What do you think?
Rate this book
Signos y máquinas: el capitalismo y la producción de subjetividad
"El capital es un operador semiótico": esta afirmación de Félix Guattari, toma relevancia central en el trabajo de Lazzarato que nos invita a abandonar el logocentrismo que orienta aún muchas teorías críticas, e intenta construir una nueva teoría en condiciones de dar cuenta del funcionamiento de los signos (y no solo del lenguaje) en la economía, los aparatos de poder y la producción de subjetividad.
Superando el dualismo de significante y significado, 'Signos y máquinas' muestra cómo los signos trabajan de "operadores" que entran directamente en los flujos materiales y en el funcionamiento de las máquinas. El dinero, las cotizaciones bursátiles, los diferenciales de precio, los algoritmos, las ecuaciones y las fórmulas científicas constituyen "motores" semióticos que hacen funcionar las máquinas sociales y técnicas del capitalismo, sobrepasando la representación y la consciencia y produciendo sujetos y servidumbres maquínicas.
Superando el dualismo de significante y significado, 'Signos y máquinas' muestra cómo los signos trabajan de "operadores" que entran directamente en los flujos materiales y en el funcionamiento de las máquinas. El dinero, las cotizaciones bursátiles, los diferenciales de precio, los algoritmos, las ecuaciones y las fórmulas científicas constituyen "motores" semióticos que hacen funcionar las máquinas sociales y técnicas del capitalismo, sobrepasando la representación y la consciencia y produciendo sujetos y servidumbres maquínicas.
243 pages, Paperback
First published April 18, 2014
18 people are currently reading
596 people want to read
About the author
Maurizio Lazzarato
46 books103 followersMaurizio Lazzarato is a sociologist and philosopher in Paris. He is the author of Governing by Debt and Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity, both published by Semiotext(e).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 7, 2020
Relying heavily on Guattari and assemblage theory, Lazzarato offers asignifying semiotics and other ways humans 'mean' and are subjectivated. His goal is liberation, specifially liberation from 'the linguistic turn' which he sees as limiting. He offers 'social subjection and machinic enslavement' as the fulcrum to leverage system-change.
Though the book is very dense at times, the thesis peaks through: "To do so, it is not enough to 'liberate' speech from the apparatuses of power; it must be constructed. That is when the networks of power are confronted with a completely new situation"(p.149). He uses Foucault's 'parrhesia' as a form of truth-telling that would provide a rupture in the assemblage that reproduces the docile subject: "Parrhesia constitutes a rupture with the dominant significations, an 'irruptive event' that creates a 'fracture' by creating both new possibilities and a 'field of dangers.' The performative, on the other hand, is always more or less strictly institutionalized such that its "conditions" as well as its 'effects' are 'known in advance.' In this way, it is impossible to produce any kind of rupture in the assignment of roles and distribution of rights (to speak). The irruption of true discourse 'determines an open situation, or rather opens the situation and makes possible effects which are, precisely, not known.' Inversely, the conditions and the effects of the performative enunciation are 'codified'" (p.173).
Though the book is very dense at times, the thesis peaks through: "To do so, it is not enough to 'liberate' speech from the apparatuses of power; it must be constructed. That is when the networks of power are confronted with a completely new situation"(p.149). He uses Foucault's 'parrhesia' as a form of truth-telling that would provide a rupture in the assemblage that reproduces the docile subject: "Parrhesia constitutes a rupture with the dominant significations, an 'irruptive event' that creates a 'fracture' by creating both new possibilities and a 'field of dangers.' The performative, on the other hand, is always more or less strictly institutionalized such that its "conditions" as well as its 'effects' are 'known in advance.' In this way, it is impossible to produce any kind of rupture in the assignment of roles and distribution of rights (to speak). The irruption of true discourse 'determines an open situation, or rather opens the situation and makes possible effects which are, precisely, not known.' Inversely, the conditions and the effects of the performative enunciation are 'codified'" (p.173).
December 6, 2020
I got what I needed in the first 170 pages
October 30, 2019
The revolution is aesthetic, baby!!!!
January 4, 2025
Lazzarato provides a great overview of Guattari's concepts in an easily digestible format. Of particular note are his integration with Foucault in the final chapter, "Enunciation and Politics," as well as the discussion of the Coordination des Intermittents et Précaires with regard to their unintelligibility for the media apparatuses in chapter 4, "Conflict and Sign Systems."
