The generalized gathering of human productive capacities under the complex regulation of the matrix of relations that constitute spectacular society simultaneously extract profit and manufacture “consent.” With the rise of visuality comes the erosion of language and therefore of certain kinds of reason. As I have suggested, “consent” includes both the organization of mass desire and sensibility, as well as the rendering invisible, and thus effectively unconscious for the society of the spectacle, the situation and indeed existence of a huge portion of the global population. A third element in the paying of/for attention, an element implied by the economic and social capture of corporeal practice by vast networks of structured attention, has perhaps received its strongest formulation in the recent work of Paolo Virno. In A Grammar of the Multitude, Virno claims, more or less correctly I think, that capital has captured the cognitive-linguistic capacities of humanity.5 These capacities, what Marx once called “the general intellect” and which were once part of the commons, have been subsumed for capitalist production. We speak, act, think, behave, and micromanage ourselves and others according to the “score” that is the general intellect—in short, the protocols or grammar of capital. For Virno, each of our acts becomes a kind of virtuoso performance of the score that orchestrates contemporary life under the regime of capital accumulation. This final subsumption of our cognitive-linguistic capacities by capital (and its huge industries dedicated to the production of signs) is the mark of the real subsumption of society by capital and the full economicization not only of culture but of what was once called “human.” That humanity, whether dancing and wailing on our screens, repressed beyond their frames, or stammering in our heads is the specter haunting the society of the spectacle—in the world of paying attention, humanity has become its own ghost.
amandla
2087
titsay
dailybridgerton
origamiaround
turnnoffyourmind