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A Glossary of Subsumption

By The Public School & Post-Media Lab, 22 January 2013

25-26 January, 2013 | 12-4pm
Brunnenstr. 155
10115 Berlin
map: http://goo.gl/maps/gD4NI
near: U8 Bernauer Str.

26 January, 2013 | Closing session | 8-10pm
Archive Books
Dieffenbachstr. 31
10967 Berlin
map: http://goo.gl/maps/gD4NI
near: U8 Schönleinstr.

SPACE IS LIMITED: PLEASE RSVP IF YOU ARE COMING AND WE WILL BE IN TOUCH

A Glossary of Subsumption: a two-day seminar building a common vocabulary of the present

Associates of the Post-Media Lab will work with invited guests to present, discuss and develop a glossary of terms relating to subsumption with a particular focus on recent developments in Information and Computation, Energy, Environment, Land/Physical Space, Health, Reproductive Labour, Education and Creativity.

Inherited from idealist philosophy (Kant, Schelling, Hegel) and used by Karl Marx to theorise the development of the capitalist mode of production, subsumption has emerged as an important term for contemporary theorists attempting to describe and periodise the development of technologies, knowledges and class relations under capital. These categories of human activity and society can be described as ‘under capital’ since ‘subsumption’, which can be translated as submission, domination or subordination, describes a process by which the particular (concrete labour) is subsumed by a universal (value or capital’s process of valorisation).

Marx theorises subsumption as a two-stage process by which capital takes hold of an existing process (formal subsumption) and begins to shape and transform it to its own ends (real subsumption). The shift from ‘formal subsumption’ to that of ‘real subsumption’ in our present moment is characterised by the profound separation of human needs from capitalist production, self-reproduction and expansion. Labour remains central to capital’s self-augmentation and socialisation, but under such naturalised domination it appears only increasingly marginal. Capital is no longer content to merely encompass existing forms of production in its pursuit of value, but must convert and transform all of life (production and reproduction) into capitalist forms. Through this ceaseless deterritorialisation, it finds ways to extract value across all forms of social, material and biological activity, radically altering them in its wake. Within this, our ways of relating, caring and of expression, of communicating and collaborating, are enclosed, templated and optimised. As ICT is folded into this process the creation of new forms of sociality, new edges, speeds and channels of communicating, and endless trails of data are produced by and for subjects. ICT accelerates capitalist subsumption but also changes the nature of struggle against its domination, forcing it, and us, into more bound and arguably intimate confrontations.

For full event details see: http://thepublicschool.org/a-glossary-of-subsumption/

Organised by the Post-Media Lab and The Public School
http://www.postmedialab.org/
http://thepublicschool.org/
http://www.archivebooks.org/

 

People presenting or participating
 
This list is being updated as more people confirm

Anthony Iles on A brief history of Subsumption >> Autonomisation

Gordan Savicic (TBC) on Information and Computation >> discussion of the term "seamlessness" through various hands-on applications on smartphones and within standard web-browsers.

Inigo Wilkins on Information and Computation >> heterodox economics, HFT, the robot-phase transition in finance and social media, computational modeling and soft control
and on Health >> transparency and surveillance

Sean Dockray on Information and Computation >> data centers, cloud

Oliver Lerone Schulz on dispossession, land grabbing and annexations in the context of international AgroIndustries, and on the re-structuring of social space grid/logics in aligning with digital network infrastructures (Zoning, logistical city, Network-Geographies)

Matteo Pasquinelli - "The number of the collective beast: The substance of value in the age of the institutions of ranking and rating"

Reading materials: http://aaaaarg.org/contents/post-media-lab 
Glossary: http://piratepad.net/wZe29j5N7f