Franco ''Bifo'' Berardi - The Soul at Work From Alienation to Autonomy

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Thf1 Soul at Work / 99inducing drugs, including neuro-programminggrowing part of Western societies, subjected to an UUlnt>ernmemal hyper-excitation to the point of collapse, evokedexorcism the urban legend of the millennium bug.phantasmatic threat dissolved, the real collapse came. Buteconomy's collective psyche had already reached its pointreturn. When in 1999 Alan Greenspan spoke of rheberance of the market," his words were more of a clinicalfinancial diagnosis. Exuberance was an effect of the rl"'M .::cthe over-exploitation of available mental energy, of a satur" ti(Jattention leading people to the limits of panic.Panic is the amicipation of a depressive breakdown, ofconfusion and disactivation.And finally the moment of rhe Prozac crash came.The beginning of the new millennium had glorifiedfusions: AOL and Time Warner united rheir temacles indiffusely infiltrate the global mind. Immediately after, thetelecommunication emerprises invested huge amounts of moneyUMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System). Thesethe last actions before the crash involving Worldcom, Enron,entire sectors of the net-economy. This crisis, which was only aanticipation of the 2008 final catastrophe, was the first m'lllifest" tiof the breakdown suffered by swarms of cognitive workers moremore affected by psychopathological syndromes and stress.Panic depressive syndrome and competitionIn his book La Fatigue d'etre soi, Alain Ehrenberg discussession as a social pathological syndrome, specifically dependingsituations characterized by competition.)epreSS1on begins to develop after the disciplinary behavioraland the rules of authority and conformity to therooLibi.tio,ns that assigned a destiny to social classes andcollapsed faced with the new norms pushing eacheveryone to individual action, forcing individuals tothemselves. Because of this new norm, the responofour lives is now fully assigned to each of us.lepl:ession then manifests itself as pathology of responsibility,'dolrnir,at
defeat, but the social norm cannot acknowledge thewithout questioning its own ideological fundaments,its own economic efficiency.The other side of the new economy is naturally the USestimulant or anti-depressive substances. This is a hidden,removed side, but absolutely decisive. How many,economy .operators, survive without Prozac, Zoloft or evenDependence on psychotropic substances, those onethe pharmacy and those one can buy on the street, is aelement of the psychopathologic economy.When economic competition is the dominantimperative of the social consortium, we can be positiveconditions fo r mass depression will. be produced. Thishappening under our eyes.Social psychologists have in fact remarked that two patholo1of great actuality in these last decades of liberalist hYiper-caplpanic and depression.Panic is a syndrome psychologists don't understandsince it seems to have occurred only rarely in the past.drome has been only recently diagnosed as aphenomenon, and it is hard to find its physical and ps)rchicr'but it is even harder to find an adequately effective th"tal'Y'it. I don't have rhe ambition to offer any solution to theic problem this syndrome poses. I'm just makingobservations on the meaning of panic. Panic is the feelingwhen, faced with the infinity of nature, we feelunable to receive in OUf consciollsness the infinite stirnul.uithe world produces in us. The etymology derives fromword pan, that means "everything existing": the godappeared bringing a sublime, devastating folly ov,,,,,kilne'ihis visit (see James Hillmann's An Essay on Pan). Butcan we explain the diffusion of this kind of syndrome inIs it possible to find any relation between it and the conitmanifests and spteads?social context is a competitive society where all energiesin order to prevail on the other. Survival is no longerreaching a position of sufficient preparation and abilities,constantly questioned: if one does not win, one can bein a few days or a few months.technological context is the constant acceleration of theof the global machine, a constant expansion of cyberspaceof the individual brain's limited capacities of elaboration.communicational context is that of an endless expansionInfosphere, which contains all the signals from which comandsurvival depend.this a very similar situation to the one pictured by theetymology of the word panic?lll" llJ"w
Page 1 and 2: THE SOUL AT WORKSEMIOTEXT(E) FOREIG
Page 3 and 4: PrefaceSoul on StrikeThe soul is th
Page 5 and 6: Instability is now the order of the
Page 7 and 8: dynamics of contemporary class anta
Page 9 and 10: Introduction"Those who maintain tha
Page 11: In this book I want to compare the
Page 16 and 17: contribution consists in the reform
Page 18 and 19: externalisation of the worker in hi
Page 20 and 21: matter that is important for us: th
Page 22 and 23: civilization. Only the estrangement
Page 24 and 25: political instruments of attack and
Page 26 and 27: To assert that knowledge needs to b
Page 28 and 29: LAhor and AlienAtion in the ohiloso
Page 30 and 31: production process itself; the rela
Page 32 and 33: capital semiotizes the technologica
Page 34 and 35: Labor and Alienation in the philoso
Page 36 and 37: 2Digital technologies open a comple
Page 38 and 39: 78 1 The Soul at Worktheir labor to
Page 40 and 41: of relation to the world, time, and
Page 42 and 43: velocity in the relation between st
Page 44 and 45: The mobility of the product was mad
Page 46 and 47: First of all, digital technology sp
Page 50 and 51: Collective panic generates phenomen
Page 52 and 53: 3The Poisoned SoulFrom incommunicab
Page 54 and 55: "globalization" and "virtuality" ca
Page 56 and 57: 11 ' nlll \1with ominous signals: i
Page 58 and 59: Desire is not a force but a field.
Page 60 and 61: order to give shape to an enunciati
Page 62 and 63: finds increasingly difficulr ro Con
Page 64 and 65: With the expression '(aesthetic par
Page 66 and 67: of public spaces in the digital rea
Page 68 and 69: Therefore the therapeutic question
Page 70 and 71: consists in the creation of dissipa
Page 72 and 73: 146/ The Soul at WorkThen the direc
Page 74 and 75: country provided with infinite ener
Page 76 and 77: Baudrillard antlc'pates this trend
Page 78 and 79: The Poisoned Soul 1 159grand Ration
Page 80 and 81: In those years Baudrillard talked a
Page 82 and 83: hierarchy (none of whom was immolat
Page 84 and 85: Pathogenic alterityIn his film Pers
Page 86 and 87: 174 I The Soul at WorkThe Poisonee)
Page 88 and 89: Thp. PnisnnAri Soul /179"The real i
Page 90 and 91: "The peculiarity of the schizophren
Page 92 and 93: force is legitimated as the only ef
Page 94 and 95: The Precarious Soul / 1 91economic
Page 96 and 97: This idea was largely popular in cy
Page 98 and 99:
Isn't technology a factor of incred
Page 100 and 101:
had belonged individually to each a
Page 102 and 103:
genesis of the present depressionco
Page 104 and 105:
form of war and tax reductions for
Page 106 and 107:
dogma we must absolutely get rid of
Page 108 and 109:
Now what?The economic collapse cann
Page 110 and 111:
223NotesIntroduction1. The Philosop
Page 112 and 113:
Notes / 2273. The Poisoned Soul1. R
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Franco ''Bifo'' Berardi - The Soul at Work From Alienation to Autonomy

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