Comments on: … is the relationship between labor power and bio-power? http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/ A working notebook Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:21:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.1-alpha by: Nate http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2376 Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:59:42 +0000 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2376 hi Colonel, Thanks for that. I don't know Foucault well enough to say much more just now. One thing I will say re: biopolitics and all that, like I said the only uses of the term I'm familiar with are those by Agamben and by post-operaismo folk like Negri, Lazzarato, etc. Re: the former, some of the point seems to me obvious and old - in some ways a reiteration of a point made by anarchists and others - but since few people seem to make the point I'm glad he makes it. With the latter, I find much about their uses of the term off-putting but I think the positive use or function to it is to open up space for a more heterodox (and accurate) marxism that considers unwaged labor and so forth. Even though I think the post-operaismo material is inadequate on those themes, it can serve as an entry point to begin paying attention to them and working out how to make them make sense in marxist terms. That's how it worked for me - I got excited about those conversations because it connected some dots for me, then those same dots became the source for some of the main arguments I want to make against all that. On Lefebvre, thanks for the tip. I'm pretty sure I've read at least two of his books but none of it stuck. I used to be enamored of the Situationists and I read Lefebvre connected to that. I should get back to him sometime. cheers, Nate hi Colonel,
Thanks for that. I don’t know Foucault well enough to say much more just now. One thing I will say re: biopolitics and all that, like I said the only uses of the term I’m familiar with are those by Agamben and by post-operaismo folk like Negri, Lazzarato, etc. Re: the former, some of the point seems to me obvious and old - in some ways a reiteration of a point made by anarchists and others - but since few people seem to make the point I’m glad he makes it. With the latter, I find much about their uses of the term off-putting but I think the positive use or function to it is to open up space for a more heterodox (and accurate) marxism that considers unwaged labor and so forth. Even though I think the post-operaismo material is inadequate on those themes, it can serve as an entry point to begin paying attention to them and working out how to make them make sense in marxist terms. That’s how it worked for me - I got excited about those conversations because it connected some dots for me, then those same dots became the source for some of the main arguments I want to make against all that.
On Lefebvre, thanks for the tip. I’m pretty sure I’ve read at least two of his books but none of it stuck. I used to be enamored of the Situationists and I read Lefebvre connected to that. I should get back to him sometime.
cheers,
Nate

]]> by: chabert http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2375 Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:39:09 +0000 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2375 P.S. Nate, I think you might prefer a lot of the work of <a href="http://as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/222/2001.Brenner.ANTIPODE1.pdf" rel="nofollow">Henri Lefebvre</a>, covering much of the same "territory" but differently, to Foucault. P.S. Nate, I think you might prefer a lot of the work of Henri Lefebvre, covering much of the same “territory” but differently, to Foucault.

]]> by: chabert http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2374 Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:18:23 +0000 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2374 oh and the way foucault talks about "power" mainly serves to obfuscate property as a special and specially important sort of exercise of power in capitalism. oh and the way foucault talks about “power” mainly serves to obfuscate property as a special and specially important sort of exercise of power in capitalism.

]]> by: chabert http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2373 Mon, 14 Jan 2008 07:06:39 +0000 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2373 I think if you really take in everything Foucault argues, biopolitics does indeed belong to capitalism, because the description involves a state undertaking to form a population as a resource which not only works but consumes in a certain way. The state's role in guaranteeing certain kinds of commodity consumption belongs entirely to capitalism. Pre and non capitalist societies can/do/did both discipline and control producers as producers, but in none is either the state or the ruling class overly concerned with the productive class' expenditures on goods. Foucault's model institution is the university; his model person subject to control is not someone living at subsistence level; he is describing france in the postwar period. Other (marxist) theorists/sociologists/philosophers in the period also saw a break of some kind, with power in capitalist societies uniquely concerned with populations as consumer markets as well as wealth producers. It's a legitimate thing to notice - political economy of the early 18th century in england is the first place one really sees the economy discussed as part of divine nature with the articfical needs of consumer society part of a divine plan, etc.. I think Virno is right though that biopolitics and biopower are more obfuscatory than clarifying; they obfuscate a) the history, that is how postwar france came to be as it was, b) the role of class struggle c) the primacy of exploitation and accumulation. For Foucault power is kind of pure creativity, and people are sort of really just passive creatures of bourgeois society, the nation state and its institutions. virutally all (possible) resistance is individual and really nothing more than a body writhing mindlessly in the toils of the creative control. with this neitzschean conviction, there is also a kind of hegelian predestination going on, a sort of crypto-divine design that is driving the replacement of discipline by control. foucault goes so far as to "clean up" his history to make it suit this design. and with the all powerful state and its institutions, enjoying a monopoly on creativity - its d'annunzian almost, how completely the bourgeoisie has created the world, and created humanity - and the sort of routine suppression of the evidence against this portrait of history and human affairs, there's not much room for either revolutionary or ameliorative collective political action. I think if you really take in everything Foucault argues, biopolitics does indeed belong to capitalism, because the description involves a state undertaking to form a population as a resource which not only works but consumes in a certain way. The state’s role in guaranteeing certain kinds of commodity consumption belongs entirely to capitalism. Pre and non capitalist societies can/do/did both discipline and control producers as producers, but in none is either the state or the ruling class overly concerned with the productive class’ expenditures on goods. Foucault’s model institution is the university; his model person subject to control is not someone living at subsistence level; he is describing france in the postwar period. Other (marxist) theorists/sociologists/philosophers in the period also saw a break of some kind, with power in capitalist societies uniquely concerned with populations as consumer markets as well as wealth producers. It’s a legitimate thing to notice - political economy of the early 18th century in england is the first place one really sees the economy discussed as part of divine nature with the articfical needs of consumer society part of a divine plan, etc.. I think Virno is right though that biopolitics and biopower are more obfuscatory than clarifying; they obfuscate a) the history, that is how postwar france came to be as it was, b) the role of class struggle c) the primacy of exploitation and accumulation. For Foucault power is kind of pure creativity, and people are sort of really just passive creatures of bourgeois society, the nation state and its institutions. virutally all (possible) resistance is individual and really nothing more than a body writhing mindlessly in the toils of the creative control. with this neitzschean conviction, there is also a kind of hegelian predestination going on, a sort of crypto-divine design that is driving the replacement of discipline by control. foucault goes so far as to “clean up” his history to make it suit this design. and with the all powerful state and its institutions, enjoying a monopoly on creativity - its d’annunzian almost, how completely the bourgeoisie has created the world, and created humanity - and the sort of routine suppression of the evidence against this portrait of history and human affairs, there’s not much room for either revolutionary or ameliorative collective political action.

]]> by: fanboi http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2366 Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:39:03 +0000 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2366 Er, <code>&auml;</code> Er, ä

]]> by: fanboi http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2365 Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:34:48 +0000 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/13/is-the-relationship-between-labor-power-and-bio-power/#comment-2365 To get an umlaut over a lowercase a use html special character &auml;. Here's a handy reference, http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/reference/entity/index.php. To get an umlaut over a lowercase a use html special character ä.

Here’s a handy reference, http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/reference/entity/index.php.

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