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Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility
A comprehensive philosophy of contemporary life and politics, by one of the sharpest critics of the present
We live in an age of impotence. Stuck between global war and global finance, between identity and capital, we seem to be incapable of producing the radical change that is so desperately needed. Is there still a way to disentangle ourselves from a global order that shapes our politics as well as our imagination?
In his most systematic book to date, renowned Italian theorist Franco Berardi tackles this question through a solid yet visionary analysis of the three fundamental concepts of Possibility, Potency, and Power. Characterizing Possibility as the content, Potency as the energy, and Power as the form, Berardi suggests that the road to emancipation unravels from the awareness that the field of the possible is only limited, and not created, by the power structures that implement it. Other futures and other worlds are always already inscribed within the present, despite power's attempt at keeping them invisible. Overcoming any temptation of giving in to despair or nostalgia, Berardi proposes the notion of Futurability as a way to remind us that even within the darkness of our current crisis lies dormant the horizon of possibility.
We live in an age of impotence. Stuck between global war and global finance, between identity and capital, we seem to be incapable of producing the radical change that is so desperately needed. Is there still a way to disentangle ourselves from a global order that shapes our politics as well as our imagination?
In his most systematic book to date, renowned Italian theorist Franco Berardi tackles this question through a solid yet visionary analysis of the three fundamental concepts of Possibility, Potency, and Power. Characterizing Possibility as the content, Potency as the energy, and Power as the form, Berardi suggests that the road to emancipation unravels from the awareness that the field of the possible is only limited, and not created, by the power structures that implement it. Other futures and other worlds are always already inscribed within the present, despite power's attempt at keeping them invisible. Overcoming any temptation of giving in to despair or nostalgia, Berardi proposes the notion of Futurability as a way to remind us that even within the darkness of our current crisis lies dormant the horizon of possibility.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2017
97 people are currently reading
2698 people want to read
About the author
Franco "Bifo" Berardi
128 books457 followersFranco "Bifo" Berardi (born 2 November 1948 in Bologna, Italy) is an Italian Marxist theorist and activist in the autonomist tradition, whose work mainly focuses on the role of the media and information technology within post-industrial capitalism. Berardi has written over two dozen published books, as well as a more extensive number of essays and speeches.
Unlike orthodox Marxists, Berardi's autonomist theories draw on psychoanalysis, schizoanalysis and communication theory to show how subjectivity and desire are bound up with the functioning of the capitalism system, rather than portraying events such as the financial crisis of 2008 merely as an example of the inherently contradictory logic of capitalist accumulation. Thus, he argues against privileging labour in critique and says that "the solution to the economic difficulty of the situation cannot be solved with economic means: the solution is not economic." Human emotions and embodied communication becomes increasingly central to the production and consumption patterns that sustain capital flows in post-industrial society, and as such Berardi uses the concepts of "cognitariat" and "info labour" to analyze this psycho-social process. Among Berardi's other concerns are cultural representations and expectations about the future — from proto-Fascist Futurism to post-modern cyberpunk (1993). This represents a greater concern with ideas and cultural expectations than the determinist-materialist expression of a Marxism which is often confined to purely economic or systemic analysis.
(via Wikipedia)
Unlike orthodox Marxists, Berardi's autonomist theories draw on psychoanalysis, schizoanalysis and communication theory to show how subjectivity and desire are bound up with the functioning of the capitalism system, rather than portraying events such as the financial crisis of 2008 merely as an example of the inherently contradictory logic of capitalist accumulation. Thus, he argues against privileging labour in critique and says that "the solution to the economic difficulty of the situation cannot be solved with economic means: the solution is not economic." Human emotions and embodied communication becomes increasingly central to the production and consumption patterns that sustain capital flows in post-industrial society, and as such Berardi uses the concepts of "cognitariat" and "info labour" to analyze this psycho-social process. Among Berardi's other concerns are cultural representations and expectations about the future — from proto-Fascist Futurism to post-modern cyberpunk (1993). This represents a greater concern with ideas and cultural expectations than the determinist-materialist expression of a Marxism which is often confined to purely economic or systemic analysis.
(via Wikipedia)
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October 13, 2018
After reading fiction almost exclusively for a while, it was definitely time for some good old Verso-published-capitalism-criticism-theory-slash-political-philosophy. Starting ‘Futurability’ got me thinking about why I read books like this. I definitely enjoy them, both sincerely and ironically. The sincere enjoyment comes from any potentially plausible structure and explanation being proposed for the destructive chaos of late capitalism, especially if the book also proposes some reason to hope for a better, less capitalist future. I am always seeking some underlying pattern or meaning behind the constant slew of news snippets, so appreciate attempts by theorists to articulate something of the kind. If I don’t completely agree with their ideas all the better, as this forces my own thoughts on the topic into focus. The more ironic and detached enjoyment comes from learning ridiculously niche new words and raising my eyebrows at the more nonsensical and incomprehensible commentary. Sometimes a single sentence can be enjoyed on both levels; the introduction of this very book contains a classic example:
A true insight into cognitive dissonance wrapped in an amusingly disgusting metaphor. This is first book I’ve read by Berardi, a 70 year old Italian Marxist, and I liked his style. After an introduction that is fairly dense with obscure jargon, the subsequent chapters are very readable. There is no hint of passive-voiced textbook here, rather the reader is being lectured by the man himself as if from an adjacent armchair. ‘Futurability’ was completed in January 2017 and attempts to diagnose what the hell has gone wrong with the global economy and politics. While I didn’t know Berardi’s exact age until I looked it up just now, the tone is obviously that of an older person baffled and horrified, asking “How has it come to this?” As a millennial who often reflects on just that question, I found it fascinating to read the answer of someone with a much longer personal perspective.
That said, this is 240 page book with a massive scope, so it can only offer limited novelty of insight and analytical depth. While I found the structure and content of Berardi’s arguments largely clear and thoughtful, there weren't as many new ideas as I hope for from theory. It seemed more like I was reading new formulations of material that I’d come across before - which isn’t necessarily a criticism, as synthesis can be very powerful. In this case, there were a few weak points. Berardi uses autism as a synonym for absence of empathy, which from reading NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity I’m pretty sure is inaccurate. He also leans heavily on the disaffection of the ‘white working class’ due to globalisation-provoked precarity as the main explanation for Trump, Brexit, and other manifestations of neo-fascism. I found this surprisingly simplistic, given his argument elsewhere in the book that the working class no longer exists as a meaningful grouping. Indeed, I liked his comments on this dissolution:
This leaves ‘white working class’ as a rather empty term to throw around, one that needs reformulation and clarification. It also conceals as much as it reveals: in the US election, better off white people voted for Trump at higher rates than poorer whites. In the EU referendum, Scotland voted 62% to remain despite being poorer and whiter than England. (Scotland’s nationalism is of an unusually progressive stripe; the Scottish National Party and the British National Party are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.) In short, I think we need new understandings of class to try and pick apart what’s happening politically. Race, wealth, education, and geography are all important; I’ve yet to come across any robust theory of 21st class which combines them to explain resurgent racist authoritarianism. (If you have, please recommend it to me.) Social Class in the 21st Century has interesting insights into wealth and cultural inequalities, but little to say about their political implications.
Berardi is stronger when discussing ‘cognitive workers’ (also known as ‘knowledge workers’) and automation. He mentions Mason’s Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (which goes into the destabilising macroeconomic effects of automation in greater depth and I definitely recommend), considering how current automation trends have changed the experience of work:
If the class stuff is rather disappointing, Berardi certainly regained my sympathy by discussing the concept of salary as superstition:
We live in a world of abundance, yet feel constantly at risk of losing the means of subsistence. This is the result of grotesque inequality, an issue that Berardi does not really mention. Possibly to avoid advocating the guillotine for billionaires, although the super-rich are quite literally destroying the world. Their wealth should be redistributed ASAP, before they have a chance to waste it all on fucking off to the Moon. Ironically enough, the only people who can avoid the superstition of salary are the richest. Somehow inheritance entitles them to luxury without labour. This links neatly into another topic that Berardi explains rather well: the mystery of why the population, despite being very angry if twitter is any indication, do not rebel.
As you might have guessed from these quotes, ‘Futurability’ is not an optimistic book. (If you want something along those lines, I recommend Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, which centres on rebuilding solidarity.) While I certainly agree that environmental and political collapse make us look pretty doomed right now, Berardi’s fatalism can be rather amusing:
Absurd as it may seem, embracing laziness is a mildly radical act in the face of neoliberal optimisation, hyper-productivity, and hustle. Of course, not everyone can afford to. If you can, I highly recommend it. Taking a nap is a lot better than being exhausted.
