Notes: April 16, 2006.

Blog the Pinnochio theory steven shaviro

http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=490 The Pinnochio Theory, Steven Shaviro,
This entry was posted on Monday, April 17th, 2006 at 1:22 pm and is filed
under Age of Aesthetics, Theory.
Now, what I am calling an antinomy in the discussion about what has
changed today, as compared to the Fordist, Keynesian, welfare-state
capitalism I grew up with (Im 52), could be summarized as the difference
between (a certain reading of) Marx, and (a certain reading of McLuhan). It
has to do with how modes of production, and forms of power and control,
relate to technosocial changes. The movement from Fordism to
Walmartization is also that from massive assembly lines in Detroit to
flexible and just-in-time production systems dispersed around the globe;
from an economic system centered on industrial production to one that
seemingly pays more attention to advertising and circulation; and from
technologies of mass reproduction to technolgies of communications and
computing that shrink space and time, and incite multiplicity and
diversification.
Nates point here, I think, is twofold. First, the differences that Deleuze
observes between the societies of discipline and control are, at the most,
changes in tactics within an overall practice that of exploitation, or
extraction of surplus value, in the process of production that remains
dominant and unchanged. Second, both sorts of tactics (enclosure and
modulated control) were at work in the era of capitalist industrialization, in
19th century; and both tactics are still at work today. This means that
Deleuzes distinctions are trivial at best, when they arent entirely spurious.
And Nate therefore rejects Deleuzes claims for new modes of subjectivity
(and implicitly, for a radical redefinition of class consciousness) in
postmodern society.
On the other hand, there is the McLuhanite argument, for which these
technological changes are absolutely crucial. A change of medium, McLuhan
says, makes for a change in the sensorium, an alteration in the ratio of the
senses. The mutation of subjectivity therefore has to be taken seriously.
And this necessarily also implies changes in social, economic, and power
relations. This is where Deleuzes rupture, from discipline to control, would
take place. Its also where the figure of the consumer takes center stage
alongside (or even instead of) the worker, or better where these two figures
are merged. Hardt and Negri thus speak of affective labor, which is more
important than the old productive kind (or, more accurately, which
subsumes and includes old-fashioned industrial production together with
much else). Lazzarato speaks of immaterial labor,, and of the separation
of the capitalist enterprise from the factory. Deleuze and Guattari even
speak of machinic surplus value, which would be extracted alongside the
old-fashioned sort of surplus value that comes from living labor, since we
are in a posthuman era where the distinction between human beings and
machines, or between variable and constant capital, is no longer as rigid as

it used to be. Many theorists also speak of circulation as taking over from
production as the main sphere of capitalist activity. Edward Li Puma and
Benjamin Lee, referring to the frenzied trade in derivatives that is the most
massive form of financial transaction today, argue, for instance, that
circulation is the cutting edge of capitalism circulation is rapidly
becoming the principal means of generating profit, absorbing the capital
formerly directed towards production.
El texto de Shaviro es un comentario acerca de si la condicion actual del
capitalismo bebe ser entendida como una continuacion o como una ruptura
de la interpretacion Marxista. Asumiendo la posicin de Shaviro esta
ruptura estara delineada en los trabajos de Deleuze, Castells, Negri,
Lazaratto, Jameson que marcan la transformacin de la economa
keynesiana a la postfordista o usando la definicin de Jameson la
Walmartizacion de la economa. Shaviro nota,
The movement from Fordism to Walmartization is also that from massive assembly
lines in Detroit to flexible and just-in-time production systems dispersed around
the globe; from an economic system centered on industrial production to one that
seemingly pays more attention to advertising and circulation; and from technologies
of mass reproduction to technolgies of communications and computing that shrink
space and time, and incite multiplicity and diversification

The old dichotomy between "mental and manual labor," or between

"material labor and immaterial labor," risks failing to grasp the new nature
of productive activity, which takes this separation on board and transforms
it. The split between conception and execution, between labor and
creativity, between author and audience, is simultaneously transcended
within the "labor process" and reimposed as political command within the
"process of valorization."