In Butler's review of Hegel's 'Unhappy Consciousness' there is a subtle mistake. It is either on Butler or Hegel and the mistake is not theoretical, but concrete. Ultimately it betrays the fact that neither have ever performed skilled labor as that is understood in manufacturing and other skilled trades.
On 39-40p, Butler sets up the idea that the Bondsman in laboring performs a self-erasure. He fabricates things to give over, forfeiting not only his signature or ownership or fruits of labor, but himself as that is identified with the object--and through twists of the dialectic, was always the lord's in advance. Okay, whatever. This assumes the that the bondsmen has objectified himself through making the object and therefore losses himself as the object is appropriated under ownership of the lord.
Whats wrong with this picture? Apparently nothing, until you realize that the object is not the house of the skill that created it--the bondsmen is. In other words the deeper problem that Butler (Hegel by extension) doesn't realize is that what is held by the bondsmen, owned and possessed, and what is self-identified is not the object but the skill to make it. The skill itself, that is the body of knowledge and the tradition of that knowledge remains with the bondsmen--is the bondsman. This doesn't die with the appropriation of the object and can not be consumed. And further, despite the exploitation of labor, its engagement and repetition improves the body of knowledge held by the bondsmen rather than diminishes it.
While all that may be well and good in the quasi-medieval metaphors that Hegel employed and that Butler uses, but it is a far cry from the conditions of working today. Nowadays, it is precisely that skilled body of knowledge that is under the most extreme expropriation efforts in all phases of work. This may be automation--the most obvious kind--where literally human skills are transformed into objects that can be owned and controlled by others. Or, it can take much more subtle forms such as stealing ideas and their accumulated sophistication through practice--i.e. management skills turned into procedures and how-to-manuals. Good-bye middle management.
Chuck Grimes,
late for work.