by
Mark Fisher
147
Lecture Four: Union Power and Soul Power
0
terms
2
notes
167
But I wonder if identity logic — taking identity as the model rather than class — is the issue here, for understanding those other forms of struggle. And this was the way in which the Right could capture these struggles. Because you could say it’s not the positive features of actually existing women that define women as a revolutionary class. It’s not the positive features of actually existing minority race groups that define them as a revolutionary class. It’s their structural and antagonistic position and the potential for transformation that occurs once consciousness develops that makes them potentially revolutionary agents.
But I wonder if identity logic — taking identity as the model rather than class — is the issue here, for understanding those other forms of struggle. And this was the way in which the Right could capture these struggles. Because you could say it’s not the positive features of actually existing women that define women as a revolutionary class. It’s not the positive features of actually existing minority race groups that define them as a revolutionary class. It’s their structural and antagonistic position and the potential for transformation that occurs once consciousness develops that makes them potentially revolutionary agents.
176
It was precisely because they were so potentially transformative that they could be so retrospectively commodified. Because the energy of transformation then becomes a kind of residual libido. When the conditions for the struggle are no longer there you can still appeal to that libido, the transformational libido. Which it still endlessly has to. Capital is always going on about the “revolutionary”. The word “revolution” is a key commodity identifier now… You’re sort of looking at me blankly… Don’t you see this quite a lot? The word “revolution” used as a commodity? Names of restaurants, that kind of thing?12 This appeal to dynamic flux, shift, creativity, all of that, is a key feature of advertising. This is kind of the argument of Boltanski and Chiapello in The New Spirit of Capitalism. I say that — you may not have read it. It was an important text for a lot of these discussions. It was very big — way too big for what was necessary — but a lot of their argument is really about how the counterculture became subdued, transformed, turned into… It wasn’t simply defeated, it was incorporated into the core structure of capitalism now, which then has to be about creativity, self-reinvention, etc. etc. So the counterculture becomes mirrored in the current form of capitalism. So it doesn’t simply defeat this stuff, it metabolises it, it absorbs it, it transforms it for its own ends. And that’s what we can start to look at next week with Lyotard.
It was precisely because they were so potentially transformative that they could be so retrospectively commodified. Because the energy of transformation then becomes a kind of residual libido. When the conditions for the struggle are no longer there you can still appeal to that libido, the transformational libido. Which it still endlessly has to. Capital is always going on about the “revolutionary”. The word “revolution” is a key commodity identifier now… You’re sort of looking at me blankly… Don’t you see this quite a lot? The word “revolution” used as a commodity? Names of restaurants, that kind of thing?12 This appeal to dynamic flux, shift, creativity, all of that, is a key feature of advertising. This is kind of the argument of Boltanski and Chiapello in The New Spirit of Capitalism. I say that — you may not have read it. It was an important text for a lot of these discussions. It was very big — way too big for what was necessary — but a lot of their argument is really about how the counterculture became subdued, transformed, turned into… It wasn’t simply defeated, it was incorporated into the core structure of capitalism now, which then has to be about creativity, self-reinvention, etc. etc. So the counterculture becomes mirrored in the current form of capitalism. So it doesn’t simply defeat this stuff, it metabolises it, it absorbs it, it transforms it for its own ends. And that’s what we can start to look at next week with Lyotard.