Re: [-empyre-] Matrixial Encounters

Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> · Thu, 21 Apr 2005 20:23:43 -0400 (EDT)

On Thu, 21 Apr 2005, McKenzie Wark wrote:
Alan writes:
Hi Ken - not trying to be difficult, but to understand. You say 'farmers 
and workers as a class alliance' for example. At this point, I'm not sure I 
understand what 'farmer' references

I call the USA/Europe/Japan the 'overdeveloped' world, partly
in the sense that it shot past a certain historical space, it went
'too far', so to speak.

I find this problematic; it assumes that there _is_ a historical and 
somewhat determinative space - I think that's also problematic. It didn't 
go 'too far' or 'too short' - 'it' went where 'it' went and where it goes. 
At least for me, the notion implies a troublesome ideology - it _should_ 
have gone to x, but look, it overshot to y.
I want to insist, however, that the overdeveloped world is
not one that resolved the antagonisms of class, whcih is
what postindustrial narratives mostly assert, and what
postmodern narratives tacitly accept. The class conflict
that still matters in world historical terms is over who owns
what hackers produce.

I'm not sure what postmodern narratives you're referencing. And certainly 
if the class conflict that 'still matters' in 'world historical terms' 
(that very phrase and its implications again of a great chain of being- 
history makes me even more uneasy) is that of hacking/ownership - why then 
would hackers however defined _be_ within or beneath the symbolic of 
class? In other words, if this is a remnant or residue, why class at all? 
Why not say there are real conflicts among production hacking property 
ownership etc. - why this 'world historical' or 'class'?
Which is not to say there aren't other struggles. I just heard
Rev. Jesse Jackson address the rally of NYU's graduate
student union, and he drew together the threads of race
and class and gender very well. And pointed out, in
passng, that the growth industry in many 'red state'
towns is the prisons.
And I gather the dominant industrly in Delaware which I may have wrong. 
This is clearly one of the most obscene elements of this proto-fascist 
state - the suffocation of dissidents by incarceration.
As I argue in the book, some forms of class conflict may
have become very dispersed and fragmented. I think that
certain kinds of class conflict over information are invisible
precisesly because of their ubiquity. File sharing is a social
movement. The Rev Jackson didn't mention it, but he
appealed to a synthesis without unity of points of struggle,
which would in turn imply some approach to the problem
of media, new media, media as education, as poesis, and
so on. That may be where some of the denizens of
empyre come in.

I agree here, but I'd say conflict, not class conflict. Take file-sharing; 
in a way I do it, but have little in common with kids at the eleven 
internet2 schools who are downloading - I think. File sharing may be a 
social movement for some; for most it's like the seepage of the rest of 
corruptive capital - here's an opportunity, seize it.

The danger in seeing difference everywhere is seeing all
kinds of difference as the same. Some differences are
different to others. Class has its own logic and effectivity.
One has to extract it from liberal list-making anf gestures
of inclusion, i think. To see it as a diagonal that polarises
the social field.
I don't agree re: the danger. I see it everywhere and am fascinated by its 
incoherencies. I don't think recognizing ubiquity necessarily points to 
blindness...
As i understand Tom Frank, he's calling for a return to
economic populism, to recreate a worker-farmer alliance.
Not in this language, but in a language of its own choosing.
The rhetorics of senators Edwards and Obana might be
trail balloons for exactly that.
http://www.ludiccrew.org
Thank you for the exchange! - Alan

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