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September 05, 2005
Long Installment Inspired by Manifesto
In response to :: Michael Hardt: Affective Labor :: http://www.makeworlds.org/node/60
When asked what I do, I always hesitate before responding with graphic design. It’s not that I don’t “do” graphic design or that I’m not a graphic designer :: more to the point, I “do” so much more. As my response slips out of my mouth, I watch the person’s face twist in attempts to make sense of the title. Then clarity strikes and they respond, “Like advertising and stuff?”
When Michael Hardt optimistically describes the new labor as highly mobile with flexible skills, design immediately comes to my mind. “Knowledge, information, communication, affect” check. “Continual exchange of information and knowledge” check. “Symbolic-analytical services” check. “Problem-solving, problem-identifying, strategic brokering” check. “CREATIVE SYMBOLIC MANIPULATION” CHECK! It sounds to me like Hardt is describing the new paradigm as design labor, not just “informatization.” This reminds me of Richard Florida’s book The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life.
The designer walks a fine line between service provider and product provider (splashing around in the blurred boundary more than setting up camp on either side). The government’s taxation structure is a bit confused about this (in California anyway). As a freelance designer, I charge sales tax for a project if I provide any physical item including a CD recording the project, but do not charge tax if I email the same document. As human relations become capital, intellectual property (immaterial ownership) will be structured with much harsher guidelines.
Imagine being charged a monetary amount every time you said something that “belongs” to someone else. Imagine selling your “visual angle” (by cameraesque device) of an event to millions of virtual participants, who are continually switching “channels” to find the best view for the best price. This takes design away from the singular possessable object, and shifts it to the production/ orchestration/ choreography of intangible products. Designing relationships with actual/virtual presence would utilize gist to leave plenty of room for interpretation and decision-making. Design labor could be about “social networks, forms of community, and biopower.” Amen.
The most intriguing concept Hardt expands upon regards the “collective subjectivities” that form society, and how production is shifting to reflect the complexity of human interaction. Despite the generalized paradigmatic assumptions, I hope he’s right. I wonder, though, about the outsourcing of “lower value tasks” in favor of keeping the “high value tasks” within the U.S. borders. Currently, the educational structure cannot support this proposal. It’s also distressing to assume that knowledge, information, communication, and affect could not originate elsewhere. Perhaps the power to manage life (create, manage, control populations) will need time to move away from the models established by trade.
Taking a bit of an egocentric stance, designers are responsible for the artifacts that act as a filter through which artificial constructs of self and interaction are formed. As a step away from rationalization and disembodiment, I propose to embrace a flexible mentality with open curiosity, to tease apart or put together the expectations and manipulations that make people think and decide the things they do. In the name of informatization, I will avoid treating the end users (who are intrinsic to my feedback cycle) as farms, factories, or computers, and instead embrace them for the gooey biological anomalies that they so cleverly attempt to mask. (I am part of the “they,” by the way). Allan Schore, a neuroscientist, has devoted his career to understanding Affect Regulation and emotional development of humans. If I am to create/manipulate affect, then it seems pertinent to also comprehend how affect adapts and loosely forms artificial constructs. I should probably acquire a more in-depth appreciation for information and communication beyond the “design world.” In Hardt’s words, “The production of affects, subjectivities, and forms of life present an enormous potential for autonomous circuits of valorization, and perhaps liberation.”
So, maybe, in say, 15 years when someone asks me what I do (which, by the way is a sign that our social structure is built around labor), I will hesitate still before saying design, because by then, I will be “doing” so much more.
Posted by amber howard at September 5, 2005 12:47 AM
Comments
At the risk of this message going unnoticed, as only a tiny (1) at the bottom of Amber's message will alert my classmates to my response, I will attempt to carry out our intention of making this 'blog more discursive and conversational, as opposed to a series of essays, rants and manifestos.
Amber's discussion of design as an important part of the labor equation reminded me of a section of Korten's book regarding the apparent uselessness and inefficiency of people in information rather than physical product-based positions (although not mentioned specifically, graphic designers would undoubtedly be grouped in with these useless folk).
