Being a card-carrying member of a culture, such a culture which seeks to have revealed a representable Essence of all things, one is indoctrinated into the primary assumptions of that culture. The predominant mode of Western Cultures --- in accordance with the Judeo-Christian religious heritage, the Enlightenment agenda, and the scientific-technical method --- dictates that those indoctrinated into that Culture (and the sub-cultures as well) will be oriented around seeking objects that serve as best-guess representations of the Essence which is sought. Be it Love, Power, Knowledge, Truth or Wealth --- it matters little in relation to "how" the search is carried out and the mode of operation that informs the searches for representable Essences. What stands out in such a Culture, in all instances, is the Marxian notion of "object-bondage". The prevalence of "object-bondage" in a Culture leads one to conclude that those bonded-objects serve as representations for what is being sought: The return of Life through object affiliation. The very representations, the objects themselves, become the sole ends, because these are where the Life (Presentation) has been emptied into like the 'representational objects' were vessels for Life. This sets up a recursive loop; where Life (Presentation) is emptied into representations, and then representations are noted as possessing Life within them. The subject notes this and seeks to recapture the Life that has been spent laboring to produce objects and representations. Through bonding, consuming, adorning, attaching to themselves the objects that are Presentation-loaded representations, the subject hopes to gain what but the Life that has been emptied into the objects by another. This recursive loop of Marxian "object-bondage" signifies, to us at least, that the representational paradigm knows no way out of its own reified and recursive drama. Powered by the representational dogma that states "Truth, Love, and the Essence of all things must be representable in order to be just so, in order to actually be said to exist as such"; therefore one has no choice but to attach to themselves various "objects" in order to actually be considered real; in order to actually be said to exist.
Our exposure to other cultures, non-Western, non-imperialistic cultures has shown us that there are indeed "other" views of what is and is not representable, and how this relates to Truth and the search for the Real. The influx of Buddhist teachings into the West during the 20th Century has shed a new light on the Absolutist doctrine of Western Religion and Science, the big two who are ever out front pawning for airtime. Where before there was no mediating agent... other than the occasional derisive glance over to the artist... now, with the swelling tide of Buddhist, Taoist, and Zen inspired literature and philosophy we are seeing the beginnings of a new force on the Western scene, one that will increasingly serve to leverage the big two of Religion and Science. It is much like what we see in the United States government with the checks and balances provided by the executive, legislative and judicial branches. The presence of a third force keeps the other two forces honest, and mediates when necessary; it prevents a total breakdown into either, an irreconciliable conflict, or a joining of forces into a new totalitarianism. The third force is key. Some have attributed the third force --- in relation to Science and Religion --- as being the artistic movement, or just Art in general. This could certainly be seen to be the case, yet at the same time Art was not necessarily an unconscious element in relation to the West. Art served a definite function of expression within the existing system, but did not come from outside the system with a new mediating awareness per se. That role has been supplied by the Eastern cultures, which along with the indigenous cultures of so-called 'primitive peoples', has served to leverage the oppositional standoff between the big-two of Science and Religion as they engage in a war of propaganda for the right to define Reality (a Reality which we have already determined cannot be defined by representations). Whereas the big-two of Science and Religion have had as their task the profound dissemination and indoctrination into a growing "Absolutism", the imposition of diverse cultures has, throughout the modern era, and increasingly so in the postmodern epoch, introduced the big-two of the West to new notions of cultural relativity and moral relativism. The absolutist fortresses have begun to crumble under the duress, the liberating influx of heretofore unseen cultural trajectories has divested the big-two of some of their believers; meaning, also some of the power and force of their representations has withered. No longer are the representations of the big two leaving the millions upon millions of subjects with one or another narrow-minded absolutism. As these representations have begun to leak and take on water many have jumped ship: the Titans of Western Duality --- of Believers and Skeptics, the Faithful and the Rational --- were seen to be going down. And from the East many could see what appeared to be lifeboats appearing from out of the fog, lifeboats that carried with them a meditative Buddha, luminous and shining amidst the sinking of the S.S. Dualities which had created war and havoc for so many for so long. Yes, lifeboats carrying a meditative Buddha, luminous and shining amidst the fog of duality at all costs. Western eyes have partly turned. Yes, the continuing search for the Absolute is still with us, but it is not as potent as before. There are basic fundamental truths, or basic fundamental tenets, if you will, that have been illumined; a direct apprehension by those Western eyes. The Imagined Absolute, the Grand Transcendental Signifier, the Immutable Immanent Law --- these are still being sought, yet there is a new counterweight, a leveraged understanding that is keeping that search from taking itself too seriously. The grandiosity of the "master narratives", as French philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard calls them, are no longer seen as being so grand, so masterful, so rich in their narrative meaningfulness. There are holes that Reality has shot through the bow of those "master narratives"; time has illumined their inadequacies in being able to meaningful place us in the hyperspace of hyperreality --- the postmodern. The threat of their becoming a new totalitarain operation, a new "master narrative" for our times is not religious, scientific, or even ideological-philosophical threat. If there is such a "totalitarian" threat, I suggest that it is embodied in the Market (and the corresponding valuation of the three spheres of existence (subjective, objective, intersubjective) according to strictly Market terms). We have discussed, in part, what the Market-signs are, along with what the Market has become, as a force unlike any other that humanity has come to know or served to help develop. The Market is such that it takes up through image and icon the Buddha, the Tao, and accedes to the throne that would overarch all that is known or can be known. The Market becomes the new engine of repression/oppression through such an all-encompassing whoredom; to liquidate and expediate; to package and adorn the sacred in imagistic garb that catches the eye like so much inconsequential "kitsch" lining the aisles of the global flea market. There, amongst the trinkets and plastic forgottens rests the Buddha. There, amongst all of the packaging, and the surpluses created by extreme production rests the Tao --- hidden amongst all the eye candy which promises so much and delivers so little. The Market will sell Spirit to you; thereby characterizing the Market motive for what it is: No distinctions except those which the Market determines. Create a buzz. Buy low. Get in on the ground-floor. Sell high. Capitalize. Cut costs. Reduce overhead. Seize the market. Create a buzz; seduce the masses. Market seduction: promising much, offering little. Like a lover who falls asleep just when....
Remember, though... ...none of this is true in an absolute sense. The Market fixation and totalization of the lifeworld gives birth to a form or style of languaging which serves to inform a certain manner and style of perceptions. In other words, the dominance of the Market ideology in our time becomes the dominance of "how" we interpret the lifeworld and "what" we end up seeing (and also what we, as a result, come to value). It is the dominance of the Market, which results in a prevalence of Market languaging in relation to our lifeworld. In another time, another era, one where the Market has seceded to the background, has become incorporated and not so exalted, then we may come to find that a new mode of languaging comes to be in the foreground of populist culture, thereby giving birth to what Sufi poet-mystic Rumi calls "new organs of perception". But for right now, the Market hegemony plays itself out in our languaging. As to what we perceive? Everything has a price, and cognitively, it appears, we currently lean to marketing as the language-style of postmodernism. It is virtually impossible to extract any substance from out of the totalizing embrace of the Market. Everything that I now look at and see near me is a derivative of the Market, has been touched by the Market, has been through the valuation processes of the Market. The computer that I sit with and use to write; the music that I listen to; the clothes that I am wearing; the chair upon which I sit; the coffee that I drink and the cup that holds that coffee; the books that I have referred to throughout these texts; the water that goes to make the coffee I sip; and the house that contains it all: each particle of my existence has been touched by the Market. I deign to assume that you as well dear reader are similarly oriented in relation to the Market. Even if I were to attempt to extract my being from the Market --- to head to the hills and live off the land --- that too would be a flight from the