project: The Societal Apparatus
location: Global
involvement: full
date: 2006 August

 

 

Dromology systematically minimizes individuality -what Deleuze refers to as dividual, while categorically organizing the balance into lumps of sustained behavioral determinism. Right. In infant form, the logistical approach to capitalism is a dynamic free flowing system of open market competition on a global stage. Maturation occurs. The intelligence begins to isolate and eliminate the minority ideals in a democratic yea or nae fashion. Nae is eliminated. As the routine continues to compound its logical decisions, decision is removed from the equation. An automated McMaster-Carr(?) warehouse is able to dynamically organize itself to meet upcoming, predicted/predestined demand. A guarantee is presented: We will have your order boxed and shipped in less than fifteen minutes. Is this possible? The final stage of logistical evolution may involve the arrival of product at a door stoop before an order is submitted. Can the logistical machine isolate a singular individuality globally? If so, culture is simultaneously homogenized into something reminiscent of a soma-induced disco party.

Appadurai states arguments of cultural homogenization fail to consider the indigenization of metropolis in disparate societies. Deleuze briefly describes a worldwide axiomatic that operates as a megamachine of control. Truly, cultural distinction has not been eliminated. The question is: Have cultures been amplified and garrisoned? Quite possibly. The disjunction between cultural perception and cultural reality, maybe shaped by Appadurai's -scapes under the invisible control of logistical systems, results in a cultural polarization and controlled homogenization within societies. The ignorance of culture becomes the competitiveness of logistics. This fuels the inherent controls logistics need to exploit in order to be successful in a capitalistic fashion.

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Written in response to:
Benjamin H. Bratton “Logistics of Habitable Circulation” a brief introduction to the 2006 edition of Paul Virilio's “Speed and Politics”
Logistics: A Special Report, The Economist
Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on Societies of Control”
Arjun Appadurai “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy”