[-empyre-] Metabolisms

Tue Apr 28 17:21:35 EST 2009

Steve--

I appreciate your engagement of Nick's ideas, and your distrust of the universality of capital, which, following the workings of contingency as defined by Leibniz, could be other without logical contradiction.  

I think Nick's move in and out of Metaphysics is to connect capital to Code, as in his argument that there is already currency buried deep within our own chemical structure, making of capital a sort of external application of constitutive biological predisposition.  I agree with you in that what we need is to expose the contingencies of capital in order to loosen its hegemonic hold (here I am thinking of the way Laclau and Mouffe define the term in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy), and also to provide a genealogy to capital which does not bury its origins in a biological metaphor occluding capital's fundamental contingency (making capital's thereness into an ahistorical quiddity which we cannot critique, but only accept and, to some extent, appreciate).  

What is universal is exchange; what is not universal is the particular form of exchange constituting capitalism.  How the universal of exchange particularizes itself in this specific constellation of means, bodies and activities (labor) making capitalism capitalism is the subject of a history in urgent need of continued historical exposition: I think this is what you are suggesting, rather cogently, and even what Nick hints at, in his recent attention to the "liveliness" of capital.  Perhaps a fruitful direction for Nick would be to differentiate exchanges with a sharper razor, such that the thereness of Code is examained in terms of its multifarious resultant individualities, or to reflect upon what Code will evolve into next, as capital is presumably only one of its stopping points, there being no end to the Code's vitality (Bergson), or liveliness (Marx/Haraway).

My only questions would be how you connect capital with Locke's theories of the genesis of private property, and secondly to inquire as to ho you would suggest folding Rousseau into the mix, as far as his thesis of the social contract is concerned.  Is there a contractualiy to capitalism, or does capital suspend contractuality through a naturalization of its thereness (your critique of Nick)?  It's back to that department store en Geneve for me.  

