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<nettime> Toshiya Ueno: Pirates and Capitalism 1 |
From: VYC04344@niftyserve.or.jp Date: Sun, 04 May 1997 17:50:00 +0900 Pirates and Capitalism Toshiya Ueno I In this article, I will try to focus on the relation between Pirates and Capitalism. I wish to begin by referring to Robinson Crusoe. In order to present, argue, and analyze relationship between piracy and capitalism, Robinson Crusoe is an important reference point. In Daniel Dafoe's story, Robinson resisted his father's opinion and Protestant ethics and did not trust the Christian God of Protestantism. Robinson was longing for his brother who had become an adventurer looking for property and treasure in the other unknown world, either Africa or the West Indies. Robinson also tried to accomplish this. But in his first navigation, he was caught by the Moors and became their slave. Eventually, he escaped from slavery, and he bought land in Brazil and managed a huge plantation. However, as he failed to succeed with his plantation, Robinson again began navigating the seas in order to get African slaves. But his ship sank, and he alone survived to live on a desert island. In this miserable situation, he appreciated and blessed God. Robinson had reformed and returned to Protestantism. On the island, he made an effort to make an enclosure just as the gentry (early bourgeoisie) established it in England. In other words Robinson repeated the Protestant ethic and the spirit of Capitalism. As you may know, this interpretation is derived from Max Weber. But it is already obvious that the human-type of Robinson--who acts rationally and productively on the basis of "innerworldly asceticism"--is a sort of fiction. If you carefully read _Robinson Crusoe_, you would come to understand that his behavior on the island was not at all "rational" and "productive." Instead his activities depended on monstrous excessive desires. For example, when he attempted to salvage many materials useful for survival from the ship wreck on the coast of the island, he wanted to get "everything" without considering whether these would be useful or not. His desire to get as many things as conceivably possible was absolutely unlimited. It is especially clear in his obsession with his fort's construction, for he did not know the exact aim of the fort. That is to say Robinson does not know what he does.(This is the definition of ideology made by Marx). His behavior and mentality were never based on "value-rationality." So the human type of Robinson is not nearly as ascetic and rational as the bourgeoisie in England were, but rather the type of human in the contemporary world. (The words like "type of human" or "human type" are technical terms in Weber's sociology. One can understand these as an ideal embodiment of type of each class.) As a character, Robinson is very similar to us in his purposeless and excessive production and consumption. Even though we would define Robinson as the human type of Protestant, the theoretical framework making this definition possible is already problematic and dubious. In response to the question "Why did Capitalism first take place in England, and why not in other places?" the most general reply has been as follows: "It is because of the bourgeoisie possessing the Protestant ethic that Capitalism proceeded from England prior to the advent of Capitalism in other places." But now this interpretation is radically changing from it's bottom. For example, according to the point of view of Immanuel Wallerstein's "world system theory," the response should be: "It is because Capitalism occurred in England that in other areas and societies Capitalism didn't take place." The world system is just one system and has a structural totality. Actually the shift in point of view made by world system theory has to with the problem of colonialism. Since 1492 Capitalism has always been synchronous and co-operative with colonization and colonialism. It should be noted that Robinson proceeded with his navigation to get slaves for his Brazilian plantation. However, in his life on the desert island, he encountered Friday as a "coloured native other." Friday as a slave could be defined as the other and the object for the enlightenment of Western (European) reason. Recently, on the basis of the paradigm of world system theory or Braudelian historicism, many theoreticians have been very interested in the transportation and the communication of the sea trading. It should not be forgotten that Robinson was a sailor. In certain sense, the type of human epitomized by Robinson was found not in Yeomanry (or middle bourgeois) but in sailors and colonizers in the 17th century. In this context, some theoreticians might talk about the change of paradigms from the history of the land to the history of the sea. For example, Venice in the medieval age, Spain in the 16th century, The Netherlands in the 17th century, England in the 18th century was the sea-polis or the sea empire, the state having sea hegemony. History can be seen from the sea, not only from the land and the continents. In 1492--needless to say it's the same year that Columbus found America--Islamic Moors, excluded from the Iberian peninsula, became Barbalian pirates and assaulted Christian ships. In turn, Christian states permit many Christians, and hence Europeans, become pirates by granting pirates letters of commission from marque to attack other nations ships. It seems that the post-Columbus age was an age of pirates. II The book "A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates" (1724) is a very strange and good book which deals with the history of the pirates and includes the stories about Captain Kid,Teach and female pirates Mary Lead and Ann Bony. It was written by Captain Charles Johnson. This book has influenced countless novels and fictions about pirates. By reading this book, we might argue about the relationship surrounding the invention of nation-states and pirates and Capitalism. One is tempted to ask, "Who was Charles Johonson?" Hakim Bey has already discussed this problem in _T.A.Z._ According to him and recent influential opinion, Charles Johnson