K-Punk

[constant escape]

Really liked Capitalist Realism, having spent some time teaching it hit home. I'm reading Discipline and Punish right now and I think Capitalist Realism can be called a blend of the feudal model of spectacular, arbitrary power and the norm defining disciplinary model. You see that clearly in schools:

Great points. But I'm unclear on a couple things. How does the feudal arrangement correlate to the sovereign society? Can we think of the sovereign society as the society where institutions have not yet been territorialized/distinguished, while the disciplinary society is marked by such territorialization, while the control society is marked by their deterritorialization? I haven't read anything of Foucault's other than a couple essays, so I'm working on second-hand information regarding disciplinary and sovereign societies. And I could very well be forcing the territorialization trend onto a development that follows different trends.

You refer to the "feudal model of spectacular, arbitrary power" - is this opposed to the more organized power of the disciplinary society? I suppose that's part of what I mean by territorialized: organized. Again, I could be using that work ineffectively, but it makes sense as far as I can tell.

Also, from a system's perspective, in as far as we can ascribe an emergent agency to a system, an agency that is not reducible to the agencies of its subjects/agents/units - from a system's perspective, what role has the institution of the school come to adopt? It seems like, from this perspective, schools are more useful as bureaucratizing machines than as edifying/enlightening machines. I could be mixing in my personal opinions about school, or I could be stating the obvious - it just seems severely unrealistic to expect the school to effectively open minds rather than define them, position them as optimally manipulable by the system.

To be sure, I do not think the system, in this sense, is steered by humans. I think it exercises an agency (if that word is even applicable) that isn't reducible to our own agencies.

 

[luka]

Schools have played slightly different parts over the years but the core function is to prepare students for and to sort students for their eventual places and roles in society. Which is why we need elite fee paying schools to train the master class.

 

[luka]

This is part of Marks argument, that in a disciplinary society schools are disciplinary institutions. They train students to adapt to these disciplinary frameworks, demands and rigours. Now the school has fallen in the gap between the old model and the new, disciplinary and control.

 

[luka]

Discipline and Punish is short and straightforward. If you want to understand his terminology you could easily read it inside a week. Specially as you're an intelligent robot like Johnny 5.

 

[constant escape]

Interesting. Is the blurring of the lines between institutions similar to the blurring of the lines between work and leisure? Sort of a homogenizing force? The transformation of a crisp black/white threshold into a continuous gradient, infinitely divisible into grades?

What role would the school assume in the control society? Or is the question of roles increasingly moot as we move away from disciplinary societies?

 

[linebaugh]

Interesting. Is the blurring of the lines between institutions similar to the blurring of the lines between work and leisure? Sort of a homogenizing force? The transformation of a crisp black/white threshold into a continuous gradient, infinitely divisible into grades?

What role would the school assume in the control society? Or is the question of roles increasingly moot as we move away from disciplinary societies?

Yah, Fisher says as much:

"Education as a lifelong process ... Training that persists for as long as your working life continues .. . Work you take home with you ... Working from home, homing from work. A consequence of this 'indefinite' mode of power is that external surveillance is succeeded by internal policing. Control only works if you are complicit with it. Hence the Burroughs figure of the 'Control Addict': the one who is addicted to control, but also, inevitably, the one who has been taken over, possessed by Control."

I think control societies sit on the relics of disciplinary societies. The 'roles' appear similar, but they are no longer justified by their utility like in disciplinary societies. Now they just do that convenient homogenizing work that makes for easier control. Capitalist Realism is talking about a technical/post-fordist/finance economy where there is less need for docile bodies doing productive labor, and the most lucrative activity comes from speculation on a populace/system that is easily read and diagnosed.

 

[linebaugh]

I think schools fit right in there. I was in low performing schools, I imagine only half of my students were actually deserving of passing, despite %90+ going on. We weren't allowed to fail more than a very small portion of the students. If schools were to suddenly return to merit based passing it would completely rupture that entire architecture of control. It would be a massive disorganizing event.