Market; a movement in relation to the Market. This is why tagging the Market with the label of being an altogether new and all-encompassing ideological force is no stretch of the imagination. In fact, the Market is an immanent and direct consequence of our existence, irrespective of culture or kin. There is no territory on the face of this here dear earth that is free from the reach of the Market --- virtual or otherwise. The significance of this Market wide embrace and collectivization of all that we know becomes lost on us when we are forced into a situation where we cannot even imagine the reality of the postmodern process. When we hunker down in our little territory and just go about gathering a few bones from the Market for this week, this is when we risk losing what we cherish but didn't know was threatened. We are forced to retreat into small pockets of desirable consumption in the face of the Market, because it is so vast, so seemingly powerful. "What can we do about it anyway?" We just want a few little bones, "just toss us our bones and we won't question a thing, like a contented hound". Meanwhile our lifeworld is becoming conditioned: a total overhaul and ReSocialization of the Body of the Earth and all that is of Her; meaning all that we know via an embodied and mindful existence. Most of us do just want our little bones, our little nuggets to gnaw on, that keep us distracted and distanced from the immanent process that is ideologically superiour to any other ideology that humanity has ever seen... Ever! The fact that we can be so easily pacified is not lost on the marketing generals of the new ideology. We can have our "object-bondage"; it is not that big of deal. In fact, it is that very act of further empowering "object bondage" which creates the Market swells. The Market has an interest in creating "commodity slaves". But we'll call them "loyal customers", it is much sweeter after all.
Precisely because the Market allows these ideologies, does not negate them, but merely commodifies them, it then appears to us that there are competing ideologies. Yet the competing ideologies are within the Market, not adjacent to the Market --- there is a big difference. The King can let his subjects fight amongst themselves and it matters very little in relation to his position. The fighting subjects are within the kingdom, not adjacent forces that are threatening the kingdom. The same relationship exists in the Market. As it is now there is no adjacent force that is able to leverage the Market. The Market is King --- and all of the other, "lesser" ideological forces that do battle are merely subjects within the Kingdom itself, not threats from outside the Kingdom preparing to encroach. Certainly we can still language the world according to a regional dialect, or according to values that are specific to our region. At the same time that this freedom to language is availed to us, one also notes that the Market is still King... and as such the language of the Kingdom is of the Market, derived from the values of the Market. We can have our own regional values, but these values are values that are contained within the global values of the Market. We can be subversive, but this subversion is subversion within the Market. We can be revolutionary, but the revolution is contained within the Market. There is nowhere on earth to go that has not been colonized by the Market. There is nowhere to go that has not been colonized. What is the ideology of the Market? What is the Market directive, exactly? What motive does this indivisible and impersonal hand have? What new all-encompassing ideology are we really talking about here? As a force in our lives the Market cannot be denied; generally speaking, it is the predominant force that we devote more time and energy to than any other. Any dissent on this point is futile, while the recognition of this point is a beginning to understanding the current ideological superiority of the Market at present. We can say that we are devoted to the Market for other reasons --- for our survival, our children, our health, our welfare, our enrichment, our entertainment, our education even. The Market doesn't care why we are devoted, why we spend so much time in the Market chasing and selling, dovetailing round and round. We are contributors by degrees. In the past, historically speaking, it was not a consideration that mattered --- this idea as to why one invested themselves in an ideology through praxis, through involvement, investment. Any investment in the system, for any reason --- it didn't really matter why --- was all that mattered. Just get into the system and contribute to that system's gain, that system's progress, that ideology's continuation. In other words, we can have our personal reasons for being involved in the system and contributing to the ideology of the Market, but these personal considerations matter little in relation to the Master Signifier --- our involvement, our investment is what matters (or our dis-investment and ex-involvement as the case may be).