The only part I felt lacking was his overview of Guattari's conception of the existential function in chapter 6, "The Discursive and the Existential in the Production of Subjectivity." While the rest of the book did a great job of making Guattari's heady concepts understandable, I struggled as much with this chapter as I have with Chaosmosis and The Machinic Unconscious.
The only part I felt lacking was his overview of Guattari's conception of the existential function in chapter 6, "The Discursive and the Existential in the Production of Subjectivity." While the rest of the book did a great job of making Guattari's heady concepts understandable, I struggled as much with this chapter as I have with Chaosmosis and The Machinic Unconscious.
Read
September 29, 2014http://www.full-stop.net/2014/08/18/r...
Review by Patrick Lyons
Tracking down texts that gracefully bridge theory and praxis can be a thankless quest. In most cases we’re caught on one side or the other: tackling either sprawling philosophical abstractions or over-specific studies trapped in a singular historical moment. One never touches ground while the other never sees the sky. Yet every so often we stumble upon a remarkable book which somehow manages to toe the line between these two camps, if not balancing their influences, at least drawing clear lines of contact. Such a book is not necessarily one which flawlessly and meticulously transposes the philosophical onto the everyday, but rather one which points out their preexisting intimacies, provoking speculation and connecting ground and sky rather than struggling to collapse their distance.
Maurizio Lazzarato’s recently translated Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity falls somewhere in this sphere, effectively balancing and joining critiques of contemporary capitalism, complex philosophies of subjection (or the complex social production of individual subjectivities), and everyday existence, touching current western politics, yet preserving a general openness and applicability. While in essence a theoretical text, Signs and Machines manages to translate abstract systems of micro-politics and semiotics into clear contact with a more grounded reading of affect, the body, and the political potential of any and every given subject, retaining a broad scope of accessible praxis.
Lazzarato, an Italian sociologist perhaps best known to American readers for his theoretical works on immaterial labor and debt in The Making of the Indebted Man, avoids the temptation to simply resituate comfortable theories of the production of subjectivities, and instead calls into question the current stability of this production, or subjection, itself. Lazzarato explains subjection as the ongoing process by which an individual is shaped and crystallized by the mechanics of his or her surrounding socio-political discourses. In brief, it is the production and positioning of individuals within social groups and identity categories. Not taking this process for granted, rather than simply asking “how does capitalism form us as subjects?” Lazzarato poses an additional question: “how functional is this formation?”
Review by Patrick Lyons
Tracking down texts that gracefully bridge theory and praxis can be a thankless quest. In most cases we’re caught on one side or the other: tackling either sprawling philosophical abstractions or over-specific studies trapped in a singular historical moment. One never touches ground while the other never sees the sky. Yet every so often we stumble upon a remarkable book which somehow manages to toe the line between these two camps, if not balancing their influences, at least drawing clear lines of contact. Such a book is not necessarily one which flawlessly and meticulously transposes the philosophical onto the everyday, but rather one which points out their preexisting intimacies, provoking speculation and connecting ground and sky rather than struggling to collapse their distance.
Maurizio Lazzarato’s recently translated Signs and Machines: Capitalism and the Production of Subjectivity falls somewhere in this sphere, effectively balancing and joining critiques of contemporary capitalism, complex philosophies of subjection (or the complex social production of individual subjectivities), and everyday existence, touching current western politics, yet preserving a general openness and applicability. While in essence a theoretical text, Signs and Machines manages to translate abstract systems of micro-politics and semiotics into clear contact with a more grounded reading of affect, the body, and the political potential of any and every given subject, retaining a broad scope of accessible praxis.
Lazzarato, an Italian sociologist perhaps best known to American readers for his theoretical works on immaterial labor and debt in The Making of the Indebted Man, avoids the temptation to simply resituate comfortable theories of the production of subjectivities, and instead calls into question the current stability of this production, or subjection, itself. Lazzarato explains subjection as the ongoing process by which an individual is shaped and crystallized by the mechanics of his or her surrounding socio-political discourses. In brief, it is the production and positioning of individuals within social groups and identity categories. Not taking this process for granted, rather than simply asking “how does capitalism form us as subjects?” Lazzarato poses an additional question: “how functional is this formation?”
Read
March 21, 2022Read this for an assignment and it was not about what I thought it was going to be about. Interesting, but The Making of Indebted Man was a much easier read.
June 8, 2016
It's good. We're all fucked. Escape capitalist subjectivity somehow
Read
March 29, 2017Essential
Read
October 12, 2018Ljót kápa, geggjað innihald.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews