no logo

As much as I liked em, I understand their disappearance, because they bog down slower connections, and writing the ILXor scriptzor to make it a preference (as I suggested) is obviously unreasonable when Graham's doing all of this great programming for free. (I think this version of the board is better than the Greenspun version by a longshot now.)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/dec/22/no-logo-10-anniversary-naomi-klein

what?

Apparently I need to put a ™ after my login

failed a corporate ethics paper once for attacking the lecturer's pet favourite naomi klein.

Think her pants are rubbish tbh, hate it when people have the label above their trousers.

i get that child labour is bad, but the emphasis on branding as evil tends just to fold into people's general cultural conservatism. don't really give two shits about what my mobile "says about me."

@colin reads like he's trying to become the 'real life' carles of the hipster runoff 'brand'

xpost

Yes, No Logo is closer to CAMRA than the SWP in spirit.

who can we turn to now that all our truths are corporatised -_-

the brand of truthgivers with whom you've had the most positive previous experience

Climate Camp™ it is then

I'm going with Indus Kebabs™ personally.

Inspired to rebrand by that article

i like it, but am worried about negative connotations due to work in the developing south american nations

don't really give two shits about what my mobile "says about me."

I'm absolutely enraged by mobile phone branding and advertising, as I've long said, and the plain fact is that it really does matter to quite a lot of people, at least in the pre-buy phase, which is the one that matters to the advertiser. The same applies to other products! It's not so much about the logo as about the technology, I will admit. To be accessorised is increasingly important, perhaps more so than ever.

looooooooooooool NV

To be accessorised is increasingly important, perhaps more so than ever.

circular argument

Well, I haven't read No Logo so tbh I don't know what I'm talking about. If I had read it, I'd be a fount of anti-corporate wisdom obv

You should probably read it, very prescient bits about the "internship" phenomenon - among many other things.

I just realised last night that if I had free texts for life I could round up every vicious criminal and gunslinger in the west, rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists, and then go round to that superband twat's house and kick him to death.

No Logo is a good logo. think bill hicks had a good spiel about the anti-marketing dollar being good dollar.

that's an epic post, NV, but i'm completely lost by it tbh.

But when you do go to the phone store to get your free texts there is small print saying 'unlimited' is 500 texts a month.

xpost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lj056ao6GE

NV, superband twat has already been given his dues here: The advertising of mobile telecommunications companies

I don't make any dollar from anti-marketing, nor do I plan to. This may make me slightly pious and smug but it doesn't make me a hypocrite.

yeah but which superband twat?

i'd rather be a rich hypocrite.

maybe everyone who joins the superband automatically becomes a twat on the slim to nonexistent chance they weren't one already -_-

So would you download No Logo to stop Rage Against the Machine being number 1 next Christmas?

I think there's a copy downstairs tbh

Looking forward to Lego No Logo coming out for the Wii next month.

No Logo My Ego

anyway I've found it. it looks long. the cover is one big logo lol

Domo Arigato, Lego No Logo

http://apecmx.com/deadduck/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/goldie.jpg

Go-Go No Logo

there's quite a lot of logos amirite

http://kodiakak.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/fugu.jpg

http://capitalistliontamer.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/goo_goo_dolls.jpg

that's the fish which is deadly poisonous unless one of like 5 cooks in the world who knows how to cook it cooks it? xpost

Yes, it's Fugu. No Logo.

The Japanese poet Yosa Buson (1716–1783) expressed some of this feeling in a famous senryū:

I cannot see her tonight.
I have to give her up
So I will eat fugu.

I cannot see her tonight.
I have to give her up
So I read No Logo.

Does she make any insightful points that aren't raised in the dozens of other books on the same subject that came out before it?

strengthening her brand iirc

don't think she's actually made any insightful points thus far though.

It just seemed like she took a lot of ideas from critical theory and more academic writers and presented them for a popular audience.

http://shanghaiflow.canalblog.com/images/Pogo_Dance.jpg

^ No Pogo

are they doing some punk vn. of the argentine tango there?

I'm absolutely enraged by mobile phone branding and advertising, as I've long said, and the plain fact is that it really does matter to quite a lot of people, at least in the pre-buy phase, which is the one that matters to the advertiser. The same applies to other products! It's not so much about the logo as about the technology, I will admit. To be accessorised is increasingly important, perhaps more so than ever.

no, i mean, i don't care about my mobile OR about if other people do. i don't know if they do or not. adverts are annoying, bfd, there are bigger things to worry about.

