{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title":"DIGITAL LABOR THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780415896948","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","id":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","uuid":"a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title":"DIGITAL LABOR THE INTERNET AS PLAYGROUND AND FACTORY","normalized_title":"digitallabortheinternetasplaygroundandfactory","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780415896948","isbns":["9780415896948","9780415896955","9780203145791"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":267,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/DIGITAL%20LABOR%20THE%20INTERNET%20AS%20PLAYGROUND%20AND%20FACTORY","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/a31b1606-7526-4f42-a12d-1edcb41ff0e7/search"},"page":{"printed_page":131,"pdf_page":138,"physical_index":138,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"ae1e28cba09f029e9d0e44e1b1575901bdc05f05e58c715fadf24dd28d8954f3"},"chapter":"DIGITAL LABOR","content":"“Whatever\" resembles the response of Herman Melville's Bartleby, the scrivener who replies, “I would prefer not to,\" when given a task or instruction.8 For some contemporary philosophers (for example, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri), Bartleby provides a figure of refusal, opposition, or resistance; a model of escape or disentanglement from the relations of power constitutive of contemporary capitalist control societies. The argument is premised on power's dependence on resistance: the transgression of the law calls law into being. Or protestors need police brutality in order to demonstrate the validity of their protests. Bartleby, then, suggests a way out of the dialectic of law and its transgression. Sidestepping resistance, he deprives power of its hold.\n\nYet even as Bartleby evades the circuit of power andresistance by refusing to refuse, he continues to rely on his position as a singular subject: he says “I,’ referring to himselfas a subject—and not just any subject, but a subject with a view, a preference. As such, he remains exposed to power. He still cares. In response to a request, Bartleby does more than acknowledge communication, the fact that a message has been delivered and received. His answer affirms the intelligibility of the request even as it challenges the normative expectations informing it. And rather than challenging the sender of the message's authority to make the request, Bartleby asserts himselfas what matters—he would prefer not to. He is a subject with preferences, and these preferences must be attended to.\n\nIn contrast, the only affirmation in “whatever\" is of communication as such. Another has communicated. This communication in no way obligates me as the recipient of the message. By responding, “whatever,\"I have signaled the minimum degree of awareness of communicative being: a message is sent in expectation of a response (after all, I didn't completely ignore you).“Whatever\" asserts no preferences. It neither affirms nor rejects. And it doesn't expose the subject as a desiring subject to whom something matters.\n\nThere is also an affective dimension to “whatever,\" an insolence or attitude or provocation that arises out of its function as a nonresponsive response. By acknowledging communication without attending to the content of the message, “whatever\"denies the sender the sense that her message has been received because its content remainsunaddressed. The sender is challenged, her position as sender undermined.“Whatever\" forestalls a communicative exchange even as it adopts communicative form. It refrains from establishing the subject position of the one who responds with “whatever,\"and it unsettles the position of the one who initiates the exchange. It's à glitch in orality.\n\nIf communicativity such that it is whatever communicativity tags forms of subjectivity and belonging discernible in contemporary media practices, who and what is likely to benefit? What kinds of political and economic relations are likely to flourish in these new communicative habitats?\n\nWhatever it takes.\n\nWhatever Blogging\n\n131","previous_page":null,"next_page":null}