Reading Benjamin

Reading Benjamin

In Times of Crisis: Act!

It has been 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. We are ‘celebrating’ this anniversary at a time when global capitalism and liberal democracy, the so-called winners of the Cold War struggle between East and West, find themselves in one of the deepest economic and political crises since the Wall Street crash in 1929 and the global turmoil that followed. Perhaps more significantly, however, this is the first crisis that Eastern Europeans are experiencing since their so-called ‘transition’ from a state socialist to a capitalist ideology. What should we make of this transition since 1989? Rather than engaging in a traditional analysis of the winners and losers of this transition, I am interested in what today’s capitalist crisis has perhaps in common with the crisis of state socialism in 1989. I will explore this question by engaging with the German film Good Bye Lenin!

Just Doing It. The Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real in Nike's Commodity Fetish

Since the mid-1990s Nike has been in the 'bad books' of left-leaning commentators, anti-capitalist movements and other protesters and academics alike because of its production practices in 'third world' sweatshops. The term ?sweatshop? was at some stage so tightly connected to the brand Nike, that it was entirely conceivable that this huge, now 30 billion Dollars worth, company could be brought to its knees. It wasn't to be. Despite a worldwide campaign against Nike (and other sweatshop operating companies), the company responded by introducing 'strict' codes and conducts for outsourcing factories and workers to follow, which, it was hoped, would address and deal with at least the more serious allegations of terrible sweatshop working conditions and child labour in many of the 'third world' factories where Nike products are made. Although at first slow to respond to the massive anti-sweatshop campaign, Nike has learned its lesson fast and it can now proudly say that it takes its 'responsibility' very seriously ? at least the company says so on its sleek website http:??nikeresponsibility.com (note that NikeResponsibility itself seems to have become a brand). But this paper is not proposing to revisit 'old news'. Rather, the starting point for our investigation is our claim that part of the failure of the anti-sweatshop campaign was its inability to conceptualize and understand the concrete workings of the Nike commodity fetish. And to be sure, this failure is ongoing. Recently, War on Want, a UK-based charity that is playing a very active part in exposing the malpractices of multinational companies in the 'third world', has been running a campaign 'Let's clean up Fashion' , to fight against low-price fashion items sold by UK chains such as ASDA, Primark, Tesco, and others. While we very much support this campaign in general, we fear that it doesn't deal with the workings of the commodity fetish head-on. That is, campaigns like this are well intended they appeal to consumers' hearts and minds, to their compassion but what they do not manage to do is to put forward a rigorous analysis of how the commodity fetish works, and how it could be disrupted. In our view, only a rupture of the workings of the commodity fetish ? the act ? would achieve real improvements. That is, campaigns like the anti-sweatshop movement, are well intended, but their compassionate pleas are just that: well intended. Žižek (1997) might go further and say that it is campaigns like these that are actually the kernel of today?s ideological cover up. The anti-sweatshop campaign is not fighting the commodity fetish, but enabling it to continue its destructive work precisely through its work of ?transparency?. We will show in the paper how this double-whammy might work in practice, using the case of Nike. But we are jumping ahead of ourselves. Our paper, then, is a discussion of the workings of commodity fetishism. At work with us is not only Lacan, who will primarily provide input into the workings of enjoyment in today?s consumer culture, but also Marx and Freud who were the early champions of conceptualising fetishism. In Capital, Marx (1976) discusses commodity fetishism as the main ideological structure that keeps capital moving. Freud (1977), in contrast, wasn?t interested in capital but the workings of the human mind, and he saw in fetishism a displacement activity that would enable young boys to get to grips with the apparent castration of their mothers (i.e. the lack of a penis) and the possibilities of their own castration. Although Freud wasn?t a reader of Marx, as far as we know, there have been many attempts to read across Marx?s and Freud?s conceptions of fetishism and somehow integrate their different approaches ? we could name Benjamin?s Arcades Project here. Our paper will review such attempts to integrate Marx and Freud, but will then apply these readings to the burning question of: What actually gets people into NikeTown, and what lets us enjoy our visit to the temple of the commodity? In other words, how is it possible that despite the tremendously bad press Nike has had over the past decade, the company is turning out record profit after record profit, as millions flock to the shops to buy its trainers and T-shirts, i.e. they are enjoying the Nike commodity. Here we will make use of Lacan's (1977, 1998) analysis of enjoyment and jouissance in order to understand the workings of the Nike commodity

No Accounting for Culture? Value in the New Economy

This paper explores the articulation of the value of investment in culture and the arts through a critical discourse analysis of policy documents, reports and commentary since 1997. It argues that in this period discourses around the value of culture have moved from the direct economic contributions of the culture industries to indirect economic benefits. These indirect benefits are discussed under three main headings: creativity and innovation, employability and social inclusion. These in turn are analysed in terms of three forms of capital: human, social and cultural. The paper concludes with an analysis of this discursive shift through the lens of autonomist Marxist concerns with the labour of social reproduction. It is our argument that, in contemporary policy discourses on culture and the arts, that government in the UK is increasingly concerned with the use of culture to form the social in the image of capital. As such we have to turn our attention beyond the walls of the factory in order to understand the contemporary capitalist production of value

Lacking Capitalism: Desiring marketing in times of capitalist crisis

In this paper we analyze the social and historical construction process of marketing, and how it is inherently linked to the reproduction of capitalism in times of crisis. Based on Foucauldian discourse theory, we critically interrogate marketing?s discursive change from a production- and sales-led to a consumption-led paradigm in the 1960s and 1970s. We use Lacan?s (1977, 1998) theory of individual desire as lack, and Laclau and Mouffe?s (1985) logic of antagonism to discuss how the modern individual is constituted as desiring subject. Marketing acts both to produce and fulfil this lack aimed at the satisfaction of customers? needs and desires. Based on Boltanski and Chiapello?s (2005) analysis, we argue that marketing plays an important role in the way capitalism is able to regenerate and legitimize itself through its capacity to incorporate critique and resistance

The New 'Hidden Abode': Reflections on Value and Labour in the New Economy

This paper engages with the works of Autonomist Marxists, such as Hardt, Negri and Arvidsson, who have argued that the so-called ‘new economy’, which is characterized by a new importance of immaterial labour, knowledge and processes of consumption, gives rise to a new law of value and changed labour relations in what they call the ‘social factory’. While we see a lot of value in this emerging body of literature – particularly in terms of its potential for critiquing relatively narrow debates in critical organization and management studies – this paper critiques the highly optimistic analyses put forward by Hardt, Negri and Arvidsson, especially with regard to their claims for a new autonomy and freedom of labour emerging out of the ‘new economy’. We counter these claims by showing how in contemporary capitalism, despite the discourses of autonomy and freedom, labour is continuously subjected to control, measurement and governance

Adeus Lenin! De dreamworlds, catastrofes e imperios, agora e entao

Este artigo trata de um sintoma: o de uma mudança ideológica, uma fratura histórica na produção fantasmática da organização social – a transição de Leste para Oeste. Ao seguir a recomendação de Žižek para “usufruir do sintoma”, explore minha própria experiência histórica do “Wende” europeu Oriental de “socialism real existente” para “capitalismo real existente”. Esta exploração é feita através de uma variedade de imagens diferentes, sendo, talvez, o famoso fi lme Adeus, Lênin! a mais reconhecida, que lida não apenas com as complexidades das transições de regimes políticos e econômicos, mas também das suas implicações na construção de subjetividades. O artigo é concluído com perspectiva afi rmativa, enquanto reinvindica que a história não terminou e que fraturas na fantasmática e ideológica produção da sociedade são possíveis ainda hoje