Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2001 09:15:36 -0100
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: What is Empire about? - subjectivity


This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

--Boundary_(ID_woIrRb/PvWsr9+ZXaWllgQ)


  Steve/All,

  I agree, but for emphasis consider:

  1) personal subjectivity and "brainwashing"
  2) sovereign vs. subject
  3) mental scope of individuals who compose the multitude.
      (one cannot think of "anything" but only of what life-experience allows, or
       memory produces/equals "self")

  Such terms and thoughts will bring us eventually to "immanence and transcendence"
  which are important parts of the book.


  On page 215 we find,  "when the boss hails you on the shop floor or the school or the high school principal hails you in the study hall, a subjectivity is formed." 

  Finally, your question about struggle and resistance is the hard part, for which answers
  must be found.

  regards,
  Hugh

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


  Steve wrote,

    **multitude, subjectivity, production, measure, appropriation etc., it should be easy to summarize in one or two thousand words.**.
  Let''s look - with  subjectivity and continue to work through the list .

  So let's look at subjectivity... In section 1.2 there is a discussion of biolpolitics and the society of control. This discussion relates directly to the work of Foucault and Deleuze and Gauttari - the relationship between biopolitics and subjectivity within N&H remains the question of re-production and the ongoing construction of producers. The postmodern society of the present is that "...in which mechanisms of command become ever more 'democratic' ever more immanent to the social field, distributed throughout the brains and bodies of the citizens..."(P23). A curious subjectivity that bears only a slight or passing relation to the 'human subject' as descended from Freud closer rather to the subject as descended from 'theories of ideology and subjectivity'.

  To make this clearer it is worth remembering that "The great industrial and financial powers thus produce not only commodities but also subjectivities... They produce agentic subjectivities within the biopolitical context: they produce needs, social relations, bodies and minds - which is to say they produce producers..." (33). Here then is the actual starting point for N&H's version of subjectivity not just in the biopolitical realm -for it is a notion of subjectivity where the accent and the active part of the word is derived from the word through the words 'subject' or 'subjugated'. The derivation from the biopolitical context is accented through "...in the biopolitical sphere, life is made to work for life..." to be the point of reproduction. The reference here also moves through into the production and productive elements of language and communication - the theory goes that the production of new langauge forms relates directly to the new globalised world order through the production of new forms of subjectivity... To this point we are addressing the notion of subjectivity as related to from the position of capital. But it is equally important to consider that the new figures of subjectivity, and you cannot think this in terms of biopolitic, also generate new forms of resistence, her obviously formed around the revolutionary subject 'the multitude'.

  In other words there is a return to the subject through - Freud - perhaps not quite the subject contained in the 'libidinal economy' of Lyotard - but not far away... After all '...a new theory of subjectivity must be formulated that operates primarily through knowledge, communication and language...'  Lyotard more or less states that this is his intention in both LE and The Differend... This variety of subjectivity becomes important because of the way in which it takes the logic of the libidinal economy  and places it in a postmodern frame. 'When one adopts the perspective of the activity of the multitude, its production of subjectivity and desire, one can recognise how globalisation, operates a real deterritorialisation of the previous structures of exploitation and control, is really a condition of the liberation of the multitude...' This subjectivity then is not about the underlying construction of the libidinal economy, it is not about the construction of the consciopus/preconscious/unconscious and so on - no polymorphous perversity here - no what is here is a predominantly social subject. Perhaps even an 'inoperative subject' a 'coming subject'... Here then is the reference back towards the notion of subjectivity descended from Freud and passed through Althussar - interppellation - 'the hey-you' of subjectivity and recognition - on top of this postmodern subjectivity is overlaid - p196 on - (based on Deleuze) the construction of the subjectivity is wholly considered as being social, school, home, army and so on....

  Writing this, extracting it from the text makes me think that the claim of subjectivity may be to much, an abuse of the word - what is defined here is a social-subjectivity, he way in which we are pinned down, transfixed by our given social roles, from the factory to the multitude and back again. It is  not clear how the social-subjectivity has been reconstituted to be marked and constructed as different from the libidinal subject of before....

  Always this text is haunted by the anti-humanism and post-humanism we deal with on an everyday basis. On this micro-social level which is being defined as the field of 'subjectivity' what can be considered struggle and resistence?

  reghards

  sdv.