Berardi marshals a wide range of references and sources that, refreshingly for a critical theorist, do not include The Dark Knight Rises. Instead he cites, among others, the Pope, the novels of Houellebecq, Foucault, Schopenhauer, Marx, and Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He also has more insight into social media than most political philosophy can offer:
That is an intriguing theory of the twitterstorm phenomenon and its like: the tendency for social media to provoke snap judgements for or against some person, concept, object, and/or event. The speed and essentialism of this process are deeply concerning. For one thing, it should be totally reasonable to not have opinions on complex matters you haven’t given a lot of thought to. More importantly, there should be space for nuance, as its suppression seems to normalise appalling extremes of racism, sexism, etc by creating false equivalency between the counterpositions ‘this minority should not be discriminated against’ and ‘this minority should not exist because I hate them’.
‘Futurability’ concludes with a fable about cognitive workers with three characters. It rings true both figuratively and literally, based on my many years in universities:
Berardi sees the only faint hope for the future in a ‘raising of consciousness’ among cognitive workers, despite this seeming ‘unattainable today’. As one of these cognitive workers, I consider this both a vote of faith and a horrifying responsibility. While this book did not provide the conceptual focus and original concepts of, say, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, I found Berardi an engaging and thought-provoking writer with valuable insight. Where I did not agree with him, I appreciated the opportunity to consider how and why. It’s hard for me to say how useful or interesting other readers might find ‘Futurability’; it would probably depend on your appetite for critical theory. But I’d certainly recommend it over endless 500 word thinkpieces that add up to confusion, anxiety, and hopelessness about the state of the world.
Capitalism is a dead dog, but society is unable to come out from under the rotting corpse, so the social mind is devoured by panic and furious impotence, until finally it turns to depression.
A true insight into cognitive dissonance wrapped in an amusingly disgusting metaphor. This is first book I’ve read by Berardi, a 70 year old Italian Marxist, and I liked his style. After an introduction that is fairly dense with obscure jargon, the subsequent chapters are very readable. There is no hint of passive-voiced textbook here, rather the reader is being lectured by the man himself as if from an adjacent armchair. ‘Futurability’ was completed in January 2017 and attempts to diagnose what the hell has gone wrong with the global economy and politics. While I didn’t know Berardi’s exact age until I looked it up just now, the tone is obviously that of an older person baffled and horrified, asking “How has it come to this?” As a millennial who often reflects on just that question, I found it fascinating to read the answer of someone with a much longer personal perspective.
That said, this is 240 page book with a massive scope, so it can only offer limited novelty of insight and analytical depth. While I found the structure and content of Berardi’s arguments largely clear and thoughtful, there weren't as many new ideas as I hope for from theory. It seemed more like I was reading new formulations of material that I’d come across before - which isn’t necessarily a criticism, as synthesis can be very powerful. In this case, there were a few weak points. Berardi uses autism as a synonym for absence of empathy, which from reading NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity I’m pretty sure is inaccurate. He also leans heavily on the disaffection of the ‘white working class’ due to globalisation-provoked precarity as the main explanation for Trump, Brexit, and other manifestations of neo-fascism. I found this surprisingly simplistic, given his argument elsewhere in the book that the working class no longer exists as a meaningful grouping. Indeed, I liked his comments on this dissolution:
Workers do not perceive themselves anymore as parts of a living community: they are rather compelled to compete in a condition of loneliness. Although they are exploited in the same way by the same capitalist entity, they are no longer a social class because in their material condition they can no longer produce collective self-consciousness or the spontaneous solidarity of a community of people who live in the same place and share the same destiny. They are no longer ‘masses’ because their random coming together in the subway, on the highway, or in similar places of transit is random and temporary.
This leaves ‘white working class’ as a rather empty term to throw around, one that needs reformulation and clarification. It also conceals as much as it reveals: in the US election, better off white people voted for Trump at higher rates than poorer whites. In the EU referendum, Scotland voted 62% to remain despite being poorer and whiter than England. (Scotland’s nationalism is of an unusually progressive stripe; the Scottish National Party and the British National Party are at opposite ends of the political spectrum.) In short, I think we need new understandings of class to try and pick apart what’s happening politically. Race, wealth, education, and geography are all important; I’ve yet to come across any robust theory of 21st class which combines them to explain resurgent racist authoritarianism. (If you have, please recommend it to me.) Social Class in the 21st Century has interesting insights into wealth and cultural inequalities, but little to say about their political implications.
Berardi is stronger when discussing ‘cognitive workers’ (also known as ‘knowledge workers’) and automation. He mentions Mason’s Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (which goes into the destabilising macroeconomic effects of automation in greater depth and I definitely recommend), considering how current automation trends have changed the experience of work:
In this dynamic lies the source of neoliberal triumph, and the emergence of a monstrous paradox: on the one hand, deregulated capitalism encourages techno-innovators to build increasingly intelligent and productive automatons; on the other, it blackmails workers to work faster for less and less money in an impossible race against robots. The consequence of this paradox is the precarisation of work and of life more generally.
If the class stuff is rather disappointing, Berardi certainly regained my sympathy by discussing the concept of salary as superstition:
How did it happen that human beings accepted and still endure the blackmail of salary in order to survive? The widespread persuasion that one must lend his/her time in exchange for the right to enjoy the products of labour and of nature is not an obvious one, nor is it based on a natural necessity. Under conditions of scarcity, people are obliged to cede their time in exchange for the money necessary to buy their basic survival. But today the scarcity regime is unnecessary.
We live in a world of abundance, yet feel constantly at risk of losing the means of subsistence. This is the result of grotesque inequality, an issue that Berardi does not really mention. Possibly to avoid advocating the guillotine for billionaires, although the super-rich are quite literally destroying the world. Their wealth should be redistributed ASAP, before they have a chance to waste it all on fucking off to the Moon. Ironically enough, the only people who can avoid the superstition of salary are the richest. Somehow inheritance entitles them to luxury without labour. This links neatly into another topic that Berardi explains rather well: the mystery of why the population, despite being very angry if twitter is any indication, do not rebel.
People are unable and unwilling to revolt because they do not see the way to autonomy and solidarity because of the precariousness, anxiousness, and competition that are linked to the present organisation of work. Labour deterritorialisation and technological fragmentation of the social body result in their inability to create effective networks of solidarity and in widespread loneliness broken only by sudden, random explosions of rage. This is one possible answer.
A second answer is the dissolution of the physical identity of power. Power is nowhere and everywhere at the same time, internalised and inscribed in the techo-linguistic automations called governance. Recent waves of rebellion have proven unable to focus their struggles against a physical centre of financial domination because a physical centre does not exist.
As you might have guessed from these quotes, ‘Futurability’ is not an optimistic book. (If you want something along those lines, I recommend Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need, which centres on rebuilding solidarity.) While I certainly agree that environmental and political collapse make us look pretty doomed right now, Berardi’s fatalism can be rather amusing:
We must abandon the point of view of productivity, the expectation of acquisition and control. We must assume, instead, the point of view of laziness and self-care. We must transform impotence into a line of flight away from the universe of competition.
We may discover that being exhausted is not so bad.
How do we deal with the problem of exhaustion? Inscribing the reality of death in the political agenda. Transforming decline into a lifestyle of solidarity.
Absurd as it may seem, embracing laziness is a mildly radical act in the face of neoliberal optimisation, hyper-productivity, and hustle. Of course, not everyone can afford to. If you can, I highly recommend it. Taking a nap is a lot better than being exhausted.
Berardi marshals a wide range of references and sources that, refreshingly for a critical theorist, do not include The Dark Knight Rises. Instead he cites, among others, the Pope, the novels of Houellebecq, Foucault, Schopenhauer, Marx, and Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. He also has more insight into social media than most political philosophy can offer:
The intensification of the info-flow provokes a disturbance of the cognitive ability to detect and interpret signs, but simultaneously pushes us towards a swarm-like automation of the functioning of the mind. The self is both pressured from the outside world and replicated by the surrounding world of other minds. The faster the act of interpretation of info-stimulus, the more the process of interpretation is shared and homologated. The swarm mutation is proceeding both from the outside world and from the interaction with other minds.
That is an intriguing theory of the twitterstorm phenomenon and its like: the tendency for social media to provoke snap judgements for or against some person, concept, object, and/or event. The speed and essentialism of this process are deeply concerning. For one thing, it should be totally reasonable to not have opinions on complex matters you haven’t given a lot of thought to. More importantly, there should be space for nuance, as its suppression seems to normalise appalling extremes of racism, sexism, etc by creating false equivalency between the counterpositions ‘this minority should not be discriminated against’ and ‘this minority should not exist because I hate them’.
‘Futurability’ concludes with a fable about cognitive workers with three characters. It rings true both figuratively and literally, based on my many years in universities:
The artist, like the pure scientist, is the creator of new concepts and new precepts, disclosing new possible horizons of the social experience. The artist speaks the language of conjunction: in the artistic creation, the relation between sign and meaning is not conventionally fixed by pragmatically displaced and constantly renegotiated.
