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4.52 AVERAGE
4.52 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Dry and hard to get through at times but very interesting and educational. I feel like I learned so much while reading this
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
informative
slow-paced
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
[Johnson] grew angry; and resolving to shock the supposed pride [of his great visitors], by making [them] imagine that his friend and he were low indeed, he addressed himself in a loud tone to Mr. Reynolds, saying, ‘How much do you think you and I could get in a week, if we were to work as hard as we could?’ – as if they had been common mechanicks.
— James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
Fish Cannot Swim Upstream
Capital has its origin in a so-called Spurious Infinity. Capitalists are always already appropriating revenues from their investments in fixed capital, variable capital, and a surplus value extracted from uncompensated labor power, which is subsequently re-invested in more capital, a process that reproduces itself ad infinitum. Marx states, "The whole movement, therefore, seems to turn around in a never-ending circle, which we can only get out of by assuming a primitive accumulation (the 'previous accumulation' of Adam Smith) which precedes capitalist accumulation; [. . .] This primitive accumulation plays approximately the same role in political economy as original sin does in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin Fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote about the past" (Capital Vol. 1 874/1143). Later on, Marx enumerates a variety of sources for this "startup capital", including the enclosure of the commons, the alienation of the monasteries, colonial exploitation, the proliferation of the contemporary slave trade, and, notably, acts of parliament limiting compensation for labor. So, in that time which, for Marx, was already characterized by "Late Capitalism," primitive accumulation remained in full swing; different "stages" of Capitalism already coexisting in the same space and time. The novelty in Federici's text is therefore not the notion of a synchronic process of primitive accumulation, but instead consists of her point that, "Primitive accumulation, then, was not simply an accumulation and concentration of exploitable workers and capital. It was also an accumulation of differences and divisions within the working class, whereby hierarchies [were] built upon gender," (89).
Karl Popper, in The Logic of Scientific Discovery describes the consequences of the Schrödinger equation for a "Particle In a Box" (this equation above), which characterizes the movement of a quantum particle. As the mass (m) of this particle approaches the macroscopic limit, this equation demonstrates that it's impossible for this particle to be moving at all (the denominator of the fraction becomes immense). Although scientific equations are de facto excluded from use in scenarios for which they have no application, such examples demonstrate how, without adequate controls, mathematical thinking can be put to wrong uses. (It's a shame Popper doesn't apply this simplicity of thought to his later arguments contra-Marxism, which are hardly scientific. . .) The second law of thermodynamics, taken wholesale, demonstrates that fish cannot swim upstream, since water follows in a fish's wake, and such Laws prove that water always flows downstream. The is analogous to the claim of certain contemporary Marxists that the most unpleasant phenoma you are just now witnessing for the first time are already the long-standing sequela of Capital. Such simplifications neglect the visible eddies and counter-currents in a dynamic system, which appears, on the scale of individual particles, even to be working against itself. The attempt to write the narrative of such phenomena, which seem fated to be pulled under in the next moment, seems somehow futile.
A single equation tasked with too much becomes an "under-determination," because it hardly seems to explain anything. This is an inversion of the "over-determination" in which a very grand explanation tends to muddy the waters. We recall those stories psychoanalysis always seems to be cooking up. Freud's analysis of clowns in The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious appears to be a sly commentary on his profession. Clowns are funny, in part, due to their excessive gestures ("clowning"). We laugh (according to Freud) because of the so-called "uneconomic" use of mental energies in these movements. Perhaps there is an analogy here with the social commentaries that link everything back six-thousand years to the biblical Fall, or indeed the psychoanalysts going back two-thousand years to the ancient Greek tragedies. (There's a saying that goes, "All the best Freudians were Anti-Freudian," (including Freud himself).) Though one might not agree with their methods, some of the results are hard to beat. On the relation between complicated tools (e.g. Marxism, Freudianism) and their reliant users, Julia Kristeva states, "According to Freud, the pervert solders the drive and the object (this mechanism could be the basis of the relationship between closeness and command).” (New Maladies of the Soul, 1993). This perhaps explains the mechanism by which all those efforts to weld Freudianism and Marxism failed: they became, perversely, the expression of Theory that takes itself for its own success. Kristeva further elaborates, "The representation erupts into the domain of language and thought, and produces a symbolic monstrosity, a symptom of thinking—magical thinking—where 'doing' is confused with 'meaning,'" (ibid.) In the sense that "Theory" is short-circuiting "Critique of Gender" by soldering it to Marxist polemics, it's at risk of entering a "spurious infinity" i.e. a continuous cycle of self-regard that does nothing else. Such rough implements remain, in essence, the "Master's Tools." Regarding the "accumulated differences and divisions within the working class," one wonders whether "Critique of Capital" is still the best tool for the job.