It just seemed like she took a lot of ideas from critical theory and more academic writers and presented them for a popular audience.

― sarahel, Tuesday, December 22, 2009 4:49 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think this is another way of saying academics can't write.

O™ (Noodle Vague)

^^^this is amazing

^yes this is awes, NV hits jackpot!

LOL Henry I was going to point out that nonfiction authors are often tasked with the translation of the theoretical into the practical.

agree, that was generally the point of her writing the book.

That and really hating gassy keg beer.

don't really give two shits about what my mobile "says about me."

― Dean Gaffney's December (history mayne), Tuesday, December 22, 2009 1:56 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Note the term "technical solution": rational problems have technical solutions. (Again, a blatantly erroneous claim: confronting ecological problems requires making choices and decisions -- about what to produce, what to consume, on what energy to rely -- which ultimately concern the very way of life of a people; as such, they are not only not technical, but are eminently political in the most radical sense of involving fundamental social choices.) No wonder, then, that capitalism itself is presented in technical terms, not even as a science but simply as something that works: it needs no ideological justification, because its success is itself sufficient justification. In this regard, capitalism is "the opposite of socialism, which has a manual": "Capitalism is a system which has no philosophical pretensions, which is not in search of happiness. The only thing it says is: 'Well, this functions.' And if people want to live better, it is preferable to use this mechanism, because it functions. The only criterion is efficiency."

This anti-ideological description is, of course, patently false: the very notion of capitalism as a neutral social mechanism is ideology (even utopian ideology) at its purest. [...] If there was ever a system which enchanted its subjects with dreams (of freedom, of how your success depends on yourself, of the run of luck which is just around the corner, of unconstrained pleasures...), then it is capitalism. The true problem lies elsewhere: namely, how to keep people's faith in capitalism alive when the inexorable reality of a crisis has brutally crushed such dreams? Here enters the need for a "mature" realistic pragmatism: one should heroically resist dreams of perfection and happiness and accept bitter capitalist reality as the best (or the least bad) of all possible worlds.

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/l/lo-fidelity-allstars/album-how-to-operate-with-a-blown-mind.jpg

man I ain't tryin' to blow any minds here; just that, when the revolution comes, I wanna put as few people up against the wall as possible

I've got a 6th hand mobile that my wife gave me because I work on 3 or 4 different sites and my boss needs to get hold of me sometimes btw

good job fighting the Marketing Man noodle

I'm just sayin lots of grown ups have phones for entirely functional reasons and the idea that we're all slaves to the omniscient and totally effective machine is a bit bollocksy really

I mean I am selling out by having a job and a family but y'know what can you do?

like we could write an encyclopedia on counter-examples to companies aren't stupid as well

no logo felt really important to me when i was 17. lol @ 17-y.o. me

And fuck's sake the very notion of capitalism as a neutral social mechanism is ideology well done Mr Zizek you sho' opened my mind, chains coming off as we speak

I've got a 6th hand mobile that my wife gave me because I work on 3 or 4 different sites and my boss needs to get hold of me sometimes btw

― O™ (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 2:46 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

move to a forest and think about being for the rest of your life

I work in a FE college, we don't make anti-third world child nukes or anything

not directly, no

oh man we are all prostitutes

I'm just sayin lots of grown ups have phones for entirely functional reasons and the idea that we're all slaves to the omniscient and totally effective machine is a bit bollocksy really

― O™ (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 2:49 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

kind of an something

No Logo is a good logo. think bill hicks had a good spiel about the anti-marketing dollar being good dollar.

― stop grieving, it's only a chicken (darraghmac), Tuesday, 22 December 2009 14:16 (Yesterday)

Yeah I think No Logo has a chapter or two on this. My immediate reaction to the marketing-of-resistance cycle is that it's creepy and we're doomed, but when I think about it I guess that's where the potential for small, slow, imperfect niches of improvement in business practice comes from (you see it a little bit with food options some places). Market feedback is part of the capitalist system, yeah...so?

another way of putting it: why are you buying a mobile if it's not to make yourself into a certain kind of person?

