I burn, I pine, I perish: Deskilling as the autoerotic asphyxiation of capital

I will speak to Mark's question about the immateriality of labor in class and in subsequent posts. For now, a few provocative questions in the attempt to generate themes in the readings so far:

Some have asked quite pointedly as per the simultaneous desire capital has to expunge yet exploit work; this is indeed a mystery... one we can perhaps attempt to investigate by turning to a discussion of generating consumptive modes of "work" (fun surveys, surfing the internet for your data mining job which I did at ACT this summer, playing at the "millsbury," day trading, etc...) which more and more becomes "really" subsumed into a logic of work. Yet, in another line of thought, I remain mystified by capital having a desire at all. What does this mean? How does it make sense to talk and read of the system of capitalism 'responding to crisis' (a la Beniger)? What model of self-propagation is advanced here beyond an assumed autochthonous engine of exchange that drives culture in a one dimensional fashion? How do we make sense of Dyer-Witheford's claim that profit is an "a-priori" dimension of capital (page 15 I think) under which all other oppressions are subsumed? How is desire prior to that which which constructs our desire? {Notice how in the readings authors vacillate on their claims of desire... capitalism is everywhere; but on this account, arguably nowhere then. Capital "tracks" desire (information), capital "stimulates" desire (wages/money) and capital "constructs" desire (advertising).} The desire to construct desire in a certain mode of being/relating cannot be said to cohere analytically; this is to confuse rationality with tautology.

I know nothing about psychoanalysis and so cannot offer a reading of what these authors truly fetishize about the "machine" of capital. But were I to ask them the pop culture question of the day, I'm sure that capital would be their daddy. In broaching the question of the fetish, however, I do wish to at least begin to raise the notion of complicating desire. And this, I believe, is echoed in Robins and Webster as they try to untangle the logic of social taylorism... especially when they get to the $64,000 issue at the end of our readings and speculate upon "the irrationality that underpins [the cybernetic imaginatists'] compulsion to order" (p. 130; see also terry Eagleton's "Holy Terror" as a deconstructive reading of the war on terrorism as the chaotic, Dionysian will to order which underwrites the compulsion for "civilization"). Whereas the logic of something like a supersubject could be postulated then (an imagined superego of the social order, the big brain of capital organizing it all and thwarting crises with its dictatorial demands), an erroneous, heterogeneous order could be said to obtain (an imagined id at the level of the system, the big brain of capital as a multi-armed shiva with its hands in all the economic cookie jars).

Hinted at in the readings are speculations on this other facet of order-generation in the discourses of "autonomism." Not having read Negri and others yet, I find myself unable to comment or speak significantly on the themes therein. However, through DW's reading, it appears as though a question deserving discussion is the difference between the monolithic, universal antagonism of common groups articulated in their opposition to capital (students, engineers, janitors, etc...) and the careful attention to the localized, unique, particular brands of antagonism in any one group. Here, finally then, is my discount idea and but one cent - antagonism to capital is not a "value" in and of itself and should not be read as the organizing value, or its desire. Groups generate desire and values in and through antagonism - and to perform this inquiry seems the real value for a project of autonomist writing. What do people want? Why do they struggle? Simply to thwart, together? There must be a better way to read value and desire (and this is why I keep coming back to Nietzsche since this is perhaps the strangeness that organized his entire philosophy, namely, where does value come from if not the gods (or capital/culture)? In this light, we can begin to read capital's perverse fantasies to subsume us all as perhaps a farce we have fetishized through our very opposition of it. Perhaps there are other perverse fantasies out there that begin to unravel and defetishize capital...

WARNING: some of these links are sexually explicit, provocative and borderline offensive as they contain very adult and sexual language. Though most are innocuous, lame and quite short, I am compelled to state that it is not my intention to offend; please read at your own risk:







http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/nyc/308349637.html (epic mount)

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/ith/359545185.html (vag for sale)

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/det/367342914.html (f$%k chores)

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sac/396375017.html (tarp)

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/110504612.html (pennies)

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/den/306580551.html (tic tac boxes)

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/den/287000204.html (couch)

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/stl/257305465.html (booze for ring)

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/bos/119559400.html (guess the item)

Not too relevant, just pretty much the funniest thing I've ever read. http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/wdc/116720705.html (Cock pic art)