The Tempest is a play of strange [empty] spaces. One can only imagine the silence of the first fifteen years of Miranda's childhood while she waits for her father to explain [Marx's concept of] simple reproduction. Yet Prospero's exposition of their exile seems to be characterized by strategic lapses. The easy concessions of Prospero's usurpers, who supposedly sent him off to certain death, are hasty even for the rapid reconciliation typical of Shakespearean comedy. One almost wonders whether our vox clamantis in deserto (read: Conquistador) was tasked with his own personal witch hunt. Caliban's presumptive mother, Sycorax the Witch, is (narratively) circumscribed within a circle of salt, for Prospero appears to have defeated her with the use of magic that he only obtained as a consequence of her defeat. Such origins always appear to be displaced. One hardly goes further by questioning the tale of Ariel's imprisonment (by Sycorax . . . so says Prospero), or the absent father of Caliban (who, in plays with a limited cast of characters, must narrowly be Prospero himself). Some readers of this play appear to mirror its lapses. Federici notes how Cuban revolutionaries such as Roberto Fernandez Retamar forget Sycorax, and instead take Caliban as their model of resistance (a repetition of the circumscription of women, which takes place, this time, among our Marxist betters). When Federici states, "Caliban represents not only the anti-colonial rebel whose struggle still resonates in contemporary Caribbean literature, but is a symbol for the world proletariat and, more specifically, for the proletarian body as a terrain and instrument of resistance to the logic of capitalism, " she is reprising the role of Prospero who is again taking Caliban into (rhetorical) service. But Caliban cannot speak any [forbidden] words we could understand, since these we didn't teach him. Though he might make a reasonable statement on the "accumulation of differences and divisions within the working class," Caliban will never be able to ask the [foreclosed] question once posed by another Native Son (Telemachus): "Who has known his own engendering?"
In summary, there doesn't actually appear to be anything wrong with Federici's project — at least from what I have taken to be its strongest points. It makes narrative sense that the process of primitive accumulation would (intentionally) "inscribe differences and divisions in the working class," and that the witch hunts likely facilitated that process. Marx, who in all of Capital never betrays whether he has intimate knowledge of "the re-production of labor-power" (aside from its association with so-called "indecent living"), appears to be begging for a Feminist critique. Yet the witch hunt narrative in this text appears to follow the Marxist rule so closely one wonders if it isn't a bit overdetermined. From all the phenomena which come to bear in these witch hunt cases, most of which appear to be contingent, one imagines what came to pass in this early Capitalist system could just as well have been otherwise (if caught in a different eddy). The story of Feudalism-as-Paradise mirrors the narrative of the Fall so closely that we become suspicious of the text — When you hear about a Fall-from-Grace be prepared to start hearing about New-Wave-Religion, Totalizing-Theory, and other forms of Desire. Alas, even after we've bought-in, it's not apparent that divisions in the working class are best approached with a Marxist power-tool and its enormous baggage (and not even battery-powered, one must plug it into the wall). Would a directed approach from post-colonial studies or feminisms-of-the-most-recent-wave not do a finer job, and also perhaps grant us access to those stories which cannot be told from within the Marxist narrative of the witch-hunt violence. We are thinking (very briefly) of Spivak's comments on "credit-baiting through women's 'micro-enterprise' — There is no figure of violence in such a global case to make the disaster immediately visible" (Breast Stories, 1997). Frederici, in recent work (e.g. "On reproduction as an interpretative framework for social/gender relations", (2018)) still appears quite sharp, especially her ability to ask why so much uncompensated labor is still expected of our (predominantly female) young assistant professors (mentoring, grading, surrogate mothering, and so on . . .) I would contend that the belated attachment to witch hunt narratives, therefore, may now be a hindrance, especially in our (Late) stage of "Late Capitalism" where the individual tragedies of Capital continue to appear as catastrophic accidents in the service of nothing, and of which no one is in control.
informative
reflective
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