The engineer is the master of technology, the intellectual who transforms concepts into projects, and projects into algorithms. The engineer speaks the language of connection. The relation between sign and meaning is conventionally inscribed in engineering. The engineer is a producer of machines, technical combinations of algorithms and physical matter that perform in accordance with concepts.
The third figure of the contemporary general intellect is the economist, the fake scientist and real technologist whose duty is to separate the artist and engineer, keeping them to their specialised tasks.
Economists are more priests than scientists. Their discourse aims to submit the activity of other intellectuals to the rule of economic expansion.
Berardi sees the only faint hope for the future in a ‘raising of consciousness’ among cognitive workers, despite this seeming ‘unattainable today’. As one of these cognitive workers, I consider this both a vote of faith and a horrifying responsibility. While this book did not provide the conceptual focus and original concepts of, say, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, I found Berardi an engaging and thought-provoking writer with valuable insight. Where I did not agree with him, I appreciated the opportunity to consider how and why. It’s hard for me to say how useful or interesting other readers might find ‘Futurability’; it would probably depend on your appetite for critical theory. But I’d certainly recommend it over endless 500 word thinkpieces that add up to confusion, anxiety, and hopelessness about the state of the world.
January 27, 2020
We live, it seems, under a totalizing regime of inevitability. The abstract and disjunctive logics of financial capitalism and rentier economics, the inexorable loom of environmental degradation under the Epimethean ecology of the Anthropocene, the recrudescence of reactionary politics as an emasculated howl against a chimerical cabal of the twittering classes, the conquest and partition of the conjunctive mass of tactile human intercourse by the synthetically-connective interpolations of social media, and the techno-capitalist recoding of the libidinal oscillations of the collective will according to the algorithmic strictures of the YouTube cocoon and the fetishistic circuitry of Pornhub, all suggest the closing of a uroboric circle: the sealing-off of the imaginative horizon of possibility under a dome of simulated determinacy.
Determinism is not a fact inscribed in the order of nature, but a strategy of biopolitical control. It is a virtual reality that conceals the magmatic field of infinite possibility which is always embedded in the present, channeling the indeterminable vibrations of potentiality through a normative cognitive framework that discriminates arbitrarily between potential futures in order to crystallize a particular social order. Fate is an expression of power. Our liberation from this power must come from a recovery of the humanistic idea, which in turn is constituted by a recognition of the ontological indeterminacy of reality itself, as well as of human potency within it. Reality itself is incomplete, so any hermetically-sealed, self-referential biopolitical circumscription of possibility must always be illusive and ephemeral, as no technological implement can truly impose integrity on an unintegrated reality.
The current epoch is a digital baroque; a regressive shadow of the info-technological renaissance. Renaissance man freely utilizes his unlimited creative energies to order the cosmos under an anthropocentric Kingdom of Man. In the baroque turn, the subjectivity of the collective mind is eroded by the proliferation of ordering techniques, as the multiplication of perspectives engendered by human artifice outpaces the collective rational capacity to organize and govern them under a linear, humanistic perspective. Technology thus becomes reified, filling the spaces where freedom once reigned and metamorphosing into a new proscriptive “god”. Human potency—our capacity to actualize potentials—has been absorbed by technique, inaugurating a theocracy of technology.
This paradigmatic capture of human potency by technique manifests itself culturally through depression, humiliation, civil and psychological disintegration, and rhetorical and physical violence. Depression is characterized by a withdrawal of libidinal energy, a lack of concentration and coherency of purpose, and the inability to imagine positive alternatives to one’s present situation; all of which are outgrowths of the neurototalitarian consolidation of techno-capitalism.
The digitized subject is overwhelmed by the flows of information he must navigate and consume, and he conforms his own psychology to the fragmentary logic of the cybersphere. Subjective potency and enunciational coherence are dissolved as the Self is externalized into the digital hive mind. The digital self is pressured by the speed of the informational flows which must be interpreted and by the mass replication of his own cognitive consciousness into sharing the very process of interpretation with the hive, creating a homogenized intellectual superorganism that resembles the social organization of bees and leafcutter ants more than that of human beings. As the info-technological “god” grows, the Self shrinks to the point of vanishing.
The digital subjugation of the attention span—and with it the actualizing capacities of the will—is exemplified by the proliferation of pornographic media: not only in the form of hardcore “tube” sites that bombard the mind with an endless fusillade of infinitely-variable erotic distractions, but also as “soft” suggestive content that is interspersed in the flow of advertising and popular entertainment. The irresistibly fascinating quality of the erotic captivates our attention, and when it permeates the media, which literally mediates our perception of reality, our attention becomes simultaneously hyperstimulated and abstracted; always aroused but never able to concentrate on a particular object. The result is a pornographic bondage of the will, wherein our attention is enthralled and our rational capacities for resistance are subverted in a double move by the pornocracy.
Populist politics is a reaction against the perceived impotence of political will, and antiestablishment politicians are elevated by disaffected majorities around the world to humiliate a “globalist establishment” that has treated them with contempt. Policy proposals are replaced by personal and institutional feuds, insults, threats, and conspiracy theories, because the dynamics of the digital swarm have eliminated faith in the potency of reasoned articulation of political aims, and even in the capacity of institutions to mediate the political process. Democratic politics, as practiced for roughly one hundred and fifty years, is evaporating, with nothing to replace it thus far but the violent rhetoric of tribal resentment. Democracy relies on humanistic freedom and volitional potency, and both have been dissolved by neurocapitalism.
Berardi interprets the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the ascension of Pope Francis as a world-historical event. The hopeful, classically-humanistic logocentrism of Benedict was obliged to yield to the post-hope vision of Francis. Whereas Benedict believed that the “satanic” animalistic instincts that govern the world through the instruments of techno-capitalism could be ordered and controlled by the application of reason and willpower, Francis’s post-hope discourse concedes that the technological regime of the world has become uncontrollable, and the collective will to master the flow of information and events is impotent. When substantive change is impossible, only mercy and friendship remain relevant. It is only in friendship and solidarity, in a “conjunctive body of the general intellect”, that the semiocapitalist consolidation-through-social-disintegration might be disrupted.
Francis’s vision of freedom through solidarity is counterpoised with the various submissionist ideologies that have emerged in our time, most notably in militant and fundamentalist forms of Islam. Whereas the Christian world is in captivity to sin and death, Islamic fundamentalism imagines a perfect creation under a perfect law, and insists that submission to this law is the only prerequisite for personal and social harmony. The appeal of submitting oneself to some unalterable law has manifested itself in many contexts—in Hindu nationalism, Catholic integralism, so-called “race realist” secular ethnonationalisms, the “religion” (though not the science) of environmentalism, and so on—but each of these is a pale reflection of the liberal capitalist totalitarianism that we all sense—however subconsciously—is closing the window of possibility and consolidating its power over the imagination.
Even so, the regime of inevitability is not itself inevitable, because the collective mind of the world—the sum total of humanity’s creative and intellectual capacities—will always exceed the ambit of the normative “coding” designed for it by any regime of mediation. But the reclamation of freedom will not come about through any political revolution, like those of the twentieth century, but rather by utilizing the connective technologies that were made to imprison us to imagine new realms of possibility. In the 2020s, the purpose of philosophy will not be to change the world, but to reinterpret it.
Determinism is not a fact inscribed in the order of nature, but a strategy of biopolitical control. It is a virtual reality that conceals the magmatic field of infinite possibility which is always embedded in the present, channeling the indeterminable vibrations of potentiality through a normative cognitive framework that discriminates arbitrarily between potential futures in order to crystallize a particular social order. Fate is an expression of power. Our liberation from this power must come from a recovery of the humanistic idea, which in turn is constituted by a recognition of the ontological indeterminacy of reality itself, as well as of human potency within it. Reality itself is incomplete, so any hermetically-sealed, self-referential biopolitical circumscription of possibility must always be illusive and ephemeral, as no technological implement can truly impose integrity on an unintegrated reality.
The current epoch is a digital baroque; a regressive shadow of the info-technological renaissance. Renaissance man freely utilizes his unlimited creative energies to order the cosmos under an anthropocentric Kingdom of Man. In the baroque turn, the subjectivity of the collective mind is eroded by the proliferation of ordering techniques, as the multiplication of perspectives engendered by human artifice outpaces the collective rational capacity to organize and govern them under a linear, humanistic perspective. Technology thus becomes reified, filling the spaces where freedom once reigned and metamorphosing into a new proscriptive “god”. Human potency—our capacity to actualize potentials—has been absorbed by technique, inaugurating a theocracy of technology.
This paradigmatic capture of human potency by technique manifests itself culturally through depression, humiliation, civil and psychological disintegration, and rhetorical and physical violence. Depression is characterized by a withdrawal of libidinal energy, a lack of concentration and coherency of purpose, and the inability to imagine positive alternatives to one’s present situation; all of which are outgrowths of the neurototalitarian consolidation of techno-capitalism.
