Horkheimer and Adorno, having fled Germany due to National-Socialism, published the Dialectic of Enlightenment1 in 1944. Being existentially threatened in Germany they were also just as much disillusioned by America’s late capitalist alternative of Culture Industry. The latter term marked a shift from Marx’s classical conception2 of the base-superstructure dichotomy, where the ideological superstructure (art, family, culture, science etc.) is derived from the economic base (property rights of means of production). Culture Industry (or the corporatist media complex) was for them just as dependent for the reproduction of a dysfunctional system as was the economic base. Hence, the more orthodox Marxists pursuing economic mono-causality is refuted in order to make place for more complex relations within consumer society and its stabilizing mechanisms (precursors of this line of thought are Lukàcs and Gramsci). And it is at this point of intersection of base & superstrucutre, where historical domination towards slaves, women, queer and PoCs (to count some of the uncounted) has been so successful in producing, performing and stabilizing itself over and over again. And this, to a large part because of a techné as a means of employing Technology to reveal certain purposes and thereby disclosing others.
In the Chapter of Culture Industry of the Dialectic of Enlightenment it says „Technical Rationality is the rationality of domination. It is the compulsive character of a society alienated from itself.“ (DoE, p. 95) The critique of Rationality (or as suggested in the title ‚of Enlightenment‘) put forward by Horkheimer and Adorno bases itself on a fundamental critique of Reason of Enlightenment, that has not lost but rather gained significance in contemporary digitalized ‚white supremacist capitalist patriarchy‚3, (bell hooks). As individualization and specialization has intensified since the Industrial Revolution(s) and has recently undergone waves of privatization, austerity measures and following a decrease in state provided social web, that took off in Chile with Pinochet and the Chicago Boys in 1973, then with Thatcherism in the UK in 1979, followed by the Reagon in the US in 1981 and the ensuing changes in vast parts of Europe. The Fordist model where workers consume parts of what they produce gave way to Post-Fordism, now consuming (or for that fact, not consuming) what was mainly produced in low-income areas around the world. A crucial example of deindustrialization has its epitome in Detroit’s economic recession of the decline of General Motors. Where cars weren’t produced anymore, unemployment increased an inflation sky rocketed, Techno as a sonic novelty of industrial dungeon sounds stemming from recursively rhythmic loops from 909 Beat Machines4 and Synthesizers DJs, that were exclusively played by PoCs emerged. This was no coincidence for the beginnings of this era, where ordinary people were made free floating individuals, now often job-less and without social security nets, which pronounced the cry for collectivity. Techno gatherings in Detroit and House in Chicago, as well as Ballroom Houses in NY were the counter-movements in which bodies were able to assemble as a response to the disenchanted circumstances.
It is in these dark and sweaty dungeons, where technology and bodies find their own way of interaction. Unlike before, where the sovereign executers (capitalists) were the ones who could hire and fire proletarians (literally: the ones who own but their offspring) for work, here togetherness by means of new musical technology in unknown ways can be seen as a new beginning. And it might be here, where Arendt’s conception of democratic new beginnings (arché) could potentially fall together with its more instrumental practices of following through (prattein) with such a new beginning.5 As a techné, that is not a Foucauldian souci de soi (worry about one’s self), but a techné of a souci des con-dividuals6 (worry about being dividually together or together dividually).
Externalization, privatization and austerity have yet another component to its effect, which is self-commodification on an ever more flexibly changing market. And it is here, where Digitalization and Financialization from the 1990s onwards amplifies the Foucauldian biopolitics of the „ratio of births to deaths, the rate of reproduction, the fertility of a population, and so on“7 is not only captured, stored and plotted in order to expand reproduction, but rather receives a new dimension. This dimension is captured by Deleuze control societies, where „Individuals have become „dividuals,“ and masses, samples, data, markets, or „banks.“8
The difference between the biopolitical „le roi et mort, vive le system!“ and the corporatist state that fuses financial instruments (derivates, options, futures, bonds) with dividual data from digitalized control societies is the following: Digitalized Capitalism has taken over a further layer of automation, in which the head of the king is not only decapitated, but the system can reproduce itself via continually fed data loops. As inputs of dividual data are abundant Neural Networks can be trained with almost an infinite amount of data. These automated regressions are solved according to desired outputs, such as sexuality, political affiliation or income (there’s more possibilities ofc.). The crucial point lies herein, that the categorization process of the algorithm remains hidden. The relation of X (input data) to Y (Output categorization) runs all sorts of ‚meaningful‘ and ‚less meaningful‘ correlations such as: Does skin color play a role of an income? Does heritage relate to criminality? What preferences do friend-circles of right/left political affiliations share?
