<nettime> the soul @ work

[un heimlich <unheimlich@hotmail.fr>]

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11880

 


>From Semiotext(e):

The Soul at Work

>From Alienation to Autonomy

Franco
Berardi

Translated by Francesca
Cadel and Mecchia
Giuseppina

Preface by Jason E.
Smith


Capital has managed to overcome the dualism of body and
soul by establishing a workforce in which everything we mean by the
Soul?language, creativity, affects?is mobilized for its own benefit. Industrial
production put to work bodies, muscles, and arms. Now, in the sphere of digital
technology and cyberculture, exploitation involves the mind, language, and
emotions in order to generate value?while our bodies disappear in front of our
computer screens.

In this, his newest book, Franco "Bifo"
Berardi?key member of the Italian Autonomist movement and a close associate of
Félix Guattari?addresses these new forms of estrangement. In the philosophical
landscape of the 1960s and 1970s, the Hegelian concept of alienation was used
to define the harnessing of subjectivity. The estrangement of workers from
their labor, the feeling of alienation they experienced, and their refusal to
submit to it became the bases for a human community that remained autonomous
from capital. But today a new condition of alienation has taken root in which
workers commonly and voluntarily work overtime, the population is tethered to
cell phones and Blackberries, debt has become a postmodern form of slavery, and
antidepressants are commonly used to meet the unending pressure of production.
As a result, the conditions for community have run aground and new
philosophical categories are needed. The Soul at Work is a clarion call
for a new collective effort to reclaim happiness.

The Soul at Work is Bifo's long overdue
introduction to English-speaking readers. This Semiotext(e) edition is also the
book's first appearance in any language.

Foreign Agents series

Distributed for Semiotext(e)

MitPress

 

 

 

 

 		 	   		  

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