Precisely because basic survival has become increasingly dependent upon the Market, this also assures the Market of the greatest involvement and investment of subjects possible. Because we all want to survive right? And more and more it is a requirement that survival is dependent upon our direct involvement and investment into the Market. And with each investment of subjects the Kingdom grows. The Colonization spreads through necessity. If you want to survive you will be subject to colonization, followed by your becoming a commodity. It is as simple as that. Colonial practices are an ancient aspect of our historical march through time. Every being that exists now is subject to falling on one side or other of the Colonial Divide --- either through colonizing an already inhabited space-time or through being colonized by another force, another peoples, another ideological Johnny-come lately. Colonizing practices are for those who stand to "gain", to "profit" from the colonization of a space-time, a culture, or a peoples. The Colonizers not only stand to "gain", or to "profit" from the colonization of a territory, they also "know better" --- ideologically speaking. The Colonizers know best how to put to use the newly colonized resources most effectively. And when the Colonizers come from a Culture steeped in commodification, then we can be certain that the Colonial praxis of those Colonizers of space-time will see commodities in the territory newly overtaken and colonized. In other words, the colonized peoples become defined in the eyes of the Colonizers as so many units of labor, the colonized culture becomes so many future cultural artifacts that can be reproduced as commodities destined for the Market, and the untapped resources of that territory is destined to become so much energy and biomass destined for consumption as commodities within the Market. Colonize. Commodify. Consume. Capitalize. The Market is a Colonial praxis. All of us are cultured to notice where we fit into the Market, what territory we can colonize for ourselves so as to fit into the system, so as to simply survive. If we are going to be involved in the Market, then we have to have a Colonial disposition; we must stake out a territory, lay claim to an intellectual or artistic landscape and colonize that space for ourselves, call it our own, possess it in the spirit of colonization. Then the newly colonized space is turned into a commodity, resources are gathered and put to productive use, profit is turned and reinvestment occurs if the profit has not been exchanged for "other" commodities. If we choose not to do this, then most likely we will fall on the other side of the Colonial Divide; we become bodies ripe for colonization; commodities; engines of labor; machines of production and industry for the use of someone else who is pursuing their vision through our sacrificial offering as colonized subject. In the Colonial Culture, the Market-driven praxis, this Commodified- Nature of the Postmodern, we are all forced into an apparent choice --- either be a Colonizer or become colonized. By the will of others --- those of ideological might and fright. Necessity dictates. The Market, home to the necessitous. Colonial compromise. Dialectic trade-off: Allowing for the colonization of the subject as productive force in trade for the right to be a colonizer in what little free time that remains. Colonial compromise. This colonizer/colonized position plays itself out in our lives, by us becoming both a colonizer and the ones who are colonized. For instance, we are the colonized at our place of work, where we are just another commodified piece in the great multinational corporate machine, but when we come home or are out on the street, or in the shop, we expect to be able to colonize some-'thing' for ourselves. We hold the right to lay claim to some territorial artifact, bond our 'self' to that object, and then pretend we are the Conqueror this time; that is, until we punch the clock again. Consumption is derived, in great measure, from this very desire to colonize. By gosh we have been "objectified" as a commodity all day at work, and then dismissed in the streets! But with a little capital or credit we have a relative supply of colonial power in the Market. We can claim as our own this, that, or the other thing. We then turn the tables and become the colonizers through our possession of goods that serve to liberate repressed energies; namely, those that want to strike out in relation to the Colonial Structure of the "late capitalism". The young boy is hit by his drunken and enraged father. Grows up to do the same to his child. The colonized subject is "objectified" as a commodity in relation to the Market. That subject does the same in relation to his or her lifeworld. Patterns recur. Imprints become expressed. Relations now, point to the performative constitution: Colonize; Commodify; Capitalize. Patterns tend to recur; it is why they are diagnosed as patterns. Have we been possessed, becoming the whores of this culture? And when we can get a bit of distance from the long-arm of colonial law we go out to seek liberation and a sense of reclaimed power through the consumption of those very goods that are produced as the commodities of the Colonization that we so secretly despise? In other words, the power that we try and reclaim is power gained through the consumption of commodities that are produced by the Colonial super-structure of the postmodern; a super-structure that we may even deeply abhor. We could even go so far as to say that we try and reclaim from the system, via commodities and the consumption of goods, what the system has taken from us: Life. And yet we may not see this as such because of the propaganda of the system: The creation of appetites that makes it appear to us that we are just following up on necessity and desire. Secretly we are attempting, in our own ways, to rob the system of what has been taken from us. The Colonial super-structure has made all of us into objects fit for commodification and consumption. We are so many commodities and resources, blobs of energy and labor, fuel for the system itself. At some level we know this, and we despise this fact. We secretly abhor the fact that we are commodities in a colonized and commodified world; ordained as such by an overly objectifying gaze that longs to displace the vacant and pervasive subjective sense of emptiness through the continued colonization, manipulation, and commodification of the lifeworld. Families = commodities. Cultures = commodities. Art = commodities. Subjects = commodities. Children = commodities. Illness = a commodity. Wellness = a commodity. In short, the whole of our postmodern landscape has left us all colonized by the ideological force of the Market which commodifies just as quickly as it colonizes.
