Mercury

Hyperlexicnotes
2017-11-11 09:48:43 (UTC)

saturday-morning-exasperated-thoughts

So there's a lot that I need to read still and it feels like I will never conquer the pile of literature that lies ahead of me and that I keep finding still, but here just to jot down some of the thoughts I should not forget:

- there is actually a clear attempt to create scarcity in care. People say that's not quite possible because care, like love, is a good that is by its
very nature infinite, inexhaustible, and therefore the market cannot impose its artificial mechanisms of scarcity but this appears to be quite wrong. Behind the discourse of privatisation of welfare lie these very attempts to make 'care' into something alienable.
- I should not forget the idea of the rather clumsy term that I termed myself: 'de-alienation'. For that I should read Sennett's 'Craftsman' to show that the relationship between people and things is the analytical locus point at which and through which we may be able to appreciate larger paradigms. In fact, this relationship is the very core of the anthropological enterprise as inaugurated by Mauss (preceded by Marx).
- Perhaps I can draw out three main ways of conceptualising the economy: a material dimension (meeting needs); a social dimension (making people), and some sort of an extra-material dimension (making things). Making people and making things: this appears as central. I should think about these two aspects more.
- there is also a curious case to be made regarding the destruction of people. Graeber, in his Shilluk paper, mentions the gap between action and effect as the source of divine sentiment whereby a person, whose creation was such a lengthy process, is destroyed in a matter of moments. Such is the source of divine violence, divine kingship, etc. But how do we think about much lengthier processes of destroying people? This echoes the scarcity of care - this is very much an explicit ongoing politics right now whose intended or unintended effects is the destruction of people by bringing about a certain social death. If slavery is the result of ripping people from their social contexts, then the current politics of hardcore economic competition does the same without visibly wielding a gun.
- I should also write something about Michael Jordan and the glorification of his competitive spirit.

Is that it? Perhaps. I hope I'll be able to continue this on a more or less daily basis. Peace.




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