The way you put this literally makes it impossible to disagree with. Making the choice of NOT getting a mobile would also be trying to "make yourself into a certain kind of person" by that argument. Not to say there's not a point there, but it's a bit circular.

which is not to say that I'm anti-mobile-phone or something, but it's absurd to think that there are somehow ways to partake of the fruits of international business without some piper somewhere getting paid by somebody

??? it's fun to be obvious but the point is to change it

move to a forest and think about being for the rest of your life

― max, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 9:53 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

noodle it sounds like you have a rewarding job which makes a positive contribution to society. that being said, I hope that when the time comes you don't hesitate to abandon it and join the mobs of impoverished south asian teenagers rioting in the streets.

not sure of the eco impact of flying down to south asia but I'm there, basically

xpost - is the real reason for getting a mobile phone, stripped of false ideology, because of "the capitalist imperative to sell your labor power" or "to make yourself into a certain kind of person" then? even if you say the consumerist version of the second comes from the first, they're still very different things, to the point that i'm not really sure where you're going with this.

oh ok if it is just to join the anti capitalist revolution i suppose it doesn't matter

xpost: oh I meant south asians at home in dear ol' Blighty -- but this is based on my cartoonishly simplistic idea of your country's demographic trends and shit so I could be way off on my endgame scenario

I don't have a mobile. People can email me or leave a message on my landline, which I can pick up remotely if needs be. Maybe a couple of times a year an occasion crops up where life would have been easier if I'd had a mobile to hand. And that's not enough for me to actually get one.

The problem here afaic is that critiques of Capitalism that still rely on bigging up its totalising force and spinning a version of "false consciousness" feel pretty ridiculiculiculous in the 09 and I don't really wanna get down with an ideology that starts from the premise that 99 percent of everybody is an idiot, tbh.

xpost to Maria: I haven't really thought about the issue of mobile phones that much, so I'm kinda making this up as I go along (shocker!). the notion of "real reasons, stripped of false ideology" is one I'm kind of skeptical of (I think Zizek is right to follow Althusser in making ideology a question of what people do, rather than what they think), so I suppose the position I'm taking is some variant of:

- this is a historically contingent development which has both positive and negative aspects
- there are a lot of useful/productive things that you, the individual consumer, can do with a mobile phone (make money, talk to your friends, etc.)
- ... but adopting a perspective (a la "I don't care what my mobile phone 'says about me', I just want to be able to keep in touch with my parents/friends/drug dealer/boss!") from which your choices appear to be purely personal matters of consumer preference or providing for your family or whatever -- when the reality is that they tend to be conditioned by, be noticed by, and contribute to the reproduction of, global capitalist power relations -- is willfully ignorant, especially when it serves to absolve you of any guilt by naturalizing these power relations and treating their harmful consequences as unavoidably built into the social fabric, while simultaneously letting you enjoy some (if not all) of the benefits that come from living in one of the wealthiest nations on earth.

can you imagine if the first major appearance of the mobile phone in society had been as a government-subsidized way to integrate the homeless into global networks of telecommunications, help them find work and get access to medical care, etc.?

xpost NV I'm not really sure what you mean by "totalising force" but part of the Zizek quote that I omitted actually talks about how one defining feature of neoliberal capitalist ideology is that it really doesn't partake of 'totalising narratives' or grand illusory truths or whatever; the truth of capitalism is the mechanism of the marketplace, which is a truth without meaning, and for precisely that reason can be incorporated into basically any society or culture. not sure if I totally buy this argument (which is why I left it out of the quote above), but just throwin' it out there.

xp i understand that argument but ultimately it doesn't impact my decision to get a phone or not which i find is kind of the problem with this

why is it a problem that it doesn't impact your decision? what would it have to do to impact your decision?
(genuinely curious)

there's just a big macro/micro disconnect for me with this stuff. like i can make the choice to buy anything fully acknowledging that my choice is conditioned by global capitalist power relations--i would never deny that that is true. but at the end of the day, i, as one guy just trying to make my daily life work, can choose to either a) buy a mobile, b) buy a landline, or c) not have a phone.

so i'm not trying to absolve myself of guilt but really my options are limited.

i don't spend any longer on my phone than i need to (so, on average about once a day for >2 minutes) but obviously yes i am participating in a corporate discourse. thing is, by not taking videos, using mobile internet, sending pictures, using free minutes, doing any of the crap that actually SELLS phones these days, i strongly believe i dodge the overwhelming groundswell of falsely collectivist telecommunication labelling that you so powerfully outline

what's the difference between using mobile internet and using internet in your home?

