Tag Archives: Deleuze

Produce, consume, repeat: what the science fiction of Frederik Pohl tells us about consumption

These days it’s all but impossible to separate the things we produce from the things we consume. Whether it be working on a production line, or staying at home raising children, many of the things that we do are a form of production – whether we get paid for that work, or not. And yet at the same time, we are also consumers, for we all pay bills, we all shop for food, and we all send our children to school.

Things then become problematic when production and consumption start to blur, for we produce in order to consume, but we also consume in order to produce. Whether it be catching a bus or paying for lunch, even the process of working itself is a form of consumption, and more often than not, many of us will also then consume the same product we have a hand in producing.

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Is killing the ultimate form of control?

I recently had an enjoyable day at Lancaster House, chatting to members of the TTAC21 reading group on subjects including drone theory, armed conflict, the Prevent strategy, and the International Court of Human Rights.

As most of the participants were drawn from law departments, it was interesting as a relative ‘outsider’ to get a view on how those in the law discipline view issues such as life, death and sovereign power. One particularly interesting question that cropped up was ‘Is killing the ultimate form of control?’

Unfortunately we didn’t really have time to explore the question during the course of the day, so I thought it useful to gather a few thoughts here to open up some discussion…  Continue reading »

Micro-fascism, Facebook and the General Election

There’s been a General Election on here in the UK – have you heard?

Most of my Facebook wall today is full of people rightly or wrongly basking in the failure of UKIP in the election. Now, I’m not a UKIP supporter, but there are some interesting points we can take from this that link to the work of critical theorists such as Deleuze, Guattari and Badiou among others. Continue reading »