McKenzie Wark on Tue, 5 Nov 2002 15:03:16 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> From Tactical Media to Digital Multitudes |
n_ik makes the valuable point that class struggle in most of the world appears not to be about information, but to be about land. Indeed, the *first*, not the second or the third, moments of commodification is very much in progress. For many people the expropriation of their communal land rights is their direct experience of commodification, in terms of what it takes from them. However, i think this process is overlaid by two other moments of commodification: indistrialisation, or the commodification of fungible productive resources, but also vectoralisation, or the commodification of information and its means of abstraction, the vector. If one breaks it down thus, one can use this distinction as an analytic for thinking about possible alliances, and possible conflicts, between the subordinated classes in each of the three distinct circuits of commodification. It seems to me greatly clarifying to think about a complex articulation of class struggles, than to posit a 'multitude' arraigned against 'globalisation', where neither of those terms have much historical analytic specificity. One can certianly trace a very significant movement that arises out the Zapatista experience, but it might be a bit limiting to restrict one's sense of a counter history to that one strand. Or to ignore how much that movement owed to an emergent information environment, both in terms of what it contronted and what it was able to use as vector for 'counter-global' (call it what you like) formation. k # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net