for the conference The Internet as Playground and Factory at the New School, NYC, November 2009

1. after tolerance
Post-cartesian politics, post-kantian cosmopolitanism
Sean Cubitt, University of Melbourne, scubitt@unimelb.edu.au
Paper prepared for The Internet as Labor and Playground, A Conference on Digital Labor, Eugene Lang College, The New School, New York, Nov 12-14 2009

2. }
AXIOMS PROBLEM METHOD
(ontology)
stuff polis consideration
(matter-energy/space-time)
mediation physis wonder
(flux)
order techne hope
(negentropy)

3. 1. political
economy

4. Internet Governance
IGF Internet Governance Forum UNHCR United Nations High Commission for
ITU International Telecommunications Union Human Rights
OSI International Standards Organisation UNESCOUnited Nations Education, Social and
WIPO World Intellectual Property Rights Organi- Cultural Organisation
sation UN-ODC United Nations Office on Drugs and
WTO The World Trade Organisation Crime
TRIPS Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of EU/CoE European Union and Council of Europe
Intellectual Property Rights OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation
GATS General Agreement on the Trade in Services and Development
ICANN Internet Corporation for Assigned Names APEC/ASEAN
and Numbers Hague Conference Hague Conference on Pri-
ISC, CENTR, APTLD + ccTLDs Country- vate International Law (now focused on B2B con-
code Top Level Domain registers and their regional tract law)
associations ICC International Chambers of Commerce
RIRs Regional Internet Registries EBU European Broadcasting Union
ISOC Internet Society IFPI International Federation of Phonogram and
IESG Internet Engineering Steering Group Videogram Industries
IETF Internet Engineering Task Force MPAA Motion Picture Association of America
IAB Internet Architecture Board BSA Business Software Alliance
W3C World Wide Web Consortium
UNCITRAL United Nations Commission on In- . . . . etcetera . . . .
ternational Trade Law

5. . . . either the rights of man are the rights This is what the democratic process
of the citizen, that is to say the rights of implies: the action of subjects who, by
those who have rights, which is a tautol- working the interval between identities,
ogy; or the rights of the citizen are the reconfigure the distributions of the pub-
rights of man. But as bare humanity has lic and the private, the universal and the
no rights, then they are the rights of particular. Democracy can never be iden-
those who have no rights, which is an ab- tified with the simple domination of the
surdity (Rancière 2006: 61) universal (Rancière 2006: 61-2)

6. Resistance
is
futile

7. You can have it good
You can have it quick
You can have it cheap
Pick one
(film industry adage)
first law of thermodynamics

9. What is a photograph?
“It is an image created and distributed automati-
cally by programmed apparatuses in the course
of a game necessarily based on chance, an image
of a magic state of things whose symbols inform
its receivers how to act in an improbable fashion”
(Flusser 2000: 76).

10. Information is 'any difference which makes a difference in some later event'
(Bateson 1973: 351)

11. "Not only is there no contradiction in principle between evil and politics, but
evil, as such, is from a certain point of view always political"
(Esposito, 1993: 183).

12. if I know, for example, what the causes
and effects of what I am doing are,
what the program is for what I am
doing, then there is no decision; it is
a question, at the moment of judge-
ment, of applying a particular causal-
ity. . . . If I know what is to be done . . .
. then there is no moment of decision,
simply the application of a body of
knowledge, or at the very least a rule
or a norm. For there to be a decision,
the decision must be heterogeneous
to knowledge as such (Derrida 2001:
231-2)

13. The reciprocal interpersonal relations that
are established through the speaker-hearer
perspectives make possible a relation-to-self
that by no means presupposes the lonely re-
flection of the knowing and acting subject
upon itself. as an antecedent consciousness.
Rather, the self-relation arises out of an inter-
active context (Habermas 1992: 24).
In order to consolidate its field of influence,
capital demands a constant emergence of
subjective and territorialized identities that,
at the end of the day, require no more than
an equality of exposure according to the
uniform prerogatives of the market. Thus we
have the capitalist logic of general equiva-
lences and the cultural logic of community
and minority identities coming together in an
articulated whole (Badiou 1997: 11).

14. 2. post-
cartesian
politics

15. What if the refugee, the politi-
cal prisoner, the disappeared,
the victim of torture, the dis-
possessed are not only con-
stitutive of modernity but its
emblematic subjects?' Anthony
Downey (2009)

16. First Thesis
All of a creature’s natural capacities are destined to develop completely
and in conformity with their end
Second Thesis
In man (as the sole rational creature on earth) those natural capacities
directed towards the use of his reason are to be completely developed
only in the species, not in the individual
Fifth Thesis
The greatest problem for the human species, whose solution nature
compels it to seek, is to achieve a universal civil society administered in
accord with the right
Kant, Imanuel (1784 [1983]), ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent’ in Perpetual Peace and
Other Essays on Politics, History and Morals, trans Ted Humphrey, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis IN., 29-40.

17. Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.
(Adorno)

18. the characteristic feature of markets is
their essential incompleteness of being, which is
transposed into a continuous knowledge project
for participants. From a theoretical point of view,
the defining characteristic of the market as an ob-
ject is its lack of 'object-ivity' and completeness of
being, its non-identity with itself. Markets are always
in the process of being materially redefined, they
continually acquire new properties and change the
ones they have. (Knorr Cetina and Bruegger 2002)

19. PROBLEMS OF DISTRIBUTION
AMATEUR included
REFUGEE excluded
GOVERNANCE/DESIGN included
‘DEAD LABOUR’ excluded
(. . . AND TEMPORALITY)

20. Renewal of The Economic (needed because of normativity [eg arithmetic enumera-
tion {commodity}, actuarial averaging {biopolitics}] and
falling rate of profit)
premised on
Politico-Legal including rights to property and to secrecy
renewal of (two expressions of PRIVATION)
through Objects
recognition of (opposite of
COMMUNICATION,
required for
RECOGNITION)
deprived of role as
of government as
subjects of politics:
non-human
non-living Subjects
dead
PROBLEMS OF ORDER

21. QUESTIONS OF ETHICS
if admitting new subjects creates a new polity . . . what kind of subjects do we
wish to become?
what is the Good which we wish a renewed polity to achieve?
Mediation subjected to Order
(primordial connectivity) produces
Privation or Communication