Technological Subjects Or, Against The Grand Sweeping Gestural ...

technoLOGICAL sUBJECTs
Or, Against the Grand Sweeping Gestural Mode: Some thoughts on feminist
collectivist postcolonial technoscience studies
Kavita Philip, UC Irvine

“The commons is the incarnation, the production, and the liberation of
the multitude. Rousseau said that the ﬁrst person who wanted a piece of
nature as his or her own exclusive possession and transformed it into
the transcendent form of private property was the one who invented
evil. Good, on the contrary, is what is common.” !

-- Hardt and Negri, Empire!
“Immaterial labor … is a collective and social process, not an individual
one. It would be a violation of the capitalist property logic itself
therefore to grant ownership to an individual or a group of individuals.
The only logical owner of the immaterial property is the community or
society as a whole out of which it was produced. This is perhaps what
hackers mean when they say that information wants to be free: when
information expresses its own social production, it argues against its
private ownership but instead calls for open, common social access.”!

-- Michael Hardt, “Common Property”!

• “Immaterial labor, …, is a collective and social process, not an
individual one. It would be a violation of the capitalist
property logic itself therefore to grant ownership to an
individual or a group of individuals. The only logical owner of
the immaterial property is the community or society as a whole out of
which it was produced. This is perhaps what hackers mean when
they say that information wants to be free: when information
expresses its own social production, it argues against its
private ownership but instead calls for open, common social
access.”

-- Michael Hardt, “Common Property”
?
• Definition of immaterial labor
• Structuralism, idealism
• Personification of information

• 17th-century piracy : Sharing by appropriation?
• After the digital copy: Piracy again; Utopia again?
• Where is the Techno-domestic in Piracy?
• Cable Cut Conspiracies

Pirate techno-utopias ?

“John Smith lures the governor of Madeira aboard”
“Monk riding”

“Mary Read runs an opponent through”
“Anne Bonny”
Source: Pirate Images, http://beej.us/pirates/pirates.html

REASONS FOR REDUCING THE PYRATES AT MADAGASCAR :
And
Proposals humbly offered to the House of Commons, for effecting the same.
That certain Pyrates having some years since found
the island of Madagascar to be the most proper, if not
the only place in the world for their abode, and
carrying on their destructive trade with security,
betook themselves thither; and being since increased
to a formidable body are become a manifest
obstruction to trade, and scandal to our nation and
religion, being most of them English, at least four
“A pirate relaxing with a
ﬁfths.
Madagascar woman”
That Madagascar is one of the largest islands in the
For it’s natural to consider, that all persons owe by
instinct a love to the place of their birth: therefore
world, and very fruitful, lies near the entrance into the
the present pyrates must desire to return to their
East-Indies, and is divided into a great many petty
native country; and if this present generation
Kingdoms independant [sic] of each other, so that
should be more extinct, their Children will have the
there is no making application to any Supream [sic]
same inclination to Madagascar as these have to
Monarch (or indeed any else) to expel or destroy the
England, and will not have any such affection for
Pyrates there.
England, altho’ they will retain the Name of
English; and consequently all those succeeding
depredations committed by them will be charged to
That upon a general peace, when multitudes of
the account of England. Notwithstanding they were
soldiers and seamen will want employment; or by
not born with us, so that this seems the only time
length of time, and the pyrates generating with the
for reducing them to their obedience, and
women of the country, their numbers should be
preventing all those evil consequences.
increased, they may form themselves into a settlement
It must therefore be allow’d to be a very desirable
of robbers, as prejudicial to trade as any on the coast
and necessary thing, that they should be suppressed
of Africa.
in time, and that if it ever be effected, it must be
either by force or perswasion [sic].

Reasons For Reducing the Pyrates at Madagascar AND Proposals humbly offered
to the Honourable House of Commons, for effecting the same.
That upon a general peace, when multitudes of soldiers and seamen will want
employment; or by length of time, and the Pyrates generating with the Women of
the country, their numbers should be increased, they may form themselves into a
settlement of robbers, as prejudicial to trade as any on the coast of Africa.
For it's natural to consider, That all Persons owe by Instinct a Love to the Place of their
Birth: Therefore the present Pyrates must desire to return to their Native Country;
and if this present Generation should be once Extinct, their Children will have the
same Inclination to Madagascar as these have to England, and will not have any
such Affection for England, altho' they will retain the Name of the English, and
consequently all those succeeding Depredations committed by them will be charged
to the Account of England. Notwithstanding they were not born with us, so that this
seems the only Time for Reducing them to their Obedience, and preventing all those
evil Consequences.
It must therefore be allow'd to be a very desirable and necessary Thing, that they should
be suppressed in Time; and that if it ever be effected, it must be either by Force or
Persuasion.

• B. Larkin:
• L. Liang:
While the older illegal city
“ It is through this
has been in existence for
generative quality
a while, in the past ten
that pirate
years there has been
infrastructure is
another layer that has
expressive of a
been integrated into the
paradigmatic shift
experience and narration
in Nigerian
of this illegal city. The
economy and
proliferation of non legal
capital and
media practices ranging
represents the
from pirated VCD's, DVD,
extension of a
MP3's to grey market
logic of
mobile phones informs the
privatization into
practices and imagination
everyday life.”
of the illegal city.
•

• Brian Larkin:
• Lawrence Liang:
Techno Pirate
culture is non-
“Non-legality has been
ideological, ie has
a major feature of all
East Asian computer
no inherent anti-
cultures where Western
authoritarian/ anti-
electronic commodities
corporate agenda
are re-sold in the world
market, particularly the
Third World. In the
• Ravi Sundaram:
Indian case, the mimetic
“recycled modernity”
act is less punctual;
has no discrete
the copy is not crucial
to pirate culture.
spaces of its own in
Rather, it is the
opposition to the
insertion into the non-
main cyber-elites,
legal local, cultural
nor does it posit a
commodity chains, and
the unintended mocking
self-defined
of the state that define
oppositional stance
'pirate' cultures in
India.”

Where is the Techno-domestic in Piracy?
• (I) “The problem facing the music publishers was not one of legal
principle. The difﬁculty lay in enforcing the law. … They had the
right to search for [pirated sheet music] copies, but not to enter
private premises to do so–unless the pirates themselves admitted
t h e m , w h i c h w a s , o b v i o u s l y , u n l i k e l y . ”

-
Adrian Johns 2002, p. 69 (emphases added)
• (II) "I say to you that the VCR is to the American ﬁlm
producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is
to the woman home alone."

– -Jack Valenti, 1983 (emphases added)

Infra/Structure:
Network Cable Mysteries

Foucault [discussing the genealogical method, in Society Must Be Defended]:
“In summary, as against the philosophico-juridical discourse organized in terms of
the problem of sovereignty and law, this discourse which deciphers the continued
existence of war in society is essentially a historico-political discourse, a discourse
in which truth functions as a weapon for a partisan victory, a discourse at once
darkly critical and intensely mythical.”
How to read technology and science not just instrumentally,
transparently, transhistorically, philosophico-juridically?
> Read its emergent, temporary formations via its geo-
political contingencies and its temporal disjunctures; its
histories, politics, and perpetual hauntings