John Protevi and the embodiment of the subject

"... dynamical systems theory, the biological and cognitive sciences, and Deleuze."(link)

Roma en llamas / Rome in flames

El agotamiento del liberalismo como discurso hegemónico, víctima legítima de su éxito, corre el riesgo de ser cooptado por fuerzas pre-liberales.  Por ello es urgente el desarrollar una distinción entre post y pre-liberalismo.  Hay que tenerlo claro: pre-liberalismo es peor que liberalismo; así como la sabiduría (la memoria), si tiene coraje, no tiene precio.

The anachronism of liberalism as an hegemonic ideology, victim of his own success, risks being exploited by pre-liberal regimes.  That's why is urgent to study the latter and decide what can be useful or not for post-liberalism.  With this fine distinction one can advance more safely in the post-liberal revolution.

Economics in a full world, by Herman E. Daly

Link (.pdf)

"Young, growing ecosystems have a tendency to maximize growth efficiency measured by production per unit of existing biomass. In mature ecosystems the emphasis shifts to maximizing maintenance efficiency, measured by how much existing biomass is maintained per unit of new production--the inverse of production efficiency." 

"[...] When all these adjustments are made, the result is the index of sustainable economic welfare [ISEW], as developed by Clifford W. Cobb and John B. Cobb, Jr., and related measures. These indices have been used by ecological economists but are largely ignored by others in the field."

Slavoj Žižek response to Chomsky: on methodology and beyond...

Link

Notas sobre populismo(s)

No debe confundirse el populismo anglosajón con el latinoamericano. Ambos combaten cosas diferentes.  El populismo anglosajón tiene como principales derroteros el elitismo político-intelectual, entre sus enemigos esta el conservadurismo ilustrado. También ataca al socialismo pero anglosajón, y solo en los últimos tiempos, con la innegable migración, al populismo latinoamericano.  Lo que es más, el populismo americano defiende el hiperliberalismo (dirán los liberales que eso no existe), no exactamente el ethos del populismo latinamericano.  Por otro lado, el populismo latinoamericano tiene como principales derroteros al neocolonialismo; no tanto al capitalismo burgués de factura anglosajona, ni mucho menos a la (otrora?) burguesía europea del estado de bienestar.  A la hora de defender o atacar el populismo latinoamericano desde una postura intelectual –con su equilibrio entre sensibilidad política y filosófica– se deben incorporar estas distinciones histórico-coyunturales y desde allí establecer las alianzas discursivas.  Su proyección trascendente debe ser gradual, las discontinuidades precipitan los anacronismos.

A Centralized Policy for Behavioral Value

Why is there pain and pleasure? Wouldn't be enough with one of them? If you expose your skin to fire, the absence of pleasure will not guarantee your instinct of protection. Well, unless your body is filled with pleasure every time it stays away of the flame, but that would be too expensive in terms of body energy. For that same reason we shouldn't expect to find in ubiquitous pain a stimulus for action. But what if action is the stable social state, then it has sense for pain to be associated to the lack of action. As a social invention, action may have different meanings; a modern society may nurture action for change (innovation) while actions for preservation would be nurtured by tradition. The ordering of modern societies may have achieved a "critical mass" allowing some traditional ordering mechanisms to be relaxed (phase transition/dynamic stability/"positive to negative pressure transition and the cohesion of society").

 Whenever we make something ubiquitous, no matter if at the beginning is associated with pain or pleasure, on the long run it will become emotionally neutral. That is why designed stimulus for action have to be carefully crafted. If a person is used to a condition that to your eyes is painful, you shouldn't expect that person to respond in the same way as you. That is why to stimulate population which is used to not having regular or productive jobs, even if they live in poor conditions for certain standards, you must first get them used to better conditions. Is not like they will tell you they are living well if you ask them, they may deny it for other reasons. But with exceptions, those latter reasons on the long run are not the ones that determine crucial economic action.

 The closer are the living conditions between people, the closer will the criteria of stimuli be. Creating a standard of living conditions and allowing slight fluctuations leads to the ideal regime of behavioral economics where there is a standardized form of behavioral value. This is similar to the role of central banks with regard to the value of national currency: stabilization and estimuli. This analogy not only provides a reference for policy but also for analysis. 

