Balkinization: Sock Puppets Explain Neoliberalism, Channel Deleuze

Comments:

Put a sock in it, not a hand.

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Here's sublation for you: The three guys from Office Space whaling on Kiki and Bubu's iPhone with a baseball bat. There's a reclamation of post-disciplinary solidarity for you.

# posted by

Anonymous : 9:08 AM

Ahem. At the risk of being both intelligible and nostalgic, it reminds me of a time not so long ago when I bust Professor Bainbridge's chops over his inane crowing about "The Ownership Society," pointing out how well the rhetoric of "the workers own the means of production" worked out for the USSR. Fun, sometimes, turning things on their heads.

As for the Porn Monster, remember the Gallagher joke, "Sex is like a Chinese dinner: It isn't over 'til you've both had your cookies"? Or was Porn Monster a representation of the collective unconscious as manifest in spammed viagra ads and the coming panopticon fueled by indiscriminate browser cookie acceptance?

Either way, glad to see the academic tenor of this hitchin' post kept tip top. Thanks, Prof!

# posted by

Robert Link : 5:41 PM

Are self-motivated knowledge workers still tools of the capitalist classes?

Short answer: Yes. Long Answer: So long as those workers exist in a society that either A. Has no space for them to share and expose how their ignorant co-workers are actually doing themselves harm, or B. Similar to the status quo, despite the workers having the information avalible to them as to why they are tools of their employers, they chose to ignore it; then they will forever still be tools of the capitalist society because they have failed to accomplish anything with their newly acquired knowledge.

Although, that does presume that the workers are tools for continuing to be motivated by their bosses. This is where the video is wrong. In a capitalist society, workers who chose not to be productive at work harm themselves in multiple ways. First, they destroy the product they manufacture. This means that customers will be getting an inferior product, either driving prices and therefore profits down, or the company will lose business, killing profits equally. What to executives do when profits shrink? They cut benefits, decrease wages, and lay off workers. That hurts them. Second, it means that there exists at least one job that could be filled with an unemployed person, the job of the employee who fails to use their best labor. This means that they lose money to the state to take care of the unemployed person who would have taken that job.

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Phelan : 8:31 PM

I thought (metaphorically speaking) it had more to do with the anonymous pedestrian nature of the mass-produced Sock requiring individuation as the product of a theater seamstress’s labors (theater a hotbed of heightened individuation) by which the anonymous incommunicable, the inchoate mumbling of the vox populi (points for latin?) being enabled through individual craft in isolation to become a fit tool for corporate communication willy-nilly.
Create or die. Create and die. It’s all a big Samsara Chimera..commercial?
What’s sublation¿ Phelan didn’t say anything about it. Does this count?

# posted by

felix culpa : 11:47 PM

Ha-ha! Aufhebung. Ya shoulda said so. Got that one nailed.
Does the winner get a T-shirt?

# posted by

felix culpa : 11:53 PM

Porny’s eyes are backwards, a post-symbolic reification of unskilled feral and flawed production unworthy of a mature market fluttering at the socks’ feet like a wounded bird or bubbling eager protoplasm, a bouncing baby life force. Animal vitality netted by marketing. Commerce unter alles.

# posted by

felix culpa : 12:13 AM

Threads which include a Gallagher joke in response to a Deleuze comment make my head asplode.

# posted by

Eric : 12:55 AM

Post-Stalinist -Greenspanist -trichotimist determinism veiled by rhetoric referencing stochastic statistically accurate meta-analyses.
Rambling Interminable Babble™ representing the proto-product of late-Post-Intellectual Society™?
A job in Publicity? Campaign management?

# posted by

felix culpa : 12:58 AM

I thought porn monster represented the new opiate of the masses, substituting religious authority for narcotic entertainment experiences-- and, unlike television, isolating the individual from the collective? Notice how it wrests control of their source of information from then and brings the discussion to an end.

# posted by

ADamiani : 4:05 AM

Are they at least engaging in "Safe Socks"?

# posted by

Shag from Brookline : 6:29 AM

Ha-ha! Aufhebung.

I did notice that the monsters were all cleverly adornoed.

# posted by

PMS_CC : 11:30 AM

Jack, I cannot even put a file on my virtual desk!

Truly, any office "worker" (in the private sector, evidently) who thought that they had some kind of controlling ownership in the business was quickly disabused of the notion when Windows 2000 enacted security groups.

controlling what we did and in turn shouldering more responsibility was always about improving service to boost profits, not sharing them. We workers understood that, though evidently false consciousness scholars didn't.

Windows 95 made that happen at an exciting pace. It was fun being able to do things for people without having to ask permission. But as the Mergers and Acquisitions raised proprietary issues, the heat was on Microsoft to clamp down on the files.

But even now, I would prefer to serve customers without having to differ to some dumb union boss playing pecking order games with me.

But unfortunately, NT 5.0 re-introduced those hierarchical obsessions (if not took them to pathological extremes) i.e., the nouns before verbs politics and, not surprisingly, productivity is slowing down.

# posted by

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# posted by

Unknown : 2:47 PM