Re: AUT: Negri and Charleton Heston?

[Lowe Laclau <lowe.laclau@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thiago (again... sorry, not picking on you, just wanting to clarify a
few things).

> I am sure you've come across the
> phenomenon of lifestylism, though that at least has a philosophical
> elaboration all of its own. Here you have a class politics which is in fact
> constructed, all the way through, from cultural artefacts.

I'm not exactly sure how you derive this assessment when this
pre-Marxian type of focus has in many places been critiqued by Negri
and especially vis-a-vis the fetishism some Marxists have had with
their definition of "working class". Lifestyles are in and of
themselves irrelevant to their discussion. Life however is a different
subject. And as far as I've ever read from them, life is never
restricted to any particular formalizations. The concept of Poverty as
he defines it in fact defies any such particularization of form. This
isn't an easy concept to understand but its worth looking into
further. Quite interesting IMO.

> I am NOT saying - let me make this clear - that this is a bad thing.
> Cultural power and identity politics is serious stuff that should be rescued
> from the molasses of cultural studies; I realise that this is something
> Hardt and Negri are self consciously attempting.

Indentity politics as it is preached by "pomos" are critiqued by Negri
himself for falling back onto this capitalist reintegration of
difference-to-measure for the sake of a type of structural fluidity of
command over labor. The common is however the construction of the
conditions of the political outside of these representative
encasements by power (or by States). He has an article somewhere on
representative politics and its alteration someplace, not sure if its
in english however.

> The way I understand this, it's
> > like production (for Negri) at its most advanced point requires a
> > laboring subject that is also a political subject (not necessarily one
> > with 'class consciousness' because this doesn't matter anymore). In
> > other words, 'class-in-itself' at the highest point of production is
> > tendentially 'class-for-itself', that is, value accumulation requires
> > the multitude in all its saintly glory. Thus, the folks in reactionary
> > USA who refuse to collaborate are not part of the multitude (as Hardt
> > says on one of Doug Henwood's radio shows) - they're not politically
> > subject and they're economically backward (and culturally too).
> >

> But that's just a load of crap. They are not economically backward - they
> are at the cutting edge of capitalism. Ie. not sillion valley, but Wal Mart.

Being at the cutting edge of capitalism is not defined by the hegemony
of any particular kind of laboring or industry, but rather by the
effect that industry and labor has upon all others. Its
deterritorializing effects. Wal-Mart (as a model) is hegemonic and
very powerful, but its not all that novel and isn't exactly shaping
the actions, events or concerns of finance capital all that much. In
that sense I'd definitely say its not at the cutting edge. Especially
when you have developments in service sectors that can take place in
NY and London and literally affect the entire world for good or worse
by the nature of its transformation of how capitalism is done (take
for example the creation of hedge fund markets and its effects on how
people do business everywhere (large businesses at least).

Lowe


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