Submitted by Stefano Harney on Wed, 05/16/2007 - 14:50.
Edu-factory: the undercommons and value from below
Attention to a commons as a resource for collective life born of the struggle between capital and labour has gained new life as that struggle appears to take place increasingly in the immaterial realm. But when attention itself is not outside this struggle, and this struggle produces immaterial effects that sever the materiality of the international division of labour and its uneven development, no simple access to this commons seems possible. But before one identifies the new subjectivities that prevent access, the audited, measured, accounted, secured, affected, and risked bodies of the contemporary scene, one might be reminded of the ‘civil war’ and the ‘dark side’ of what is said to be denied access. The history of the denied is long and central, denied measurement, stolen body and soul, and the fugitive organisation of the denied faces both today the industrialisation of culture and the primitive accumulation of ways of life whose social accomplishments are precisely occasions for crude appropriation. In this struggle, as much as that usually identified in the name of the immaterial, one might look for value hidden in the undercommons. In so doing, we might articulate the struggle over intellectual property with the new bio-enclosures, and the fight against the cultural industries with a history of struggle against eurocentric primitivism and orientalism. We might then find a way, as Augosto Illuminati put it, to concern ourselves 'with the translation from the viewpoint of subordinates, with the use of the different possibilities of surplus, that can be handled in an antagonist and liberating way.'
This workshop will build on the ground-breaking work of the edu-factory collective and will also preview a workshop on value from below to be held in London in September by a collective from Queen Mary, University of London.
Edu-factory: the undercommons and value from below
Edu-factory: the undercommons and value from below
Attention to a commons as a resource for collective life born of the struggle between capital and labour has gained new life as that struggle appears to take place increasingly in the immaterial realm. But when attention itself is not outside this struggle, and this struggle produces immaterial effects that sever the materiality of the international division of labour and its uneven development, no simple access to this commons seems possible. But before one identifies the new subjectivities that prevent access, the audited, measured, accounted, secured, affected, and risked bodies of the contemporary scene, one might be reminded of the ‘civil war’ and the ‘dark side’ of what is said to be denied access. The history of the denied is long and central, denied measurement, stolen body and soul, and the fugitive organisation of the denied faces both today the industrialisation of culture and the primitive accumulation of ways of life whose social accomplishments are precisely occasions for crude appropriation. In this struggle, as much as that usually identified in the name of the immaterial, one might look for value hidden in the undercommons. In so doing, we might articulate the struggle over intellectual property with the new bio-enclosures, and the fight against the cultural industries with a history of struggle against eurocentric primitivism and orientalism. We might then find a way, as Augosto Illuminati put it, to concern ourselves 'with the translation from the viewpoint of subordinates, with the use of the different possibilities of surplus, that can be handled in an antagonist and liberating way.'
This workshop will build on the ground-breaking work of the edu-factory collective and will also preview a workshop on value from below to be held in London in September by a collective from Queen Mary, University of London.