the way it is marketed! the way you pay for it! the way it 'defines' you socially! hey dudes, lemme just pop home so i can check my email vs i am connected person on the go thumbing thru my gmail woooooo

well I mean, that's fine, just so long as you realize that this pseudo-pragmatic worldview rests on a whole host of ideological assumptions -- Zizek makes a good point in his most recent book, apropos of the financial crisis, about the structure of capitalist ideology:

ahahaha, i'll get to this later. just so long as you know (what a pleasing construction) that zizek is a fucking toolbag/stalinist apologist/antisemite (i say this most days but rly dude).

xp eh that's kind of fooling yrself imo--i pay one giant telecomm company for internet at home; i pay another one for my phone/data plan. if feeling like you didn't get marketed to is a good feeling to you then carry on, i guess.

well dude put it this way my parents bought me a phone when i was 12 and didn't know shit about anything. i still have the same SIM card. i haven't been marketed to at all; i've received and topped up. as for the internet...well as i still live w/ my folks, i get their internet. but the internet is kinda universal and it really doesn't matter who you got it from. i just want cheap, cheerful internet.

i mean ok the fact remains i don't think you can successfully participate "halfway" in these structures

the truth of capitalism is the mechanism of the marketplace, which is a truth without meaning, and for precisely that reason can be incorporated into basically any society or culture.

slow_burner.gif

zizek is a fucking toolbag/stalinist apologist/antisemite (i say this most days but rly dude).

― Dean Gaffney's December (history mayne), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 4:24 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

lookin' forward to yr reply though

there's just a big macro/micro disconnect for me with this stuff. like i can make the choice to buy anything fully acknowledging that my choice is conditioned by global capitalist power relations--i would never deny that that is true. but at the end of the day, i, as one guy just trying to make my daily life work, can choose to either a) buy a mobile, b) buy a landline, or c) not have a phone.

so i'm not trying to absolve myself of guilt but really my options are limited.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 4:16 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

i don't think it's a case of fractions. i participate, but i participate on a basic plan. most young people i know participate on a slightly more advanced, slightly more materialistic plan. their choice and hey they're probably sending each other groovy videos and getting networked while i rot. perhaps my kneejerk reaction against what i term 'the flashmob mentality' is pure untrammeled grouchfulness. but especially in a society where fairness and economic prudence are paramount, these things are essentially frippery. they can be useful on a personal level but to implement them in any sort of self-definition is sad. i don't mind people who use the technology discreetly. but those who celebrate an empty, technological 'togetherness' are complacent and usually oppressive towards the poor, homeless and afflicted.

the internet is by far the most interesting cipher in the capitalism versus socialism debate, and whom it serves best/COULD serve best is something that can be argued until the end of time

(I find the "No Logo" stuff a bit condescending at this point in my life. The mere idea that the stuff we possess has some semiotic importance is much older than capitalism and can't really be avoided, and the fact that capitalism hyper-emphasizes the semiotic value of brand-name stuff can be mitigated by just not hyper-emphasizing it yourself, which most people I know don't. Admittedly, some people DO do this, and the fact that I don't is probably influenced by my having read no-logo-type stuff when I was younger. At this point I just don't think about it. I got a Blackberry recently because I needed to be able to get school/work e-mail very quickly, and I don't care that much about what it says about me (if anything I'm a bit embarrassed when I pull it out on the Subway).

xpost: the problem with the internet is that you can walk from one end of it to the other without ever bumping into a single opposing viewpoint; it reminds me of Foucault in The Order of Things describing the man of the Renaissance, condemned to wander the earth seeing nothing but "resemblances" between all the terms in the Great Chain of Being.

bernard that's a good question--i think the presentation of viable, non-exploitative alternatives can influence decision-making. to a certain extent this can happen with things like clothing and food, unfortunately it can't really happen right now with things like buying a mobile plan.

so i guess my problem w/the argument is that it doesn't really present a "well here's what you SHOULD do" that looks meaningful ir helpful at all, at least not from what i remember of no logo and other stuff i read on the topic.

and lj we're just gonna have to agree to disagree--you are either in or you are out imo. and this but those who celebrate an empty, technological 'togetherness' are complacent and usually oppressive towards the poor, homeless and afflicted. is a pretty monster generalization.

haha most important postwar philosophical thought is based on monster generalisations, right? not that mine is important but sometimes you've gotta say something violently loaded in order to project one's point sufficiently. i mean to say that the mentality presented in the likes of a flashmob for T-Mobile is the sort of mentality which privileges 'those who can' above the unabled. it's quite hard to put my finger exactly on what i mean but placing a sort of religious faith in technology to validate oneself (as happens) means that certain folk are kinda going to hell

imo it is imperative that there are universal channels of discourse open to all people, and it seems that some people are either being excluded or are excluding themselves. which is why ilx is so great! well, provided that everyone has internet access, which they don't. hmm. they will, eventually. these are prototypes.