The digitized subject is overwhelmed by the flows of information he must navigate and consume, and he conforms his own psychology to the fragmentary logic of the cybersphere. Subjective potency and enunciational coherence are dissolved as the Self is externalized into the digital hive mind. The digital self is pressured by the speed of the informational flows which must be interpreted and by the mass replication of his own cognitive consciousness into sharing the very process of interpretation with the hive, creating a homogenized intellectual superorganism that resembles the social organization of bees and leafcutter ants more than that of human beings. As the info-technological “god” grows, the Self shrinks to the point of vanishing.
The digital subjugation of the attention span—and with it the actualizing capacities of the will—is exemplified by the proliferation of pornographic media: not only in the form of hardcore “tube” sites that bombard the mind with an endless fusillade of infinitely-variable erotic distractions, but also as “soft” suggestive content that is interspersed in the flow of advertising and popular entertainment. The irresistibly fascinating quality of the erotic captivates our attention, and when it permeates the media, which literally mediates our perception of reality, our attention becomes simultaneously hyperstimulated and abstracted; always aroused but never able to concentrate on a particular object. The result is a pornographic bondage of the will, wherein our attention is enthralled and our rational capacities for resistance are subverted in a double move by the pornocracy.
Populist politics is a reaction against the perceived impotence of political will, and antiestablishment politicians are elevated by disaffected majorities around the world to humiliate a “globalist establishment” that has treated them with contempt. Policy proposals are replaced by personal and institutional feuds, insults, threats, and conspiracy theories, because the dynamics of the digital swarm have eliminated faith in the potency of reasoned articulation of political aims, and even in the capacity of institutions to mediate the political process. Democratic politics, as practiced for roughly one hundred and fifty years, is evaporating, with nothing to replace it thus far but the violent rhetoric of tribal resentment. Democracy relies on humanistic freedom and volitional potency, and both have been dissolved by neurocapitalism.
Berardi interprets the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the ascension of Pope Francis as a world-historical event. The hopeful, classically-humanistic logocentrism of Benedict was obliged to yield to the post-hope vision of Francis. Whereas Benedict believed that the “satanic” animalistic instincts that govern the world through the instruments of techno-capitalism could be ordered and controlled by the application of reason and willpower, Francis’s post-hope discourse concedes that the technological regime of the world has become uncontrollable, and the collective will to master the flow of information and events is impotent. When substantive change is impossible, only mercy and friendship remain relevant. It is only in friendship and solidarity, in a “conjunctive body of the general intellect”, that the semiocapitalist consolidation-through-social-disintegration might be disrupted.
Francis’s vision of freedom through solidarity is counterpoised with the various submissionist ideologies that have emerged in our time, most notably in militant and fundamentalist forms of Islam. Whereas the Christian world is in captivity to sin and death, Islamic fundamentalism imagines a perfect creation under a perfect law, and insists that submission to this law is the only prerequisite for personal and social harmony. The appeal of submitting oneself to some unalterable law has manifested itself in many contexts—in Hindu nationalism, Catholic integralism, so-called “race realist” secular ethnonationalisms, the “religion” (though not the science) of environmentalism, and so on—but each of these is a pale reflection of the liberal capitalist totalitarianism that we all sense—however subconsciously—is closing the window of possibility and consolidating its power over the imagination.
Even so, the regime of inevitability is not itself inevitable, because the collective mind of the world—the sum total of humanity’s creative and intellectual capacities—will always exceed the ambit of the normative “coding” designed for it by any regime of mediation. But the reclamation of freedom will not come about through any political revolution, like those of the twentieth century, but rather by utilizing the connective technologies that were made to imprison us to imagine new realms of possibility. In the 2020s, the purpose of philosophy will not be to change the world, but to reinterpret it.
April 27, 2021
This was mostly pretty good, and makes for a good bridge between Four Futures/Fully Automated Luxury Communism and Postcapitalist Desire. Berardi's writing is mostly accessible, if repetitive at times (a further edit could possibly have trimmed 30 pages off the pagecount) as he oscillates between general inferences from politics and history to deeper theoretical matters. It's here, when sinking his teeth into concepts, that he's at his best.
In the final stages of the book Berardi disavows the power of the Left as a political project and it's here that he reveals a significant weakness in his argument: he supposes that capitalism can be voluntarily reformed with the interests of the world population in mind without suggesting any way of tackling issues such as social atomisation or even so much as addressing the prevailing miasma of right-wing ideology that clouds the horizon of possibility. And so, as a staunch leftist, I have to fundamentally disagree with some of the conclusions that he makes, such as that it will be the role of a collectivised cognitive workforce to take us beyond our present stagnation in late capitalism. Instead, I take the stance of Mark Fisher as expressed in Postcapitalist Desire, in maintaining that it is the proletariat that contains revolutionary power on account of its structural position, rather than any positive attributes it may hold as a class.
In the final stages of the book Berardi disavows the power of the Left as a political project and it's here that he reveals a significant weakness in his argument: he supposes that capitalism can be voluntarily reformed with the interests of the world population in mind without suggesting any way of tackling issues such as social atomisation or even so much as addressing the prevailing miasma of right-wing ideology that clouds the horizon of possibility. And so, as a staunch leftist, I have to fundamentally disagree with some of the conclusions that he makes, such as that it will be the role of a collectivised cognitive workforce to take us beyond our present stagnation in late capitalism. Instead, I take the stance of Mark Fisher as expressed in Postcapitalist Desire, in maintaining that it is the proletariat that contains revolutionary power on account of its structural position, rather than any positive attributes it may hold as a class.
August 14, 2017
A schizo-semiotic ejaculation from self-literary potentiality to actualised potency (of the impotent); the limp bourgeois violence of Houellebecq, the infinitesimal spasmic vibrations of a Spinozan-Trump genealogy of power, and a masco-masochistic depressive deluge of Deleuzean counter-senescence. All reverberating on a techno-coagulation hyperplane of the Becoming of Becoming of Being (perhaps).
I rather enjoyed it.
The strange movement from terminology rich prose of declarations into a deeply personal and emotional account of revolutionary ideas, and saddened cultural diagnosis, was certainly welcomed. Bifo's ability to fuse deep theory, personal annecdote and (pop) cultural analysis is impressive. A rich catalog of references lifted the writing out of continental philosophy oblivion, such that Futurability is likely to hold as one of my favourite works of political philosophy for a long time.
I rather enjoyed it.
The strange movement from terminology rich prose of declarations into a deeply personal and emotional account of revolutionary ideas, and saddened cultural diagnosis, was certainly welcomed. Bifo's ability to fuse deep theory, personal annecdote and (pop) cultural analysis is impressive. A rich catalog of references lifted the writing out of continental philosophy oblivion, such that Futurability is likely to hold as one of my favourite works of political philosophy for a long time.
September 25, 2018
Futurabilità parla di possibilità. Bifo parte da una considerazione filosofica, prima di tutto: che il presente contenga dentro di sé il futuro, o, meglio, tutti i futuri possibili. Che, come in uno stato quantistico, esistono potenzialmente tutti contemporaneamente, finché non se ne realizzerà soltanto uno. Una specie di scatola di Schrodinger a grandezza del mondo. Ora, tutti questi futuri, però, non ci appaiono visibili, o anche soltanto pensabili, vuoi perché comunque siamo limitati in quanto persone, vuoi perché i futuri che crediamo possibili, se non probabili, vengono filtrati dalla realtà socio-economica in cui viviamo, ovvero il Capitale. Il motto della Thatcher, per cui "there is no alternative" (al capitalismo) è proprio la messa in atto di questa esclusione del futuro. Il Capitale, ci dice Bifo, fa proprio questo per poter mantenere il suo potere, specialmente ora che è messo piuttosto male: toglie ogni possibile alternativa. Se non ci sta altro per cui combattere, allora, ogni movimento, ogni tentativo di azione sarà all'interno del capitale stesso. "There is no alternative" sega via ogni possibile via oltre il capitalismo, lo rende l'unica strada percorribile perché unica strada esistente. "La linea di fuga dall'inevitabile", quindi, "è l'inconcepibile".
L'inconcepibile, in questo caso, è un futuro possibile in cui si è raggiunta la piena automazione delle macchine, in cui il lavoro non definisce più l'identità delle persone perché superfluo. E' un futuro in cui il capitalismo è collassato e, come nella più classica utopia comunista, la persona è libera di dedicarsi alla propria crescita, e quindi alla crescita della società, non dovendo più sottostare alle imposizioni di accumulo del Capitale. Che sia una visione più o meno condivisibile importa fino a una certa, perché quello che fa Bifo è aprire una strada alternativa, mostrare una crepa nella narrazione granitica del neoliberismo. (Che è un po' il filo conduttore di tutte le pubblicazioni di Not fino a questo momento, di cui Futurabilità è un po' la summa e raccoglimento).