Materialism Beyond Class

[In the following text I refer to Marx and Engel rather rhetorically. In other words, I don't know these guys. I also reflect on a debate which is rather outdated. As a matter of fact, if I were you I'd ask myself: what am I doing reading this?]

I do believe in materialism and I do acknowledge Marx and Engel's ideas on the subject; what I'm critical of the them and specially of some of the orthodox ghosts they left is that they landed too quickly the general idea of materialism into a specific historical form, that of class struggle. I'm fine with the idea of landing general ideas –although I believe that it is a task that not always has to be undertaken by the same author– and I realized that all forms of praxis will lead to historical incarnations, my concern on marxism is that it failed to emphasize the historical nature of that particular body which is class [1]. I recognize this is a cumbersome issue as it may facilitate an argument to critics with bad faith, but is also important for those socialists with an honest interest to explore the possibilities of social change with a sense of responsibility. Once the socialist regime has taken place a whole new set of social conditions are at place and the need for sociological guidance becomes just as imperative as during revolutionary times. Is not just the formulation of a new economy; one needs a new ego; the utopian counterpart of the revolutionary proletarian; a subject rooted within relations of production but still holding an emancipatory conscience. This is lacking in a depiction of post-revolution. Is difficult to blame Marx for this, after all he had more urgent tasks [2]. But this is an issue that marxism would have to settle eventually. Should we wait for the new conditions to asses this new ego? If we do, then how to distinguish the issues we should anticipate and those for which is wise to wait after revolution?

[Interlude: Marx and Engel talk about the historic rise of socialist revolution; one may use this account to explore how would it be the evanescence of the socialist myth. The future may bring conditions resembling a pre-revolutionary society, not as a reversal of civilization, but as a rediscovery of former lifestyles within an hyper-modern setting. Something similar to McLuhan's new tribal.]

Post-revolutionary debates may show new insights that hegemonic thinking hides today, but we need to be careful not to use the future as the rug to sweep under the seeming contradictions of our utopian visions. In a world of increasing ecological power, proving right one of this contradictions may have catastrophic results if undertaken at too large scales (as indeed we can). I don't pretend to discourage all  forms of revolution; although we've seen catastrophes before, we may also be seeing them now. They may not show off in the form of an alien flag, we no longer die in the battlefield. In a time of peace and modern medicine we've learned that death still makes his way by walking squat. But if you pay attention you may still hear it before is too late.

[1] Precisely that is where feminist theory comes to the rescue... I guess.

[2] I guess Marx tried this on his early writings, before becoming mature.

Please excuse my solemnity; I cannot help it

Within my generation to persist in political literature is an anachronism. In my defense I'd say that in my life politics came before writing; there's no reason why I should pay tribute to literature. There is nevertheless an anachronism; my approach to politics. I belong to the theater of morality in a time of behavioral economics. I'm unable to go beyond the last –perhaps the only– debate of moral politics, that of realism against utopians. I'm not alone and I'm not sure if that is a motive of hope. Behavioral economics proved to be something far from utopian; surprisingly, it has also proved to be far from what we understood as realism.

Conversaciones en La Catedral

What I'd I like to ask Mario Vargas Llosa...

Is there a place for radical change in your vision of a liberal society? 

Please, before answering I want to point out why I believe this question matters and why it has sense, even if at the very end is contradictory. 

Your defense of liberalism is emphatic in opposing reformism to almost any form of radicalism. One may understand this as a needed emphasis given that a major obstacle of liberalism in regions like Latin America is our obsession with revolution; seen often as the only vehicle of politics, as if under its epic aura we could bypass the burden of dealing with policy and leadership disappointments. Which of course, would not be a burden if it wouldn't carry as corollary a deception on our own identity. 

I want to know, not just if you are aware that liberalism has a place for radical change but if this consideration has played a role on your speech. Or if is just something you know but don't bother to bring about.

By the places of radical change in a liberal society I think of the market. Seemingly, the only one with the blessing to take society into unknown places. It does so in the form of new financial products or the nurturing of new consumption habits. We not only allow the market to destroy traditions, often celebrate it as a conquest of modernity. Your writing on the devastating effects of popular culture to the humanist intellectual tradition suggest that you are not always in favor of the cultural "innovation" coming from the marketing of cultural products, or the culture of marketing products. Should we expect of a liberal politics and economy only an enhancement, a greater fulfillment of our traditional anxieties, as projected in politics and culture in general, or is there a room for tectonic displacements comprising the very core of their strategies and purposes?