However, the ultimate variables which decide a ’successful‘ prognosis of input to desired output remains a black box. This not only leads to an infinite loop towards reproducing the Status Quo by extrapolating the past towards projections into the future. It further does not problematize the 1) sample sets, 2) the reductionist move from dividual data to fully fleshed individuals and last but not least, 3) the way in which Neural Networks instrumentally divert responsibility from the present and the past. As long as the input data fits the output categorization and the so called „sweet spot“9 between the data sets and the outcomes is attained, an algorithm is considered ’successful‘ – and at the same time remains unquestioned.
In white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, algorithms as these keep colonization, imperialism, slavery, reproductive work, segregationism and lastly its own massive energy consumption disclosed. Server firms such as Quanta, Foxcon and Compal that are again a further move towards decentralizing responsibility among tech giants Google, Amazon, Facebook etc. If algorithms are a way of hiding the past, then instrumental knowledge becomes a way of reproducing 1) racial injustice from violent colonialism, 2) patriarchy from emotional and reproductive work and 3) capitalism from expropriation and ongoing exploitation, then to whom should the power over these technologies be left to?
If one thing is for sure, then that centralized power today functions via mechanisms of decentralization and hidden algorithms of corporations. In other words it is a Re-production of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy in digital control societies. And democratizing the means of reproduction is a step towards autonomy in a society that doesn’t put profits as ultimate end, but rather more just livelihoods via a souci des con-dividuals. Speaking with Arendt, this would mean a new beginning (arché) of practices (prattein) that are yet to be built.
Björn Das (dividual ID: 7 311 358)
References
1 Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Stanford University Press, 2020.
2 Marx, Karl. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (1859), Vorwort, MEW Bd.13, p. 8.
3 bell hooks. https://www.mediaed.org/transcripts/Bell-Hooks-Transcript, p. 7
4 Beat Machines – An example Jeff Mills on a 909: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU-UsvYbIV0
5 Arendt, Hannah. „Freedom and politics: A lecture.“ Chicago Review 14.1 (1960), p. 41.
6 The term Condividuality is lent and inspired by: Raunig, Gerald. Dividuum: Machinic capitalism and molecular revolution. MIT Press, 2016.
7 Foucault, Michel (1997). Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-1976. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press. p. 243.
8 Deleuze, Gilles. Postscript on the Societies of Control (1992), p.5 https://www.jstor.org/stable/778828?seq=1
9 Tahmasebi, Pejman, Farzam Javadpour, and Muhammad Sahimi. „Data mining and machine learning for identifying sweet spots in shale reservoirs.“ Expert Systems with Applications 88 (2017): 435-447.
Race and/as technology. A course blog. 
In my comment, I will try to offer a critique of this post in the hopes of highlighting some of the inconsistencies I identified in my reading of it. Since your text is touching on a lot of different theoretical concepts, historical events and political interventionist perspectives, all deserving of their own in-depth analysis, I will stick to just three points in my reply. The first one aiming at understanding your use of the terms related to technology, the second one developing on a disagreement with your reading of the quoted literature, and the third one questioning the edited graphical content.
I read this post as an attempt to connect the dots of a broad range of theories of society rooted in Historical Materialism, Critical Theory and Poststructuralism, and apply them to present day technologies, such as algorithmic neural networks, as they reify existing economic markets and social structures.
Firstly, besides pointing out my difficulties to follow the very ambitious and therefore challenging project of summarizing complex historical processes in such a short article – without defining the quoted philosophical terms sufficiently – I would like to turn to my problem with understanding the use of different terminologies describing ‘technology’ throughout the blog post, which appears diffuse and ignorant towards major conceptual differences in the respective theories. I understand Foucault’s idea of technology as central to his theorizing of biopolitics, whereas Adorno and Horkheimer – to pick up the quote you chose from Dialectics of Enlightenment – use it to describe an increasing standardization process in the culture industry. Further meanings of ‘technology’ are hinted at by referring to the philosophical term techné, or through the anecdotal example of techno music. In the light of our common interest in finding out about the entanglements of race and/as technology, I was wondering whether you could clear up this confusion and specify your use of the term ‘technology’?