Korten writes about the shift from a social economy to a market economy that stresses monetary growth. This seems similar to a shift from a hegemonic structure of industrial labor to immaterial labor, the latter of which is valued today in developed societies. But Korten describes these activities, when performed for capital gain, as inefficient and destructive to social networks: "Consider that when family and community members worked directly with and for one another, there were no tax collectors, managers, government regulators, accountants, lawyers, stock brokers, bankers, middlemen, advertising account executives, marketing specialists, investment brokers, or freight haulers collecting their share of the output of those who did the actual productive work. The full value of goods and services produced was shared and exchanged within the family and the community, among those who actually created the value. The result was an extraordinarily efficient use of resources to meet real needs." (Korten, 51)
I have to admit that when I read Korten's critique of market economies (as opposed to social), I couldn't imagine a future without it, except perhaps in small, marginalized societies. It seemed the academic equivalent of saying 'why can't we all just get along?'. Similar to the discussion of attempting to 'end Globalization', which is a force so complex and interwoven into every activity that it's impossible to end, fix, or solve, I saw a shift back to social economies as an idealized impossibility. But Hardt and Negri's section on immaterial labor takes this much further to group these intellectual laborers (described by Korten with apparent mild disgust) with reproductive laborers, houseworkers, customer service reps, etc. as all being valuable in some way to the whole. This, to me, seems like a much more realistic view of work, and what works.
Posted by: Cheryl Berkowho? at September 6, 2005 12:50 PM
CB, hopefully the tiny (2) will bring attention to both of our entries… Amber & Cheryl, I completely agree with your points, and have these thoughts to add/echo:
Is it too simplistic or utopian (or even flat-out naive) for me to suggest that immaterial labor can serve as the bridge between Korten's spiritually driven Civil Society, and the 'soulless' market driven (read: evil) Capitalist Society (Korten, 331)?!? Korten's diagrams are diametrically opposed, visiting the polarities of good vs. evil, individual strength vs. individual powerlessness, and compassion vs. wealth (because apparently one cannot have both), but my biggest hangup with Korten is that he glosses over the enormity of the issue of globalization by neatly categorizing it into two camps, suggesting that each is comprised of members forming united fronts. That Hardt has been critical of the Left has helped me appreciate that I am not a complete betrayal to liberals by questioning some of the blanket statements made in Korten.
Isn't it, like everything else, a matter of application? It comes down to questioning whether we're using our immaterial labor for overall growth or just for financial gain. The first would imply a more 'civil' society; the second a stagnant existence in the capitalist model. If I'm interpreting the following passage correctly, then my concern about being naive is somewhat dispelled by what Hardt says here:
Saying that capital has incorporated and exalted affective labor and that affective labor is one of the highest value-producing forms of labor from the point of view of capital does not mean that, thus contaminated, it is no longer of use to anticapitalist projects. On the contrary, given the role of affective labor as one of the strongest links in the chain of capitalist postmodernization, its potential for subversion and autonomous constitution is all the greater. (Hardt, www.makeworlds.org/node/60)
What I appreciate about Michael Hardt's analysis is that he exposes the vulnerabilities of the current system, and illuminates the opportunities for positive intervention; he suggests that we're not doomed to succumb to the evils of capitalist corruption, but that the corruption will be self-defeating, and that this will be a prime opportunity for revolution by the multitude (Hardt and Negri). He probes much further than Korten, pointing out the multiplicity of opportunities that exist, supporting my hunch that globalization is not all bad, but that it does indeed need to be redirected; in effect he has mixed the black and white on the proverbial artist's palette and shown us the gray.
As it pertains to my personal role of graphic designer, this means that I can channel my "immaterial" labor (in quotes because by definition, immaterial is "of no essential consequence; unimportant"—thanks, Infoplease.com) towards "social, cultural, and political directives” and away from the market-driven "like advertising and stuff" (Amber)
Posted by: tracy kroop at September 6, 2005 07:30 PM