I said it was a contradictory question, but it has a lot of sense in its relative solutions. On the one hand we have the paroxysm of the "place for radicalism" in the circus: from the roman arena to the Santiago Bernabéu. On the other, we have the notion of innovation which in the realm of financial economy and consumption technologies enjoy unprecedented freedoms, hardly found in the realm of politics which seems to recreate the kind of radicalism akin to the Bernabéu. As  for the contradiction, as you surely understand, lies in the fact that the most profound revolutions do not only lead to totally unpredictable futures but come from totally unpredictable places, beyond the intricate but still compact territories of the stock market or a bourgeois public sphere.

One last thing. Lets recall that the market is not the only place for radical change within liberalism. As many other modern (dis)utopias, there's also room for technological disruption. Even then we seem at the mercy of the market as it sets the criteria on whether new discoveries or technologies are to become social realities. I'm not just talking about your personal robotic assistant but also vaccines and therapies for cancer.

Perspectivas provinciales (1a Parte)

¿Qué lugar ocupa la vida rural dentro de la narrativa moderna, posmoderna, su existencia más allá de etiquetas y su proyección histórica? Esa periferia que suele ser llamada lo rural y suburbano. La respuesta no es estática, son categorías que sufren los avatares de la historia. La asimetría entre lo rural y lo urbano es ya patente en el registro migratorio. Y si bien el transfondo es la desigualdad económica, también hay una asimetría mediática e ideológica. El citadino moderno ve lo rural como inferior, perteneciente a un pasado que precisa distanciamiento. El citadino posmoderno es algo más complejo en su relación con lo rural. Puede llegar a verlo como algo superior pero aún se debate entre una valoración romántica y una de vanguardia, ambas muy distintas. Mientras la primera idealiza lo rural como un regreso a la vida tradicional, la segunda ve un potencial que requiere de proyección y transformación hacia nuevos horizontes. Diferente, este último de la conquista, que transforma hacia lo conocido. En el ideal romántico lo rural es bueno porque no es urbano (sencillez social, aire fresco, ausencia de ruido, etc.), lo que contrasta con las vanguardias rurales de ecologistas y socialistas utópicos, y las vanguardias suburbanas de la clase media industrial, de académicos y visionarios empresariales y políticos (un sector bastante reducido de la población hasta el punto de hacer francamente sospechosa su referencia).

Pienso que la Ilustración y la modernidad de posguerra del siglo XX le deben mucho al ethos del suburbio. Y es que el suburbio no solo es un lugar geográfico, esa es la forma concreta que toma en el siglo XX, ya en épocas anteriores este ethos tenía morada en las reflexiones que contrastaban la vida rural con las nuevas costumbres de la urbe; relatos de viajeros, comerciantes que se nutrían del intercambio entre la ciudad y el campo. La pureza conceptual de la máquina y la integridad de la existencia rural remiten no solo a los pensadores Ilustrados como Rousseau, Diderot o Descartes, pero al mismo Renacimiento, a Brunelleschi, Da Vinci o Miguel Angel. Debo aclarar que mi defensa de la vanguardia no se reduce a la apología del virtuosismo. Para mí este último es acaso una revelación profética. Bien se hace en desafiar la vanguardia solipsista por su realización colectiva.

A veces temo que el habitante rural este condenado a una existencia bovina, un destino absolutamente subordinado a la voluntad del hombre de ciudad. Cómo ignorar el historial de parasitismo, de depredación de las ciudades sobre la producción campesina (alimento y talento humano). Bien parece que la conflictiva relación entre el campo y la ciudad es de nuevo el lugar histórico del colonialismo, la ciudad-estado. Y es que en lo cultural la asimetría es abrumadora; si acaso el citadino consume cultura rural lo hace bajo la ironía kitsch o la nostalgia, nunca como sentimiento de vanguardia y mucho menos de irreverencia. Pero la población rural no siempre ha sido víctima, también ha tenido su momento de victimario, al menos eso es lo que sugiere la idea del fascismo como proyección (modernidad) del ethos rural. Pienso en Heidegger y su vulnerabilidad al encanto fascista; pienso en Mao y su socialismo de sello campesino; pienso en Charles Fourier, de quién Vargas Llosa hace un magnífico recuento I, II; o en ejemplos más recientes como el cinturón bíblico (Bible Belt), parte de la base social de la dinastía Bush. En general la población rural es aún una parte importante del conservadurismo político de muchas naciones. Pero hay que desconfiar de la desconfianza a la modernidad provincial que despiertan las vanguardias planeadas. Esos maosimos terminan por implantar solo simulacros de la vida campesina. También hay que desconfiar del mercado que presenta al campesino como un consumidor de nostalgias (el hombre Marlboro y sus reencarnaciones). Es precisamente la vanguardia colectiva, la promesa no cumplida de la posmodernidad.

