{"id":5963,"date":"2010-10-26T16:19:03","date_gmt":"2010-10-26T20:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=5963"},"modified":"2010-10-26T16:29:17","modified_gmt":"2010-10-26T20:29:17","slug":"5963","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2010\/10\/26\/5963\/","title":{"rendered":"exclude or exploit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jodi Dean, The Communist Horizon<\/a> part 2<\/p>\n

I also want to emphasize that for communists the binary inclusion\/exclusion does not indicate the primary axis of justice (although it functions quite nicely for liberal democrats who insist that the true political issue is making sure that no one is excluded from opportunities to participate in the democratic process or from the possibility of striking it rich in the capitalist market). The remedy for those without papers, for example, is to have papers\u2014and thus membership in the state. This isn\u2019t a bad goal, but it is a goal that extends rather than takes or changes state power. The remedy for those without property (slum dwellers, say), is a right to property, a remedy that incorporates the owner into the official market economy, in effect eliminating the threat to the market that uncounted use and exchange pose.<\/p>\n

But is capitalism best understood as a system that constitutively excludes persons or one that constitutively exploits them?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Building from Alain Badiou and Jacques Ranciere, Zizek claims that the antagonism between the included and the excluded is<\/em> the fundamental antagonism rupturing capitalism today (and hence crucial to the idea of communism). Zizek recognizes that the focus on exclusion easily elides with \u201cthe liberal-tolerant-multicultural topic of \u2018openness\u2019 . . . at the expense of a properly Marxist notion of social antagonism.\u201d Yet he argues that the inclusion of the proletariat is an inclusion of a different sort, an inclusion of the capitalism\u2019s point of symptomal exclusion (\u201cpart of no part\u201d) that effectively dismantles it.<\/p>\n

A lot rides on the notion of \u201cproletariat\u201d here, especially insofar as contemporary capitalism relies on communication as a productive force, rather than industrial labor. On the one hand, Zizek detaches \u201cproletarian\u201d from the factory, treating \u201cproletarianization\u201d as a process that deprives humans of their \u201csubstance\u201d and reduces them to pure subjects<\/strong>. On the other, he identifies exclusion as a particular kind of proletarianization, one by which some are made directly to embody \u201csubstanceless subjectivity<\/strong>.\u201d They are the material remainders of the system, its unavoidable and necessary byproducts. Because the entire system relies on their exclusion (or their inclusion as remainders), because they embody the truth that capitalism produces human refuse, surplus populations with no role or function, to include them would destroy the system itself.<\/p>\n

Capitalist productivity derives from its expropriation and exploitation of communicative processes. Cesare Casarino\u2019s distinction between the common<\/em> and the commons<\/em> is helpful here.<\/p>\n

The expropriation of language in the spectacle opens up a new experience of language and linguistic being: \u2018not this or that content of language, but language itself<\/em>, not this or that true proposition, but the very fact that one speaks.\u2019 Failure to communicate provides its own satisfaction, the enjoyment of language itself.<\/p>\n

The movement from commons to common repeats, in a way, this shift from active to passive or, the movement from desire to drive.<\/p>\n

Blogs, Facebook, YouTube\u2014they each and together take our ensemble of actions and return them to us as an endless communicative common.\u00a0 Rather than \u201cI make,\u201d there is production, a production of thoughts and affects, opinions and contributions that circulate, accumulate, and distract. Words were spoken.<\/p>\n

Agamben\u2019s answer to the expropriation of the common is drive. The communist answer is desire, a desire already manifest in our active linking and adding and making, our creating and contributing without pay, just for ourselves and for each other<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jodi Dean, The Communist Horizon part 2 I also want to emphasize that for communists the binary inclusion\/exclusion does not indicate the primary axis of justice (although it functions quite nicely for liberal democrats who insist that the true political issue is making sure that no one is excluded from opportunities to participate in the … Continue reading “exclude or exploit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,125,21,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desire","category-drive","category-jouissance","category-zizek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5963"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5973,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5963\/revisions\/5973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}