Thursday, August 28, 2008

Sorry, It's much worse: (somewhat less than a book report, even)

As something of a follow up to the recent post on Negri it makes sense to write a short review of sorts of Richard Sennett’s The Culture of the New Capitalism. Like Negri, Sennett ascribes to the view that there has been a radical transformation of labor, and that this transformation has effects that reach far beyond the economy to constitute a new basis for politics and a new articulation of culture. However, unlike Negri, Sennett is almost entirely pessimistic about this transformation.


Sennett’s sketch of the present focuses on two fundamental transformations of the structure of work. First, there is the demise of a certain model of hierarchy and bureaucracy, of the pyramid structure of the corporation. The loss of this is also a loss of a particular relation to time, to social capital, and ultimately to a particular kind of subjectivity. The subject of the hierarchical corporation worked to “climb the ladder,” accumulating knowledge, and social capital (defined as a particular investment in one’s social involvements). This also entails a particular involvement and investment in time, a time of delayed gratification, in which work is towards constructing a future. Ultimately Sennet is more concerned with the particular subjectivity that accompanies this structure, than the structure itself, that of the citizen/craftsman. This is the second transformation. Sennett defines the craftsman as someone willing to do something for its own sake, something which requires an objectification in an object or practice. As philosophers such as Aristotle and Arendt have argued, this “thing,” car, cake, law, or institution becomes the standard of the action.


These two things, the institution of delayed gratification and the ethic of the craftsman, overlap and reinforce each other in that both require a certain construction of the future, a certain ideal of stability. They are thus both destroyed by the way in which work has been reorganized by the twin specters of uselessness, automation and outsourcing. These have fundamentally restructured the organization of the corporation, from a hierarchy, in which one accumulates expertise and social capital, to a lateral system of networks, where one moves from job to job, starting over each time, never accumulating knowledge (because it is continually radically redefined) or social capital. In place of the craftsman the contemporary subject of work is defined by potential. It is this potential that is assessed in the various tests that start in the early years of life, and becomes the basis for future movement. This potential exists as something fundamentally unrealized and unrealizable, it is a vague ability to adapt to new situations, to respond to the situation, and to interact, to “work with people.” Sennett connects this to a fundamental change of attitudes, this subject as potential is caught between the anxiety of uselessness and the flexibility of adapting to new rules and structures. We are all little ipods, obsessed with potential that cannot be realized, all of that excess memory, and capable of indifferently switching in new programs, new rules, depending on the situation. In this way his work echoes themes in Paolo Virno's work regarding anxiety, cynicism, and opportunism.


It is important to stress that Sennett connects this ideal of the craftsman with a particular idea of the citizen. The citizen-craftsman is able to dedicate his or herself to the difficult task of constructing institutions and structures, structures that have a certain objectivity, which outlast the individuals that create them. More importantly the citizen-craftsmen is able to research issues and ideas, dedicating time towards the eventual good of knowledge and participation. In its place we now have the “citizen consumer.” The actions of the citizen consumer are modeled on the general trends in consumption in general. Sennett points out that contemporary production is based on more or less standardized products, which have slight variations of style or packaging. Politicians and political events take on the same structure, a fundamental homogeneity that underlies the various pseudo-events, the scandals and slight changes that make up the din of political coverage.


“So familiar are we with this crossover from consumer to political behavior that we lose sight of the consequences: the press’s and public’s endless obsession with politician’s individual character traits mask the reality of the consensus platform. In modern political performances, the marketing of personality further and frequently eschews a narrative of the politician’s history and record in office; its too boring. He or she embodies intentions, desires, values, beliefs, tastes—an emphasis which has again the effect of divorcing power and responsibility.”


Sennett’s skepticism regarding the liberatory effects of immaterial production is in part based on the shift from the production to consumption. Whereas Negri focuses almost exclusively on the production of subjectivity through labor, finding a subject which is communicative, ethical, and capable of organizing itself outside of the control of capital, Sennett focuses on consumption, finding a subject which is isolated and subject to the narcissism of minor difference.


Finally, I would argue that the connection that Sennett (and others such as Negri, Virno, etc.,) explore between a mode of labor and a mode of social existence can and should be deepened. Sennett’s fundamental point of a transformation of time, from an ethic of deferred gratification to an ethic of anxiety and short term connections, should be examined and extended. It would seem that the most fundamental challenge in the present is the one that Virno outlines:


"What is involved here is the conceptualization of the field of immediate coincidence between production and ethics, structure and superstructure, between the revolution of labor process and the revolution of sentiments, between technology and emotional tonality, between material development and culture. By confining ourselves narrowly to this dichotomy, however, we fatally renew the metaphysical split between “lower” and higher, animal and rational, body and soul—and it makes little difference if we boast of our pretensions to historical materialism. If we fail to perceive the points of identity between labor practices and modes of life, we will comprehend nothing of the changes taking place in present-day production and misunderstand a great deal about the forms of contemporary culture."


1 comment:

Yusef Asabiyah said...

“So familiar are we with this crossover from consumer to political behavior that we lose sight of the consequences: the press’s and public’s endless obsession with politician’s individual character traits mask the reality of the consensus platform. In modern political performances, the marketing of personality further and frequently eschews a narrative of the politician’s history and record in office; its too boring. He or she embodies intentions, desires, values, beliefs, tastes—an emphasis which has again the effect of divorcing power and responsibility.”

I read this before the Palin nomination and its been going through my mind ever since. Maybe I better read this book.