Questa alternativa, o meglio, la presa di consapevolezza che esistono alternative (plurale, altrimenti cadremmo in un pessimo dualismo inutile), è necessaria nel momento in cui il progetto capitalista è precipitato e rischia di precipitare ancora più profondamente in una depressione che viene identificata perfettamente con il termine di "Illuminismo oscuro": la ragione è in crisi, incapace di dare un ordine al caos della realtà; il Capitale ha frantumato ogni legame, ogni solidità e solidarietà. E sono nati i mostri, da una parte gli estremismi del califfato, dall'altra l'Occidente che ha iniziato a chiudersi a riccio, a tornare indietro sul suo percorso democratico, facendo sorgere populismi razzisti e nazionalisti. Ecco, quindi, la necessità di proporre una valida alternativa che non sia un ritorno degli orrori novecenteschi al Capitale: "redistribuzione della ricchezza, uguaglianza, sobrietà, solidarietà, amicizia: queste sono le parole chiave di una trasformazione culturale necessaria e soprattutto possibile".
L'inconcepibile, in questo caso, è un futuro possibile in cui si è raggiunta la piena automazione delle macchine, in cui il lavoro non definisce più l'identità delle persone perché superfluo. E' un futuro in cui il capitalismo è collassato e, come nella più classica utopia comunista, la persona è libera di dedicarsi alla propria crescita, e quindi alla crescita della società, non dovendo più sottostare alle imposizioni di accumulo del Capitale. Che sia una visione più o meno condivisibile importa fino a una certa, perché quello che fa Bifo è aprire una strada alternativa, mostrare una crepa nella narrazione granitica del neoliberismo. (Che è un po' il filo conduttore di tutte le pubblicazioni di Not fino a questo momento, di cui Futurabilità è un po' la summa e raccoglimento).
Questa alternativa, o meglio, la presa di consapevolezza che esistono alternative (plurale, altrimenti cadremmo in un pessimo dualismo inutile), è necessaria nel momento in cui il progetto capitalista è precipitato e rischia di precipitare ancora più profondamente in una depressione che viene identificata perfettamente con il termine di "Illuminismo oscuro": la ragione è in crisi, incapace di dare un ordine al caos della realtà; il Capitale ha frantumato ogni legame, ogni solidità e solidarietà. E sono nati i mostri, da una parte gli estremismi del califfato, dall'altra l'Occidente che ha iniziato a chiudersi a riccio, a tornare indietro sul suo percorso democratico, facendo sorgere populismi razzisti e nazionalisti. Ecco, quindi, la necessità di proporre una valida alternativa che non sia un ritorno degli orrori novecenteschi al Capitale: "redistribuzione della ricchezza, uguaglianza, sobrietà, solidarietà, amicizia: queste sono le parole chiave di una trasformazione culturale necessaria e soprattutto possibile".
February 12, 2020
"Ya hace más de diez años que Fredric Jameson sentenció «es más fácil imaginar el fin del mundo que el fin del capitalismo». Frase hoy más que citada para resumir la impotencia en la que se encuentra todo intento de transformación política. En su libro anterior, Fenomenología del fin, Franco Berardi ponía el acento en la descripción de dicha impotencia. Con el auge de la digitalización y el proceso de transformación tecnológica se produce un cambio en la sensibilidad humana que tiene como consecuencia la reducción de todas nuestras acciones a una serie de automatismos precondicionados por algoritmos. ¿Cómo, entonces, imaginar un futuro mejor? Pero este nuevo libro del filósofo autonomista italiano no es un libro sobre el futuro, tampoco sobre el no-futuro, nos lo deja claro en las primeras líneas. Es un libro sobre el presente, sobre todo, pues el futuro está inscrito en él y emerge de la bifurcación de innumerables posibles que no tienen por qué dejarse marcar por un sentido determinista. Si lo computable, lo concebible, es lo que hoy sirve de fundamento común del intercambio social, hay que hacer de lo incomputable, lo inconcebible, la línea de escape de lo inevitable (¿El fin del mundo?)". Laura Sala
May 4, 2021
This book is Berardi’s attempt to diagnose and explain our psychological and philosophical impotence, caused by the collective nightmare of late capitalism. Conceptualising his way around three axes of potency, power and possibility, Berardi portrays our inability to escape the labyrinthine impasse of our global situation as the latest stage of a system which seems to have been collapsing as long as any of us can remember, “any day now”. While we might imagine the faint glimmers of an end, somewhere, no one seems capable of holding on to it, expanding it, make way towards it; Is there a way out? Is there a future, different from our present? Why might we even think there is one?
As Berardi lays the philosophy down in the initial chapters, the despair that sets in might be familiar to readers of many such diagnostic works coming from the contemporary leftist thought. Berardi denies being hopeless, although he is certainly not hopeful. While he elaborates on what he thinks might be the initial steps to lead us out of this nightmare (liberation from labor, global solidarity between workers etc.), I found myself longing for more. Berardi writes well and I do not disagree with his diagnoses or recommendations, but right as the reader might want to beg him to go further and propose real solutions, he stops. How we might take those initial steps given our ever more divisive present? What Berardi offers is not concrete or well-defined political steps, but concepts; contrivances to elaborate our Ulysses of suffering under present conditions even more. While I appreciate how he does not declare the existence of a way out as outright impossible, the ambiguity of his resolve did little to mitigate the despair. Will something reveal itself? Perhaps. Might one want to hope? That is always a choice. The present is as volatile as it is dark, and if you open this book already knowing this, Berardi does not add much to what you already know, nor does he take away from it. For others, however, perhaps this work is an opportunity to grasp the infinite points of bifurcation in our current global landscape, and imagine, if only fleetingly, the ways in which a different future might be born. As Mark Fisher wrote:
As Berardi lays the philosophy down in the initial chapters, the despair that sets in might be familiar to readers of many such diagnostic works coming from the contemporary leftist thought. Berardi denies being hopeless, although he is certainly not hopeful. While he elaborates on what he thinks might be the initial steps to lead us out of this nightmare (liberation from labor, global solidarity between workers etc.), I found myself longing for more. Berardi writes well and I do not disagree with his diagnoses or recommendations, but right as the reader might want to beg him to go further and propose real solutions, he stops. How we might take those initial steps given our ever more divisive present? What Berardi offers is not concrete or well-defined political steps, but concepts; contrivances to elaborate our Ulysses of suffering under present conditions even more. While I appreciate how he does not declare the existence of a way out as outright impossible, the ambiguity of his resolve did little to mitigate the despair. Will something reveal itself? Perhaps. Might one want to hope? That is always a choice. The present is as volatile as it is dark, and if you open this book already knowing this, Berardi does not add much to what you already know, nor does he take away from it. For others, however, perhaps this work is an opportunity to grasp the infinite points of bifurcation in our current global landscape, and imagine, if only fleetingly, the ways in which a different future might be born. As Mark Fisher wrote:
For now, our desire is nameless – but it is real. Our desire is for the future – for an escape from the impasses of the flatlands of Capital’s endless repetitions – and it comes from the future – from the very future in which new perceptions, desires, cognitions are once again possible. As yet, we can grasp this future only in glimmers. But it is for us to construct this future, even as – at another level – it is already constructing us: a new kind of collective agent, a new possibility of speaking in the first person plural. At some point in this process, the name for our new desire will appear and we will recognise it.
March 2, 2021
i guess Verso anti-capitalist books just bang in general? obsessed and surprised by this one. some sections were a bit over my head, but from what i gather, Bifo pins the impotence of the general public and working class today on the reluctance to shift from outdated modes of solidarity and uprising that belong to the industrial age, an age which is nearly irrelevant due to the rise of tech and the replacement of industry as product with the industry of information. i particularly vibed with the sections on how working class impotence and its tendency towards fascism/nationalism is linked with misogyny, with the idea of limitless possibilities and untethering of potency being "female", while adherence to the industrial norm is masculine. the working class in a globalized society is fractured and belittled by competition rather than solidarity. I'm interested to see what Bifo has to say about the effect of the pandemic on this dynamic.
it's also interesting and disheartening to learn about the ways in which our impotency transcends government action. gone are the days where making "demands" on a given administration will lead to actual change. since the rules of governance are internalized and repeatedly innocuated in us every minute of every day, any real change will have to come from macro changes to the general intellect. Page 244: "Command is no longer inscribed in political decision but in the concatenation of techno-linguistic automatisms. This is why demands are pointless, and why building political parties is also pointless". end capitalisms co-opting of cognitive workers, engineers and artists need to unite in anti-capitalism, UBI, etc etc etc!
it's also interesting and disheartening to learn about the ways in which our impotency transcends government action. gone are the days where making "demands" on a given administration will lead to actual change. since the rules of governance are internalized and repeatedly innocuated in us every minute of every day, any real change will have to come from macro changes to the general intellect. Page 244: "Command is no longer inscribed in political decision but in the concatenation of techno-linguistic automatisms. This is why demands are pointless, and why building political parties is also pointless". end capitalisms co-opting of cognitive workers, engineers and artists need to unite in anti-capitalism, UBI, etc etc etc!
