[-empyre-] networks of catastrophe + terror/capital

Sun Nov 30 00:12:02 EST 2008

Hello,
I would like to first say how terribly sad I feel about what has happened
in Bombay/Mumbai. I have connections with the city, which makes it all
seem so unreal, like a very bad dream.

I have just finished reading ‘Southern Theory: The global dynamics of
knowledge in social science’ by Raewyn Connell (2007). I recommend the
book as an excellent introduction to the recent history of the global
knowledge economy we now live in. Connell makes several points that I
think can be related to a discussion around the codes of capital,
colonialism, globalization and the practice of what is collectively
labeled sociology. I thought a few badly expressed ideas that have emerged
for me in reading Connell may be relevant to the discussion going on here.

Connell explains "I use the term 'Southern Theory' for several reasons.
First, the phrase calls attention to the periphery-center relations in the
realm of knowledge. The editors of the Indian periodical Subaltern Studies
used the term 'subaltern' not so much to name a social category as to
highlight relations of power (See Chapter 8). Similarly, I use the term
'Southern' not to name a sharply bounded category of states and societies,
but to emphasize relations - authority, exclusion, inclusion, hegemony,
partnership, sponsorship, appropriation - between intellectuals and
institutions in the metropole and those in the world periphery." (Connell
ix)

What I thought was particularly interesting in Connell's text is the
suggestion that the first neoliberal social system to be implemented in a
post-colonial state was by the Pinochet regime in Chile (grounded in blood
in 1973). This does suggest connections between the free flow of capital
(i.e. that is 'free' between those who have capital, which is between the
elites) and violence.

A second overarching point that is made by Connell is that the hegemony
maintained by the global north/metropole/center (Europe, North America) in
knowledge production (and quid pro quo the activism/s emerging from it)
has resulted in a ruinous trail of conflicts and suffering in the regions
outside these nodes of power. The coups of the 70s and 80s in South
America, the Iranian revolution of 1979, the horrors of South East Asia in
the 70s began as ideological conflicts. The preliminary stages of these
conflicts were often struggles between systems of knowledge. The
ideologically mixed, but place-specific thought of Ali Shariati
(1933-1977) is taken up by Connell as an example of a synthesis of
metropolitan and southern. The work of Shariati was effectively smashed by
the triumphant ideology in Iran, which remains largely intact and in power
today. This regime is diametrically opposed to the metropole by its own
architects and in doing so it fulfills the needs of the militarized West
to manifest a threat and maintain an insane volume of spending on
armaments.

As well as resistance to the centre, by adopting the discursive stances of
the metropole and performing theory and analysis according to the contexts
from which the concepts emerge (deconstruction, post-structuralism,
post-colonialism and so on), generations of academics, activists,
community workers and similar have participated in the same structures
which they were often trying to dismantle.

The alternative is not a ‘year zero’ style scorched earth, but rather an
adaptive observance of the obviously important knowledge produced by the
metropole and a careful attention to, and development of, the wealth of
knowledge situated in the societies outside the hegemonic centre/s.

Examples of figures working with place-specific knowledge systems given by
Connell are many; Raúl Prebisch, Cardoso and Faletto, Hopenhayn, Montecino
and Néstor García-Canclini, al-Afgahni, Al-e Ahmad and Ali Shariati,
Ranajit Guha, Veena Das, Asis Nandy, the Dahomey philosopher Paulin
Hountondji, and the Australians Vivien Johnson, Noel Pearson,  and Connell
herself (to name but a few). It is such work which needs to be moved into
a central position in the creation of pubic policy, education, and
activism.

Identity is at the center of these projects. It is indiscriminate and
ruthless power (from the gun and the grenade) being used in an attempt to
control identity that we are witnessing in the bloody foyers of the Taj
and Trident-Oberoi Hotels. A militarized ‘solution’ (after the event?)
will be no doubt part of the response by the Indian state, supported by
the United States and other power hungry nations (at this stage even
Pakistan, the Faust of the subcontinent dealing with both sides, is
sending intelligence forces). The deepening crisis is a null end game,
increased security for no other reason than continuing the system that
necessitates the increasing of security. Connell attributes responsibility
for this dangerous farce beyond just the military-industrial complex, it
is an pan-institutional problem:

"Corporations are not the only institutions that allow the rich countries
to exercise control and accumulate resources. There is also the
metropolitan state, changing from its days of plump imperial pride to its
scarecrow neoliberal present, thinning its commitment to citizen's
well-being while growing its capacity for external destruction. There are
museums and research institutions that have been key players in the
centralisation of data from the colonial world. There are new sciences and
technologies that, as Al-e Ahmad (1962) observed, lie behind the machine
civilization that is the vehicle of Westoxification [Farsi: gharbzadegi].
Since his day computer technology has made the point even more forcibly.
And there is the problem of tracing the changing locus of power in a
system where now, as Garcia Canclini (1999:13) puts it the main decisions
that shape everyday life 'are taken in places that are inaccessible and
difficult to identify" (Connell, Southern Theory. 216)

Connell states elsewhere that Al-e Ahmad's suspicion of the machinist
metropole was a not a resistance to technological change but rather a
desire for the machines to be within the control of the fellahin.