 

[constant escape]

Cool, as if the institutions had membranes which, once punctured, let their particular content diffuse and mingle with the content of other punctured institutions, until not only thresholds are indistinguishable, but even grades? Granted that is pretty abstract, and something robust is lost when we speak in such non-concrete terms.

Do you think this kind of disorganization is just a pocket (of entropy?) in a larger system of organization, a system wherein humans are no longer identifiably in charge? That could be an unanswerably abstruse question though - apologies in advance.

 

[linebaugh]

You see how that departs from discipline. Schools aren't interested in coding student behavior. Foucault talks about how disciplinary societies were significant because they were the first to consider the individual in the system, where in penal systems prior there was just the populace. The goal of disciplinary societies was to mold and define the individual, but schools are no longer interested in doing that. Rather the primary function of the school is to just keep the public shuffling through the control systems.

 

[constant escape]

I think schools fit right in there. I was in low performing schools, I imagine only half of my students were actually deserving of passing, despite %90+ going on. We weren't allowed to fail more than a very small portion of the students. If schools were to suddenly return to merit based passing it would completely rupture that entire architecture of control. It would be a massive disorganizing event.

Thats fascinating - do you know if there is a way to get ahead of the curve again? Or are we just reactively flailing from this point onward?

That is, is there a way to reconfigure the parameters of credits/passing without rupturing the system? Would such a rupture spell a certain death, or can we recover from it?

 

[luka]

Thats fascinating - do you know if there is a way to get ahead of the curve again? Or are we just reactively flailing from this point onward?

That is, is there a way to reconfigure the parameters of credits/passing without rupturing the system? Would such a rupture spell a certain death, or can we recover from it?

I'm not sure it's releveant. The reason we don't need to grade accurately is that people are now surplus to requirements.

 

[luka]

As Limburger says the purpose is to push the paste through the control systems. Grading is superfluous if people are superfluous.

 

[linebaugh]

Cool, as if the institutions had membranes which, once punctured, let their particular content diffuse and mingle with the content of other punctured institutions, until not only thresholds are indistinguishable, but even grades? Granted that is pretty abstract, and something robust is lost when we speak in such non-concrete terms.

Do you think this kind of disorganization is just a pocket (of entropy?) in a larger system of organization, a system wherein humans are no longer identifiably in charge? That could be an unanswerably abstruse question though - apologies in advance.

Yah, Id say. Fisher talks about how flexibility is the best asset in the increasingly volatile economy, when the work is speculative and ambiguous. Cant find the quote but it used to be admirable if you remained with one company for an extremely long time, but now, in certain industries, if you haven't been at multiple companies your first ten years in the work force that's seen as a negative. That kind of constant movement is going to seep its way into your personal life. You become a brand.

Capitalist Realism talks about how it seems humans are no longer in charge, re: the Big Other thing I was on. If you want to call market logic inhuman then yah.

Thats fascinating - do you know if there is a way to get ahead of the curve again? Or are we just reactively flailing from this point onward?

That is, is there a way to reconfigure the parameters of credits/passing without rupturing the system? Would such a rupture spell a certain death, or can we recover from it?

I think like every fucked institution it would take such massive societal changes that it its never going to happen and it looks like were committed to running this horse into the ground. Feels like there's an unspoken acknowledgement that the game played by business right now is a race to the bottom. I know in certain industries that's not even abstract, gig economy food delivery services like door dash aren't even profitable, theyre kept afloat by financial wizardry and the goal is to be the only company left standing when the competitors inevitably implode.

 

[version]

As Limburger says...

 

[luka]

Yes, that's the basic dishonesty at the heart of it. You keep yourself afloat by zombie money until the competition has been decimated. It's what Amazon did, it's what uber do.

 

[luka]

The whole thing is running on fumes

 

[linebaugh]

Is Limburger a jokey reference Im missing or is this someone worth reading?

 

[luka]

It just popped into my head. I've been drinking lager in the sun. It's your new name I guess.

 

[version]

It's a cheese. And that picture's the villain from Biker Mice from Mars, an alien called Limburger.

 

[linebaugh]

Oh I am Limburger. Yes, yes, as I said.