is said to be the pen name of Daniel Dafoe. It is a tremendous story if the author of the mythical text about the rise of Capitalism was at the same time the author of a history of pirates. However, this is not simple coincidence. Hakim Bey began the most important chapter of TAZ by titling it "Pirate Utopias." As you know, the Temporary Autonomous Zone is not a concrete and realized society or fixed space but autonomous chronotopes which vanish after being realized temporarily by independence and autonomy. Bey considered such a type of zone in the activity of the pirates in the 17th or 18th centuries. He said that the pirates and corsairs already had a sort of information network by creating the global web connecting islands and continents. Historically speaking, many pirates founded small communities or utopian societies in Morocco or the Caribbean islands which were quite different and independent from the early power politics of nation-states in those days. These communities made by pirates already composed Temporary Autonomous Zones. He took as an example Bruce Sterling's famous novel _Islands in the Net_ and pointed out the overlapping relation between islands (or archipelagos) connected through pirates and the rhizomatic nets of transnational corporations. Hakim saw a model of data pirates in Sterling"s novel as, besides huge corporations, many hackers and small high-tech manufactures are operating on information and transforming its quality and the meaning of property or ownership, itself. It is worth referring to another text, _Pirate Utopias--Moorish Corsairs &European Renegadoes_(Autonomedia,1995) written by Peter Lamborn Wilson. This book focuses on Muslim corsairs and pirates utopias where thousands of Europeans converted to Islam and joined the pirate "holy war." According to his analysis, the pirate utopias were formed by a community of renagedoes who converted beliefs, ideologies, and political or religious identities. The Pirate Republic of Sale in Morocco in the 17th century is the representative model.This independent and insurrectionary community was constituted by corsairs, sufis, adventurers, etc. I wish to say in passing that Robinson was the captive of this republic. It seems important that in the history of pirates, there have always been renagedoes and "drop-outs" from any closed community or dogmatic party. So the term of renegade does not mean negative escape but rather self-expression in the form of betrayal .The renegadoe is the movement toward heresy or paganism and is a means for cultural traveling. For example, when a religion or one belief system would move from one culture to another one, heresy and paganism can take place there. One should remember the relationship between Celtic culture and Christianity or that between Islamic, Jewish, and Christian religions. In addition, the renagedoes are always the resistors in a society or community. In fact, America was originally founded as a land of drop-outs (Peter Lamborn Wilson, "Lost Ancestors: An Introduction to Pooch Van Dunk's "Indian Heritage" in _Gone to Croatan, Origins of North American Drop Out Culture_, edited by Ron Sakolsky & James Koehnline,1993). In order to analyze pirate cultural politics much more, I would like to refer to the novel _Moby Dick_ by Herman Melville. Of course, Captain Ahab and his crew in the ship "Pequod" were not pirates, but they were another type from the tribe of sea workers. Ahab has common aspects with Robinson, because for Ahab the activity--the vengeance against Moby Dick also was filled with self-purpose. I can summarize the important points in this novel as follows. Firstly, Melville's writing about whales was very paranoid and maniacal. It can be immediately felt from the encyclopedic descriptions about whales, "cetology," that there are strange passions involved in classifying the tribes of whales. Moby Dick ,as a big white whale, existed on the top of these tribes. Ahab, haunted by vengeance, and his crew were occupied with taking the invisible power of life from Moby Dick. The big white whale seems to be almost immortal. Even though in one incident Moby Dick was wounded by a whaler's harpoon, he appears in other scenes without any scar. Moby Dick's immortality derives from his omnipresence in the sea. The white whale is immortal because it can go beyond the limits of time-space zones. In other words , Melville (or Ishmael as the narrator) said that the whales know the secret web and routes in the sea.However, the whales have not only information about networks in the sea, but they are themselves an corpus of strange information. What does it mean?In _Moby Dick_ , Melville as narative subject compared the patterns on the whales skin with the designs of primitive Indian art. At the same time, he also emphasized the flowing and moving of the whale's tale and likened it to the symbols and signs in Freemasonry. In such a way, for Melville, the whales, themselves, exist as the information and text and for human perception. Secondly, there are so many "races" on the ship "Pequod." Around Ahab as a white, one could easily find the overlapping of marginal natives and tribes, for example, Caribbean, American Indian, African blacks, and European whites. Hakim (and Peter) have often mentioned the "tri-racial-community" in Croatan as well as drop out America. On the "Pequod," I'm tempted to call the tri-racial-community the creol and hybrid community on the ship. In that sense, the name of Ishmael is very symbolic because in the Bible it meant the exile. I wish to say in passing that whale catching in Japan has had a very special meaning and history. Japanese whalers have also known the informatic nature of whales. The whales are very sensitive to peculiar sounds and therefore they possess a harmonic unity with the sea. For whales, the sea originally contained networks and matrices of information. Whaling was not simply the hunting in general but a very unique technology of searching the invisible and uncontrolled zones of the sea. Through fighting the whales, the whalers could enter unknown and hidden elements in nature. --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de