The World Computer: Derivative Conditions of Racial Capitalism

351 Pages·2021·17.03 MB·English

by  Jonathan Beller

The World Computer
THOUGHT IN THE ACT
A series edited by Erin Manning and Brian Massumi
The World Computer
Derivative Conditions
of Racial Capitalism
JONATHAN BELLER
Duke University Press Durham and London 2021
© 2021 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid-f ree paper ∞
Designed by Drew Sisk
Typeset in Portrait Text and IBM Plex Mono by
Westchester Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Beller, Jonathan, author.
Title: The world computer : derivative conditions of racial capitalism /
Jonathan Beller.
Other titles: Thought in the act.
Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2021. | Series: Thought
in the act | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2020029359 (print) | lccn 2020029360 (ebook)
isbn 9781478010135 (hardcover)
isbn 9781478011163 (paperback)
isbn 9781478012702 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Mass media—Social aspects. | Digital media—Social
aspects. | Race in mass media.
Classification: lcc hm1206 .b455 2021 (print) | lcc hm1206 (ebook) |
ddc 302.23—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029359
lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029360
Cover art: Thomas Ruff, r.phg.10, 2014. Chromogenic print, 94½ × 72⅞
inches, 240 × 185 cm. © 2020 Thomas Ruff / Artists Rights Society (ARs),
New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Germany. Courtesy the artist and David
Zwirner.
For those who are written, unwritten,
rewritten, and read
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The technical subordination of the worker to the uniform motion of the
instruments of labor, and the peculiar composition of the working group,
consisting as it does of individuals of both sexes and all ages, gives rise to a
barrack- like discipline, which is elaborated into a complete system in the
factory, and brings the previously mentioned labor of superintendence to
its fullest development, thereby dividing the workers into manual laborers
and overseers, into the private soldiers and the ncos of an industrial
army. “The main difficulty” (in the automatic factory) “lay . . . above all in
training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to
identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of complex automations.
To devise and administer a successful code of factory discipline, suited
to the necessities of factory diligence, was the Herculean enterprise, the
noble achievement of Arkwright! Even at the pre sent day, when the system
is perfectly or ga nized and its l abor lightened to the utmost, it is found
nearly impossible to convert persons past the age of puberty into useful
factory hands.” In the factory code, the cap i tal ist formulates his autocratic
power over his workers like a private legislator, and purely as an emanation
of his own will, unaccompanied by either that division of responsibility
other wise so much approved by the bourgeoisie, or the still more approved
representative system. The code is merely the cap i tal ist caricature of
the social regulation of the labor pro cess which becomes necessary in
co- operation on a large scale and in the employment in common of
instruments of labor, and especially of machinery. The overseer’s book of
penalties replaces the slave- driver’s lash. All punishments naturally resolve
themselves into fines and deductions from wages, and the law- giving talent
of the factory Lycurgus so arranges matters that a violation of his laws is, if
pos si ble, more profitable to him than the keeping of them.
— KARL MARX, CAPITAL
Eu rope is literally the creation of the third world.
— FRANTZ FANON, THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH
You fucked the world up now, we’ll fuck it all back down.
— JANELLE MONÁE, “SCREWED,” DIRTY COMPUTER
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CONTENTS
Acknowl edgments xi
i Computational Racial Capitalism
Introduction:   The Social Difference Engine and the
World Computer 3
1 The Computational Unconscious:
Technology as a Racial Formation 63
ii The Computational Mode of Production
2 M– I– C– I′– M′: The Programmable Image
of Photo- Capital 101
3 M– I– M′: Informatic Labor and Data-
Visual Interruptions in Capital’s
“Concise Style” 139
iii Derivative Conditions
4 Advertisarial Relations and
Aesthetics of Survival 175
5 An Engine and a Camera 206
6 Derivative Living and Subaltern Futures:
Film as Derivative, Cryptocurrency
as Film 222
Appendix 1: The Derivative Machine:
Life Cut, Bundled, and Sold—
Notes on the Cinema 255
Appendix 2: The Derivative Image: Interview
by Susana Nascimento Duarte 267
Notes 285 References 301 Index 315
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