Chapter 1: Subjective Figures of the Crisis ... - Negri in English

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populations in the Americas and Australia had to work to buy themselves out of debt, but often their debt continually rose, condemning them to indefinite servitude. Unable to rise from the miser}' to which they are reduced, the indebted is bound by invisible chains that must be recognized, grasped, and broken order to become free. The Mediatized In previous eras it often appeared that in relation to the media political action was stifled primarily by the fact that people didn't have sufficient access to information or the means to communicate and express their own views. Indeed today repressive governments attempt to limit access to websites, close down blogs and Facebook pages, attack journalists, and generally block access to information. Countering such repression is certainly an important battle, and we have repeatedly witnessed how media networks and access to them eventually and inevitably overflow 7 all such barriers, thwarting attempts to close and silence. We are more concerned, though, about the ways that today's mediatized subjects suffer from the opposite problem, stifled by a surplus of information, communication, and expression. "The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves," Gilles Deleuze explains, "but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don't stop people from expressing themselves, but rather, force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying." The problem of surplus, however, is not really homologous to the problem of lack, and it is not even a matter of quantity. Deleuze seems to be recalling here the political paradox highlighted by Etienne de La Boetie and Baruch Spinoza: sometimes people strive for their servitude as if it were their salvation. Is it possible that in their voluntary' communication and expression, in their blogging and web browning and social media practices, people are contributing to instead of contesting repressive forces Instead of
information and communication, Deleuze says, what we often need is the silence necessary' for there to be thought. This is not really such a paradox. The aim is not really silence for Deleuze but having something worth saying. Primarily at stake in the question of political action and liberation, in other words, is not the quantity of information, communication, and expression but, rather, their quality. The importance of information and communication in repressive apparatuses (or projects of liberation) is heightened by the fact that laboring practices and economic production are becoming ever more mediatized. Media and communications technologies are increasingly central to all types of productive practices and are key to the kinds of cooperation necessary' for today's biopolitical production. For many workers, moreover, especially in the dominant countries, communications and social media seem simultaneously to free them from and chain them to their jobs. With your smart phone and your wireless connections, you can go anywhere and still be on the job, which you realize quickly means that an where you go you are still working! Mediatization is a major factor in the increasingly blurred divisions between work and life. It thus seems more appropriate to think of such workers as not so much alienated as mediatized. Whereas the consciousness of the alienated worker is separated or divided, the consciousness of the mediatized is subsumed or absorbed in the web. The consciousness of the mediatized is not really split but fragmented and dispersed. The media, furthermore, don't really make you passive. In fact, they constantly call on you to participate, to choose what you like, to contribute your opinions, to narrate your life. The media are constantly responsive to your likes and dislikes, and in return you are constantly attentive. The mediatized is thus a subjectivity that is paradoxically neither active nor passive but rather constantly absorbed in attention. How can we separate the repressive powers of media from the potential for liberation Is it possible to recognize qualitative distinctions among different types of information and communication Perhaps a look back at the role of information and communication in the factor}' in an earlier phase of production can give us some hints. In the early 1960s, Romano
Page 1 and 2: Opening: Take Up the Baton Chapter
Page 3 and 4: Declaration Michael Hardt and Anton
Page 5 and 6: degage!" and indeed by the middle o
Page 7 and 8: These movements do, of course, shar
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Page 17: equal exchange, then, the debtor-cr
Page 21 and 22: or even ideas but rather through th
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Page 63 and 64: What do I know about water distribu
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to be the guide. Democratic, partic
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Latin America. From the 1990s to th
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with the sources of sovereign power
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constitutional functions. The crisi
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incapable today of launching an eff
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to make political decisions themsel
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miserable death, and as we said ear
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ureaucratic organization together w
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governmental body. Another primary'
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come crashing down. Or that debtors
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In medieval England, commoners form
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lack of leaders but because of it.
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See Etienne de La Boetie, Discourse
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Independence as the real and legiti
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Cover design by Benjamin Shaykin Co
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Chapter 1: Subjective Figures of the Crisis ... - Negri in English

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