July 7, 2018
As the times we live in are so singular, unprecedented, and schsimatic, a serious work by a major thinker nobly engaging the full breadth of our current crisis is something of which we are sorely in need. Only in reading FUTURABILITY was I able to fully comprehend how thirsty I had been for what is has to offer me. I will put it straight: I have read nothing that comes close to Berardi's book in anatomizing our current situation and conceptualizing the admittedly-wholly-unknowable future from our current vantage. Though we do live in the age of impotence typified by pandemics of depression and eruptions of psychotic violence, Berardi would not have us abandon hope, at least not entirely (though he is definitely not what you would call optimistic). Though he does lay down some basic things that have to happen for us to emerge from the current nightmare (namely reestablishment of solidarity and friendship, the wresting of the reins of the techno-semiotic web from the entrenched power apparatus of late capitalism), he very wisely reminds us that at the beginning of the twenty-first century we couldn't very well have been expected to foresee the global situation in which we currently find ourselves; the thing about the concatenations of the future is that though they are inscribed in the vibrational virtual of the present moment, we cannot be expected to disentangle a fully-formed future here and now. As I always like to say, almost a line of faith: life means expect to be surprised. The book is equally about the two subjects announced in its subtitle: Impotence and Possibility. Impotence is the state of being of a global citizenry framed as automized cognitarians subjuncted by the toxic predations of neoliberalism in the hyper-connected information age. Unchecked growth, aggressive competition, and deregulation in the hyper-connected world have produced an environment of deterritorialization, monstrous exploitation, as well as a pervasive sense of alienation, hopelessness, and incapacity. Epidemics of suicide, depression, drug addiction, rage, and mass-murder, as well increasing-in-number pockets of nihilistic reactionary nationalism (symptomatic of what Berardi calls a "global civil war" constituting "Mission Accomplished" for Osama bin Laden) are byproducts of this. The three core elements Berardi posits as central to historical development are possibility, potency, and power. Possibility is what is dormant in the chaosmatic vibrations of the present. (At times of greatest chaotic vibration, Guattari reminds us, there is a heightened possibility for new rhythms.) When possibilities emerge only potencies can drive their realization. Power is the overriding Gestalt that concretizes possibilities, turning them into forms of collective life. Power is currently represented by capital and the techo-semiotic web. Hope lives, again, not only in friendship, solidarity, empathy, and care, but in the idea of a Global Silicon Valley invested in the liberation of knowledge and work. (There may also be a way out of the stranglehold of salaried work.) One of the real pleasures of reading FUTURABILITY was the pressing relevance of every bit of it to my life and the world I live in. So much continental thought is based on extravagant ontological model-building and inane academic-sectarian nit-picking, and I can think of little more noxious than such practices in times as dark as ours. That being said, Berardi is a philosopher and does grapple with, index, and sublimate ontological business. I do take some exception with him from time to time, generally in a manner that is fundamentally immaterial to the overall efficacy of the text. When he talk about the multiplicity of possible futures inherent to any given present, he wants the reader to understand that though only one future can emerge, all those possibilities are materially in play. He says he wants to distinguish himself from some pantheist who would posit an underpinning plan that would necessitate a preordained future. Well, I am personally more or less a kind of Spinozist (and thus, I guess, a pantheist). But I am also a Deleuzean. While Berardi takes from Guattari his notion of a chaosmosis that produces the actual out of a chaotic magma of virtuality, he leaves behind Deleuze's notion of radical contingency. Radical contingency simply means to me that so many forces (and we are essentially invoking a Nietzschean ontology here) are in play and are so completely intertwined and interdependent that nothing could ever be actualized other that what is in fact actualized. All I have to do in order to make Berardi fit for me is reframe his concept of possible futures and present indeterminacy as epistemological rather than ontological. So small a quibble that it isn't even a quibble. And even if it were a large enough small quibble to genuinely be a quibble, it would still be in regard to a passing piece of conceptual business at the heart of a book I emphatically believe everyone should read. Especially everyone I know! I'm talking to you, guys!
April 21, 2024
If you ignore the Trump hating and Obama arse licking. Bifo does have some great points. Here are some I kept highlighted on my Kindle.
--
"Technology has now actually supplanted God, establishing a sort of technical theocracy"
"....Now sinking under a wave of sadness and cynicism. Young people seem unable to alter the social conditions and are wandering in a social labyrinth devoid of solidarity or peace"
"The digital sphere is generating a cognitive mutation, a shift from the conjunction to the connective mode of concatenation. We might call the new condition 'neo-human"
--
I don't agree with the conclusion that capitalism is bad with exploitation is an necessary core. Creation of evil. It's the system we know that works. It's 2am (on a Monday morning) and I cba writing an essay on that.
However, I do agree that we are becoming a lot more nihilistic. People film themselves going through traffic at 320KM/H to set records in heavy traffic (see: GhostRider - Uppsala Run). Kids stealing Kia/Hyundai's because how easy it is and posting it on social media. (See: Kia Boyz) I feel we are becoming so "collective" that you need to do something so bombastic to even be recognized as an individual. I get it, I was a 4chan degenerate back in 2013. The whole: do it for the memez and normies vs Us attitudes. I have to say, the Internet probably is the reason for so much nihilism. And we treat it like a God. A hive mind, a median of collective thought. Should we care about others opinions? I wonder if that's what humans biggest flaw is: telling the world you're not just another speck of sand in an overly connected world.
--
"Technology has now actually supplanted God, establishing a sort of technical theocracy"
"....Now sinking under a wave of sadness and cynicism. Young people seem unable to alter the social conditions and are wandering in a social labyrinth devoid of solidarity or peace"
"The digital sphere is generating a cognitive mutation, a shift from the conjunction to the connective mode of concatenation. We might call the new condition 'neo-human"
--
I don't agree with the conclusion that capitalism is bad with exploitation is an necessary core. Creation of evil. It's the system we know that works. It's 2am (on a Monday morning) and I cba writing an essay on that.
However, I do agree that we are becoming a lot more nihilistic. People film themselves going through traffic at 320KM/H to set records in heavy traffic (see: GhostRider - Uppsala Run). Kids stealing Kia/Hyundai's because how easy it is and posting it on social media. (See: Kia Boyz) I feel we are becoming so "collective" that you need to do something so bombastic to even be recognized as an individual. I get it, I was a 4chan degenerate back in 2013. The whole: do it for the memez and normies vs Us attitudes. I have to say, the Internet probably is the reason for so much nihilism. And we treat it like a God. A hive mind, a median of collective thought. Should we care about others opinions? I wonder if that's what humans biggest flaw is: telling the world you're not just another speck of sand in an overly connected world.
February 6, 2022
The first book I've read from Berardi was After the Future, and it was arguably one of the worst books I've ever read. However, this book I very much so enjoyed. If I was to recommend someone their first theory book they should read, it would be this one.
However, admittedly, it was a bit lacking at points:
1. Lacks systematization, his claims might as well lack any warranting to begin with. His book Futurability could be a book of aphorisms and it would have the same level of proofs.
2. Mixes up consciousness with subjectivity, fails to establish a link (if there is one to begin with).
3. With recent Scientific research, we have found that there now seems to be a correlation regarding political heritability (political inheritability being about 40%); there are also recent claims as to our lack of “rational” choice (it appears, according to recent studies, that we already act before we even consciously know we are going to act). In Berardi’s work there seems to be inefficient (if at all) dispelling of this — something of which is required for several premises of his to function.
The claims as to our acting prior to consciousness knowledge seems to have a lot of clashing views on it, and generally I found that the whole notion was false, however, I would still like to see him address it possibly in a future book.
4. "And the American people are more intolerant than ever, more quick to hate” (36). Is it not possible to say the exact opposite is also happening (given his thinking regarding tendential forces)? Identity politics is on the forefront of “left”-liberal politics, tolerance is at an all-time high. The power relations behind this tolerance having clear racism implicit within it, this being seen in the very question: who gets to tolerate, and who gets to be the tolerated?
However, admittedly, it was a bit lacking at points:
1. Lacks systematization, his claims might as well lack any warranting to begin with. His book Futurability could be a book of aphorisms and it would have the same level of proofs.
2. Mixes up consciousness with subjectivity, fails to establish a link (if there is one to begin with).
3. With recent Scientific research, we have found that there now seems to be a correlation regarding political heritability (political inheritability being about 40%); there are also recent claims as to our lack of “rational” choice (it appears, according to recent studies, that we already act before we even consciously know we are going to act). In Berardi’s work there seems to be inefficient (if at all) dispelling of this — something of which is required for several premises of his to function.
The claims as to our acting prior to consciousness knowledge seems to have a lot of clashing views on it, and generally I found that the whole notion was false, however, I would still like to see him address it possibly in a future book.
