Intellectual Specificity and Inner Fascism

Capitalism is the use of money for the purpose of accumulating more money.
Money is pure exchange value, with no inherent use value. Thus there is no
end-goal or telos in capitalism, but rather perpetual and endless exchange.
Similarly, the purpose of consuming information in an entertainment culture
is . . . to consume information. Entertainment seeks only to draw the
viewer's attention. But human attention is such that it is most easily
retained by moving images or "novelty". Thus entertainment is a perpetual
flow of novel images; like money, entertaining images never rest in any
final meaning (signified-referent) or telos. Entertainment is the endless
play of signifiers of deconstruction/postmodernism/poststructuralism.
Postindustrial capitalism has given information enormous monetary value.
Thus capitalism merges with entertainment and the signifier disengaged from
any referent. Academia is not immune from this process. On the contrary,
academics are highly privileged members of the upper class (in terms of
income, academics are upper middle income; in terms of power, influence,
autonomy and status, they are upper class/ruling class). They thus have a
vested interest in the status quo, which is that of a post-modern,
post-industrial captalism. Hence, education has been reduced to postmodern
entertainment.

Foucault is of interest not because of any post-structuralist epistemology
he may harbor, but because he sheds light on modern institutions of power
and on the structure of power in a modern society.


>From: Doug Stokes <dstokes14@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: foucault@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
>deleuze-guattari@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: Intellectual Specificity and Inner Fascism
>Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2000 12:53:48 -0000
>
>Im not familiar with the thread, or indeed Nussbaum. Maybe what he / she is
>getting at is Post structuralisms (PS) failure to ground itself in any
>politico-ethical framework. Furthermore, it has taken left academia into a
>discursive navel gazing whereby the symbolic becomes the foundational. The
>retreat from any economic or materialist analysis (which PS caricatures as
>'economic reductionism') and its attendent effects on concioussness is made
>all the more ironic as capitalism further penetrates our inner lives.
>Intellectuals abdicate responsibility for any sustained engagement. Instead
>they cripple themselves with talk of 'specific intellectuals', meanwhile
>the
>globalised juggernaut of late capitalism continues to universalise
>oppression.
>
>I seriously doubt that Nassbaum was wishing to be 'morally led' by wishing
>to know what butler grounds her 'perfomativity' in. By the way, does Butler
>provide any empirical evidence for her claims except a vague mention of
>transexualism as indicative of teh performative nature of subjectivity?
>
>cheers,
>
>Doug Stokes.
>
>>Hi~
>>
>> Nussbaum complains the Butler doesn't provide a criteria by which to
>>differentiate between Good and Bad. This seems to be an appeal to Butler
>>to
>>act as what Foucault calls the universal intellectual, rather than to open
>>up spaces for specific intellectuals. Could the desire to be morally "led"
>>by philosophers be attributed to Deleuze's concept of inner fascism?
>>
>> I'm gone for a week. I hope to return to an overflowing inbox :)
>>
>>Cheers
>>
>>~Nate
>>
>>--
>>
>>"Thought is no longer theoretical. As soon as it functions it
>>offends or reconciles, attracts or repels, breaks, dissociates,
>>unites, or re-unites; it cannot help but liberate and enslave.
>>Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must
>>be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm,
>>thought, at the level of its existence, in its very dawning, is
>>in itself an action--a perilous act."
>> -Michel Foucault
>>
>
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