Jason Read

The Politics of Transindividuality

The Politics of Transindividuality proposes a new understanding of not just the relation of the individual to the collective, but of politics and economics, one that can not only keep pace with existing transformations of capital but ultimately contest them.

The Fetish is Always Actual, Revolution is Always Virtual: From Noology to Noopolitics

By most accounts Deleuzes engagement with Marx begins with the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia he co-authored with Felix Guattari. However, Deleuzes Difference and Repetition alludes to a connection between Deleuzes critique of common sense and Marxs theory of fetishism, suggesting a connection between the critique of the image of thought and the critique of capital. By tracing this connection from its emergence in the early texts on noology, or the image of thought, to the development in the critique of state thought in A Thousand Plateaus, it can be argued that what initially appears as an entirely infra-philosophical problem, concerned with the presuppositions of philosophy, is not only a political problem as well, but ultimately bears on the very nature of the conjunction between thought and politics, making possible a re-examination of what is meant by revolutionary thought. It is a transition from noology to noopolitics. In the end it can be argued that revolutionary thought is no lo...

The Hidden Abode of Biopolitical Production: Empire and the Ontology of Production

In the exposition of volume 1 of Capital, Marx presents the transition from capitalism viewed from the perspective of relations of exchange, including the sale and purchase of labor-power, to the capitalism viewed from the perspective of its production as analogous to the transition from “appearance” to “truth.” In commodity exchange, equivalents are always exchanged for equivalents. Thus, barring swindling, it is impossible to understand from the point of view of exchange how valorization, the increase of value, is possible. In order to grasp this secret, which after all is the heart of the capitalist mode of production, it is necessary to leave the market of exchange and turn to an examination of production.

The Antagonistic Ground of Constitutive Power: An Essay on the Thought of Antonio Negri

labor: labor that produces value. The foundation of this subordination is the division between labor as abstract labor, defined as that which creates value, and all other activities, which are given the negative definition of “nonwork” or nonproductive work (this includes housework and all other labor defined as nonproductive). As Hardt and Negri write, “If labor is the basis of value, then value is equally the basis of labor. What counts as labor, or value creating practice, always depends on the existing values of a given social and historical context; in other words, labor should not simply defined as activity, any activity, but specifically activity that is socially recognized as productive of value” (1994,9). While the distinction between valued labor and labor deemed nonproductive is itself a site of contestation and antagonism, in a capitalist society this division between valued and nonvalued labor is ultimately drawn by the demands of capitalist accumulation. If in the first instance capitalist command differentiates and separates the sphere of work from nonwork, in the second it establishes a hierarchy and discipline internal to work, which is necessary to the production of surpl~s-value.’~ As Mam indicated in chapter 13 of Capital, the more capitalist production is dependent upon the cooperation and subjectivity of labor (as in the production of relative surplus-value), the more it must impose structures of command and discipline to control the productive forces it requires (Hardt and Negri 1994, 77). It might be possible to say that capital is a kind of worldly potestas that functions by separating power (potenria) from “what it can do.” Capital continually subordinates the subjectivity and sociality of living labor to the constraints and demands of surplus-value. The conflict between capitalist command (as a worldly form ofporestas) and living labor is not limited to the direct and immediate conflict that takes place between worker and capitalist in the labor process. It also includes the political and social effects and mediations of this relation, such as law and state power (Balibar 1988, 33). These “mediations and effects” are transformed by the passage from formal to real subsumption, and the most notable effect of this transformation is a breakdown in the spatial and temporal division between the sites of production and reproduction. The factory as an isolated site of production has given way to the “social factory” in which social cooperation and communication (not to mention the productive forces of immaterial labor such as subjectivity, knowledge, style, and affect) have become directly productive. Production has become coextensive with the social. “If the factory has been extended across the social plane, then organization and subordination, in their varying relationship of interpenetration, are equally spread across the entire society” (Hardt and Negri 1994, 79).15 This socialization intensifies and multiplies the contours of antagonism. It intensifies antagonism by elevating and 14. Following Deleuze and Guattari, capital can be identified as an “apparatus of capture.” An apparatus of capture is defined by two moments that are mutually constitutive, a direct comparison of activities (the division between labor and nonlabor) and a monopolistic appropriation (surplus labor) ( 1987. 444). 15. Gilles Deleuze (1995) has developed some of the implications of the breakdown of spatial and temporal divisions between techniques of control.

The Order and Connection of Ideas: Theoretical Practice in Macherey's Turn to Spinoza

This essay examines the “turn to Spinoza” by contemporary Marxist philosophers, arguing that far from being a scholastic exercise, the turn to Spinoza furthers and resolves problems of Marxist philosophy. Specifically this essay argues that Pierre Machereys research on Spinoza furthers the project of outlining the materialist understanding of philosophy initiated by Karl Marxs critique in The German Ideology of the supposed autonomy of philosophy. While many have understood that critique as a simple denunciation of philosophy, Louis Althusser argued that Marxs thought offered the conditions of a new “practice of philosophy.” However, Althussers conception of “theoretical practice” remained stuck in irresolvable paradoxes. Spinozas philosophy offers a necessary resolution of Althussers limitations. While many consider Spinoza to be a philosopher who thought sub specie aeternitatis, contemplating eternal truths, Macherey demonstrates not only that Spinoza wrestled with the ideologies of his time, but that his philosophy offers grounds for a materialist conception of philosophy through his insistence on the causal order of thought. Through the lenses of Althusser and Macherey, Spinozas philosophy can be understood to offer a materialist reevaluation of philosophy as an activity conditioned by the relations of bodies and affects. Finally, this essay argues that an understanding of philosophy as conditioned, as a specific theoretical practice, or operation, makes possible a transformation of philosophy.

Relations of Production

Simondon’s concept of the transindividual has become a central point of reference for contemporary critical philosophy and social philosophy. Despite its importance in the work of such writers as Etienne Balibar, Gilles Deleuze, Bernard Stiegler and Paolo Virno, Simondon’s works have not been translated into English, and thus no comprehensive study has appeared so far. Muriel Combes’s book presents not only a study of Simondon’s thought, but an examination of what it makes possible in terms of rethinking social relations.

Commonwealth, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Cambridge, MA.: Belknap-Harvard, 2009

Abstract Commonwealth is the third book co-authored by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. As with the previous two books, Empire and Multitude, the task of this book is to both critique the present order and provide the concepts for a radical transformation of that order. This review examines how this third, and final book in the series, changes the argument of the other two, specifically examining the role that the concept of the common plays in restructuring the idea of critique, politics, and political economy.