right ok but i can use my mobile internet to post to ilx and check basketball scores while on the bus and i have never participated in a flashmob iirc. there are plenty of degrees in between embracing the evangelizing effect of such technology (which i like you totally reject) and being like "hey, this is pretty damn useful--not necessary, but useful"

yeah well while i was rambling earlier i produced the following sentence which sums it up pretty well

they can be useful on a personal level but to implement them in any sort of self-definition is sad.

hence we can agree to disagree, and also agree 0_o

maybe, depends who you ask / uh not really? / categorically untrue

lookin' forward to yr reply though

― I got gin but I'm not a ginger (bernard snowy), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 4:35 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

not really sure what your specific problem with capitalism is, yet!

once you've articulated i might get round 2 engaging. but n.e. way i linked to a categorical demonstration of sz's antisemitism yesterday: can't really be bothered to do it again.

his characterization of "capitalism" is basically supernatural; his attempt to counterpose "ideology" and, uh, whatever it is he trades in, was misbegotten enough when althusser tried it;* and there isn't time to engage with him. he doesn't merit it.

but i suppose it really depends on what you want to see there. what kind of society *is* zizek advocating? what is his (or your) dream of perfection? im not saying there's anything wrong with having such dreams or that *all* such are doomed to russian-style failure/tyranny. im just asking which dream it is that he/his fans would make reality. what is the other game in town?

(of course, language itself is so soaked in ideology that... this can't be articulated! amirite? genius.)

*I think Zizek is right to follow Althusser in making ideology a question of what people do, rather than what they think

that would be to follow... the tenets of materialism. and not just even marx. to credit this to althusser (an arch-idealist) is just idiotic.

(I find the "No Logo" stuff a bit condescending at this point in my life. The mere idea that the stuff we possess has some semiotic importance is much older than capitalism and can't really be avoided, and the fact that capitalism hyper-emphasizes the semiotic value of brand-name stuff can be mitigated by just not hyper-emphasizing it yourself, which most people I know don't. Admittedly, some people DO do this, and the fact that I don't is probably influenced by my having read no-logo-type stuff when I was younger. At this point I just don't think about it. I got a Blackberry recently because I needed to be able to get school/work e-mail very quickly, and I don't care that much about what it says about me (if anything I'm a bit embarrassed when I pull it out on the Subway).

― Bay-L.A. Bar Talk (Hurting 2), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 4:51 PM (51 seconds ago) Bookmark

needless to say, the RIM corporation is not greatly bothered by this state of events.

must have really tired you out to have linked to that categorical demonstration of sz's antisemitism nrq

i don't want to bang on the same drum is all, but it's on the most recently bumped bob dylan thread.

though reading his stuff should sort of alert you to him being a creep.

i don't want to bang on the same drum is all, but it's on the most recently bumped bob dylan thread.

also just oxygen of publicity stuff. he's a highly effective operator partly by trolling. getting into it only helps him, if only in a tiny way. he hardly exists outside global capitalism himself, so i don't get how any of this rigorous purism of bernard's stands up, or what end it's aimed at.

hahaha oh man it's the exact awful TNR article that I expected this is great

good reasoning. the article has direct quotes from zizek that i don't think can be justified. what say you?

I say that I don't know how a literate person could arrive at the ridiculously distorted out-of-context readings that Adam Kirsch provides; therefore he is either illiterate or did not really read the books in question

i have a fairly decent track record on literacy; i've read as much zizek as i'd like to; and i haven't seen anyone explain how a quotation can be "distorted". "out of context" of course i understand, but it needs to be demonstrated.

basically Zizek's own response (to Kirsch's *first* article calling him anti-semitic based on a bunch of out-of-context quotes) says it better than I ever could: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/disputations-who-are-you-calling-anti-semitic

Back to Mr. Kirsch, often it is enough to continue my quote and the meaning (opposite to the one imputed to me) becomes clear. Mr. Kirsch quotes my passage “crazy, tasteless even, as it may sound, the problem with Hitler was that he was not violent enough, that his violence was not 'essential' enough”--but is this really a call for even more killing than Hitler afforded? Here is how my text goes on: “Nazism was not radical enough, it did not dare to disturb the basic structure of the modern capitalist social space (which is why it had to invent and focus on destroying an external enemy, Jews). This is why one should oppose the fascination with Hitler according to which Hitler was, of course, a bad guy, responsible for the death of millions--but he definitely had balls, he pursued with iron will what he wanted. … This point is not only ethically repulsive, but simply wrong: no, Hitler did not ‘have the balls’ to really change things; he did not really act, all his actions were fundamentally reactions, i.e., he acted so that nothing would really change, he stages a big spectacle of Revolution so that the capitalist order could survive.”