4. "And the American people are more intolerant than ever, more quick to hate” (36). Is it not possible to say the exact opposite is also happening (given his thinking regarding tendential forces)? Identity politics is on the forefront of “left”-liberal politics, tolerance is at an all-time high. The power relations behind this tolerance having clear racism implicit within it, this being seen in the very question: who gets to tolerate, and who gets to be the tolerated?
August 6, 2019
Bifo. Who else can do what he does? The first chapter is dense philosophy, the rest are too, but constellated through Bifo's recently found gifts at writing clear, direct prose that handles devilish complications and deeply troubling subjects with clarity: depression, old age, precarity, politics. And you, know, I have to say: every time I read him, I feel relieved and clarified.
February 1, 2018
Very intellectually engaging and emotionally relatable at times, but has occasional moments of vagueness in its concepts and sometimes loose connection between topics. Those weaker moments are rare, however, and I was say the book was excellent if it wasn't for the conclusion, which was far too similar to that of many other political books: roughly along the lines of "I'm not sure how we fix all these problems but the first step is solidarity; cognitive workers should take control of the technology to repurpose it for the benefit of the people". Seems to me like a shallow recontextualisation of "seize the means of production" which in my opinion is too vague to help those workers in finding a way out of wage slavery.
I don't want this review to sound negative, I've simply focused on the aspect that I found problematic – the rest was great and I feel that part doesn't need explaining as you would be better off reading it for yourself!
I don't want this review to sound negative, I've simply focused on the aspect that I found problematic – the rest was great and I feel that part doesn't need explaining as you would be better off reading it for yourself!
December 5, 2025
Berardi is probably one of my favourite writers and political thinkers in this day and age. Even if this book does hint at some of his other works ( Breathing: Chaos and Poetry and The Uprising: Poetry and Finance in particular), I really enjoyed his dismantling of older philosophers like Heidegger, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel that I found was not present elsewhere in works I've read of his. Is it good ol' Verso-anti-capitalist critique? Yes. Is this neo-Marxism that does not fall purely into dogma and actually parses through Eurocentric philosophy with ample critique? Absolutely.
I enjoyed Berardi's critiques of nostalgia and Jihadism. In addition, he poses an interesting techno-futurist position of liberation from financial capitalism (and its counterreaction from progressive movements) that may seem like outright technophilia, but it does warrant some interrogation: is the issue with the usage of AI the programs themselves, or is it the ends that they serve? This was written before the rise of LLMs and GPT-style generative AI, so I'd like to see him continue to expand on this. I ultimately still believe that the ethics of modern AI are still up for debate, namely intellectual property rights, the environmental degradation from AI-servers, and the crutch of inevitability that seems to accompany AI's dominance in every sphere of life (might I add that the University of Calgary's Chancellor Jon Cornish said at this year's spring convocation that "we're witnessing one of our most profound disruptions of our time in AI; those who fear change are often left behind," implying that society must accept the deluge of AI-slop-making and information flows that AI enables in our lives and that there ought to be no hesitancy but rather a dose courage to submit to this new biopolitical regime). I do agree, however, that much of my distaste for GPT-reliant cognitarians and the AI-slop-eaters comes from its utility in devaluing critical thought and the very education that Berardi seeks to preserve, and not necessarily the programs themselves.
Regardless, this is well worth a read. As said before, Berardi does not miss.
I enjoyed Berardi's critiques of nostalgia and Jihadism. In addition, he poses an interesting techno-futurist position of liberation from financial capitalism (and its counterreaction from progressive movements) that may seem like outright technophilia, but it does warrant some interrogation: is the issue with the usage of AI the programs themselves, or is it the ends that they serve? This was written before the rise of LLMs and GPT-style generative AI, so I'd like to see him continue to expand on this. I ultimately still believe that the ethics of modern AI are still up for debate, namely intellectual property rights, the environmental degradation from AI-servers, and the crutch of inevitability that seems to accompany AI's dominance in every sphere of life (might I add that the University of Calgary's Chancellor Jon Cornish said at this year's spring convocation that "we're witnessing one of our most profound disruptions of our time in AI; those who fear change are often left behind," implying that society must accept the deluge of AI-slop-making and information flows that AI enables in our lives and that there ought to be no hesitancy but rather a dose courage to submit to this new biopolitical regime). I do agree, however, that much of my distaste for GPT-reliant cognitarians and the AI-slop-eaters comes from its utility in devaluing critical thought and the very education that Berardi seeks to preserve, and not necessarily the programs themselves.
Regardless, this is well worth a read. As said before, Berardi does not miss.
May 9, 2024
Nanni Moretti mentioned 👍
May 3, 2019
You've got futurability
You fly hard, don't you wanna
You've got futurability
You could be a star, it ain't hard
You fly hard, don't you wanna
You've got futurability
You could be a star, it ain't hard
April 15, 2021
太讚了 大家都該看一下這本書
March 19, 2022
Tengo mucho que decir pero solo haré algunos apuntes en borrador. No es exhaustivo.
1. Empieza farragoso y complejo, en especial para los que no somos filósofos.
2. Mejora a medida que avanza la lectura.
3. Sigue la premisa de Srnicek de pensar en un mundo sin trabajo y cómo corno hacemos para desconectar la vida del hombre del trabajo asalariado.
4. Jugosas las notas al pie, cita autores que, sin duda, hay que investigar.
5. Lo más interesante de la obra está en los capítulos finales. Tienen tanta miga que no se pueden resumir acá pero me quedo con la idea de que nos quitaron la posibilidad de imaginar otro mundo posible. Esa es nuestra misión, buscar allí donde NO vemos, donde NO alcanzamos.
6. La importancia del trabajador cognitivo en ese cambio.
7. La idea de desconectar el conocimiento de la lógica mercantil. Es la principal tarea de nuestro tiempo.
8. Combatir la robotfobia. La automtización debe servir para trabajar menos y poder desarrollar otros aspectos de la vida.
9. La crítica a la izquierda que defiende el trabajo.
10. Se nos obliga a depender del trabajo para sobrevivir.
11. La idea de que tenemos un marco de percepción acotado y que determina nuestro campo de posibilidades de pensamiento. Esto está limitado por el lenguaje. En ese sentido, el lenguaje es una tragedia, recorta la realidad. Nos limita y limita nuestras experiencias.
12. Nuestro gestald es económico, Berardi propone cambiarlo recurriendo al extrañamiento y recurriendo a los poetas, capaces de ir más allá del lenguaje.
13. La figura del mercader, el intelectual y el guerrero.
14. El artista es el único capaz de generar nuevos horizontes posibles. Coincide con Srnicek que le tiraba el fardo a los escritores.
15. El economista es como un sacerdote, solo tiene dogmas. No puede predecir. No hay ciencia.
16. Coincide con Srnicek en tema fin del trabajo pero no soluciona el asunto ¿a quién le exigimos todo eso? Bifo dice que no podemos contar con el Estado ni los partidos políticos.
17. Apela a un colectivo independiente de trabaajadores cognitivos que sean capaces de ver la fuerza que tienen para desmantelar o reprogramar máquinas.
18. Automatización, sí pero con perspectiva humanista y socialista.
19. Bifo es visionario, parece que está escribiendo hoy. Dos procesos imparables en el presente: a. las guerras civiles globales b. la automatización. La idea de trauma.
20. La idea de que justamente lo que NO es computable es lo que nos hace humanos. Ahí está la clave.
21. Son bellas y emocionantes las palabras de Bifo, no sé bien en qué se puede traducir. Ni sé por dónde empezar pero me interpela y me saca mis esquemas.
22. La organización del libro es algo desordenada pero no importa.
23. Vale la pena.
1. Empieza farragoso y complejo, en especial para los que no somos filósofos.
2. Mejora a medida que avanza la lectura.
3. Sigue la premisa de Srnicek de pensar en un mundo sin trabajo y cómo corno hacemos para desconectar la vida del hombre del trabajo asalariado.
4. Jugosas las notas al pie, cita autores que, sin duda, hay que investigar.
5. Lo más interesante de la obra está en los capítulos finales. Tienen tanta miga que no se pueden resumir acá pero me quedo con la idea de que nos quitaron la posibilidad de imaginar otro mundo posible. Esa es nuestra misión, buscar allí donde NO vemos, donde NO alcanzamos.
6. La importancia del trabajador cognitivo en ese cambio.
7. La idea de desconectar el conocimiento de la lógica mercantil. Es la principal tarea de nuestro tiempo.
8. Combatir la robotfobia. La automtización debe servir para trabajar menos y poder desarrollar otros aspectos de la vida.
9. La crítica a la izquierda que defiende el trabajo.
10. Se nos obliga a depender del trabajo para sobrevivir.
11. La idea de que tenemos un marco de percepción acotado y que determina nuestro campo de posibilidades de pensamiento. Esto está limitado por el lenguaje. En ese sentido, el lenguaje es una tragedia, recorta la realidad. Nos limita y limita nuestras experiencias.