*******************************************
Michael Angelo Tata, PhD  347.776.1931-USA
http://www.MichaelAngeloTata.com/

> Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:26:33 +0100
> From: sdv at krokodile.co.uk
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Biomes
> 
> Michael,
> 
> It's not finally a matter of exchange but rather whether capital and 
> capitalism should be defined as a universal in the way that Nick 
> suggests. It's clear that even in the use of the biochemical example of 
> 'breathing as a capitalist action' Nick is applying his local social 
> norms to define capital as a universal. It would be a small movement for 
> a communist to make precisely the same case and define communism as a 
> universal 'breathing as a communist action', as a consequence exchange 
> and capital should not be considered as equivalent. As a universal 
> capital remains more deeply social and ungiving than the more normal 
> alternatives of purely economic definitions of (M-C-M). 
> 
> The question becomes does a position which defines capital's thereness 
> as material and biochemical enable social change or even social 
> evolution and whether the deep pessimism that seems unavoidable with the 
> conceptualisation of capital as a universal (breathing as a capitalist 
> action) give us any grounds for hope.
> 
> steve
> 
> Michael Angelo Tata, PhD wrote:
> > Nick + Steve:
> > 
> > I think the question is whether or not there can be a history of 
> > exchange, or whether "exchange" transcends historical analysis 
> > because, like Being and Time in Heidegger's system, it has always been 
> > there as a primary given or noumenon, and we have no analytical access 
> > to its fundamental thereness. Personally, I think that even if we 
> > trace exchange back to metabolism, there is the possibility of 
> > constructing a genealogy, albeit a biochemical one. Currently, I'm 
> > reading Lynn Margulis' /Dazzle Gradually/, and paying a lot of 
> > attention to her idea that life began as symbiosis (a motile 
> > spirochete invading a stationary archaebacterium, and the two forming 
> > a stable and transmissible system). But even in her thought, there is 
> > pre-exchange, a time preceding even the push and pull of metabolism or 
> > symbiosis, making it possible to rephrase the question of a history of 
> > exchange as a problematics of bacteriology. For her, even the 
> > exchanges of capital refer back to the exchanges of metabolism, which 
> > ultimately begin with the interactions of bacteria with environment 
> > and one another, which hearken back to the autopoiesis that made 
> > individual existence and its interactions possible in the first place. 
> >
> >
> > *******************************************
> > *Michael Angelo Tata, PhD 347.776.1931-USA*
> > *http://www.MichaelAngeloTata.com/* <http://www.michaelangelotata.com/>
> >
> >
> >
> > 
> > > Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:27:47 -0700
> > > From: editor at intertheory.org
> > > To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] local currencies
> > >
> > >
> > > sd...it all depends upon how you read/perceive a market...and 
> > exchange...my view is quasi-empirical: in such a view, 'breathing' is 
> > a capitalist action, wherein a being, call it 'A' --capitalizes upon 
> > the extant oxygen in a given gas containing milieu, further utilizing 
> > that oxygen to drive cellular processes that enable energy production 
> > in the form of cellular ATP. The Romantics will call such activity, as 
> > it drives a certain familiar mammal around the planet, human 'life'. 
> > There is even a built-in regulator of ecological balance, in the sense 
> > that one person can only breathe so much at a time...on the other 
> > hand, other activities of anthro-capital utilization (e.g. financial 
> > speculation, local currency creation,etc.) are checked by more 
> > anthropic laws...
> > >
> > > Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
> > > Editor, Kritikos
> > > http://intertheory.org
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message ----
> > > From: "sdv at krokodile.co.uk" <sdv at krokodile.co.uk>
> > > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> > > Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 2:25:39 PM
> > > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] local currencies
> > >
> > > Nick
> > >
> > > Given that earlier you claimed that 'we are all capitalists' and in the
> > > same note proceeded to mention the 'market' in terms which effectively
> > > continue the fetishization of the concept which we've been living with
> > > throughout the last three decades, to then revert back to a currency
> > > localized in geographic terms seems a little inconsistent...
> > >
> > > Still there have always been methods of exchange which are external to
> > > capitalist markets, for markets existed before capital and will exist
> > > long after capital has been superceded.
> > >
> > > steve
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Nicholas Ruiz III wrote:
> > > > these people may really be on to something with this 
> > practice...why wouldn't or shouldn't every locale have their own currency?
> > > >
> > > > NRIII
> > > >
> > > > Nicholas Ruiz III, Ph.D
> > > > Editor, Kritikos
> > > > http://intertheory.org
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ----- Original Message ----
> > > > From: davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com>
> > > > To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> > > > Sent: Monday, April 6, 2009 2:35:14 PM
> > > > Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Eddies, Whirlwinds, Trade Winds
> > > >
> > > > I just read an article in the Detroit News on their new local 
> > currency:
> > > > 
> > http://www.detnews.com/article/20090323/BIZ/903230389/Detroit+cash+keeps+hometown+humming
> > > >
> > > > It's not "extra-marketable"... but I do like that it tries to keep 
> > money local.
> > > >
> > > > Davin
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Sun, Apr 5, 2009 at 8:58 PM, { brad brace } <bbrace at eskimo.com> 
> > wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> On Sun, 5 Apr 2009, G.H. Hovagimyan wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>>> ghh...what might an 'extra-marketable' utopia look like...?
> > > >>>>
> > > >>> ... In New York there are hundreds of artists collectives that
> > > >>> are now functioning outside of the market. They share loft spaces,
> > > >>> produce work online and offline and function despite the
> > > >>> market...
> > > >>>
> > > >> you'd know better than me G.H. (I haven't set foot in NYC
> > > >> since the 70-80's), so I'm genuinely interested to know
> > > >> about all these many suddenly successful artists' co-ops...
> > > >> care to name a few? (or is this wistful posturing...)
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> /:b
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> _______________________________________________
> > > >> empyre forum
> > > >> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > > >> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > > _______________________________________________
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> > > > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
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> > > > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> > > >
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> >
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