Futurability. Franco “Bifo” Berardi

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      Contents

       Introduction

      Part I. POTENCY

      1.The Age of Impotence

      2.Humanism, Misogyny and Late Modern Thought

       3.The Dark Side of Desire

       Part II. POWER

       4.Automation and Terror

       5.Necro-Capitalism

       6.Money Code and Automation

       Part III. POSSIBILITY

       7.Conundrum

       8.Superstition

       9.Disentanglement

       10.A Short History of the General Intellect

       11.Dynamics of the General Intellect

       12.Invention

       Afterword: The Inconceivable

       Notes

       Introduction

      I’m not going to write about the future, again.

      I’m not going to write about no-future, either.

      I’ll write about the process of becoming other: vibration, selection, recombination, recomposition.

      Possibility is content, potency is energy, and power is form.

      I call possibility a content inscribed in the present constitution of the world (that is, the immanence of possibilities). Possibility is not one, it is always plural: the possibilities inscribed in the present composition of the world are not infinite, but many. The field of possibility is not infinite because the possible is limited by the inscribed impossibilities of the present. Nevertheless, it is plural, a field of bifurcations. When facing an alternative between different possibilities, the organism enters into vibration, then proceeds making a choice that corresponds to its potency.

      I call potency the subjective energy that deploys the possibilities and actualizes them. Potency is the energy that transforms the possibilities into actualities.

      I call power the selections (and the exclusions) that are implied in the structure of the present as a prescription: power is the selection and enforcement of one possibility among many, and simultaneously it is the exclusion (and invisibilization) of many other possibilities.

      This selection can be described as gestalt (structuring form), and it acts as a paradigm. It may also be seen as a format, a model that we can implement only by complying with the code.

      Possibility

      In 1937 Henri Bergson published the article ‘Le possible et le réel’ (The Possible and the Real) in the Swedish magazine Nordisk Tidskrift. In this text, later included in the book La pensée et le mouvant, the French thinker answers the question: what is the meaning of the word ‘possibility’?

      We call possible what is not impossible: obviously, this non-impossibility is the condition of its actualisation. But this possibility is not a degree of virtuality, is not ideal pre-existence … From this negative sense, we shift unconsciously to the positive sense of the word. In the first definition, possibility means absence of hindrance; but we are shifting now to the meaning: pre-existence in the form of an idea.¹

      ‘B is possible’ means that B is inscribed in A and nothing is preventing B from deploying from the present condition of A. Bergson speaks of pre-existence in the form of an idea, but I don’t want to use the word ‘idea’, preferring to say that a future state of being is possible when it is immanent or inscribed in the present constitution of the world. However, we should not forget that the present constitution of the world contains many different (conflicting) possibilities, not only one.

      Extracting and implementing one of the many immanent futurabilities: this is the shift from possible to real. Futurability is a layer of possibility that may or may not develop into actuality.

      Bergson writes:

      Why is the Universe ordered? How can the rule impose itself on the irregularity, how can form impose itself on matter? … This problem vanishes as soon as we understand that the idea of disorder has sense in the sphere of human industry, in the sphere of fabrication, not in the field of creation. Disorder is simply an order that we do not seek.

      We stare at the chaotic intricacy of matter, of events, of flows, and seek for a possibility of order, a possible organization of chaotic material. We extract fragments from the СКАЧАТЬ