> Quick note on Butler
> . . .
> On 39-40p, Butler sets up the idea that the Bondsman in laboring
> performs a self-erasure. . . .
>
> 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. . . .
One might say alternatively, and not necessarily in contradiction, that the bondsman is realized or finds fulfillment in the use of whatever is produced, notwithstanding the arrangements by which it is severed from the bondsman.
Or one might say any other damn thing. After all, it's philosophy.
mbs ---------------
This is an ironic nod to the wonderous joys of shopping at Walmart?
First though, philosophy does count to the extent that it can and fairly often does frame discourse that will later become more concrete expression in policy, institutions, and the broad sweep of cultural themes. That's why we are in the middle of a culture war with the Right--right? So philosophical definitions of skill, labor, and human relations have consequence beyond their apparently rhetorical effect. I mean, words count.
Let's get rid of the Bondsman metaphor and start talking about people who work--say arbitrarily designated as we. So, we are supposed to find fulfillment in mass consumption and ignore the hours we go to meaningless, if not ugly and exploitive work? Pretty watery gruel for the laboring human condition, no?
The only way I can figure out of this barren equation is through re-appropriation of skill and knowledge--taking back what has been subsumed into the maw of capitalist mass production and mass consumer culture.
So, to that end, we need to re-define skill and re-think how it constitutes and creates culture, tradition, and society. Skipping the detail, that's why I fastened onto Butler's rendition of Hegel. Shortest form I can think of--We hold the tradition and skill to create and reproduce society, and that is precisely what Capitalism as a system is about exploiting--just as was Feudalism before it.
Chuck Grimes