"Wake me from the dream when it's over. And please, do tell me it is a dream, won't you?" The Body, that flesh of flesh, bone of bone, the basis of the most basic is no longer inviolate, and definitely no longer a given. The Body has become colonized, and is not accepted as such --- as the fertile wildness of the Other which gave birth to mind in all of its Colonial futuricity. No, in fact, the Body, that flesh, this materiality, is inhabited by a Will and a Colonial force that has come to "create" a better space for habitation, a more viable vehicle for the Will of the Colonial Spirit of New Jerusalems. The Body is malleable, is subject to becoming a commodity even for that subject who is the very inhabitant/consequence of that self-aware Body. Just as we have seen how the Colonialists sail into new lands with a plan for the bodies of the colonized, that very same ideological spirit has infiltrated into the bodies of us all; to remake what is perceived as innately flawed, that is not a properly formed commodity, one that can gather for the subject the necessary prosthetic extensions from the Market. In this way we have begun to use our subjectivity, and ourselves as objectified entities, just so as to create for ourselves a best case scenario. So that will be able to meet our quota of prosthetic desires; gaining for ourselves the necessary extensions of the Body. It has become a necessity; to acquire extensions of I-dentity through "object-bondage". Attaching like prosthesis those commodities that match, augment, or otherwise amplify our "self". Welcome to postmodernville: Malleable identities through affordable adornment.
What we prosthetically attach to our Body through the commodification of the subjective essence as a malleable object to be morphed is "what" we have become in this postmodern time-space. In other words, "I am... " has become "I am what I can afford to prosthetically attach to my Body... what I am object-bonded to". Certain commodity-extensions of the Body, of I-dentity, become the home to the displaced essence of subjectivity. More so than any sort of Myers-Brigg personality test, we can be determined as subjects through what we purchase --- through the commodities that we attach to ourselves like prosthetic limbs of extended subjectivity. The subjective awareness of our self, in relation to the community, which is the Market en masse', is made firm by what we have gathered from the commodity fields in our midst. From the time we are young we are socially defined by what we possess, what objects (commodities) our subjective self has been able to bond to. The essence of the subject is appearance in this case. There is no hidden essence that is discriminate from the objects we have become bonded to. Essentially, postmodernly, we, as subjects, are that which we are in "object-bondage" to. We are defined by the addictions we have. We are defined by the traumas we endure, and are in recovery from. We are defined by the commodities we possess or otherwise attach ourselves to: the fake tits in our bra and the fatty lipids injected into our lips. We ourselves become commodities only because we have allowed our subjective essence to become just another commodity in the Marketplace. The language that we allow ourselves to use, that defines and determines our social discourse, is Market-aligned and driven by possessiveness in relationship to ownership, servitude, and bondage, i.e. Colonialism. The social discourse of our times most often becomes centered around possessing experience, gathering commodities from the Market, the valuation of experience relative to pleasure received, and the consumption of commodities from the Marketplace so as to alleve alienation and powerlessness; that displaced essence of subjectivity that we aimlessly try and retrieve from the shelfs at the Market. Patterns recur. Loyal consumers? Commodity slaves?
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