Re: [SPAM] Re: [-empyre-] Matrixial Encounters

[Eduardo Navas <eduardo@navasse.net>]

Hello,

I was about to respond to this message, when I got a second message from
Henry Warwick.  I will respond to that one in a few hours. After I sleep...

For now I want to respond to Aliette's most recent commentaries.

---

Bonjour Aliette,

Je comprend le Français, mais la ecritur'est très dificile. Votre frustation
avec l'anglais est evident à moi. Il y a comprehensible.  Je te admire parce
que vous ecriver Anglais bien; c'est la vérité.  Je ne pouvais pas faire la
au Francais.  Votre pasion est evident dans la discussion.  Maintenant, les
suivant responses sont au Anglais.  Je vais responder a votre material
francais au Anglais, aussi.  Pardon moi.  C'est necessaire pour la
list-serve.  Je procede.



On 4/12/05 8:17 PM, "Aliette Guibert" <guibertc@criticalsecret.com> wrote:

> Sorry, a transgression in real : one friend not an asteroid (maybe) of mine
> but alternative charismatic representative has begun a hungry strike to
> accompany Marco Pannella (the founder of the Radical transnational party)
> who asks Italian amnesty for all the political prisoners as well as for
> several ones guilty of the small offences of common law. So I had to help
> him as well as possible (posting on the European lists etc.) even I am not
> an activist. For the lead years and by including the activists of Genoa (who
> are still imprisoned), it makes an account about 7000 persons concerned by
> the amnesty. In France, since the war of Algeria, we had a tradition of
> amnesty at every new presidential election, but this tradition was a little
> blown out since the second mandate of Mitterrand:) More any events of this
> sort strangly happened for the last week-end. That is exactly the very
> current of the local European country I live into.

I could cite cultural insiderism, but will not.  Many people on this list, I
can safely assume have had real circumstances where transgression is real.
What I am referring to being problematic, however, is a specific work (a
book) that calls for cultural reconsideration.

> 
> For the most unavailability I have a lot of late works to do all the day
> long since a pair of days and part of the nights, while the anglophone
> debate is not easy to me. For my part, the English-speaking answers are even
> more difficult than the readings; and there will be certainly nobody here to
> contradict me - having judged me in acts:) They are the real reasons for
> which I did not dash into an exegesis of Ken's book. Here you are very sharp
> in your arguments and your references (although I am not completely all
> right on your seeing of situationnists quite reduced to The Society of the
> spectacle, even if it is a work of importance. Maybe because I am of the
> generation who have crusader Debord and the "fanatics" in papers, in spaces
> in debate, and on walls ; I hold the recollection of all original IS
> publications since these former years - but you have probably read it for
> the best, as for my part just regarding the acts ?

I really understand that having time to respond is an issue.  However, if
you reread my post, you will notice that I did not mention the situationists
at all.  I only mentioned Debord because he is the person that inspires
Wark's book.




>> I am not going to describe the book in detail here, but I will say that as
>> many on the list know, it proposes hackers as a new type of class
> resisting
>> yet another class: the vector class (a global form of the bourgeois adept
> to
>> information).
> 
> Not really "bourgeois" but 'resocracts ('netcrats) - as a solution suggested
> by the French translator, I have choosen for "resocrats" which tells of the
> stream - : the managing category more the oligarchy at the power. They
> manage the information; they govern and control streams; more they are the
> administrators and the managers but they do not hold the production
> resources. So they do not form a class but a sphere of influence which
> steers and controls; a layer distributed among several categories of the
> administration of the business or the power.
> 
> As in a game with a rule of two partners, the third part of this vision is
> of people excluded (but it appears to be a notorious choice from the part of
> the author, I think).

The book is divided into chapters.  One of the is called "Class."  Wark is
very clear in defining each of the classes he sees rising.  He states on the
Vector class:

"Information, like land or capital, becomes a form of property monopolized
by a class, a class of vectoralists, so named because they control the
vectors along which information is abstracted, just as capitalists control
the material means with which goods are produces, and pastoralists land with
which food is produced." (029)

I site this at length to show how the vector class is connected to well
established Marxist definitions of class.  So they are a class that are
supplanting or joining those in power (or have those in power actually
converted?), in fact, with basic deduction it is easy to see where the
vector class largely arose from... The Bourgeoisie.