Ya se me antoja percibir un incipiente conservadurismo en los habitantes de la metrópoli, que en su turbulento amor por la gran ciudad se vuelven autoreferenciales. Finalmente han encontrado su tierra prometida. Cierran sus ojos o simulan estar abiertos bajo esa digestión de lo rural que es el exotismo. Mientras tanto el ciudadano de la provincia tiene el problema opuesto, es vulnerable a toda influencia, incapaz de desarrollar su propia narrativa. Pero hablar de enamorados de la metrópoli tal vez solo aplique a citadinos de primera generación. ¿Cómo evolucionan las figuraciones de la ciudad a través de las generaciones? Esa ya es otra historia, como también la de narrar los diferentes cosmopolitanismos, porque esta el de marineros, de pioneros y funcionarios imperiales, de inmigrantes económicos y exiliados políticos, de nómadas y errantes, eruditos de la tradición intelectual y hasta de la más moderna cultura popular (esa libertad que aprendió a cabalgar las balas sentada en un sillón).

The Dark Side of the Public Sphere

Introduction

This post explores how a deliberative society can learn to coexist with counterhegemonic practices as to prevent the public sphere becoming a mechanism for hegemonic ruling. In particular we notice the contrast between Habermas deliberative society and that of counterhegemonic activism.

Some key words are: conspicuous silence, action as counter-hegemonic speech, the contraction of logocracy to the private sphere (realm of intimacy?) and the refusal to rehearse the theater of public logocracy, the counterhegemonic role of intimacy (as a right and practice) [1], etc. Some historical examples are to be found in religious insurrections and resistance, ethnic and class resistence, etc. Also important is to inlcude unpopular cases such as the silent politics of corporative lobby and military coups. The former will provide a more realistic assesment of the implications of counterhegemonic rights and practices.

This debate also revisits (eventually, I guess) some ideas developed in the third quarter of the XXth century regarding the legitimate means for power.

Reassesment of Deliberative Dynamics

Within a genetic conception of deliberative action [2], counterhegemonic politics does not constitutes a direct threath to a deliberative society, on the contrary, it provides a key to understanding its configuration. 

Reassesment of Hegemony

The reluctance to public deliberation can be interpreted as antidemocratic behavior but also as a counterhegemonic action denouncing the fallacy of hegemonic freedom. Mechanisms to distinguish one from the other, in case there are, should be developed. This problem demands a careful revision and probably a political stand on the definition of hegemony.

Rights, Ecology and Politics

The right of association is in a way a right to conspire, it allows to create the critical mass to surpass the cognitive inertia of hegemonic representations. This right is not only protecting the conspirators from physical repression but of the more subtle repressions of hegemonic power. Sort of nursery habitat for narratives.

Claiming the Theatre of Politics: Rhetorics and Strategy [3]

Within the pulse between speech and action there might be more pedestrian motives. We can see behind the pulse of one media against the other an individual or subcutural strategy to take advantage of di facto inequalities. Take for analogy prose and lyrics within the opera; those which are better at prose would tend to give it more importance than lyrics, and the other way around. In our case, speech will favor eloquent voices while action will favor executioners.

By no means the multiplicity of voices we find in contemporary society implies a more egalitarian medium than action. Deliberative-Democracy is an animal as mythological as it sounds; after the dust of noise settles, only the eloquent prevails. Perhaps one property of speech which creates a complementary contrast (... I know) with action is that the former gives liquidity to whatever both carry (power?). And in this sense those who are good at action will eventually feel the need to get a form of speech as to give liquidity to their action-capital. I am thinking of the early bourgeoise which despite having a sense of priorities wear objects reflecting their (anti)status or beliefs. They are taking part in speech-action politics by means perhaps not of explicit speech but by the aesthetics of persuasion, allusion or intimidation.

