MENTAL ECOLOGY IN COGNITIVE CAPITALISM - A FELIX GUATTARI MASTER CLASS (2007-2010)

Economy does not function only through exchange values, monetary values, but also through mechanisms of subjectivation. They are the most important means of organization of the accumulation in a biopolitical economy where our abilities to understand and learn, to feel and create meanings and to relate to the presence of others have replaced direct labour and machines as the central forces of production. Economy has become production of subjectivity. It is a “productive-economic-subjective” compound as Félix Guattari says. We are ourselves integral organs to the functioning of this compound: our feelings, perceptions, hopes, desires and imaginary ghosts are not something separate but integral components of the functioning of economy. This transfer of the mechanisms of production of value into our mental environment is far more important to the analysis of our psyche than the mother relationship or family. This is what Deleuze and Guattari meant in their famous analysis in L’Anti-Oedipe: desire is social, capitalism is about the appropriation of desiring production. This thesis as a starting point, we wanted to study in detail the relationship between the functioning of cognitive and affective forms valorization and the subjectivity we were experiencing.
The project organized three series of international workshops to map how the mechanisms of production of value have spread into our mental and social environments: the ecological disequilibrium of our mental environments (precarious states of mind, panic and depression as a forms of life, the erosion of subjectivity and its foundations etc.) were like an organ of the mutation of capitalism where the structures and risks of production have spread into structures of subjectivity, meaning, desire and relationships.The project was called (following Félix Guattari) a project on “mental ecology”, because the question of the ecology of these regions – the question of the future and environments of the incorporeal species of ideas, feelings, states of mind and modes of cooperation – is as pressing a problem as is the ecology of the natural world. The problem is not only something “external” to us, but resides already “inside” us, in our hearts and minds, in our friends and modes of cooperation.

RELATED PUBLICATIONS

Félix Guattari: Kolme ekologiaa [Three Ecologies]. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto 2008.

Félix Guattari: Kaaosmoosi [Chaosmosis]. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto 2010.

Bracha Ettinger: Yhdessätuotanto [Co-poiesis. Edited by Akseli Virtanen]. Helsinki: Tutkijaliitto 2009.

Bracha Ettinger: Fragilization and Resistance Exhibition, The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts 21-30.8.2009. Curated by Akseli Virtanen and Tero Nauha.

Virtanen Akseli (2009): Johdanto Bracha Ettingerin yhdessätuotantoon [Introduction to Bracha Ettinger’s co-poiesis]. Aivojen yhteistyön muistivihkot, Helsinki. 57 p.

Virtanen Akseli & Tero Nauha eds. (2009): Bracha Ettinger: Fragilization and Resistance. Exhibition catalogue, The Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. Aivojen yhteistyön muistivihkot, Helsinki. 137 p.

Butler Judith (2009) Brachan työstä - On Bracha’s Work. Limited edition. Edited by Akseli Virtanen. Aivojen yhteistyön muistivihkot, Helsinki. 59 p.