In this precise sense of violence, Gandhi was more violent than Hitler: Gandhi’s movement effectively endeavored to interrupt the basic functioning of the British colonial state.

I've learned to stop worrying and love my mobile phone.

"distortion" in this case would consist of taking an isolated passage from a book entitled Violence, which is almost entirely dedicated to exploring and developing a theoretical concept of violence, and presenting it to the reader without giving them any inkling of A.) its place in the broader argument being advanced, or B.) the specific meanings or senses of words that are being used.

i don't mind people who use the technology discreetly. but those who celebrate an empty, technological 'togetherness' are complacent and usually oppressive towards the poor, homeless and afflicted.

The word that pops (sorry) out at me in this sentence is "discreetly." It sounds like what bothers you is conspicuous consumption, which has connotations of self-indulgence and self-centeredness, rather than anything to do with the technology itself.

that's a superb defence of revolutionary violence, but doesn't explain how the quotes were out of context.

surely zizek's original quote *does* call on hitler to have been even more (or just as) violent. it's nice to talk about disturbing the "capitalist social space" but what do we mean here, really? could get into debate about whether nazi germany really was in the end a viable space for capitalism -- an idea that really shows up the looseness of his definition of "capitalism".

the last line about the "precise sense" of violence is just fatuous rubbish. is that what you're really offering as an argument?

(of course, gandhi's precise views on the holocaust are interesting to recall, aren't they? of course we wouldn't want to take them out of context. yet more interesting that zizek chose that example.)

xpost zizek actually talks about his instictive reaction to a story as being antisemitic -- jews "of course" trade in human blood. so one can blame his cultural background/upbringing or whatever but it's sort of right there for you. again, though, if you read him and don't find him a creep that's entirely up to you. it makes no difference to the future of socialism.

I don't think you can really call "the capitalist imperative to sell your labor-power" an "entirely functional reason" but then again I'm kind of an idealist
― I got gin but I'm not a ginger (bernard snowy), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 8:57 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

please tell me precisely what is non-functional about selling your labor-power

also reading this ON IPHONE

I always find it disconcerting when someone argues for the disassociation of the term "violence" from actual physical violence against people (such as the mechanized murder of millions) and prefer instead to use the term to refer to abstractions (like capitalism, "the state", etc.) GTFO is my reaction.

x-post

re: antisemitism, it's also been mentioned before that zizek in that rebuttal of his anti-semitism implies, falsely, that jews didn't die in the holocaust in slovenia - or that if they did, it was only a handful, so it's no big deal. then in a recent piece for the guardian, he used the phrase "palestinian-frei" to describe israel's policies in gaza and the west bank, which he also called the world's largest concentration camp. "jews are the real nazis" is the number one trope of modern antisemitism and holocaust denial.

zizek may not really hate jews in his heart of hearts, but he goes around making these hateful statements, and we've already established that ideology is what you do - which makes him an anti-semite.

and we've already established that ideology is what you do

I think I missed something here - when was this established?

not really, but bernard snowy endorsed the view: "I think Zizek is right to follow Althusser in making ideology a question of what people do, rather than what they think."

yeah, which earned me this response:

*I think Zizek is right to follow Althusser in making ideology a question of what people do, rather than what they think

that would be to follow... the tenets of materialism. and not just even marx. to credit this to althusser (an arch-idealist) is just idiotic.

― Dean Gaffney's December (history mayne), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 5:07 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

but ideology, according to Althusser, was based a lot on what people think!

still haven't gotten around to addressing this:

surely zizek's original quote *does* call on hitler to have been even more (or just as) violent. it's nice to talk about disturbing the "capitalist social space" but what do we mean here, really? could get into debate about whether nazi germany really was in the end a viable space for capitalism -- an idea that really shows up the looseness of his definition of "capitalism".

the last line about the "precise sense" of violence is just fatuous rubbish. is that what you're really offering as an argument?

