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

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174 I The Soul at WorkThe Poisonee) Soul / 175good and is well-disposed to his neighbor; but theof private property has corrupted his nature [. .. J. Ifproperty were abolished, all wealth held in conlrnc>n,5evetyone allowed to share in the enjoyment of it,hostility would disappear among men [ ... J. I have nowith any economic criticism of the communist system; Inot enquire into whether the abolition of private prt)pe.ttjexpedient or advantageous. But I am able to recognizepsychological premises on which the system is baseduntenable illusion."36According to Freud modern capitalism, as every civilfounded on a necessary repression of individual libido andlimating organization of the collective libido. This intuitionexpressed in many different ways in 20th-century thought.In the context of Freudian psychoanalysis, our "diiscclntelconstitutive and inevitable, and psychoanalytic theory offersthrough language and anamnesis, the neurotic forms that itprovoke. The philosophical culture of existentialistshares Freud's firm belief that constitutive alienation is unav(lid,and that libidinal drives are repressed.On the contrary, in the context of Marxist and antiallthtarian theories, repression needs to be considered as adetermined form that social action can eliminate byproductive and desiring energies already belonging to themovement of society.In both of these philosophic scenes however, the COtlCe])t.repression plays a fundamental role, since it explains thepathologies dealt with by psychoanalytic theory whilesame time elucidating the capitalistic social contradiction,ishm"n[ revolutionary movements want to make possible into overcome exploitation and alienation itself.is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization isup upon a renunciation of instinct, how much it presuppreciselythe non-satisfuction (by suppression, repressionor some other means?) of powerful instincts." [FreudJ1960s and 1970s the concept of repression was left in theitk1:rolllla of political discourse. The political influence of desireemphasized in opposition to repressive mechanisms, but thisof thinking often ended up becoming a conceptual and polititrap.As for instance in 1977 Italy: after the wave of arreststhe February and March insurrections, the movementto call a September meeting in Bologna on the question of,p,,:ssi,)n. This was a conceptual mistake: choosing repression asmajor topic of discussion, we entered the narrative machine oflosing our capacity of imagining new forms of life, asymwithrespect to power and therefore independent from it.(",,, tile end of the twentieth century, the entire question of rep resseemsto vanish and relinquish the social scene. The dominantpattlO/C)gil" of our times are no longer neurotic, determined by a!'p""SiC)ll of libido, but rather schizo-pathologies, produced by theexpre,,;iv( explosion of the just do it.Stnlcture and desireantiaurhoritarian theories of the 1970s emerge from aFreudian conceprual domain even if they expand and overturn its
historical horizons, In Eros and CtZVzh'/'e time,' I' messZzatzonof the liberation of 'colle'Vl a,rq'sepresses'tec hcrlvenology'seros 'and knowl e d ge ' stheir full developmentpotentialitiesbut by. ' Cfltlca " subJectivi lprecisely by tymaking possible the fullandexprpr o d'Uctlve 'eSSlOnpotentialities ' th us 'fi ullcreating threalizationeof the pleasurecOlodi'tiollprinciple,The analysis of ,modern sOciety isdesCnptlOn of discipli nary InStruments 'tions andmod I'the public d' ,e 109 social. .lSCourse In apublrcatlOn ofrepressive wFoucault'say,1979 'dsemmarsevoted to(parti I"the Ib' h fb' , , cu at y1ft 0 ,opolmcs") hasofforcedFoucault'sus totheory frommovere presslve ' d"IOpO meal,sclpline tocontrolth edevices, Yet in his wor kso f modd ermty 'evoted to th e(specifically ' n M. dZ. , ,1 a ness andCmtc, DtsciplineCivilizatioandn,A Unts 'h) , 1ll ' h' IS ownwithinwaytheF IdomainOUcauoftth e "still,repressive ' " paradigm,Despite their open abandonment ofthethe F reudlan 'Anti-Oedipus, Deleuz e andomailld G uattan 'falso remain.0, problems h'delimited byhFreud ' ':'It n t es 1929 essa y , ,dzscontents, Desire is theCtVt/tzatzond nvmg "rorce cof thesociety andmovementindividualbothexpcnences, ' yet desirin g . .constantly withcreativitythe rehas topresslve ' warpmachineacesthatm evetycapitalisticcorner of existence and the ima ',Th e conceptgmatlon,0 f desire"cannot be flattenedrepressive"OUt 'k'1010ad , 0 n there,'dinttofthcontraty, indesire isAnti-Oedi iUSopposedtheto thatconceptof lack. The field 0 f Itical auphilosophy,producedon wh' IC h twentleth '(century p I" mis)-fortunes:Oltlcs b 'Iit is theUI tfield of d epen dL aceney,k' IS aand notspecificofproductaUtonlolI'Yof the economic regime , of re I" 19lOUSb' 1"I 'domination. Processes of erotic and political subjectivabefounded on lack, but on desire as creation,this point of view, Deleuze and Guattari let us undetstandrep,ression is nothing but a projection of desire, Desire is not theifestatiion of a structure but has the creative power to build astructures. Desire can stiffen structures, transforming them3oi)sessi1!e refrains, Desire sets traps for itself.in the analytical frameworks deriving from Foucault'sand Deleuze's and Guattarfs creationism prevails a visionas force, as the reemergence of repressed desirethe repressive social sublimation: an anti-repressive, or ratherexpressive vision.The relation between structure and desire is the turning pointGuattari's schizoanalytic theory, leading him outside of Lacanian?re'Idis;m"s influence, Desire cannot be understood through strucasa possible variant depending on invariable mathematicalCreative desire produces infinite structures, and amongthem even those functioning as apparatuses of tepression,in otder to really exit the Freudian framework, we need towait fo r Baudrillard, whose theories looked dissuasive to us inthose years, Jean Baudrillard draws a different landscape: in hisworks of the early 1970s (The System of Objects, The ConsumerSociety, "Requiem for the Media" and finally Forget Foucault)Baudrillard maintains that desire is the driving force of capital'sdevelopment and that the ideology of liberation corresponds tothe full domination of the commodity: the new imaginary dimensionis not repression, but simulation, proliferation of simulacra,seduction, Expressive excess is for Baudrillatd the essential core ofan overdose of reality,176/ The Sou! at Work
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THE SOUL AT WORKSEMIOTEXT(E) FOREIG
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PrefaceSoul on StrikeThe soul is th
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Instability is now the order of the
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dynamics of contemporary class anta
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Introduction"Those who maintain tha
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In this book I want to compare the
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contribution consists in the reform
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externalisation of the worker in hi
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matter that is important for us: th
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civilization. Only the estrangement
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political instruments of attack and
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To assert that knowledge needs to b
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LAhor and AlienAtion in the ohiloso
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production process itself; the rela
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capital semiotizes the technologica
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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 48 and 49: Thf1 Soul at Work / 99inducing drug
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 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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