12. Nuestro gestald es económico, Berardi propone cambiarlo recurriendo al extrañamiento y recurriendo a los poetas, capaces de ir más allá del lenguaje.
13. La figura del mercader, el intelectual y el guerrero.
14. El artista es el único capaz de generar nuevos horizontes posibles. Coincide con Srnicek que le tiraba el fardo a los escritores.
15. El economista es como un sacerdote, solo tiene dogmas. No puede predecir. No hay ciencia.
16. Coincide con Srnicek en tema fin del trabajo pero no soluciona el asunto ¿a quién le exigimos todo eso? Bifo dice que no podemos contar con el Estado ni los partidos políticos.
17. Apela a un colectivo independiente de trabaajadores cognitivos que sean capaces de ver la fuerza que tienen para desmantelar o reprogramar máquinas.
18. Automatización, sí pero con perspectiva humanista y socialista.
19. Bifo es visionario, parece que está escribiendo hoy. Dos procesos imparables en el presente: a. las guerras civiles globales b. la automatización. La idea de trauma.
20. La idea de que justamente lo que NO es computable es lo que nos hace humanos. Ahí está la clave.
21. Son bellas y emocionantes las palabras de Bifo, no sé bien en qué se puede traducir. Ni sé por dónde empezar pero me interpela y me saca mis esquemas.
22. La organización del libro es algo desordenada pero no importa.
23. Vale la pena.
May 6, 2020
Bifo parte de uma proposta suspeita de mobilizar conceitos da micropolítica para fazer uma análise de conjuntura do cenário político internacional atual. O que parece errado já na premissa vai se desenrolando de forma impecável. a começar pela genealogia da impotência que ele faz no livro, passando por schopenhauer, nietzsche, heidegger e usando como estudo de caso a literatura de houellebecq. assim ele chega na extrema-direita nacionalista emergente cujo desejo de fechamento - ou de impotência - enfrenta como adversário o neoliberalismo global. se o primeiro obviamente nos levará somente ao aprofundamento da barbárie, o segundo foi o principal responsável pelo estado atual das coisas no mundo. do colapso climático ao colapso econômico e de novas ideias, o neoliberalismo insiste que a única alternativa é obedecer ao dogma econômico de crescimento, lucro, poder e acumulação desenfreada. como alternativa ao culto neoliberal, Bifo aposta na autonomia do conhecimento, na união dos "trabalhadores cognitivos", que desponta como horizonte de possibilidades. o caminho é árduo e incerto. ao contrário, tudo indica para um horizonte de mais barbárie e depressão. mas segundo palavras do próprio:
"However, what I see and what I know is far from the whole picture. What escapes my grasp, what I cannot see, what I cannot imagine, what I cannot even conceive is the means of escape"
"However, what I see and what I know is far from the whole picture. What escapes my grasp, what I cannot see, what I cannot imagine, what I cannot even conceive is the means of escape"
December 18, 2018
A series of (more personal) essays, it seems, with good insights written occasionally in poetic flight.
"In the past century, we thought democracy and socialism had defeated nationalism. Wrong. Nationalism is back, thanks to the vengeance of the white working class, humiliated by neoliberal policies and betrayed by social reformists who have played into the hands of the financial dictatorship" (p.231).
Earlier Bifo wrote: "Mario Tronti has labelled industrial workers a 'rude pagan class' that fights for material interests and not for rhetorical ideals. It is for the sake of material interests the rude class of industrial workers is not turning nationalist and racist, as it did in 1933."
I'm not sure how I feel about this - pessimism or parrhesia?
"In the past century, we thought democracy and socialism had defeated nationalism. Wrong. Nationalism is back, thanks to the vengeance of the white working class, humiliated by neoliberal policies and betrayed by social reformists who have played into the hands of the financial dictatorship" (p.231).
Earlier Bifo wrote: "Mario Tronti has labelled industrial workers a 'rude pagan class' that fights for material interests and not for rhetorical ideals. It is for the sake of material interests the rude class of industrial workers is not turning nationalist and racist, as it did in 1933."
I'm not sure how I feel about this - pessimism or parrhesia?
November 2, 2024
Bifo Berardi, Byung-Chul Han, Judith Butler, Giannina Braschi, and Angela Davis are some of my favorite living political philosophers. Their styles are very distinct. Han writes the clearest and simplest, but Berardi perhaps the most passionately about humanity, work, exploitation, and capitalism. The Age of Impotence is a good companion to Burn Out Society by Han and to Putinoika by Braschi. They are all writing about a stoppage or blockage in the ways of society and a restart of a new human energy level. A critic said that Berardi is a "master of global activism in the age of depression. His mission is to understand real existing capitalism. Sense the despair of the revolt, enjoy this brilliant labour of the negative". (Geert Lovink)
April 29, 2021
This is peppered with good ideas, but the text as a whole was a bit too preoccupied with posturing for my taste. The readings of various canonical figures were fine, but lacklustre and lacking in nuance. Several of them were included more as a demonstration of academic chops rather than because they contributed much that was worthwhile. Berardi has a propensity to drop in long quotes from other thinkers and then do little work with them, which I find extremely lazy. Still, there were some intellectual elements I enjoyed.
September 28, 2022
Berardi's oeuvre should be as well known as Zizek's, Fisher's, or Graeber's but in fact he goes largely unacknowledged. The work talks about the role of the proletariat in today's schizophrenic, disconnected society, and how our mutual, virtual interconnectedness through the Capitalist web makes true solidarity difficult. Though the subject matter is difficult, and every line saturated with meaning, the work remains readable even to someone who is perhaps unfamiliar with automatism, Capitalist Realism, or post-structuralism.
December 14, 2022
El mejor libro que he leído este año, super interesante oír la vista de un autonomista italiano de una izquierda super fuerte hablar del general intellect, de la automatización y de los procesos de neoliberalismo. Es un libro maravilloso con mucha esperanza en el ser humano y el factor de la solidaridad como posible factor que rompa con la máquina muerta que es el capitalismo. Habla de muchos agentes como el economista, el diseñador y el ingeniero. Habla también de la guerra civil global y de una forma ligera esboza la tecnoproblematica que es el antropoceno.
super guay.
super guay.
May 21, 2019
Some interesting left-leaning political ideas and terminology but overall poor writing, and supporting claims are made by connection to references whether pro or against, not by evidence.
How can open minded thinking need to rely on what is effectively just another battle ground of dogma?
I do very much like the idea of Futurability, look forward to someone else picking this up in clearer less dogmatic terms.
How can open minded thinking need to rely on what is effectively just another battle ground of dogma?
I do very much like the idea of Futurability, look forward to someone else picking this up in clearer less dogmatic terms.
March 14, 2021
I particularly liked the way Bifo deploys how technology and innovation are paving the path of growth and efficiency of the rotten corpse of capitalism and how workers need to reclaim the destiny of technology instead of denying it. This disdain means that today are the elites who dominate the tech economy, and technology is replacing workers, impoverishing them, and finding new paths of exploitation.
Let's reclaim technology to be an ally of workers and conquest freedom of work and salary.
Let's reclaim technology to be an ally of workers and conquest freedom of work and salary.
January 9, 2023
no sé si veo futurabilidad en los "cognitariados", no confío en un "general intellect" que demandó la vuelta al trabajo (y otras instituciones) postpandemia. a pesar de que en ocasiones solo crea palabras cada vez mas grandes para dar algún tipo de color o hacer creer q esta diciendo algo nuevo, si habían capitulos bien interesantes, sobretodo los q tenian relación al desarrollo de la cibernetica y hoy, un semiocapitalismo de plataformas mucho más zarpado.
May 13, 2025
"What escapes my grasp, what I cannot see, what I cannot imagine, what I cannot even conceive of is the means of escape"
THE theory book for understanding our times. Remarkably sophisticated prescient analysis of every causation of the current moment. More diagnostic than liberating, but with enough of an ethos of collective knowledge building as the means of escape that it never feels hopeless. Berardi gets it. The only person whose brain I want to pick about AI.
THE theory book for understanding our times. Remarkably sophisticated prescient analysis of every causation of the current moment. More diagnostic than liberating, but with enough of an ethos of collective knowledge building as the means of escape that it never feels hopeless. Berardi gets it. The only person whose brain I want to pick about AI.
February 28, 2018
Maybe the most accurate diagnosis of the far right strong man phenomenon (Putin, Assad, Duterte, Trump, Boris Johnson, et al). Impotence of the Versailles variety. Automation and the Statisticon resulting in a radical loss of autonomy/power (particularly displeasing to white males) - the loss of power being a sure precursor to its off-point demonstration in a spray of lethal testosterone
April 18, 2021
Conocí a este filósofo por un taller con Yolanda Segura en Casa Tomada. Me gustó mucho su rechazo a lo inevitable del porvenir delimitado por el modelo económico actual y la posibilidad de imaginar diversos futuros posibles. Todo lo que diga sería una simplificación pero creo que es una voz valiosa para repensar el presente.
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