[-empyre-] Mediated Matters and design abjections

[John Hopkins]

Thanks Johannes for that reference and your comments...

> < Forms of Life as commodities
>
> The society of the spectacle undoubtedly complies with technology-based,
> post-industrial capitalism, its logic of production as well as the modern
> logic of representation: it is the outcome of hyper-technologization and
> functionalization, codifying life and prescribing processes of
> subjectivation, which are nothing less than forms of subjugation. The new
> model up for debate, as it surpasses the model of developed modernity,
> introduces a completely new commodity to the game: the forms of life itself.
> In reference to Debord’s definition of the society of the spectacle, one
> could define this new model as “capital accumulated to the point that it
> becomes a form of life”.

> The new model thus takes over the ‘un-producible’, totalizing the range of
> the market....

I'm constantly amazed at the humanistic clinging to the idea that humans
actually think they control something that they cannot ultimately explain the
existence of -- that is, *life*. The human (mental) process of abstracted
objectification (& subjectivation!) seems so helpless in the face of a cosmos of
the unknown. We pretend that we can 'manage change' at all scales. (Not only
that, but manage it 'rationally'. Hah!)

This may sound incredibly cynical, but springs from a genuine sense of
curiosity: with what I've seen/experienced in life -- across science, art,
politics, culture -- I would very much like to be around for the collapse of
human systems in the world -- the collective hubris of our present time is
really nauseating at times! Yeah, The Market, pffff! Between the total 
abstraction of money (see http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/archives/1199) and the 
absolutely counter-reality of constant growth, what are people thinking??

Cheers,
jh



-- 
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Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD
grounded on a granite batholith
twitter: @neoscenes
http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/
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