deschooling.classroom(o^o)

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Početkom 1820-ih, kada Marx još uvek nije imao ni pet godina, razotkrivena je jedna vrlo domišljato konstruisana prevara. Naime, 1770-e konstruisao je Volfgang fon Kempelen mehaničkog Turčina, automatizovanog igrača šaha. Mašina se sastojala od modela ljudske glave i trupa u prirodnoj veličini, obučenog u tradicionalnu garderobu turskog čarobnjaka – na glavi je nosio turban, u levoj ruci držao je dugu, tanku lulu, dok mu je desna ruka ležala na komodi, na čijoj su se površini nalazile šahovska tabla i figure. Izgledalo je kao da mehanizam može da odigra jaku partiju šaha protiv čoveka, kao i da može da izvede skakačev kružni put – šahovski problem koji zahteva da konj obiđe čitavu tablu, zauzimajući, pri tome, svako polje samo po jednom. Početkom 1820-ih ispostavilo se, međutim, da se u komodi krije majstor šaha, koji, u stvari, vuče poteze koji su publici izgledali kao potezi koje vuče sama mašina.

Opisana prevara, očigledno se oslanjala na jedan quid pro quo. Uopšteno gledano, quid pro quo, posebno u svojoj skraćenoj verziji quiproquo, predstavlja vrstu nesporazuma u kojoj subjekt misli za neku osobu ili stvar da je neka druga osoba ili neka druga stvar. Specifičnost efekta quiproquo, kada je u pitanju pomenuti mehanički Turčin, sastojao se u zameni osobe za stvar – publika je, naime, mislila da mašina-stvar igra šah, zamenjujući time, a da toga nije ni svesna, operatera-osobu mašinom-stvari. I obrnuto, specifičnost efekta quiproquo, u slučaju koji razmatramo, počivao je, takođe, u zameni stvari za osobu – publici se, naime, činilo kao da je mrtva mašina-stvar živi čovek-igrač.

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Ovaj tekst je grupa ” Čitanje Marksovog Kapitala” koristila kao jedan od materijala za radionicu sa Dušanom Grljom.

Oblik vrednosti

Analiza robe je pokazala da ona predstavlja nešto dvorodno – upotrebnu vrednost i vrednost. Stoga, da bi neka stvar imala oblik robe, mora imati dvojaki oblik, oblik neke upotrebne vrednosti i oblik vrednosti. Oblik upotrebne vrednosti je oblik samog robnog tela, gvožđa, platna itd., njegov čulno osetan oblik postojanja. To je prirodan oblik. Oblik vrednosti robe jeste, naprotiv, njen društveni oblik.

A kako se izražava vrednost neke robe? Dakle, kako ona dobija svoj pojavni oblik? Kao odnos raznih roba. Da bismo pravilno analizirali oblik sadržan u takvom odnosu, moramo poći od njegovog najprostijeg, najnerazvijenijeg vida. Najprostiji odnos neke robe je, očigledno, njen odnos prema jednoj drugoj robi, svejedno kojoj. Stoga odnos dveju roba predstavlja najprostiji izraz vrednosti za neku robu. Read the rest of this entry »

Translated by Aileen Derieg

“Welcome to the Machine!” This was the way the university welcomed students in a satiric drawing by the German artist and writer Gerhard Seyfried in the 1970s.[1] Taking a closer look at the drawing, however, the “machine” turns out to be more of a factory, because it arranges the automated mass production of the specific commodity of knowledge in the universities. Seyfried’s knowledge factory also has elements of a ghost train (with all kinds of horrifying surprises for those riding it), a flipper device (the students as flipper balls being launched and propelled), a three-tier Nuremberg funnel (although knowledge here is funneled in – as it should be in a factory – in masses and anonymized). These kinds of illustrative transfers of central components of the factory as fordist core institution to other institutions have always been widespread. Yet what does it mean, when even at the transition to post-fordist modes of production the metaphor of the factory still continues to be applied to the university? Read the rest of this entry »

In the first part of my lecture in Belgrade (http://www.tkh-generator.net/sr/openedsource/from-biopolitics-to-necropolitics), January 2009, I introduced two concepts, de-linking and de-coloniality, implicating a certain cut with contemporary processes of capitalist institutionalization, control and subjugation. I can say that my proposal was and is a proposal for the intensification of a re-politicization of life. This re-politicization of life is a critical intervention capable of providing means, goals and forces for dealing with the present reality of global capitalism. Today, capitalism is clearly biopolitics, a radical institutionalization, control and subjugation of life, that needs, I argue, to be re-politicized, intensified, by changes brought with modes of management of life outside the First capitalist world, which is necropolitics.

Biopolitics is a horizon of articulating contemporary capitalist societies from the so-called politics of life, where life (it does not matter anymore, via Giorgio Agamben, if bare/naked life or life with forms) is seen as the zero degree of intervention of each and every politics into contemporary societies. But today capital’s surplus value is based on the capitalization of death (Latin necro) worlds. In the text “Necropolitics,” (2003) Achille Mbembe discusses this new logic of capital and its processes of geopolitical demarcation of world zones based on the mobilization of the war machine. Mbembe claims that the concept of biopolitics, due to the war machine and the state of exception being one of the major logics of contemporary societies, should be replaced with necropolitics. Necropolitics is connected to the concept of necrocapitalism, i.e., contemporary capitalism, which organizes its forms of capital accumulation that involve dispossession and the subjugation of life to the power of death. The necrocapitalist capturing of the social implies new modes of governmentality that are informed by the norms of corporate intensified rationality and deployed in managing violence, social conflicts, fear and the Multitude. No conflict that challenges the supreme requirements of capitalist rationalization is tolerable – economic growth, profit maximization, productivity, efficiency and the like. I argued that with this move Mbembe gave us a possibility to re-politicize biopolitics, saying that it is a time for its intensification as well as its historization.

In this second part of my lecture, I want to go on rearticulating, resuming, rewriting Santiago López Petit’s book, entitled Global Mobilization. Brief Treatise to Attack the Reality (La movilización global. Breve tratado para atacar la realidad) published in Spanish by Editorial Traficantes de Sueños, Barcelona in June 2009. Santiago López Petit is one of the key Spanish contemporary philosophical figures who was involved in workers’ struggles in the 1970s. Today, he participates in several political initiatives along with the groups Oficina 2004 and Espai en Blanc.

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