Moreover, the dichotomy between action and speech is increasingly unclear as we approach a world that resembles the words of  Istvan Csicsery-Ronay: "When hallucination and reality collapse into each other, there is no place from which to reflect." Speech is becoming action and action is increasingly configured as speech.

[1] La intimidad juega un papel fundamental en la gestación de una esfera pública. Es como si la esfera pública fuese una condensación de pequeñas burbujas concebidas bajo la noción de la intimidad.

[2] By genetic insight we mean an understanding of the effective action of deliberation limited to congenial views. Is like sexual animals that can only have offsprings with genetically similar peers, nevertheless leading eventually to the formation of new species.

[3] I use the word "Theater" in a two-fold way: as simulation and as "theater of war".

Looking forward: what we can learn from Lance Armstrong's landing

Lance Armstrong's doping affair becomes emblematic within the fin de siècle. It marks the decline of the American myth. A myth about the natural relation between freedom and fairness. There was a time where this was an ethical belief rather than a policy belief. Once written in a paper it started to be unwritten in the heart. Freedom and fairness where attached by the unifying field of conscience. But not any more. They were to take very different paths. A very similar fate is shared by democracy. It is the fetishism of the written law.

Classical economics states that there is no such dichotomy between the ethics and the law. In the characteristic optimism of the enlightened era they embarked on an axiomatic program for economy. Although we cannot neglect many of the successes of such approach, economy was far to be a tractable system. Within enlightenment coexists many conflicting beliefs, notably that between pragmatism and the rule of law, between empirical evidence and axiomatics. Within a tractable system —paradigm of classical economy— there is no conflict between empirical observations and the written laws pretending to describe them. Hence, from this classic perspective, empirical reality doesn't depends on the medium which pretends to reproduce it, whether is culture or law. This paradigm has proven to be insufficient. Evidence is build not only in economic history but also in the wider realm of physics. The often misinterpreted quote from McLuhan might be suitable to describe our actual state of affairs: "The medium is the message." We should not expect from a liberal law the same outcome that from a liberal culture. Policy should be framed as to allow for a liberal culture but should not pretend to replace the liberal culture.

 Beyond the challenges of implementing a complex expression of ethical liberalism we need to reinterpret liberalism in itself. We need to go beyond liberalism as a belief. The lessons from the first half of the XXth century are not to be interpreted as the proof of the success of liberalism, they are to prove the failure of the combined policies from the corresponding historical projects. Liberalism has its own accumulated failures. Both lessons should be taken as an invitation to deconstruct history rather than avoided. To go beyond liberalism as a belief means to question the position of the individual as the absolute reference of history. This is not just some abstract demand, it is a realistic assessment as the power of humanity takes dimensions way beyond the realm of human affairs. Human civilisation has become one of the major (anti)ecologic forces. It is not just the responsibility of humanity to preserve others types of life, it is also about the development of humanity beyond the idea that human civilisation should not cross the dessert but become a casino half the road.

Coming back to our sporting heroes what we see in the doping affairs is the fear and incapacity of liberalism to imagine a world where the human expression no longer corresponds to the liberal individual. I am not justifying Armstrong but I want to show how symptomatic is his case to our times. What to do when humans want and indeed be more than humans? Is not just cheating,  Armstrong is not the only high profile athlete involved. Moreover, is not sophisticated doping an almost canonic practice in modern economy? Where to rule the difference between fair advantage and unfair? Should we rule it according to which structural and/or pragmatic units? Technology has destroy the temple of liberalism, the individual. The skin is no longer a di facto defence. And as doping (as any other corporal extension) deconstructs the physical individual, other forms of technology deconstruct the individual as an ethical, economic or legal unit. As the skin becomes the more superficial, we need to keep asking ourselves, if an ethics where the individual is the starting point has not become an ethics where the individual is the ending point.

Tejiendo red

Ediciones simbióticas es un proyecto de ejercicio crítico de colaboración abierta. Algunos de sus autores, entre ellos Álvaro Cuadra y José Ramón L. Alba, tratan el tema de la hypermodernidad. También tienen ediciones digitales de libre acceso, por ejemplo, Hyperindustria Cultural.

Interview with Boaventura de Sousa Santos

The struggles behind the multi-scale distribution of sovereignty amid globalization: who defines what is global and what is local?


