Joanna write: "What makes an economy 'Nitzchean'?
FM: Diederichsen's explanation is totally sidereal if it's there at all but I think it means the current economy is Dionysian/Post-Fordist as opposed to the ordered Apollonian/Fordist economy. Which makes me think of Kenneth Lay or Lloyd Blankfein or the Republican Congress dressed as maenads drunk to the point of ecstasy blindly tearing the head off of the economy in honor of the god of the free market.
Angelus Novus writes: "the 'Pop Left', basically arguing for a retreat from traditional concerns with social justice and economic struggles, because they regarded the German working class as irredemably racist and counter-revolutionary. Instead, the "left" should concentrate on constructing sub-cultural niches around music and clothing and other pop-cultural tastes to construct a sort of counter-hegemony to the supposedly racist and reactionary masses."
FM: Interesting. And I thought this piece felt like more of a critique of that idea. Certainly the last paragraph seems to be a caution against what the author calls "the Nietzchian left":
"Jacob Taubes, back then a brillant and dazzling lead character of those who would later find their way via leftist Nietzscheanism into the all-nighter of capitalist adventure doped up on euphoria, expressed a skeptical view of this development. Taubes, a scholar of religion and philosopher who was the founding editor of Suhrkamp’s 'Theorie' series, was always open to an intellectual adventure. Yet in an interview in an early issue of the magazine Tumult, he cautioned against the 'Nietzsche boys' who suddenly popped up all over places where a very rigid left had prevailed: the other side of the critique of power, as it were, was a new will to power—and it would ultimately find its way to power as well."
FM: There are two things that I liked about the essay. The first was the description of the kind of personal drama that a freelance worker or a creative entrepreneur experiences as opposed to the worker in a systematized and rigidly hierarchical work environment. The failures and successes of the individual freelance worker are all experienced as personal failures and successes. It is a constantly emotional relationship to the marketplace. The Fordist worker is part of a team and the impact of the successes and failures of the firm, the factory, etc. are not so immediately personal. Perhaps that's a romantic and even condescending idea. It probably is. But I do see his point of the constant emotional drama of the solitary freelance worker, even if that worker is a successful creative entrepreneur. The movie "The Social Network" uses that form of emotional drama as the basis of its story.
I also liked the section on "The Schöneberg Customs Office" which contrasts the old customs office with its "lovingly preserved" DDR furniture and its complicated, lengthy and slow work system to the new creative class who are standing in line waiting their packages and dashing out periodically to communicate with their cell phones. Diederichsen says it feels like one of Christoph Marthaller's stage productions, a work system that is preserved as a kind of affectionate act of nostalgia.
clips from a Marthaller production: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgJ7GPMNgpQ