> 
>> The book has been proposed as a reproposition of Marxism and
>> has been praised by many.
> 
> It is not a theory - BUT an essay - it is a GAME suggested to be played in
> real as a social reality and dialectically contracting its social transgress
> ion as possible.
> 
>> I, however, admit to be a bit skeptical because
>> the book fails to deal with a major problem with class--its hierarchy.
> 
> I have just answered that it is not the vision of class, so there is not
> hierarchy or yes : one have the power but not holding the resources ; the
> other one holds the resources (technology - objective material and human
> structural and cognitive resources of medias) but do not hold the power :
> just a service. The power : the adequat work to manage the streams and for
> another part the politic power and for others the administrative power of
> the decision) and all the others as excluded, out of representative in the
> game in matter of consciousness and of real civic power. In fact it is a
> reintegration of The dialectics of the master and the slave by Hegel to the
> current actuality of the divided society.


Yet the "game" has such a rule within its framework.  It is part of what
gets people who might play eliminated.  This may apply to the issue of
political economy that is raised by Henry Warwick  in the post I hope to
respond to later, actually.

> 
>> book essentializes hackers as being a type of universal class, following
>> Marx's position on the proletariat.
> 
> Not really. Prolétariat are mass egual to the social mass. In Ken's vision
> Hackers are diverse but they are not mass. They are high slaves. They are
> Samouraïs. The largest part of the people is out of the game. At last the
> hacker is not a class as he crosses several classes but it is the same with
> the Vectors (whose name by Ken is the vectorial class of course).
> 
> In reality Hackers are extremely
>> diverse individuals (whose class ranges form country to country) who may
> not
>> actually be interested in politics; some of them have very practical
> reasons
>> behind their doodling, some like it because they are really curious, and
>> others... Well, other simply like the power.  But others are interested in
>> research following the paradigms of scientific investigations, and others
>> simply want to make money in the long run, via the gift economy or any
> other
>> means of legitimization.
> 
> Exactly what does not plead for a social class grouped around the same
> factor of expoloitation and of progress...

We can disagree on this.  I could again quote the book, but in the end it is
a matter of opinion and how one relates to Marxist ideology (yep, it too is
an ideology--before you jump read Althusser).  I stand in disagreement.


> 
>> So to claim the term "hacker" as a name for a type
>> of "cultural producer" is already running into murky waters.  The book is
>> short-cited in this sense.  It starts with abstractions and is never
> really
>> able to contest the very limitations that Marxism ran into post 1968 for
>> that matter in a practical way.  There is no hint as to how such notions
> can
>> move beyond the  manifesto--something that Debord (who Wark claims
> inspired
>> the book) is able to do very eloquently by showing how his culture was
>> enslaved by spectacular time.
> 
> We are widely beyond the society of the spectacle in Ken's book; we are yet
> in the society of 1984 wher the hacker is an impure dandy - secretly or
> obviously rebellious for anytime and in diverse modes.


When I cited the Society of the Spectacle, I mentioned that Debord made the
book clearly a call to serious issues at play during his time.  It has an
urgency that is still felt today when read.  With Wark's book I see this not
really being a strong point.

> 
>> So where to look?  I would say Benjamin.  He knew better than to
> speculate,
>> even though he heavily relied on Marx for his critical position, he
>> certainly knew better than to predict.  He stuck to analyzing to then
>> develop real pockets of resistance.  The result as we all know is an essay
>> that is so overcited that we may want to hate it, yet it is still vert
>> relevant today even today.  But resistance is not enough.  There needs to
> be
>> actual strategies for the long term for real change.
> 
> The strategy of the hacker is not the dictatorship of the prolétariat to get
> at the power BUT to exist in the actual not specially in the spectacle.
> 
> He is a symbol of resource, objective, and project contracted in real time
> of his production egual as social acts and way of life...

I am not reviving the proletariat struggle here.  I am actually quiet
skeptical of it for becoming a type of universal colonial icon that was
imposed as a disguised European model of resistance particulary in Latin
America--and this is my cultural insiderism by the way...

