[Reader-list] Re: Residue

[pratap pandey]

Dear Residue-discussers,

I need some semantic clarification here: by 'residue', do we mean 'detritus', or do we mean 'precipitate'? Are we talking 'left-overs' here or are we talking 'survivors'? Are we talking accident here or intention?

Who, or what, is the motor of change? Including, in the capacity of being fully human? 

If we are talking about the fold of capitalism, then 'residue' does not fit. If we are talking about capitalism fold-ups, by which is meant a moment when capital is actually able to reflect upon its activity, then 'residue' does not fit. If we are talking capitalism fold-outs, by which is meant a moment when capital needn't reflect upon its activity, then 'residue' does not fit. If we are talking about capitalism fold-overs, by which is meant a moment when capital is able to ride over obstacles, then 'residue' doesn't fit.

When we are talking about the 'residue' of capitalism, do we actually mean that we are talking about 'labour'? To speak about 'labour' in terms of the 'residue' of capitalism is intellectually such a horrendous task that I am sure none of us would like to do it.

[Funnily, in the Third World context, this is a hot thing to talk about. Here, one goes into the whole question of unnamed agents, transported against will, combating contexts of accumulation. Narratives about such agents range from dread drudgery to sublimatory transformations (early Naipaul included here). What gets lost, in the sea of recrimination, or discovery, or even nostalgia, is the brute fact of accumulation. Its history. NOT ITS CULTURE. O no. The culture is always retrieved, never the context of accumulation.]        

What the discussion touches upon is nothing more than the history of labour, and nothing less than the history of the labour-figure.

Perhaps we should turn our attention to the labour-figure, as opposed to the hysteric.

pp  

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