hi Jon,
Thanks for this. I'll have to give this Weil piece a look. Regarding affect and fordism, how does this relate to Hardt and Negri's claims about postfordism? I take them to say that postfordism is the affective and biopolitical stage of capital, while you seem to be indicating a history of changing modes of affect/biopolitics over the course of the history of capitalism. (Is that a fair characterization? If so, then I'm in complete agreement and am excited to see more.) If you're interested in accounts of work and factory life, I highly recommend Stan Weir's Singlejack Solidarity and Martin Glaberman's Punching Out if you haven't already. Weir ran a small publishing endeavor out of pocket for most of his life, Singlejack Press, dedicated to presenting views of work from the perspective of workers. He was also a friend of James Baldwin and associate of CLR James.
take care,
Nate
Nate | Homepage | 03 Dec, 2005 - 12:34 am | #

Nate, thanks for this and for the recommendations. Yup, indeed, I'm implicitly arguing against the sense of novelty that Hardt and Negri ascribe to post-Fordist affective labour. I take part of the task of posthegemony theory to be a redescription of what had previously taken to be hegemonic, now in terms of affect and habit (and the multitude).

It so happens that Jeremy (he of the recent guest post on the French disturbances) has recently written a very interesting essay on this same subject. Maybe I can prevail on him for another guest post...
Jon | Homepage | 03 Dec, 2005 - 12:43 am | #