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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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