I'm not anti-mobile, mobile is anti-me

bernard otm i hate philosophical writing and this isn't that hard to follow

but ideology, according to Althusser, was based a lot on what people think!

― sarahel, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 6:03 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

where only a single subject (such and such an individual) is concerned, the existence of the ideas of his belief is material in that his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject.

I don't think that this is saying that ideology is solely about actions and what is material, but instead, is saying that ideas cannot be separated from the material.

okay, but I would argue that you're still guilty of "hyper-emphasizing the semiotic value" of the Blackberry "brand". you've detached the brand from its embodiment in the realm of concrete material objects and practices, and made it into some sort of abstract reference point which you define yourself in opposition to. this allows you to buy and use a Blackberry without "buying in" or being a "Blackberry person"; all the negative aspects are subsumed under the heading of "brand", allowing you to avoid them, even as you use the product, simply by not believing in the brand.

needless to say, the RIM corporation is not greatly bothered by this state of events.

― I got gin but I'm not a ginger (bernard snowy), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 12:09 PM Bookmark

I really don't define myself in opposition to it though - I'm not running around saying "Hey, I'm not one of those Blackberry people" I'm just saying that the product's primary interest to me is functional. I mean if you really want to get into the significance of it, I think it's probably more interesting to look at how a Blackberry's "functionality" implicates me in capitalism than its semiotic significance (after all, its effect is to make capitalist work more of a presence in my life at all times, with a little vibration that interrupts whatever I'm doing and tells me to look at another law school or work message).

Perhaps if anything the real semiotic significance of a Blackberry stems from this - it projects a sense of "I am a busy, serious professional who prioritizes my work and I'm 'important'" as opposed to the iPhone's "I am a creative, fun, youthful person." So maybe the BlackBerry's branding is a little less obvious in that sense.

I mean underneath it all I know how I'm complicit in capitalism by my default "pragmatic" attitude, but the thing is when you're not a chaired academic with a platform it's pretty hard to oppose capitalism in a non-futile way, especially when you're being presented with the choice of an imperfect system that feeds you versus a big question mark.

what if we could eat questions marks

please tell me precisely what is non-functional about selling your labor-power

― deej--nuts, butthurt, and yelly (gbx), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 5:50 PM (43 minutes ago) Bookmark

and of course, individuals can also arrive at very distorted perspectives on what their own 'needs' are. daycare may be a necessity for a single mother whose only source of income is paid labor, but one can easily imagine a society in which this wouldn't be the case. similarly, I know a lot of people who wish that they could cook more, because it's cheaper/healthier/tastier, but they just don't have the time... because they're always busy working, in order to make money, which is then spent on expensive prepared/packaged foods. or look at the domestic 'chores' (for some reason denied the status of legitimate employment) traditionally assigned to housewives: from the perspective of the husband, things like cooking, cleaning, and washing clothes appear as 'needs', when their status is really more like 'preconditions for the continuation of gainful employment'.

what condiment would you put on your question marks

it would tell me a lot about you

what if you didn't have time to prepare your own question marks, so busy working for the man that you order take out

I hope you remember the ones living off government question marks

maybe they're the really free ones

have you ever tried exclamation points

"work or starve" is kind of an easy decision from the individual's perspective, but the choice to work ends up expressing more than simply a desire not to starve; intentionally or not, it lends legitimacy to the ruling order.

Work or starve is pretty much a human imperative. I mean it's work, starve, or make others do work for you, whether by force or by some kind of social contract. You could quibble with the AMOUNT of work required by capitalism and whether it's really way beyond what's necessary and a means for the ruling class to skim, but work itself can't be quibbled with.

Unless you're using "work" as a shorthand for selling your labor to someone else. In which case I'd probably bring up some arguments about efficiency.

But I'd also add that capitalism does give you a pretty wide range of options in terms of selling your labor - I mean you can work 20 hours a week in a Starbucks and then spend the rest of your time growing food, knitting clothes and building furniture if you really want.

I mean underneath it all I know how I'm complicit in capitalism by my default "pragmatic" attitude, but the thing is when you're not a chaired academic with a platform it's pretty hard to oppose capitalism in a non-futile way, especially when you're being presented with the choice of an imperfect system that feeds you versus a big question mark.

