The new head of the king
Ad space pt.1...
Ad space pt. 2...
OK, so the two links lead to the New York Times – an article published on Thursday the 18th, and the “Media and Advertising” section on the website. Both of these demonstrate the vaguely cannibalistic nature of news reporting, which creates media as media spectacle. The entertainment frame has become so prevalent, we become entertained by talking about it. Second, it makes a point about the structure of capitalism and neoliberalism. The race of advertising TV networks to attract advertisers demonstrates how all aspects of social relationships reduce to an economic cost/benefit choice under capitalism. In television, this relationship comes from the technological structure of channel flipping or switching off. In capitalism, it comes from the globalization of the labor force through telecommunications and transportation technology. The option to ‘switch off’ to other locales or countries allows labor to be viewed in terms of differential costs and benefits between separate labor forces. The opportunity to invest jobs into particular countries or people is determined by the level of investment in infrastructure, labor laws, environmental regulations, job skills, training, etc. the country or person makes. Just as the individual shows networks produce become ‘capital’ to invest in future gains of advertising, education and other job related choices become ‘capital’ invested in the development of the human company. This model of subjectivity founds the expansion of neoliberal capitalism and arguments to the ‘optimization’ of production in specialized contexts.
The relationship of capital investment between countries explains a shift in the rhetoric founding the policies of sovereign states. The manifest destiny assumed by US territorial expansion or the enlightenment burden of the social contract have been replaced by the overarching imperative to achieve economic ‘growth.’ This imperative was formed by the globalizing demands of WTO style markets, which require countries to compete with each other as sources of investment, either in monetary or population terms.
The new ‘head of the king’ supposedly removed by the ceding of government enterprise to private organizations grows from the body of Soviet-style socialist management opposed by the US in the Cold War. Ronald Reagan’s subtle linkage of government centralized managerialism to the ‘evil empire’ demonstrates how the transfer of administration of populations/the self to private or individual hands becomes such a powerful instrument in the redefinition of the human as capital. Last- this schema requires an understanding of the subject as a fundamentally self interested party driven by economic imperatives to achieve greatest wealth for themselves or the people around them. The outline of this subject is found in a Hobbesian worldview of anarchic competition. The treatment administered by institutions under a disciplinary model of personal regulation becomes self-administered and optimized in the neoliberal model. The various resistances and hiccups in the macro administration resolve themselves in the ceding of these controls to individuals subjected to the market. The overarching self interests assumed by the human capital model determine how and why individuals choose to subject themselves to good hygine, discipline, prudence, etc. The ‘head of the king’ represented as ‘big government’ of course never disappears but merely gets transferred to a system defined not by transgression and punishment, but by differential access to economic or personal benefits. Access to these benefits serves as the subjective and personalized means of social control in a society supposedly moving beyond government.
Duncan
Ad space pt. 2...
OK, so the two links lead to the New York Times – an article published on Thursday the 18th, and the “Media and Advertising” section on the website. Both of these demonstrate the vaguely cannibalistic nature of news reporting, which creates media as media spectacle. The entertainment frame has become so prevalent, we become entertained by talking about it. Second, it makes a point about the structure of capitalism and neoliberalism. The race of advertising TV networks to attract advertisers demonstrates how all aspects of social relationships reduce to an economic cost/benefit choice under capitalism. In television, this relationship comes from the technological structure of channel flipping or switching off. In capitalism, it comes from the globalization of the labor force through telecommunications and transportation technology. The option to ‘switch off’ to other locales or countries allows labor to be viewed in terms of differential costs and benefits between separate labor forces. The opportunity to invest jobs into particular countries or people is determined by the level of investment in infrastructure, labor laws, environmental regulations, job skills, training, etc. the country or person makes. Just as the individual shows networks produce become ‘capital’ to invest in future gains of advertising, education and other job related choices become ‘capital’ invested in the development of the human company. This model of subjectivity founds the expansion of neoliberal capitalism and arguments to the ‘optimization’ of production in specialized contexts.
The relationship of capital investment between countries explains a shift in the rhetoric founding the policies of sovereign states. The manifest destiny assumed by US territorial expansion or the enlightenment burden of the social contract have been replaced by the overarching imperative to achieve economic ‘growth.’ This imperative was formed by the globalizing demands of WTO style markets, which require countries to compete with each other as sources of investment, either in monetary or population terms.
The new ‘head of the king’ supposedly removed by the ceding of government enterprise to private organizations grows from the body of Soviet-style socialist management opposed by the US in the Cold War. Ronald Reagan’s subtle linkage of government centralized managerialism to the ‘evil empire’ demonstrates how the transfer of administration of populations/the self to private or individual hands becomes such a powerful instrument in the redefinition of the human as capital. Last- this schema requires an understanding of the subject as a fundamentally self interested party driven by economic imperatives to achieve greatest wealth for themselves or the people around them. The outline of this subject is found in a Hobbesian worldview of anarchic competition. The treatment administered by institutions under a disciplinary model of personal regulation becomes self-administered and optimized in the neoliberal model. The various resistances and hiccups in the macro administration resolve themselves in the ceding of these controls to individuals subjected to the market. The overarching self interests assumed by the human capital model determine how and why individuals choose to subject themselves to good hygine, discipline, prudence, etc. The ‘head of the king’ represented as ‘big government’ of course never disappears but merely gets transferred to a system defined not by transgression and punishment, but by differential access to economic or personal benefits. Access to these benefits serves as the subjective and personalized means of social control in a society supposedly moving beyond government.
Duncan
posted by Duncan at 1:08 PM
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