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Friday, May 9, 2014

A Labeling Machine

The machine.
Photo Credit: (Gail Taylor, 2010). American Apparel labeling machine, at the factory in downtown Los Angeles.

It makes our lives simpler. Distracting, irritating, yes. Therefore, the aftermath of progress, may simply be getting re-acquainted with ourselves and our work.

If Marx and Engels were concerned about the alienation of the worker from his/her work, then what could be the antidote to this distancing? Another question might be: What would be a cultural politics, today? 

Consider, radical self-reflexivity. In The Kristeva Reader, Julia Kristeva writes, "Another generation is another space," Kristeva, a French theorist, considered the new way that political entities disenfranchised from power will interact with creators of knowledge and knowledge-structures in a globalized world. She said, "Another generation is another space," (209). And one of Kristeva's strengths in this essay is that she is intentional about speaking about space from a Western perspective. The Western-mode of segmentation as process is contestable. Especially today, when leisure appears to be the default mode.

Consider, introversion as method as the machine roars on.

 

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