I brought up Benjamin because he appeared to be cautious and alet during his
own period.  In reality, we need a combination of writers to beg, borrow and
steal from, including the usual suspects like Foucault to post-colonial and
transnational writers, like Spivak and Stuart Hall or Coco Fusco; yet,
really young cats are outthere now, and we need to get to know them.  The
game is changing, and we certainly cannot be citing the same dead people.
(I am certainly guilty of this too, by the way)

> 
> pardonnez-moi de poursuivre en français pour éviter les contresens :
> ------------------------------------------
> 
> « A hacker manifesto » de Ken Wark :
> 
> D'après moi : La question est que ce texte de Ken pourrait être pris pour un
> dinosaure; quelque chose de l'effet retard post-communiste, de révisionniste
> même du manifeste du parti communiste, le réveil d'un ouf antédiluvien
> communiste de parti, ou de retour des ses avant-gardes : en fait cela relève
> d'un effet critique : il faut créer la distance pour viser la catharsis. La
> distance critique s'exerce aussi par rapport à l'utopie. Contrairement à
> TAZ, A hacker manifesto n'est pas une utopie, c'est un monde qui s'effectue
> et s'innove en temps réel de son histoire, à partir d'un mythe.


History of real times emerging from a myth.  This  would certainly demand a
deep revision of Hegel's principles of history.  Something I don't see
happening in the book.  To do this, would need a more detailed reevaluation
of, both, Marx and Hegel and their interpretations of history. I read the
book as an extension of well established dialectics.

> 
> Quel est le mythe ? Dans « A hacker manifesto », de Ken, c'est le marxisme
> léninisme lui-même, qui est constitué comme un mythe. Ce qu'il dépasse
> chronologiquement c'est le communisme scientifique comme vérité historique
> et sociale. La transformation symbolique de la société qu'il décrit, comme
> dans la poésie épique ou le théâtre tragique, c'est le dépassement de la
> vérité du projet moderne cautionnée par l'utopie qu'il prétend accomplir,
> par l'existence comme événement contemporain contenant son futur prédictible
> (ce n'est pas exécutif, c'est aléatoire) - en quoi, c'est un texte cohérent,
> organique.

This the book does do.  I actually do think is written very well. And as a
piece of literature, I accept it.  If we take your proposition of critical
fiction, then the above fits quite well.

> 
> c'est un manifeste de la transgression historique par la création littéraire
> romanesque elle-même (la transgression de l'histoire sociale par l'invention
> de mondes arbitraires logiques et réels). Un activisme de la simulation de l
> 'environnement et de la praxis au niveau du manifeste qui succèderait au
> manifeste du parti communiste, en le plagiant par insolence (avec un bout du
> « Capital »).
> 
> C'est une fiction critique, une recherche qui se donne la forme de l'essai.

That it critical fiction, I am not sure.  It clearly grounds itself on very
specific theories that have affected the world in incredible ways.  The book
is clearly proposed as a (I quote the inside sleeve):
"systematic restatement of Marxist thought for the age of cyberspace and
globalization."  I don't see critical fiction anywhere, to be honest.
Perhaps it is your interpretation and I respect that.  But this is not how
the book has been promoted.


> Pour moi c'est une oeuvre littéraire importante, transgressive de toutes ses
> références y compris poétiquement appliquée au domaine social, et inspirante
> politiquement. C'est une oeuvre qui innove une littérature organique
> héroïque émergente qui demandera un peu de temps pour être lue sans
> malentendu.
> 
> Et c'est bien ma raison passionnée - et ma fierté - de vouloir le publier en
> francophonie.
> 

This will be the last section I respond to.  Passion can take us a long way,
way past transgression, I dare propose.

I did read your section on hacking, but in the end, responding to every
section of your comments may not lead us to a more fruitful discussion.
Certainly we can drop the book from the general discussion, unless others
want to elaborate more on it.

I will only add that it is obvious that I read the book and this means that
I put some time considering its ideas.  I actually plan to teach it when
appropriate.  In the end, it brings to the table a bold honest reevaluation
of Marxism, something that nobody has done for a long time.  For that I
commend it and have consumed it (I bought the book) and I actually do
recommend it to others.  That I disagree with it does not mean that I don't
think it is valuable.  It is.  I wish you the best with the translation
(which hopefully will be a transgression of language).

A plus tard-- trop de énergie à toi.

Eduardo