Readings on Resistance
Frequently Unheard Question (FUQ): How to resist the enclosure of the human psyche?
I recently published my latest responses to the four questions I introduced in FUQ#7. See Four Questions: Responses from the Ark. In my response to the third question — What are you hearing? — I reported that forces we pretend to understand are now doing with the psyche what they once did with land. The report was based on what L.M. Sacasas at
calls The Enclosure of the Human Psyche. He explains that…The enclosure of the commons is the name given to the centuries-long process by which lands available to the many were turned into a resource to be managed and extracted by the few. My claim is that structurally similar processes are unfolding with the aim of enclosing the human psyche and transforming it into a resource to be managed and extracted.
Fittingly, he also quotes Marshall McLuhan:
Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left.
Naturally, this line of argument leads to the call to “resist the enclosure of the human psyche”, i.e., the capture of our senses and nervous systems. Such calls to action have been rising in frequency and urgency, and my current focus at MISM is on the art of resisting the techno-economic processes we struggle to describe. In the next few posts, I will share annotated readings of the sources that have helped me think about these processes.
In addition to The Convivial Society and the Substacks I mentioned in New Year, New Media, my sources, in no particular order, include:
Distance, Attention, and Being: Thinking About Media, a brief lecture by professor David McDonald
Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
The Mirrorball Self, an excerpt from Superbloom by Nicholas Carr
The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis, Chapter 4 of Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
Simone Weil’s The Need for Roots
Ivan Illich’s Toward a History of Needs
Stop Hacking Humans by Brad Littlejohn and Clare Morell
Lewis Mumford’s The Cult of Anti-Life
The Cult of Anti-Life by Thoughts from the Shire
Against the Factory Farming of Creativity by Brett Scott
Intelligence in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Charles Eisenstein
Why Wisdom Resists the Template Economy by Lane Watson
AI and the Return of the Unknowable Katherine Dee and Taylor McMahon
Seven Ways of Understanding Media by Andrew McLuhan
How Perception Works by Clinton Ignatov
The Illusion of Ownership by Ron Cast
A Techno-Pessimist Manifesto by Curtis Yarvin
Why Tech Criticism Failed by Geoff Shullenberger
Meta's AI Chatbots in a Global Community by Brent Lucia
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If you have related sources to recommend, leave a comment with a link.