--Boundary_(ID_woIrRb/PvWsr9+ZXaWllgQ)

HTML VERSION:

Steve/All,

 

I agree, but for emphasis consider:

 

1) personal subjectivity and "brainwashing"

2) sovereign vs. subject

3) mental scope of individuals who compose the multitude.

    (one cannot think of "anything" but only of what life-experience allows, or

     memory produces/equals "self")

 

Such terms and thoughts will bring us eventually to "immanence and transcendence"

which are important parts of the book.

 

 

On page 215 we find,  "when the boss hails you on the shop floor or the school or the high school principal hails you in the study hall, a subjectivity is formed." 

 

Finally, your question about struggle and resistance is the hard part, for which answers

must be found.

 

regards,

Hugh

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

Steve wrote,

 

  **multitude, subjectivity, production, measure, appropriation etc., it should be easy to summarize in one or two thousand words.**.

Let''s look - with  subjectivity and continue to work through the list .

So let's look at subjectivity... In section 1.2 there is a discussion of biolpolitics and the society of control. This discussion relates directly to the work of Foucault and Deleuze and Gauttari - the relationship between biopolitics and subjectivity within N&H remains the question of re-production and the ongoing construction of producers. The postmodern society of the present is that "...in which mechanisms of command become ever more 'democratic' ever more immanent to the social field, distributed throughout the brains and bodies of the citizens..."(P23). A curious subjectivity that bears only a slight or passing relation to the 'human subject' as descended from Freud closer rather to the subject as descended from 'theories of ideology and subjectivity'.

To make this clearer it is worth remembering that "The great industrial and financial powers thus produce not only commodities but also subjectivities... They produce agentic subjectivities within the biopolitical context: they produce needs, social relations, bodies and minds - which is to say they produce producers..." (33). Here then is the actual starting point for N&H's version of subjectivity not just in the biopolitical realm -for it is a notion of subjectivity where the accent and the active part of the word is derived from the word through the words 'subject' or 'subjugated'. The derivation from the biopolitical context is accented through "...in the biopolitical sphere, life is made to work for life..." to be the point of reproduction. The reference here also moves through into the production and productive elements of language and communication - the theory goes that the production of new langauge forms relates directly to the new globalised world order through the production of new forms of subjectivity... To this point we are addressing the notion of subjectivity as related to from the position of capital. But it is equally important to consider that the new figures of subjectivity, and you cannot think this in terms of biopolitic, also generate new forms of resistence, her obviously formed around the revolutionary subject 'the multitude'.

In other words there is a return to the subject through - Freud - perhaps not quite the subject contained in the 'libidinal economy' of Lyotard - but not far away... After all '...a new theory of subjectivity must be formulated that operates primarily through knowledge, communication and language...'  Lyotard more or less states that this is his intention in both LE and The Differend... This variety of subjectivity becomes important because of the way in which it takes the logic of the libidinal economy  and places it in a postmodern frame. 'When one adopts the perspective of the activity of the multitude, its production of subjectivity and desire, one can recognise how globalisation, operates a real deterritorialisation of the previous structures of exploitation and control, is really a condition of the liberation of the multitude...' This subjectivity then is not about the underlying construction of the libidinal economy, it is not about the construction of the consciopus/preconscious/unconscious and so on - no polymorphous perversity here - no what is here is a predominantly social subject. Perhaps even an 'inoperative subject' a 'coming subject'... Here then is the reference back towards the notion of subjectivity descended from Freud and passed through Althussar - interppellation - 'the hey-you' of subjectivity and recognition - on top of this postmodern subjectivity is overlaid - p196 on - (based on Deleuze) the construction of the subjectivity is wholly considered as being social, school, home, army and so on....

Writing this, extracting it from the text makes me think that the claim of subjectivity may be to much, an abuse of the word - what is defined here is a social-subjectivity, he way in which we are pinned down, transfixed by our given social roles, from the factory to the multitude and back again. It is  not clear how the social-subjectivity has been reconstituted to be marked and constructed as different from the libidinal subject of before....

Always this text is haunted by the anti-humanism and post-humanism we deal with on an everyday basis. On this micro-social level which is being defined as the field of 'subjectivity' what can be considered struggle and resistence?

reghards

sdv.