Globalization, Societies and Education. Vol. 2 (2), July 2004.

Excerpts

"what we call globalization is always the successful globalization of a particular localism" 

[La anterior afirmación merece una crítica desde la perspectiva de transiciones de fase y otros fenómenos de física de multiples cuerpos. También vale la pena establecer una frontera entre la anterior afirmación y las teorías objetivistas de última generación.]

"Once its redistributive functions were neutralized [starting from the 1980s], democracy became the ideal form of government for global capitalism"

"Here in lies also the deepest source of the crisis of left politics. Since whatever is being proposed as a reform (education, health, social security, etc.) is definetly for the worse, the left is often forced to defend the statu quo. And the left have never been very good at defendig the statu quo."

"In my view, we may be entering a period in which societies are politically democratic and socially fascistic. This new fascism is a social regime, not, as in the past, a political regime."

The Domain of Anti-Historic Materialism

Jean-Antoine Watteau's study of soldiers.

We are effectively inverting the relation of reality posed by historic materialism. Well, not strictly, let me put it this way, we are creating a society that at many levels inverts the economy of reality as formulated by historic materialism (Hegemony/Production). Indeed, we do so every time we pretend that someone should drop off his weapon because is not ethical, or when we pretend strong people not to bully the physically weak. In fact, we are, at the micro and not-so-micro levels, creating a society where power is not the direct reflect of physical conditions (and here 'direct' seems to be a key word). Is not just the logic of an hegemonic class, but the hegemony of collective superstructures. In these structural levels (scales of complexity), the effective laws defy the universal laws of historic materialism just as the laws of physics could be 'cheated' effectively in reduced dimensions (nevertheless we hear about the possibilities of feedback between social scales as in Giddens). This aggregated reality takes the form of simulacra and determines, as individuals, our very notions of success, happines, power. We, humans are now living in the guts of who knows which organism. The image of the teenager totally alienated by marketing, is in a way, the most pure form of our times. Sometimes I think that for many people –one by one– is much more useful a guide to power in the simulacra that a guide to power in the hardcore of reality.

Aren't neo-revolutionary attitudes such as "fight fire with fire", "hacking the system", "strike like a virus", symptomatic of this turn? If revolution can be made in terms of the battlefield of simulacra by the strategic use of the hegemonic constructions, then it seems inevitable to confront the question: what then is hard power suppose to assure? perhaps the answer is, to assure the reality of simulacra and by that I mean, to assure simulacra as the battlefield of ultimate power. And even if is not the ultimate power, at least a battlefield of power conflicts which are able to engulf class struggle. This is a thesis which seems to be backed by history: why have the control of mass media become so strategic in modern revolutionary warfare? And for the not-so-radical, it is a sufficient proof the role of mass media in the 'wide' political spectrum of modern democracies. In evolutive biology one may think on the brain, as it used to be a muscle. But to understand the analogy one should think that 'the muscles used to be part of the brain', the muscles used to be active part of decisions in the organism, but then they started to separate, letting the brain take as much decisions as the precedence of a material body allowed to.

Licencia para soñar

La plusvalía es clave en toda forma de desarrollo socio-politico, socio-económico y socio-cultural. Parece absurda vista desde la mentalidad del individuo cartesiano. El capitalismo fundamentalista solo acepta la plusvalía que contribuye al desarrollo económico de la sociedad, el capital; el paroxismo socialista solo acepta la plusvalía que contribuye al desarrollo político de la sociedad, la burocracia; el paroxismo cultural solo acepta la plusvalía que contribuye al desarrollo cultural de la sociedad, la educación de inspiración humanista. Es preciso recordarles a cada uno de estos fundamentalismos, que la sociedad requiere de todas y cada una de estas plusvalías. La plusvalía ajena, siempre se presentará absurda. La plusvalía es el margen de libertad de cada ámbito; libertad que le permite soñar (que no dormir), proyectarse en diferentes futuros probables y ambiciosos, inventar sus propias utopias. Esto es un papel fundamental de la vida, el crecimiento. Todo esto lo digo porque en la actualidad las utopias del mercado de capital reinan, las utopias políticas sobreviven, y la utopia académica ha sido declarada por el capital y por una enrarecida democracia como enemigo público.

Related texts: The Teleology of Education (Ernst Blog).