"Only the society that makes machines, rather than always importing them,
can control their power and use them in a labour-intensive, more
appropriate agriculture that would reduce imports and support the
population." (Connell 123)

Granted Connell is no economist. Being able to produce a good, be it a
high-end manufactured one, does not guarantee an equitable society. But I
believe the point regarding access to and use of technology in a global
perspective is a good one. Witness the travesty that is internet access in
sub-Saharan Africa today.

For more on Southern Theory see:
http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-March-2008/connell.html

http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-March-2008/jolly.html

/Jim Barrett
29/11/08
Umeå Sweden

> Interesting as far as it goes. But limited by the extent to which it
> ignores the way in which fear and terror pervaded pre-capitalist
> societies. (for example -Virillo's prized catholic religion was founded
> on fear, terror and politics. ) If we now recognize that terror is
> something endemic to capital, which in our times I think it must be,
> then it should be more explicitly identified with the ever-increasing
> depth of the class hierarchy within global capital. It's difficult to
> always remember that it is now deeper then ever before in human history.
>
> It is not then that capital encodes terror,  rather that capital now
> produces terror as a by product of it's increasingly globalized network
> structure. The consequence of the network society is the increasing
> mediaevalisation of human relations, from personal to working and
> beyond. This reappearance of serfdom and slavery, the bonds of vassalage
> which place free human beings at the beck and call of lords - is why
> their has been an increase in sheer terror. The current global economic
> crisis will make the the structures even more global.
>
> The events of Mumbai are not just a circus but the consequences of  the
> new serfs building Dubai and because the network society is a catastrophe.
>
> steve
>
>
>
> Verena Conley wrote:
>> Excellent point. Of course, terror is endemic to capitalism. Though we
>> still have to define it.
>> Also, since earlier we spoke of catastrophes, it seems fairly safe to
>> say that free market capitalism the way it was practiced since 1989
>> but especially 2000 is the real catastrophe.
>>
>> Verena
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 5:05 PM, simon <swht at clear.net.nz
>> <mailto:swht at clear.net.nz>> wrote:
>>
>>     Does this mean - the following - the following (too late), which my
>>     earlier post was an attempting to articulate: that capital encodes
>>     terror? makes use of it in its flows of symbolic exchange? as if
>>     having
>>     reached a critical velocity, the accident of history is given to
>>     returning endlessly?
>>
>>     Or conversely has there been some sort of symbolic phase shift
>> whereby
>>     the simulacrum, the coded world, that Image of
>>     thought-as-representation, now only runs by circulating, through the
>>     circulation of, acts/networked nodes of terrestrial and
>>     extraterrestrial
>>     terror? Is capital now entrained in the duration of terror? (As we
>> are
>>     entrained in the durations of its spectacular technological means.)
>>
>>     Simon Taylor
>>
>>     www.squarewhiteworld.com <http://www.squarewhiteworld.com>
>>     www.brazilcoffee.co.nz <http://www.brazilcoffee.co.nz>
>>
>>
>>     Nicholas Ruiz III wrote:
>>     > As a reflection of the transparency of evil (Baudrillard), the
>> whole
>>     > lot of it, Mumbai, etc.--is commerical art...and the millions of
>>     > downloads, transmissions and commentaries are its market, paid
>>     for in
>>     > broadcast fees, cable and satellite subscriptions and financed by
>>     > advertisers: with media art critics and all!  We are enveloped by
>> a
>>     > postmodern Roman media coliseum, where gladiatorial urges are
>>     elicited
>>     > and fulfilled, where spectators take part in the war games,
>>     which are
>>     > repeated endlessly and archived for posterity on the Network.
>>     >
>>     > NRIII
>>     >
>>     > Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
>>     > Editor, Kritikos
>>     > http://intertheory.org
>>     >
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     empyre forum
>>     empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au <mailto:empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
>>     http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Verena Andermatt Conley
>>
>> Department of Comparative Literature and Romance Languages
>> and Literature
>> Dana Palmer 202
>> Harvard University
>> Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
>> tel: 617-495-2274; 617-496-6090
>> fax: 617-496-4682
>>
>> http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~rll/ <http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Erll/>
>>
>> Kirkland House
>> 85 Dunster Street
>> Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
>> tel: 617-495-2272
>> fax: 617-496-4620
>>
>> http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~kirkland/
>> <http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/%7Ekirkland/>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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-- 
PhD Candidate,
HUMlab.
Department of Language Studies.
Umeå University
+46 (0)90 786 6584
Umeå University.SE-901 87.Umeå.Sweden
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