Having elaborated on these conceptual difficulties I had, I’d like to untangle an incoherence I encountered in your citation of (neo)Marxist literature:
Drawing on Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s chapter on the culture industry in DoE, you are suggesting a critique of the dichotomy of base and superstructure. Thinking contemporary mass media through A/H’s theory of culture industry as systemically reproducing mass culture via the conditioning of the consumers’ needs and thereby reifying dominant social and economic structures, seems an interesting endeavor to me. However, I do not think it is consequently pursued throughout the development of your argument. The criticized dualistic concept is revived throughout the text, thereby negating its analytical poignancy. The use of the theoretical vocabulary of Historical Materialism, illustrated by your example of techno music as the result of a linear historical process, is intended to highlight the importance of acknowledging the structural discrimination against PoC inherent to intersecting control mechanisms sustained by the culture industry. Ironically, your “counting of the uncounted” (sic) and your referencing of an interview with bell hooks remains superficial and does not take into account the multilayered implications of the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”. It seems to me like your analysis fails to really engage with bell hooks’ Critical Marxist theory from a WoC’s perspective on the intersections of base and superstructure.
Lastly, I want to problematize your edit on the visualization of the algorithmic neural network as merely speculative. The link you provided leads to an article by the company IBM, which illustrates an explanation of the differences between types of algorithmic learning with this graphic, except it does not say any words on it. The example IBM is giving in the accompanying text, is the banal decision whether to buy pizza for dinner or not. In our last seminar session, we learned about Joy Buolamwini’s research, which scientifically decodes exactly this algorithmic black box. I was wondering why you did not base your illustration off of her work? Instead, you are using the indication ‘phenotype’, which might be read as a biological essentialization of racializing classifications in this context. Maybe, a further discussion of Buolamwini’s work could offer a clue towards answering your question “to whom the power over those technologies should be left to?”
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am pleased to have gone through your thorough reading and will want to respond to the three points of criticism you raise. As to the first question of technologies, I think your point is quite valid: The use of technologies in the article is diverse and might seem diffuse. This lies therein, that Foucault as well as Adorno and Horkheimer have more in common, than one might think. And central to both strains of thoughts (let’s box them into the categories of early critical theory and Postmodernism) is a criticism of Reason and more specifically of supposedly ‘rational thinking’ (in Neoclassicism), ‘technological reason’ or governmentality. In this sense, technological thinking refers first and foremost a technocratic approach of emplyoing means for certain ends (Weber called it ‘Zweck-Mittel-Beziehung’). To make an example, in order to fight structural racism, a digital corporation such as Facebook decides to employ a quota for BiPocs working on a face-recognition algorithm. Even if this might have positive effects on in the sample selection and perhaps to a stronger awareness within digital corporatism for racist tendencies, it forecloses more fundamental problem of colonial past, ongoing spatial and educational segregation as well as income discrepancies. As we learn it from a line of thought running back to Nietzsche, Freud, Fanon all the way up to Spivak, anti-race measures do not make away with a hard-wired racist society, which late capitalism so builds on and digital control societies reproduce from. Foucault as well as Adorno & Horkheimer adequately describe this process from a top-down technocratic rational.
Another way of looking at technology – and here focusing more on the positive potential – is Foucaults use in the ‘technologies of the self’. Herein, he implicitly refers to Althusser, who already saw the dialectics of power as both a process of subjugation (assujettissement), as well as its potential for resistance. Hence, technological power exertion is precondition for identity and constitutive for change. Now Foucault’s ‘technologies of the self’ focus on the latter potential as individual ways of resistance. My only criticism here was Foucault’s focus on the individual subject (souci de soi), rather than a collective dividuals (souci des con-dividuals) such as in the collective phenomenon of techno music in the 80s in America and 90s in the UK. For the understanding of the article, it is crucial to think both technocratic rational (top-down technologies) together with technologies of resistance understood as techniques countering it.
As to the second point of the culture industry, I think that the process mentioned above happening with technological rationalization are very much applicable to algorithms as well. Here, maximum-likelihood regression analysis is used in order to maximize inputs X1, X2, X3 for a certain outcome Y and also holds in digital culture industry. Attention maximization and advertisement placements work according to the older non-digital marketing techniques. The crucial differences, however, is that digital algorithms have made it way easier to externalize responsibility, divert criticism and use data for commercial purposes. And it is here, where top-down use of digital technologies are both producing desire and distraction for and through culture products, as well as reproduce racism with face-recognition, racial profiling and ethno-natioalism. What the employment of corporatist’s digital algorithms reveal is that structural racism is embedded in those that rule (archein) as well as those that program and execute the commands (prattein). And this also holds for your mentioning of Joy Buolamwini and her article Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification, where darker-skinned females are misclassified 35% of the time, while lighter-skinned males are 0-8% of the time. So, coming back to your questioning of the duality between base and superstructure: Yes, there is a discrepancy between those that rule (rentier capitalists) and those that execute (managers and programmers). However, that does neither mean that this duality is kept in late digital capitalism, where culture products are equally important in reproducing racist world views as are the means production and diffusion of those world views.
LikeLike