>as Doug says, there are flaws in the Marxian argument that with the
>progression of global capital there arises a global civilisation - a flaw
>that arises from the progressivist attachments of various marxisms to be
>sure. but I wouldn't particularly pattern it as core and periphery, nor
>would I argue there is an inability to push deterritorialisation further [1].
>there are ways of territorialising a low-wage 'periphery' at the heart of the
>cosmopolitan 'core', and I think Doug has mentioned sweatshops in NY before.
>Mike Davis essay on the Mex-Us border is certainly about a way in which
>criminalisation and the management of movements between spaces is itself a
>powerful instrument in the creation and maintenance of a low wage reserve [4]
>and I would add the enhancement of regional competition b/n workers in
>low-wage (and compliant) biddings where the borders are less porous. (maybe
>the problem is that we too easily lapse into liberalist conceptions of state
>power as negative rather than productive, even in supposedly negative moments
>such as making certain things illegal, and so there is a tendency to think of
>nation-states as obstacles to global powers when that is hardly the case.
>maybe the problem is simply that we think of global and national as
>antithetical terms in the first place.)
>but having said that: I think Doug is right to say that capitalism
>territorialises as it deterritorialises, that enclosures are an integral part
>of capital's 'progression', not a contradiction with it. I would add that
>there is another way in which Zizek's analyses are important: that the
>inherent contradictions of capital will out, but not necessarily in ways
>which are useful for any anti-capitalist projects. the failures and
>antagonisms of capitalism will have to be attributed, and for now, they seem
>to be being attributed to immigrants, the poor, the unemployed, 'other
>ethnicities'...
>as to the question of taking bourgeois propaganda too seriously [3], I don't
>think this can be easily dismissed: alongside the triumphalism of
>globalisation there is a generation of people who believe it without
>exception, that the free movement of money is, or should be, rendered into
>the right of free movement of peoples - this is a challenge to the new
>enclosures of people on which the free movement of money relies for its
>effectivity.... an immanent challenge, but a challenge nonetheless, and
>certainly one that has the potential to be more combative (or even
>constitutive of a working class combativeness) than the other immanence on
>offer (anti-American nationalism). ('do we have anything other than
>immanentism?' is perhaps a question that drives much of recent theory,
>including that of Deleuze, Negri.... and I honestly don't think I can see
>that there is. I'd certainly like there to be...)
>but as to Michael's comments on the Empire: (and here I am still leaning
>toward seeing the current moment as a shift away from US hegemony), isn't
>there a sense in which each new imperial regime has its own privileged codes
>and structures? that US dominance brings with it certain substantive
>elements (its cultural motifs, particular modes of control) that Euro
>dominance (hypothetically) won't (the emphatic code of Civilisation, civil
>society, moralism, etc that we have seen amplified during the current war in
>Europe)?
>Angela
>---
>rcollins at netlink.com.au
>--------------------
>[1] Doug wrote:
>>You could argue, following Polyani and/or Zizek (see quote below), that the
>>construction of the world market produces the very "monsters" that the U.S.
>>and its allies end up bombing. So, contrary to the classic Marxian argument
>>about the world market creating a world civilization, it inevitably creates
>>a cosmopolitan core and an excluded periphery. It may be that you can't
>>push capital's deterritorializations further, because capital
>>reterritorializes as it deterritorializes.
>---
>[2] Michael Hardt wrote:
>>global order as if it were completely deterritorialized. There are, as
>>she says, important territorial obstacles that we should oppose, such as
>>national border controls and immigration policies. (I'm reminded of a
>>Deleuze and Guattari line that sometimes instead of resisting the forces
>>of global capital we have to push its deterritorializations further,
>>accelerate the process, to come out the other side.) In any case, I
>>recognize this as a problem rather than knowing how to resolve it: how to
>>understand simultaneously, as Angela says, the territorialized or local
>>forces of rule and the processes of deterritorialization.
>---
>[3] Michael wrote:
>>>are the primary elements of hegemony. And in these regards the US is not
>>>predominant and we can begin to imagine an Empire without center,
>>>composed on networks of global power.
>Doug replied:
>>I wonder how much of these ideas of decentered empire come from taking
>>bourgeois propaganda too seriously.
>---
>[4]>[from Mike Davis, "Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City,"
>New
>>Left Review 234, March/April 1999, pp. 15-16]
>>specific, and La Linea, even in its present Berlin-Wall-like configuration,
>>has never been intended to stop labour from migrating al otro lado. On the
>>contrary, it functions like a dam, creating a reservoir of labour-power on
>>the Mexican side of the border that can be tapped on demand via the secret
>>aqueduct managed by polleros, iguanas and coyotes - as smugglers of workers
>>and goods are locally known - for the farms of south Texas, the hotels of
>>Las Vegas and the sweatshops of Los Angeles. At the same time, the Border
>>Patrol maintains a dramatic show of force along the border to reassure
>>voters that the threat of alien invasion - a phantasmagoria largely created
>>by border militarization itself - is being contained.