Re: <nettime> Net Criticism 2.0: a dialog

[Felix Stalder <stalder@fis.utoronto.ca>]

>TB: .... And you
>say: The problem is the neo-liberal project of the
>global market. OK, then: Which parts of it should we
>tear away at, which parts should we keep, and how do we
>reconfigure those parts? The answers to this question
>will begin to give us priorities and the seeds of a
>plan.

Net Criticism needs clarity to cut through the maze and detect new spaces
that are opened by the changing conditions created by the Net, not so much
only with in the Net but in the societies and culture which are reorganized
by using the technologies.

The 'global market' as a catch phrase is one of the 'mazy' things that
create confusion and this confusion is instrumental. It makes any critique
seem impossible by presenting something that seems so big and complex that
nobody knows where to begin the detailed work which any critique needs to
engage in if it doesn't want to be just another layer of 'novelty'.

Let's look at the parts into which the 'global economy' can be dissected:

* Globalization
* Globality
* Globalism

_Globalism_ means the neo-liberal ideology which argues that the market is
a 'force of nature' which by its character is out-side the realm of the
political and any political invention is to disturb or hinder the way
things develop most effiecently, thus creating a situation of additional
stress. Globalism is the political ideology that promotes the 'end of
politics'.

_Globality_ acknowledges the fact the decisive aspects of our economy, and
of our culture -- just count the continents you have recently been to --
are already organized on, or at least being influenced by, a global scale.
It furthermore acknowledges that this process is irreversible and that any
critique needs to start from here.  This is fairly obvious.

_Globalization_, at last, is where the action is. These are the processes
that underlie the further expansion of the scope of Globality and its
systems of ordering and reproduction. Globalization, however, does not need
to be a one-way street, as the dominant ideology of Globalism suggest,
globalization does not mean that 'everything that is solid melts into air',
that we are all to succumb under the abstract logic of a deregulated, read
market-regulated, economy of behemoths. Globalization also means that
previous isolated people and groups can communicate, that strategic action
at key nodes can be disruptive for the whole network, that grassroots can
coordinate themselves globally, in short, that the local can gain an
enormeous power.

When we start to separate the ideology of Globalism from the process of
Globalization, which are much more diverse and culturally oriented that the
neo-liberal model is able to understand, then we will find the in the
falt-lines space for action and hope, something not just to criticize but
to look forward to.

[The distinction of the three terms is borrowed from Ulrich Beck: Was ist
Globalisierung?, 1997]

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Les faits sont faits.
http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/~stalder 
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