ways made these conclusions inevitable, if only because ‘continual structural features’ have to be discerned across more and more diverse historical periods, which can suggest that perhaps some of the features we thought were strictly capitalist are in fact more general. Steven Shaviro thus finds the language of ‘novelty or reversion’ somewhat inappropriate, if only because neither can account for ’structural features’ that persist across each:

“Now, I am largely in agreement with Hardt (and Negri, and some of the economists associated with their position, like Marazzi and even to some extent Moulier Boutang) about the transformations in capitalism over the last fifty years, and especially since the 1970s. But I am not sure I entirely accept the framework through which Hardt interprets these developments. In particular, I do not think that immaterial production involves a more “direct” expropriation of the common than was the case when industrial capitalism extracted value. It is true, as I have already said, that a lot of this new source of capital appropriation comes from a kind of “primitive accumulation” — corporations are now appropriating the commons in the form of things like genomes and songs and procedures of working, in the same way that landlords appropriated the commons of land at the time of the enclosures. But I don’t think that this is either a novelty or a reversion. It is rather the case that “primitive accumulation” never went away; it is a continual structural feature of capitalism, and was at work in the industrial age as much as it was in the agricultural stage, and as much as it is still today. Capitalism always both appropriates to itself things that it didn’t produce — and this precisely by “privatizing” them — and extracts a surplus from the processes of production that it directly initiates and supervises” (Steven Shaviro, “Communism conference — Michael Hardt,” The Pinochio Theory 16 march 2009)

In this regard, the ‘direct expropriation of the common’ starts to seem a lot more diverse in site and mechanism than current theories of capitalist appropriation allow. To be sure, the market’s absorption of presumably revolutionary practices goes hand in hand with its opposite: the political redressing of the same in the guise of the new, which is by no means a strictly capitalist mechanism. Maximilian Forte’s cutting analysis of the rhetoric of novelty where there is none is just one certain example:

“On what basis do we call it a “radical new experiment,” when there is a long history of anthropological service to imperialism, a fact promoted by Montgomery McFate in her own writing? Anyone who knows anything at all about anthropology in the last 30 years would know that we have had these debates before, and anthropologists have served in counterinsurgency programs long before now. So why feign such ignorance, or is it real ignorance? Why the preposterous claims to “novelty” when there is nothing new here? Why the foolish appropriation of the term “radical” in connection with an ideologically reactionary stance and imperial militarism? How many more times will the degraded salesmen pitch their product in such hackneyed terms? Why not just stand for what you mean to say, and what you mean to think, instead of couching it in such awfully banal language of “NEW!”, “experimental!”, “applied!” and “radical!”?” (Maximilian Forte, “A ‘Radical New Experiment’ in ‘Anthropology’? What HTS is NOT“, Open Anthropology 27 August 2008)

The goal here isn’t to argue for some kind of universal notion of appropriation, novelty, absorption, and so forth, though I do find the current theory of the commodity just as totalizing (across geographies, markets, populations, and objects). One proof of this is to be found not in Badiou’s books, but in their market existence. Surely even he must consider the ‘contents’ of his own published commodities relevant, if not transcendent of their commercial ‘form’. This is no small matter. If his works are not just commodities, then perhaps similar things could be said for other commodities or for the revolutionary possibilities for the commodity. And this is precisely where I would like this argument to take us: to the commodity, not away from it. Still reeling from a Marxism that privleges the ‘moment’ of production over consumption, leftist thought is now discernibly lagging behind shifts in other domains — design, for instance.

Along these lines, the most obvious short-coming of the recent Communism conference (aside from its non-representation of the Global South) is its complete lack of interest in environmentalism and the green movement. Which is perhaps no coincidence, in that the green movement is consolidated largely around the commodity form, theoretically and practically. Green design and sustainability in general takes as its locus precisely what the Badiouean rejects — namely, the object, its construction, and its relation to the production process. Though it’s true that rethinking the commodity alone won’t do much for labor conditions or the distribution of wealth, at least not directly, it is nonetheless increasingly clear that a thorough reform of objects would entail the most fundamental, revolutionary reorganization of society. But to begin to tackle these questions, in a philosophical as well as practical manner, would require an interest in the very ‘contents’ of the forms we have been led to disavow.

Notes

[1] Theodor Adorno, “Letters to Walter Benjamin,” in Aesthetics and Politics, ed. Ronald Taylor (New York: Verso, 2007), 119.

* CFP: “Novelty, Transformation and Change” Pli 21 [conference website]

I recall one paper for the course that affected my eating habits, at least temporarily. The assigned topic was something like this:

“Aliens from another planet, with vastly superior intelligence to humans, land on earth in order to consume humans as food. What argument could you make to convince the aliens not to eat us that would not also apply to our consumption of beef?”

I can’t remember what I said in the paper, but I remember becoming a vegetarian for several weeks thereafter. My carnivorous ways eventually resumed not because I figured out a good response, but because I ignobly put the question out of mind.

