Labor of recombination

Abstract

Much of Marxist theory rests on the assumption that workers experience exploitation as individuals, and that the rate of exploitation (as a unit of time) can be calculated on a per-worker basis. Yet this calculation breaks down when dealing with cybertime and post-human bodies. Even as capital restructures the mode of production, labor continues to resurrect the ghosts of an idealized past that may or may not have actually existed. Whereas Deleuze and Guattari view subjectivity principally as a molar event or a form of closure, Bifo elaborates on their concept of subjectivation as an open, molecular becoming, which no longer hinges on the subject. Drawing upon both Bifo and his intellectual forbears, I will expand upon the idea of subjectivation as it relates to labor. Beginning with the assumption that the labor movement, broadly defined, remains an important site of contestation, I will ask the question: What strategies and political (non)-forms become possible as immaterial, acorporeal labor becomes the dominant mode of production?