Zusammenfassung der Ressource
OWT 223 Fast Subject &
Performativity
- Thrift (2002)
Performing Cultures
in The New Economy
- CONCLUSIONS
- With the construction of 'New Spaces' of
action in which the unmarked has
become marked and objectified, a new
Fast Subject is formed.
- 1) We can see a new set of
embodied resources being
brought into the world for
capitalist firms. This is a world
where Business is smart &
FAST.
- 2) Perhaps a new map of
personkind, based upon attributes
of personhood & potential for
innovation & creativity. HOWEVER
this might be accompanied by few
exceptions made for new entrants
like Japanese & overseas Chinease
- 3) That for there to be
Faster Subjects, there
have to be Slower
ones.but also in the sense
of workers who live in this
world of forced team
working, have been shown
a vocabulary of protest.
- 4) The Fast world may not last. It is
critically dependent on a business
model of short term returns which
may have its limits. For example
FAST COMPANY in 2000 expressed
its concern over the increasing
prevalence of 'built to flip' rather
than 'built to last' companies, based
on the practice of selling up quick
companies that realise instant
profits.
- Managers now see themselves as entitled to
make money.
- 5) There is no guarantee that the process of
producing fast subjects that are capable of
functioning in this fast world, can or will
succeed. It is an unfinished project and body of
knowledge still being created.
- Fast subjects, May well
turn out to be fragile
subjects, only able to hold
together with certain
costs.
- Is it possible for a manager to achieve
balance, to be a sustainable person? Or is it
the case of 'the more you get the less you feel
you have. The faster i go the faster i feel the
need to go' (Barlow 1999).
- The negation of everything is the essence of the
fast subject. = Key economic problem of
management in 21st Century: How is there to be any
sense of value if everything is boring, unsatisfying.
This is a cultural trap. The value of a thing has
entered into a negative cycle so nothing can satisfy
us. Hence the New Economy is truly new as it has
seperated any value from producable objects.
- Understanding the
Performative Turn
- It is no suprise that
organisations tend to
draw inspiration from
the performing arts as
they are a rich archive
of knowledge and
techniques for making
community, tuning
creativity and
enlivening space
(Thrift 2000).
- Thrift speaks very clearly and
concretely about the form that scripts
the performative nature of
contemporary culture present both at
work and outside of it. This form is a
cultural phenomenon: The Fast Subject
- The performative turn corresponds to the intensified cultural success of or to soft
capitalism, and to the ethics of self-work. The performative turn takes place when the
dominant ideal of our lives becomes the one we must keep returning to: “Don’t sell for
anything less than you can be! Make your life a masterpiece!”
- performativity is the
key to ‘excellence’,
and ‘excellence’ is
the platform of
self-actualisation
and
self-improvement in
work
- Facile Formula: Only
Perfect People can
PERFORM perfect
work; and only
performing Perfect
Work can one
PERFECT oneself.
- core sphere of performativity: exchange.
‘shopping’ is that performance itself (any
performance, of any kind) can only claim
and realise its value as a spectacle, as a
viewed event. Exchange becomes the true
and ultimate stage of the spectacle of
so-called value realisation in the age of
performance
- Shopping becomes the
place where the product
appears not simply as a
product, but as an
indicator of excellence, of
so-called added value –
that element of value now
supersedes the functional
purpose of any ‘thing’.
- Performativity &
Work in the New
Economy
- Our Economy is of
Performative Positions, how
things look.
- Other
Perspectives on
Performative Turn
- Whilst Thrift tells us about the performative turn
as corresponding to ‘the time when emergency
becomes the rule’ and which forces subjects to
become performative in the name of a ‘new
economy’ in which new products and services are
produced,
- we argue that something else gave birth to
this new economy, something else is its
cause: namely, the Self which depend upon
speed in the satisfaction of the insatiable
appetite of individual success or
self-realisation.
- Fast subjects and the
new economy must be
understood together as the
essence of the
performative turn in both
production and
consumption
- The New
Economy
- A new economy has
arisen (Service
Economy). Thrift
announces it is not
what is being
produced, but how its
delivery and exchange
are performed -
Production as a
spectacle &
Performance Culture.
- The intensification of
consumer demand, the
vast expansion in
customer service are
the elements of this
new economy. Its
essence lies in the
notion of added value
- Engine of New Economy is
need for unecessary items of
mass produce. We are too
'Fast' to realise to move on to
something else that might
make us happier. The demand
is that we all explore ways to
express ourselves as
performative workers,
shoppers and consumers.
- Those who can not do that
will remain ‘slow subjects’,.
The ‘fast subject’, on the
other hand, is full of
potential, enthusiasm and
youthful vigour. iooking to
self - actualise
- The human subject is no longer a
mere part of the production
process, service/knowledge
economy, the subject is the
production process. Hence,
individual subjectivity becomes
also the locus of performativity,
but also the locus and source of
added value.
- The value of any thing lies in
its appearance – not in its
function. This is the shifting
place of value. The VW Phaeton
example.
- The New Economy is
precisely revolving around the
indeterminacy of the value of
any thing and on the instant
devaluation of every thing as
soon as its moment of
performance, or its ‘spectacle’
has finished.
- Value appears
in between the
Private &
Public spheres,
how it makes
you look, the
spectacle
- Govornmentality
(Foucault 1991) &
New Spaces
- Foucault (1991) -
Governmentality: Concentrated
on practices of power and the
'code of conduct' one might use
to govern themself
- Thrift interested in how spaces
can produce identity effects. -
In which ways space figure as
'technologies of the self'.
- Managers are the products of
increasingly engineered
circumstance. Nowadays this
viewpoint is often gathered under the
concept of PERFORMATIVITY,
- The Procedures which show up and
value the new things that are necessary
to create 'fast subjects'are bound up
with the productions of 'new spaces',
which, by being more active, more
performative than those of old, can help
foster creativity (Thrift 2000)
- The project of Governmentality is
spreading as a key element of the
'Knowledge Economy'. Also more
likely to be found in industries that
characterise themselves as 'Fast'.
& where highly educated Managers
are and Large firms.
- The State of
Emergency & The
Fast Subject
- As Walter Benjamin Predicted,
firms now live in a "permanent
stage of emergency", always
bordering on the edge of chaos
- With this Turn to the rule of
emergency, it demands New
Disciplines and Skills of Managers.
The Organisational Man is gone
and in his stead, new subject
positions must be invented
- What is unfolding is the gradual
attempt to engineer new kinds of
'FAST' Subject positions which
can cope with the disciplines of
permanent emergency
- Against the pressure of
shorter time horizons and the
need for increase innovation
The Fast subjects need to be
"Calculating subjects able to
withstand the exigencies of
faster and faster return
- managers find
themselves part of a
Panoptic (world based on
shorter time horizons)
and have become part
of 'Audit Explosion".
- Being prepared for surprise isn't
easy. Consists of 3 qualities. 1) All
cultural succesful learning and
creativity needs to engage the
passions & senses of the whole
brain. 2) Establishment of
innovative groups. 3) Design of
thinking spaces which allow groups
to create and produce innovation
- EXAMPLES
- Fast
Company - is
a cultural
weapon
aimed at
challenging a
business's
self-image by
focusing the
insights on the
nw=ew
economy,
- GOOGLEPLEX
- 18 Different Restaurants
& Cafes all free.
- Drinks & Snacks near everyones
work area.
- Fitness Centtre 4 Gys,
Massage Parlour,
- Sleeping Pods to
Nap.
- Doctor - Free
- Provides
Laundry
- Made for Fast Subjects,
everything looks good
- Googleplex made for creativity &
innovation in a relaxed working
environment.
- Gives them all the tools to perform
- It is an attempt to produce a new visual
rhetoric, aimed at visualising the views of
the New Economy. It is also meantt to act
as a role model for young people working
in the new economy.
- It is clearly an attempt to produce a new
community based around the idea of a new
economy which will embody particular values and
produce new foundational stories. ‘it can be seen as
an attempt to boost the cultural capital of business.
Business becomes funky, youthful, sexy, caring,
fun. Business becomes where it’s at, not just work
but popular culture.