The question is a trick, of course, meant to shore-up the full gamut of post hoc rationalizations for killing and eating animals, and for that reason vegetarians (like myself) will never tire of putting it on the table, even if just to watch the fancy footwork that follows. But in the end, as detractors like to point out, it’s a hypothetical scenario; aliens have not shown up and we are not in danger of becoming dinner. For these reasons perhaps, Ingrid Newkirk, cofounder of PETA, has found a more direct means of making the point. According to her recently publicized last will and testament, upon her death she requests

a. That the “meat” of my body, or a portion thereof, be used for a human barbecue, to remind the world that the meat of a corpse is all flesh, regardless of whether it comes from a human being or another animal, and that flesh foods are not needed;

b. That my skin, or a portion thereof, be removed and made into leather products, such as purses, to remind the world that human skin and the skin of other animals is the same and that neither is “fabric” nor needed, and that some skin be tacked up outside the Indian Leather Fair each year to serve as a reminder of the government’s need to abate the suffering of Indian bullocks who, after a life of extreme and involuntary servitude, as I have seen firsthand, are exported all over the world in this form;

c. That in remembrance of the elephant-foot umbrella stands and tiger rugs I saw, as a child, offered for sale by merchants at Connaught Place in Delhi, my feet be removed and umbrella stands or other ornamentation be made from them, as a reminder of the depravity of killing innocent animals, such as elephants, in order that we might use their body parts for household items and decorations;

She goes on, however, to make of her corpse much more than an imitation of industrialized ‘animal products’. Engaging in a bit of Surrealist agitprop theater, she requests that her body be parceled out, piece by piece it would seem, for purely symbolic purposes. An eye to the EPA, a finger to Barnum & Bailey, an ear to the Canadian Parliament.

d. That one of my eyes be removed, mounted, and delivered to the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a reminder that PETA will continue to be watching the agency until it stops poisoning and torturing animals in useless and cruel experiments; that the other is to be used as PETA sees fit;

e. That my pointing finger be delivered to Kenneth Feld, owner of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, or to a circus museum to stand as the “Greatest Accusation on Earth” on behalf of the countless elephants, lions, tigers, bears, and other animals who have been kidnapped from their families and removed from their homelands in India, Thailand, Africa, and South America and deprived of all that is natural and pleasant to them, abused, and forced into involuntary servitude for the sake of cheap entertainment;

g. That one of my ears be removed, mounted, and sent to the Canadian Parliament to assist them in hearing, for the first time perhaps, the screams of the seals, bears, raccoons, foxes, and minks bludgeoned, trapped, and sometimes skinned alive for their pelts; that the other ear be removed, preserved, and displayed outside the Deonar abattoir in Mumbai to remind all who do business there that the screams of the cattle who are slaughtered within its walls are heard around the world;

Say what you will of PETA (–the ads they run are often gratuitously sexist, their tactics overly-spectacular), this publicity stunt appears to be also, quite literally, real. Though the will itself is, for the moment, little more than a press release, Newkirk’s eye may very well one day end up on the grounds of the EPA. Surely a provocation such as this counts for something.

As a work of art and of politics — a concept we’ve otherwise grown tired of seeing fail — Newkirk’s will succeeds in turning herself and her body, the very thing at stake in animal rights, into a final, definitive statement. And yet, when so many works of art insist on representing the ‘inscription’ of culture onto ‘the body’, the one instance where this is actually, dramatically the case can be easily overlooked.

The title of this paper is a nod to Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard, a post-modernist philosopher. This paper explores the meaning and nature of money, and the form in which money exists today. It begins by asking such basic questions as what is money and explores the history and development of money. We live in a world of increasing and stunning wealth, a world where billionaires are as common as millionaires once were, and a world of increasing wealth inequality. This paper contends that such a world exists because money is a pure simulacrum that has taken on a reality of its own, a reality that is now untethered to the fact that money’s significance used to be limited by its role as a symbol of an underlying thing of value. But money is now a pure thing in and of itself, with value, existence and purpose that is independent of any signified thing. When money became released from its role as symbol, the foundation was laid for the world we live in today. What does this have to do with law? Interestingly enough, the Supreme Court’s landmark decisions in the Legal Tender Cases of the last half of the 19th century provided notice (or warning, depending on one’s perspective) of the role of money today, and foreshadowed Baudrillard’s analyses of money in the 1970’s. These cases were at one time viewed as perhaps the most important cases decided by the Court, but have faded into obscurity as questions about the nature of money came to be viewed as pointless or long-settled. This paper contends, however, the ever-changing nature of the economic cycle may lead scholars to again start asking questions about first principles such as the nature of money. The purpose of this paper is to discuss money in its original conception, money as it exists now, and where the meaning and nature of money may be headed.

Money as Simulacrum: The Legal Nature and Reality of Money by John J. Chung

Fisk is a charming and easy going person who seems to feel at home among strangers, and so his encounter with students flowed smoothly, with few inhibitions on either side, and while it was an amiable and agreeable atmosphere, there was really little agreement. Many of the students were particularly interested in issues of independent journalism, alternative information networks, blogging, and counter-lobbies, and Fisk essentially disappointed them on each of these fronts. Fisk’s persistent points were that one needs a “proper” newspaper, people have to pay for the news (putting it for free on the Internet has severely damaged the budget of The Independent), and deep readers are needed. Fisk seemed to have limitless scorn for both cable television news, the Internet, and blogs in particular; he claimed to not use the Internet at all, nor e-mail. One student pointed out how some blogs have been especially successful, and Fisk’s retort was, “Yes, but you can’t work for a blog.” How does a blog pay for the travel of the correspondent, for airline tickets, hotels, etc.?

On the whole, a strong generational gap seemed to divide him from the students, as well as a different conception of how news is reported: the students seemed to prefer large, widespread, international collaborative networks with numerous bloggers in situ, while Fisk seems to prefer the lone and intrepid foreign correspondent who dances across the globe from war zone to war zone.

I left the room thinking that I might have been happier had I just heard the students speaking among themselves.

Readers turn increasingly to the Internet for information — even though the Internet has the potential to be, in the words of the chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, “a cesspool” of false information. If Jefferson was right that a well-informed citizenry is the foundation of our democracy, then newspapers must be saved.

Although the problems that the newspaper industry faces are well known, no one has offered a satisfactory solution. But there is an option that might not only save newspapers but also make them stronger: Turn them into nonprofit, endowed institutions — like colleges and universities. Endowments would enhance newspapers’ autonomy while shielding them from the economic forces that are now tearing them down.