The Structure of Technological Revolutions

Palabras Claves: Tahrir Square, Manuel Castells, Cybernetics.

Technological disruption may render a temporary instability on power structures. I call this a vortex of revolution. The power structures within the vortex are, up to fluctuations, at equal ground, with the 'powerless'. It doesn't last much time, if the powerless doesn't consolidate the revolution fast enough, the power structures eventually manage to domesticate the new technological conditions. In a way, the reaction of the status quo is like developing robust algorithms on top of an algorithm which has new features threatening the structure of older features –those we associate to old power structures–.

PD. : And so, what should be the natural question after the latter descriptive hypothesis? I personally answer that with a call to reflect on the issue of velocity of action which often compromise the predictability of the outcome of our actions. Zizek had already point out that we should act now and negotiate the future later: "don't negotiate in enemy territory". The fact that time is running against our expectations of structural change (which, don't forget, are driven by a pragmatic diagnosis of the present state of civilization) may support Zizek's call. In fact, the outcome of power is very difficult to compute (we still have problems predicting the behavior of proteins!). Usually what happens is that we negotiate power and the outcome of such negotiations often takes the form of pseudo-a priori political theories.

Analysis and Synthesis on Scientific Method –based on a Study by Bernhard Riemann (PDF). By Tom Ritchey.

Revisiting the Simulacrum from the Perspective of Financial Market

Key words: commodification, simulacrum, fetishism.

My personal interest is to import the perspective of modern finance to understand the commodification of knowledge [1]. For the financial market there is a continuum between utility value assets and the most liquid of assets –most often– money. But this spectrum started out from utility value in a non-standardized exchange economy. It's development was denounced by Marx as commodity-fetishism. This step corresponds to the 'perversion of reality' in the development of simulacrum (Baudrillard). But the spectrum between 'solid' and 'liquid' values is not just an evolutionary relation, as is stated by Baudrillard, it also constitutes a simultaneous interplay as observed in the financial markets. This sets a limit to schizophrenia –although the financial market may not be the best example– since the new realities are to be articulated into the older –without discarding functional replacements–.

It would be interesting to understand the mechanisms that channel and bifurcate the aggregate of knowledge as to satisfy the dual demands of production and financial utility. In particular, it could be useful to address the problem in terms of 'formats'. Take for example 'formalism' as a format for knowledge. It is suitable for precision and generalization. At the same time, 'generalization' is a suitable format for 'critical transmission' (efficient in terms of shannon's information), as in DNA. Contrast this with educational formats (pedagogy), technical formats (manuals) or aesthetics as format for fast reading processes. Behind the apparent label of formalism may be hidden a production of distinction in Bourdieu's sense, and therefore a commodifying process since knowledge loses its substantiality (perhaps one should say ironically, its original substantiality) to serve the ever alien purposes of power . How does commodification gets in conflict with the other uses of knowledge? how does commodification parasites the legitimacy of knowledge given by the other uses. This conflict is paralleled by the relation between the financial markets, the industrial sector and the labor unions.

It is also interesting to see how the very form of the knowledge-asset starts to 'mutate' from utility oriented to liquidity oriented. Just as the fathers of the nation with all their flaws become as compact as a coin, how does knowledge mutates to become an object oriented to self-control the decentralized emission ('fake copies' for central banks or academia). Rationality whose enlightened foundation is based on decentralized value starts to become his antithesis as it experience the pressure of commodification. It may take (and have taken) the form of baroque credentials, it may take the form of Books! they've been the units of knowledge after all. They may take the form of long doctoral thesis or of 'important' and insubstantial connections between authors or ideas –which nevertheless show that 'you know what you are talking about'–. All this extra structure coming from the very demand of commodification could be resumed in the impression: the quality of knowledge has become as alien to utility as the quality of paper money.

Related posts: Money as Simulacrum: The Legal Nature and Reality of Money by John J. Chung, Baudrillard's Radicalization of Fetishism by Mike Gane.

[1] In a way this study has been carried by many thinkers. Baudrillard extends the Marxist critic of commodity-fetishism to the realm of culture. Bourdieu points out the use of knowledge as an apparatus of distinction (social seggregation). Norbert Elias and Foucault have already study the nexus "power/knowledge".

Conceptualizando la complejidad

El pensamiento complejo de Edgar Morin. Críticas, incomprensiones y revisiones necesarias por José Luis Solana Ruiz