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