Wojtek
On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 2:54 AM, Chuck Grimes <c123grimes at att.net> wrote:
>
> Harvey presented, under a description of his approach four sections. The
> first was the axiomatic level where Production was the top generalized
> level, then below Distribution, and Exchange---which are fed back into the
> top level. He considered this something of fixed form, an abstract
> architecture.
>
> The next area he considered not in terms of a fixed architectonic, but a
> flow in the sense of thermodynamics. The central form was the flow of money,
> composed of labor value, rents... I lost him here, almost nodding out. He
> wrote out a relational equation of balance that essentially said, if any of
> these factors is stopped it stops the flow, and shit breaks down.
>
> His third category was the dynamic of interlocking systems which included
> technology, social relations, conditions of daily life, relation to nature,
> an ideological system and its discontents, and others. The basic idea was
> the presentation of the categories of potential change that animate the
> system and which Capital mobilizes. The condition was that if these
> interdependent factors are not simultaneously addressed, change on our side
> fails.
>
> The fourth section was on Geography, the wide field of application, which
> for Harvey the urban environment was central. The city was center place in
> its dialectic with nature, as landscape was the locus of change-revolution.
>
> The latter was really interesting and I definitely woke up for this part,
> since my ex-wife was a city planner, worked for Berkeley city government,
> and we had talked endlessly about this dialectic between city and country,
> Berkeley and Yosemite, the take over of local business by national
> franchise, the nastiness of the Chamber of Commerce and its feudal land
> system...
>
> The crowd were all graduate students, old timers something like me, and the
> young professional turks. This was a fine view of actual, living, breathing
> left. Very glad I got off my hermit(internet) ass. It was really nice to be
> around smart people. These folk have no idea how lonely it gets in the
> bullshit that passes for life in the US. I want to debate Darwin---fucking
> kiss my ass.
>
> The questions were interesting. The first was about the role of
> proletariat---standard issue Marxism.. Havery redirected the understanding
> of who the prols were, in caspule, the makers of cities. He used several
> other examples like the obvious disaffect intellectuals...
>
> The DOE library is under current occupation---who knew? The guy sitting next
> to me was an archaeologist on staff in Geography whose period, place was
> ancient Peru. We chatted about the Peruvian collection below the Hearst
> women's gym and swimming pool, a Julia Morgan building, which worries the
> archivialists---as it fucking should below many tons of water.
>
> Patrick Bond turned me on to this lecture, but he was very distracted. We
> only exchanged a few words of greeting. I have to say, the most beautiful
> thing geography does is maps, fabulous maps that track the rotten-right
> through its Mason-Dixon territories. If you notice these traces follow the
> central river systems of the US, the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri. What
> does that mean?
>
> Then there are the scatter diagrams of blacks and minorities in major urban
> centers, or the crop intensity plots of the California landscape. The
> landscape creates the gigantic wealth of California because it has virtually
> every productive eco-system from SEA rice paddies to grasslands for live
> stock to valleys of custom Tuscan grapes for wine, cheese, and wheat plains
> for bread. It has three giant natural ports in SF, LA, and San Diego. The
> idiots that run this state have never seen it. The river systems that flow
> into the Sacramento Delta create something compariable to the ancient deltas
> of yore. Well that's the conceptual level of the geography of California;
>
> I have gone on about this because there is a lot of intellectual life in
> Berkeley, but it is incrediably difficult to keep track of. You have to
> evolve a system of some social sort I never mastered to follow all the
> goings on. The Berkeley Planet sure ain't the New Yorker or the NYT.
>
> For those around the bay area here is the link to David Harvey's big public
> lecture:
>
> http://events.berkeley.edu/?event_ID=32976&date=2010-10-08&tab=all_events
>
> Summary. Wurster Hall 112, 4pm. Parking. Go to the concrete parking
> structure on Bancroft a block below College in front of Kroeber Hall and
> cheat anyway you can. It is a short walk from this parking structure to the
> Architecture and Design building of Wurster---a souless Le Courbusier
> modular structure. I assume this lecture will be a book lecture on The
> Engima of Capital. Of course it is popular because art and architecture
> students are too stupid to grasp the abstract concepts. I hate the idea, but
> that is about right.
>
> CG
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>