Undermining Labor Power

Author(s):  
Elena Shih ◽  
Jennifer (JJ) Rosenbaum ◽  
Penelope Kyritsis
Keyword(s):  
Resonance ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-210
Author(s):  
Joshua Hudelson

Over the past decade, ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) has emerged from whisper-quiet corners of the Internet to become a bullhorn of speculation on the human sensorium. Many consider its sonically induced “tingling” to be an entirely novel, and potentially revolutionary, form of human corporeality—one surprisingly effective in combating the maladies of a digitally networked life: insomnia, anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. Complicating these claims, this article argues that ASMR is also neoliberal repackaging of what Marx called the reproduction of labor power. Units of these restorative “tingles” are exchanged for micro-units of attention, which YouTube converts to actual currency based on per-1,000-view equations. True to the claims of Silvia Federici and Leopoldina Fortunati, this reproductive labor remains largely the domain of women. From sweet-voiced receptionists to fawning sales clerks (both of whom are regularly role-played by ASMRtists), sonic labor has long been a force in greasing the gears of capital. That it plays a role in production is a matter that ASMRtists are often at pains to obscure. The second half of this article performs a close reading of what might be considered the very first ASMR film: Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Through this film, the exploitative dimensions of ASMR can be contrasted with its potential for creating protected spaces of financial independence and nonnormative corporeal practices.


2002 ◽  
Vol 43 (155) ◽  
pp. 99-109
Author(s):  
Miodrag Ivovic

This paper probably presents one of the first attempts to draw a parallel between certain regularities in physics and some regularities and categories in economics. On the basis of a parallel which can be drawn between mechanical energy in physics, especially the law of energy sustain-ability, and the power of money in economics, the paper shows that in economics as well the power of money is indestructible, independent of whether it is observed in inflationary or non-inflationary conditions. In addition to a parallel which is drawn in this paper between energy in physics and the power of money in economics, it is also possible to draw a parallel between physical values such as: mass, force, labor, power, etc. , and certain values in economics and draw interesting conclusions. However, this can be a topic of some future paper.


Klio ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Morris Silver

SummaryThis paper begins with a brief review of evidence for migration to the relatively affluent city of Rome during the earlier Empire. Then it is suggested that most slaves coming to Rome at this time originated in the Greek East and that these slaves were volunteers not forcible captives. Slavery by contract made it possible for individuals to overcome credit constraints limiting their ability to borrow to finance training and migration. This view is tested by examining literary, epigraphic and archaeological evidence to decide whether slave markets in the Greek East (at Acmonia, Ephesus, Magnesia on Meander, Thyatira and Delos) and in Rome itself were suitable for processing „dangerous merchandise“ (= forcible captives). The totality of the evidence suggests they were not. Near Easterners conveyed through local and Roman slave markets were probably willing self-sellers seeking economic advancement. A new, positive, light is cast on the role of slave dealers who profited from reallocating labor power from less to more productive uses.


2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-52
Author(s):  
Joshua R Eichen

This essay looks at the historical geography of sugar plantations in Northeast Brazil during the 16th- and 17th-centuries to critique the spatio-temporality of the discourse of the Anthropocene. I argue that sugar plantations were key places in early systemic cycles of capital accumulation with their grim calculus of cheap labor-power and acceptable deaths. Sugar plantations were simultaneously prototypical racializing state actors and part of the emergent relations of capital changing the climate. With their rationalized, time-disciplined labor for processing cane into sugar, plantations were not only fundamentally proto-industrial sites, but also one of capital’s laboratories of modernity. They were primordial sites of proletarianization, of spatio-temporal patterns that repopulated the Americas and central in the production not of the Anthropocene but of the racializing Capitalocene.


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