it’s about a book that sucks ass
I read neither the review nor the book.
I rate the review as good and the book as bad.
:zizek:
So I'm a bit less than halfway through the review (very nice work), am I understanding correctly that Wark is arguing that in the contemporary epoch, the dominant force is essentially global telecommunication technologies and computing power writ large? Because if so, boy, that's a stupid fucking take. It'd be like arguing that Capitalism in 1865 was only Capitalism because of the scientific mechanical nature of the industrial revolution.
She claims throughout the book to not be saying something that stupid, but imo, as a necessary consequence of her methodology, she ends of saying exactly that stupid thing.
Yeah ok. It seems a lot like the classic case of someone thinking that empiricism is somehow privileged in describing metaphysical truth, failing to realize that it's technological power always comes from its failure to describe the Real. It's clear that she doesn't seem to really understand the material nature of technology and specifically information technology, perhaps due to a lack of personal, practical experience. Some of the points you describe seem solid, like wanting to find a way to peer around "adjective-Capitalism." I think the failure though of most of this cultural theory and focus isn't that it doesn't correctly privilege science or is guilty of meaningful epistemic failures but that it doesn't properly understand the effect of increasingly powerful technology further abstracting productive Capitalism away from the material core. The Situationists wanted the workers in the factories to rise up, but the majority of the French hadn't been laborers experiencing the specific conditions imposed by industrial capitalism in quite some time.
Isn't her focus on vulgar Marxism exactly what your critique of her is? She argues that the cultural theorists don't focus nearly enough on the development of the forces of production (which IIRC according to her argument can't be understand theoretically sans collaborative effort), and how the rapid development of the forces of production have led not further the rationalization of the economic process, but only a furthered its abstraction to new levels, which basically seems to be what you just said.
Yeah, I think that was the reasonable part. But then the explanation she starts into about "the vector" comes across as deeply uninformed. I think it's a failure to adequately understand the nature of contemporary technology, and then elevating it to essential godhood while arguing that no one can argue against the empirical sciences. I agree with the critiques as does the review, but then the whole argument of the book goes right off the rails.
Damn! Great and comprehensive take down. The power of being a classic r/cth poster
That's a shame—a lot of McKenzie Wark's has been wonderful. Glad I skipped this one.
reading it really helped me clarify my own positions at least (more or less the exact opposites of everything she wrote)
Great review. It also helped fill in some of my gaps about Marxism. 👍
I read this review a while ago (didn’t realize I was dealing with an old school cth’er, definitely make the whole thing funnier), but didn’t read the book and therefore landed on “?”
(I knew a few people who had read the book and didn’t come away from it as unfavorably, and I respect their opinions)
I will ask you instead a related question (in my mind):
Have you read or watched Ian Wright’s talk on Capital as a real god?
In my mind (not having read wark) it’s sort of adjacent to all of this. He contends that, viewed through the lens of control theory, capital functions not only as the ultimate controller of human labor, but also crucially supplies the “sensing instrumentation” by which we measure the value of things
I’ve really enjoyed the framework since reading it, and think it offers a different way of thinking about the role of “data” etc (“vectorialism”ish, again, not having read wark herself) under our particular monopoly capitalism. I suspect capital has always had a fondness for information in order to survive, essentially.
Im light of this, modern capitalist “data” is ultimately a marginally useful thing that can provide moderate profit amplification, but not enough to really justify the energy currently put into it (but capitalists also need to do something with surplus, as well as make-work schemes, so dog tracks like “advertising data markets” can usefully exist).
I personally fear these discussions are a little “academic”, and don’t place a ton of importance on them, even though I find them interesting
My favorite part of the book, or at least the part that stuck with me, is the near throwaway line about how it would be more accurate to refer to neoliberalism as “alt-fascism.”
Ever since then it’s been a brainworm I can’t quite unthink.
