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Animal Spirits Animal Spirits ANIMAL_SPIRITS.indd 1 02-12-2008 13:39:50 studies in network cultures Geert Lovink, Series Editor This series of books investigates concepts and practices special to network cultures. Exploring the spectrum of new media and society, we see network cultures as a strategic term to enlist in diagnosing political and aesthetic developments in user-driven communications. Network cultures can be understood as social-technical formations under construction. They rapidly assemble, and can just as quickly disappear, creating a sense of spontaneity, transience and even uncertainty. Yet they are here to stay. However self-evident it is, collaboration is a foundation of network cultures. Working with others frequently brings about tensions that have no recourse to modern protocols of conflict resolution. Networks are not parliaments. How to conduct research within such a shifting environment is a key interest to this series. Studies in Network Cultures is an initiative of the Institute of Network Cultures (INC). The INC was founded 2004 by its director Geert Lovink and is situated at the Amsterdam Polytechnic (Hogeschool van Amsterdam), as a re- search programme inside the School for Interactive Media. Since its inception, the INC has organized international conferences: ‘A Decade of Web Design’, ‘Incommunicado: Information Technology for Everybody Else’, ‘Urban Screens’, ‘The Art and Politics of Netporn’, ‘MyCreativity: Convention on Creative Industries Research’, ‘New Network Theory’, and ‘Video Vortex: Responses to YouTube’. For more information please visit: www.networkcultures.org. The series Studies in Network Cultures is published by the Institute of Network Cultures in collaboration with NAi Publishers, Rotterdam. Series Coordinator: Sabine Niederer, Institute of Network Cultures. For more information please visit www.networkcultures.org/naiseries. Previously published in this series: Ned Rossiter, Organized Networks. Media Theory, Creative Labour, New Institutions (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers and Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2006). Eric Kluitenberg, Delusive Spaces. Essays on Culture, Media and Technology (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers and Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2008). ANIMAL_SPIRITS.indd 2 02-12-2008 13:39:50 Animal Spirits A Bestiary of the Commons Matteo Pasquinelli NAi Publishers Institute of Network Cultures ANIMAL_SPIRITS.indd 3 02-12-2008 13:39:50 This publication was made possible thanks to the financial support of the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam Series editor: Geert Lovink, Institute of Network Cultures, Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HvA) Series coordinator: Sabine Niederer, Institute of Network Cultures, Hogeschool van Amsterdam Editor: Michael Jason Dieter Copy editor: D’Laine Camp Design: Studio Tint, Huug Schipper, The Hague Cover design: Studio Léon&Loes, Rotterdam Type setting and printing: Die Keure, Bruges, Belgium Binding: Catherine Binding Paper: Munken Lynx 100 grs. Project coordination: Barbera van Kooij, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam Publisher: NAi Publishers, Rotterdam © 2008 the author, All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For works of visual artists affiliated with a CISAC-organization the copyrights have been settled with Pictoright in Amsterdam. © 2008, c/o Pictoright Amsterdam NAi Publishers is an internationally orientated publisher specialized in developing, producing and distributing books on architecture, visual arts and related disciplines. www.naipublishers.nl [email protected] It was not possible to find all the copyright holders of the illustrations used. Interested parties are requested to contact NAi Publishers, Mauritsweg 23, 3012 JR Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Available in North, South and Central America through D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers Inc, 155 Sixth Avenue 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10013-1507, Tel 212 6271999, Fax 212 6279484. Available in the United Kingdom and Ireland through Art Data, 12 Bell Industrial Estate, 50 Cunnington Street, London W4 5HB, Tel 208 7471061, Fax 208 7422319. Printed and bound in Belgium ISBN 978-90-5662-663-1 ANIMAL_SPIRITS.indd 4 02-12-2008 13:39:50 Contents Acknowledgments 11 Introduction 13 Chapter i Animal Spirits: A Conceptual Bestiary The Diseases of the Empire 18 London Sinking: The Psychopathology of Everyday Cultural Life – Institute of Contemporary Boredom: The Art World as Symptom – Radically Correct: The Unconscious Puritanism of Activism – The Removal of the Animal Body and the New Commons The Dark Side of the Multitude 30 The Animal Open to the World – Restoration of a Bicephalous God A Conceptual Bestiary of the Commons 43 A Conceptual Bestiary – The Bicephalous Eagle: The Ambivalence of Power and Desire – The Parasite of the Commons: Alliance and Sabotage – The Hydra of Language: The Biomorphic Unconscious of Culture Chapter ii The Parasite of the Commons: Digitalism and the Economy of ‘Free Culture’ The Biosphere of Machines: Enter the Parasite 54 The Living Energy of Machines and the Surplus – Michel Serres and the Cybernetic Parasite – Diagram of an Immaterial Parasite – Intermezzo: Baudrillard in the Whirlpool of Sign Digitalism: The Impasse of Media Culture 72 The Flesh Is Made Code – The Ideology of Free Culture – Against the Creative Anti-Commons – Towards the Autonomous Commons – The Poverty of Networks – A Parasite Haunting the Hacker Haunting the World ANIMAL_SPIRITS.indd 5 02-12-2008 13:39:50 Rent: The Dystopian Parasite of Cognitive Capitalism 91 Rent Is the New Profit – Rent Is the Other Side of the Commons – The Fourth Dimension of Cognitive Capitalism – A Taxonomy of Immaterial Parasites – The Bicephalous Multitude and the Grammar of Sabotage Chapter iii The Hydra of Language: The Biomorphic Unconscious of Culture Industry Immaterial Civil War: Prototypes of Conflict within Cognitive Capitalism 106 My Creativity Is My Conflict – The Public Life of a Cognitive Object – Lazzarato Reading Tarde: The Social Dimension of Value – Enzo Rullani and the ‘Law of Diffusion’ – David Harvey and the Collective Symbolic Capital – Immaterial Civil War and the Common – The Sabotage of the Cognitive Parasite Creative Sabotage in the Factory of Culture: Art, Gentrification and the Metropolis 126 The ‘Life of the City’ versus the Chimera of the ‘Creative City’ – Introducing the New Urban Frontier – The Hydra of Concrete behind the European ‘Creative Cities’ – The Metropolis as Social Factory and Motor of the Surplus – Intermezzo: Radical Cities: Negative Index versus Positive Index – The Collective Symbolic Capital and the Asymmetries of the Common – The Artistic Mode of Production – The Dispostifs of the Factory of Culture – Be Uncreative: Linguistic Games on the Surface of the Metropolis – The Grammar of Sabotage and the Institution of the Common Chapter iv The Bicephalous Image: The Just Masochism of the Imaginary Neurology and Profonation of the Optical Unconscious 156 The Bicephalous Image: Questioning the Autonomy of the Imaginary – ‘Fiction Is a Branch of Neurology’ – ‘Neuronic Icons on the Spinal Highway’ – ‘The Latent Sexual Character of the War’ – ‘Pornography Is a Powerful Catalyst for Social Change’ – Pessimism of Senses, Optimism of Nerves: Deleuze’s Francis Bacon – First ANIMAL_SPIRITS.indd 6 02-12-2008 13:39:50 contents Disambiguation: Code Claustrophobia and the Poverty of the Subject – Second Disambiguation: Biodigitalism and False Organicism – The ‘Civilization of Images’ and the Profanation of Pornography I Like to Watch! Warpunk against Warporn 188 The Grinning Monkeys (of Peace Activism) – Videoclash of Civilizations –Animal Narratives for the Global Mind – Digital Anarchy: A Videophone versus the Empire – Warporn: The Sexual Content of War Imaginary – The Reset of Imaginary – Warpunk: ‘I Like to Watch!’ Libidinal Parasites: Netporn and the Machinic Excess 200 Porn on Diazepam and the Technopathology of Immaterial Labour – The Thermodynamics of Pornography – The Entropy of Desire and the Negentropy of Machines – Vortices Accumulating Crystals of Time – Libidinal Parasites and the Accumulation of Libidinal Surplus Notes 211 Bibliography 229 7 ANIMAL_SPIRITS.indd 7 02-12-2008 13:39:51 Hoe groter de geest, hoe groter het beest. [The greater the spirit, the greater the beast] Traditional Dutch saying1 ANIMAL_SPIRITS.indd 9 02-12-2008 13:39:51 Introduction What constitutes the common? While I was exploring the dark sides of digital commons and culture industry, the awakening of the animal spirits of the financial crisis during 2008 became in fact the horizon of the political debate. The idea of investigating the animal spirits of the commons was actually conceived a few years earlier, when the global mediascape following stock indexes were fed by the pornography of war terrorism. Yet the irrational fears and forces struggling behind media networks were never illuminated by critical thinkers and politi- cal activists or, more specifically, considered as a productive component of economic flows. John Maynard Keynes once defined ‘animal spirits’ as precisely those unpredictable human drives that influence stock markets and push economic cycles.1 Similarly, in his recent work, Paolo Virno has underlined how all institutions (from the nation-state to con- temporary digital networks) represent an extension of the aggressive instincts of humankind.2 In this reading, language
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