― Bay-L.A. Bar Talk (Hurting 2), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 6:50 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark

just one more thing to add, and then I gotta run: I don't think of 'ideology criticism' (or whatever you wanna call it) as a way to separate myself from and denounce the unenlightened, false-consciousness-having herds; my motivation is more along the lines of "god DAMN it, why is it so hard to change this system when everyone knows that it's constantly fucking people over, again and again, in the same predictable ways?" but as long as people acknowledge that we have now is a seriously flawed system, and they aren't actively stanning for the World Bank or something, I'm fine with them doing whatever.

ut the thing is when you're not a chaired academic with a platform it's pretty hard to oppose capitalism in a non-futile way

I'd say most chaired academics with platforms are deluding themselves that they're opposing capitalism in any way whatsoever

especially if they have blackberries or iPhones, right?

haha

why is it so hard to change this system when everyone knows that it's constantly fucking people over, again and again, in the same predictable ways?

http://images2.fanpop.com/images/quiz/266000/266151_1248794026596_350_349.jpg

I just, in general, find the idea that you can stand OUTSIDE a system and criticize it ridiculous. you will always be inside the system. man is a social animal and is bound by social constructs. even the most ascetic drop-out unabomber type, living in the woods wearing handmade clothes and burning his shit for fuel or whatever, is still living in relation to some external system - the thoughts he has are ordered by a language, his actions are defined by their opposition to the existing system, etc. there is no outside. we're all in it.

criticizing a system you are inside of often makes for a more informed, nuanced critique.

have you ever read an sb thread

Read an sb thread? I've gotten multiple sb threads locked by mods as a result of my posts to them!

I just, in general, find the idea that you can stand OUTSIDE a system and criticize it ridiculous. you will always be inside the system.

frankly I don't even know what this means

like how ridiculous was black folks' criticism of the racist power structure in the american south

or are you just calling the unabomber on his shit

but regardless of questions about Althusser's philosophical persuasion (given that his most famous essay about ideology includes a detailed discussion of his thesis that "Ideology has a material existence", I'm going with "materialist"), that seems to be the view most people here are working with

yeah, maybe read some of the lit on althusser? it's fairly well established (by marxists!) that his basic outlook was idealist. been saying this on ilx for years so excuse lack of patience, but basically althusser was so comprehensively "done" in the 1970s that it is ludicrous to me that people continue to talk about him.

I think Zizek's original quote, taken in full, says exactly what it says: Weimar Germany was a nation with a lot of problems, and Hitler's solution (unifying the population around the exclusion and extermination of an ethnic minority) was an easy way to make people feel better without changing anything. whether or not you think it's legitimate to define the term "violence" broadly enough that it encompasses both genocide and social change is irrelevant; it's pretty clear that that Zizek does think it's legitimate, and the only way to arrive at the "ZOMG HE SAID HITERL SHOULD BE MORE VIOLENT!!1!" criticism is to ignore the author's intent (or to have it obscured for you by a charlatan like Adam Kirsch).

"without changing anything"? yeah, you're going with that? ok.

i think the violence he meant was probably more than "social change", wasn't it? more like violent leninist revolution? under third period comintern that would have been just lovely. probably not as bad as nazism, but "social change" -- no. i think he means rather more. why is kirsch a "charlatan"? more than zizek, the guy who extols "emancipatory violence" from various well-protected lectures halls to the children of the rich west.

"the last line about the "precise sense" of violence is just fatuous rubbish. is that what you're really offering as an argument?"

the idea that a philosopher will sometimes use a word in ways that are different from its everyday use? yes, that would be my argument. this is why e.g. the Kantian "transcendental subject" is not "maths"

well, he said "precise" didn't he? how would you "precisely" define violence to include the most-famous advocate of non-violence? (his world is altogether lacking in precision. history is messy. even the collapse of the raj.)

or are you just calling the unabomber on his shit

^^^this. but not just the unabomber basically all ivory tower academicians

lol at blanket condemnation of betrand rusell, jacques derrida, unabomber

?

stop it you are making me hungry

nah I like Derrida, he's a riot

xp question mark con carne?

Russell seems like a stand-up guy too.

Dropping my slave-name as a challenge to global capitalism btw

i thought this thread would be revived for naomi klein's in-praise-of-sex-and-the-city article in G2 this week

wasn't that naomi wolf? (a little unexpected as well but ok)

haha oops! i am actually more disappointed in naomi wolf than i was when i was skimming it and thought it was naomi klein for some reason

http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/2610/1uyunibig6st.jpg

world looks pretty good from up here tbh

klein and climate reparations.