z3118338 on Mon, 7 Mar 2005 04:59:43 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> W/O(C) digest [geer, salucofagos] |
On Sun, 6 Mar 2005 08:58 am, nettime's_counterimagineer wrote: > Today 08:58:08 am /snip > From: Benjamin Geer <benjamin.geer@gmail.com> /snip > If you can explain how we can dispense with halfway measures, and > immediately create a radically transformed social order in which all > ideas will belong to the commons, I'd like to hear your strategy. =C2=A0In > the absence of such a strategy, what can we do but try to use existing > social norms (like copyright) in new ways (like copyleft), to begin > creating transitional forms of society that include some conditions > (like a substantial commons of ideas) that could be part of a better > world? I think before I can really deal with the depth of the Schijndel & Smier piece we have to try as they say in someplaces at least to get on the same page and not talk across each other. So two points: 1. re: > If you can explain how we can dispense with halfway measures, and > immediately create a radically transformed social order .... Well it seems you ask the impossible from me. And that you will not entertain (as usual) any "transitional forms" other than those expounded by your high priests of the GPL of the CC. Are not the GPL and the CC by your own admission themselves "halfway measures"? You seem to acknowledge that they are but you will not acknowledge any other form of passage or transition. Its a bit hard to discuss with someone who is only open to the one and the good tranistional form. 2. re: >in which all > ideas will belong to the commons, well isnt the commons just a hang over form the public/private thinking of modernity. Isn't it the Lessigian harking back to the "real" meaning of copyright law. Isn't it just a big open pool ready for the taking able to be commodified by various forms (eg Trade Marks or whatever) in order to serve the purpose of innovation and business application? I am not really interested in the idea of building such a commons within capital - one that is free as in speech and not free as in beer. I prefer to think in terms of what we have in common by the composition of relations which give us the potential to increase our capabilities to live in common. This is not an all encompassing thing like "the commons". If we have nothing in common, iif for example someone rejects the ethics by which another seeks to build a just world why would I want them to be able to take what I have in common with others and propertise it to turn it back on me inverted why and for would I want to support the process of expropriation that capital seeks to manage and control by adding to the commons. Agamben said : "The extreme form of the expropriation of the Common is the spectacle, that is the politics we live in. But this also means that in the spectacle our linguistic nature comes back to us inverted. This is why (precisely because what is being expropriated is the very possibility of the common good) the violence of the spectacle is so destructive; ..." Deleuze in his classes on Spinoza gives us a hint what the common is about: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/csisp/PDF/deluze_spinoza_affect.pdf =E2=80=9CLet's now try to find the common notions. A common notion is a perception. It's a perception of a common relation, a relation common to me and to another body. It follows from affects, active affects. These affections, perceptions and affects are also affections of essence. They belong to essence. It's the same thing, but insofar as what? No longer insofar as essence is conceived as possessing an infinity of extensive parts that belong to it under a certain relation, but insofar as essence is conceived as expressing itself in a relation. Here the extensive parts and the action of the extensive parts are cast off since I am raised to the comprehension of relations that are causes, thus I am raised to another aspect of essence. It's no longer essence insofar as it actually possesses an infinit of extensive parts, it's essence insofar as it expresses itself in a = relation.=E2=80=9D And it see to me that Negri and Hardt use "common" in contradistinction to the commons, eg: p. 188 =E2=80=9CThe legal justification of private ownership is undermined by the common social nature of production.=E2=80=9D p. 206 =E2=80=9C... our insistence on a legal conception of the common against both the private and the public...=E2=80=9D p. 303 =E2=80=9C...not a return to the public ... but a creation of the common ...=E2=80=9D p. 310 =E2=80=9C...the ontological conditions of society are defined by a common fabric, which is not fixed and static but open, overflowing ... The task is to discover a way in common ...=E2=80=9D So, sounding like some punky singer I want to say - Dont talk to me about the commons, coz I aint interested in capital's commons, (to quote Moglen: "The GPL is a straightforward capitalistic proposition") and dont ask me to tell you how to create the new Stalisnist Pol Potist world - there is no immediately created and radically transformed social order - there is only life and living the passage. To do that dear Ben you must be open to other means than the one and the true way. And to live the passage we don't need a licence (a property form or contract) we need ethics. If the GPL et al live in this passage charcaterised by a permanent state of exception - where they appear as law, have force of law; why not experiment with ethics instead of property and the contractual form?? ------------------------------------------------------ # 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