Brian Holmes on Thu, 20 Apr 2006 08:44:08 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> Network, Swarm, Microstructure |
Some thoughts about power Foucault conceived a mode of sovereign power, related to the functioning of law in the Middle Ages (transcendent power of life and death, power to banish); a mode of disciplinary power, related to the functioning of institutions from the 16th century onward (collective power to train, to correct, to reshape behavior at both sensory-motor and psychological levels); and a mode of liberal power, related to a capacity to evaluate the potential benefits, to oneself and/or the state, of circulations of all kinds (power to induce self-maximalizing strategies that make behavior predictable and modulable, without having to dictate it). Finally, he also came somewhat reluctantly to admit and theorize the coexistence of all these forms of power, their hybridization in specific admixtures. An approach which has not been sufficiently developed imho. I think the word "network" is a better descriptor of hardware and of protocols, than of forms of power (ie, regular and constraining patterns of social relations). A lot of confusion arises because of the desire to make one word, network, say much more than it can all alone. I also happen to think (and this is where I do differ slightly from Felix) that the most common contemporary networks, though not all networks of course, have very weak and open protocols. Not particularly binding, somewhat exclusive of course, but not intensely exclusive either. The Internet can convey words, images, sounds. You can do it all for free with pirated Microsoft bullshit that takes thirty seconds to learn. Similarly, you can put a lot of different things on a train, and you can say a lot of different things over a telephone. This is massively done all around the world by people with incredibly different motivations, entangled in very different sets of constraints, disciplines, hierarchies, systems of law and so on. You can convey a tremendous amount of cultural attitudes, behavioral cues, conceptual structures via the net, the train or the phone, all of which don't have practically anything to do with the specific protocols of those technologies. It would be sort of strange not to notice that important permeability of the most widespread networks, with the most basic protocols. However, the fact that these cultural attitudes etc. do pass through the net, and through Microsoft, or through the train and the SNCF, or the phone and Mobistar, does have its real importance too. The forms of power are reorganized by the ones that are dominant. In the world today, the liberal form of power is dominant. It is articulated by money first of all. The telos of money is to circulate. Its circulation is calculable with statistical methods. People can be expected to follow the cues of that circulation, and institutional and control functions can be built which make that expectation into a self-fulfilling prophecy. All this has an incredible effect both on discipline and on one's experience of transcendence. But it doesn't get rid of the influence of inherited disciplines or symbolic divides between the holy and the base, the includable and the excludable. What money with its telos of circulation does do, however, is elicit a very clear ethos of resistance among certain minorities, an ethos which can and has gone very far in erecting all kinds of incitements and constraints to keep you from acting for profit. And so we do, in reality and when we're lucky, have cooperative networks as well. What's needed is to understand very precisely the large number of social dynamics that have reconfigured themselves, for better and worse, according to the last great deterritorializing expansion and multiplication of the circulation of money, which has been accompanied and facilitated, even decisively reshaped, by the implementation of hyperindividualizing electronic networks. Study the expansion of the American currency (or financial techniques), accompanied by the Internet, comsats and TVs, and you will learn a lot about the dominant structures of power articulated by the underlying logic of liberalism. Study the expansion of the vertically integrated American corporation and you will learn a lot about what discipline means in the world today. Study the expansion of American military bases and you will learn a lot about what sovereign power means today. The word American recurrs three times in the sentences above because the currently dominant ways of articulating all the three forms of power were invented there, from about 1890 onwards. But that doesn't cancel out deep and strange hybridizations of the type we see all the time, both between the three contemporary (ie dominant) forms, and between other kinds of power, sets of behaviors, concepts, values and world views, that have held historical sway elsewhere and at different times and that continue to reproduce themselves partially in circulating human beings. The useful gain that could be made out of this conversation is to quit saying a network is this, a network is that. I definitely don't think you can specify networks to collaboration. Hierarchy can be conveyed perfectly by network technology; possessive individualism can express itself even better through network technology. However, if you start trying to talk about a specific set of values, goals, world visions and truth claims, and then you delineate the relation between those "worlds" and specific technical functions and logical protocols that enhance people capacity to act within them, then you can start to describe some of the great variety of microstructures that have proliferated over the past thirty years. great to hear so many ideas on this subject! best, BH # 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