see it as resonating with Maurizio Lazzarato’s thoughts on the immaterial,
on the cognitive phase of capitalism?Bifo:OK, first of all, the concept itself: in A Thousand Plateaus, there is a
chapter devoted to the double articulation, in which they talk about
Hjelmslev, and the double articulation is precisely this. Language is this:
on the one hand, it has a conventional, intangible character, but on the
other hand, words are also gestural, factual, affective, and let’s say that
this motivates all the things you say about publicity as a circuit of
material production. Then there is this strand opened by Lazzarato, but
I can trace it back to French thought if we think about Lyotard. So I
would respond to you: of course they connect. Except that I would
prefer substituting the word ‘immaterial’ with other words, because
really if we believe in the fact that language and signs possess their own
materiality, if we believe in the fact that there is an affective, productive
dimension – productive on the economic level, on the affective level –
in the dimension of semiotics, then why employ the notion of ‘immate-
riality’? I understand the problem, but then we use a word that allows
us to situate the question: we are speaking about the cognitive. The cog-
nitive dimension, cognitive work enters into determining the symbolic
and the immaterial dimension of the social, for which I would say they
are on the same level of discourse that Lazzarato proposed, except that I
find that the word ‘immaterial’ seems to lead us off track. I understand,
I do remember how it came about since at some point, people started
talking about the immaterial. And they did so to say that an operation
of a symbolic kind takes place – that’s fine. But what we want to grasp
and lies at the very heart of our interest is neither the mechanical nor
the physical being, but the material being of what is symbolic! But
about the word ‘immaterial’, we have already understood each other.
Now if Lazzarato were here, he would say, ‘OK, fine, but we can use
“immaterial” to account for a displacement of production from the
physical to the symbolic dimension’.GM:Yes and you know, in his latest work he becomes, if you will, a little
less, not optimistic, but a little less triumphalist about the potentialities of
immaterial work. Because at a certain point, it seemed that this immaterial
work was a moment of liberation, whereas now he says that there are also
forms of exploitation in immaterial labour: there is immaterial labour also
for those who serve as elder care providers. Because this is also immaterial
labour, not only computers. Immaterial work is also that of a receptionist at
a hotel, who says hello, but it’s an underpaid form of immaterial work.Interview with Franco Berardi (Bifo) 1579780230_221192_14_inte.pdf 10/3/08 11:37 AM Page 157