This is
my paraphrasing/understanding of part of “The Great Caliban” The
struggle against the Rebel Body” from Caliban and The Witch;
Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici - in
the context of Addictions – Alwareness April subject
We are
talking this month about addiction. The last thing I said last week
was that it is important to see if there is anything you can love
about your addiction. I also said that addictions are a natural and
normal part of being human, that every individual has addictions.
Some
are not termed addictions because they forward the aims of capitalist
society – like our addictions to oranges, tea, sugar, coffee and
chocolate – I mention those particularly because they are based on
slave labour. Slavery is OK if it is to provide the cherry on the top
of an excellent life style for us in Europe and The States but it is
not OK when it is your body fighting against your rational mind. -
Verslaving – the Dutch term for addiction, literally to be
enslaved.
I am a
humanist. I believe that the reason we are alive is to learn and
grow, to experience, to be. Learning requires access to knowledge and
an awareness of what went before to avoid repeatedly inventing the
wheel!
In
having an 'awareness' of went before, it is important to understand
that history is written by the winners. All history is from the point
of view of the people who conceived the world the way it is today but
also initiated and carried through their plans by the use of
ubiquitous violence. It is in truth HIS story there is no placement
of HER within it.
Capitalist
society can only exist by exploitation, a small group of people are
allowed and encouraged to lead lives of exploration, learning, growth
and enjoyment at the expense of a much larger group denied all of the
above. That larger group have to be applied to creating profit for
the smaller group. A capitalist society can never be humanistic.
There is room for an adapted form of capitalism within a humanistic
society. Because the desire to make profit and be one up or better
than ones fellows is also an inherent human trait.
“The
human body … was the first machine developed by capitalism.” By
creating a hierarchical relations between the mind and body 16th
and 17th century philosophers developed the theoretical
basis for the 'Mechanical body' philosophy essential to the creation
of a functioning capitalist society. The body is a machine, the mind
must exert will over the machine to focus on serving god and the
state. This brilliant idea was formulated by men such as Descartes
and Hobbes, these were men who for a start firmly believed that the
first woman was created from the rib of a man.
This
notion of the body as an engine that needs to subdued, controlled,
constrained ordered and subjugated to the will is very new. A battle
was fought for over three hundred years in words and concepts,
supported by the gratuitous use of violence to embed this idea into
our psyche. The war of words began in philosophical texts at end of
the 15th century “but only in the second half of the
19th century can we glimpse the (ideal) ...worker –
temperate prudent, responsible, proud to posses a watch - that
personifies the capitalist utopia.
“The
body machine idea could not have become a model of social behaviour
without the destruction by the state of the
pre-capitalist beliefs, practices and
individuals whose existence
contradicted the behaviour
promised by the philosophy. The peak of what is called the Age of
Reason which was
actually an age of scepticism and methodical doubt was also the peak
of a prolonged,
vicious and ferocious attack on the
proletariat.
The
hatred across Europe in the 16th and 17th
century for wage labour, with the notable exceptions of the NL and
Sweden was so intense that most preferred to risk the gallows rather
than submit. This we can mark by the intensification in that time of
penalties, particularly those punishing crimes again property, also
the introduction of bloody laws against vagabonds and huge number of
executions. In England alone 72,000 people we hung by Henry VIII in
the 38 years of his reign.
Up
until the 16th century the body was seen as a receptacle
of magical powers. “Nature was viewed as a universe of signs and
signatures, marking invisible affinities that had to be deciphered,
every element - herbs, plants, metals and most of all the human body
hid virtues and powers..... a variety of practices were designed to
appropriate and bend the secrets and powers of nature to the human
will. Eradicating these practises was essential.
Francis
Bacon lamented that 'Magic kills industry”. Magic is an illicit
form of power 'to obtain what is wanted without labouring'. Moreover
magic rested upon a conception of space and time that is totally
incompatible with the capitalist work/discipline paradigm. Whether
magic is real is immaterial. All pre capitalist societies have these
beliefs. The revival of 'magical beliefs' is only possible today
because to paraphrase Silvia Frederici, even the most devoted
believer in astrology will consult the clock to check they are on
time for work.
If this
war had never taken place we would see our bodies as magical vessels
imbued with wonder.
Most
of our addictions, especially the ones we see as a problem, take us
out of the mundane reality of our daily lives and into another
space/mind set. If we hadn't completely taken on board the
de-consecration, alienation and mechanisation of our body, how
would we view the calling of a magical
vessel towards an altered state?
