Black Mamba wrote:I found Kuze's real revolution to be extremely confusing. It made no sense to me what so ever.
Elmo's basically correct about the reference to superstructures. It also relates to the Tachikomas' conversation about Dawkins and Lovelock in "Pat." As Elmo wrote:
The superstructure is the particular form through which human subjectivity engages with the material base substance of society. This is of course purely a dialectical concept, not a distinction between entities in the real sociopolitical world.
One thing, though-- I believe Kuze was saying that the superstructure is already "real" and that it's changing from its original nature, that it's evolving. And Marxist models of subjectivity-- and the show's portrayal of subjectivity, for that matter-- differ from what most folks think of as subjectivity.
So I'll add to or modify Elmo's comments. (I'm going to reduce a long argument to it basic components, and the thinking about these matters has changed a lot since Marx's day, so I'll apologize in advance.)
In Marxism, the superstructure-- the cultural and social spheres, the thought-forms which inform and shape human subjectivity, influence what a subject perceives, and motivate particular interactions with the material world-- is determined by economic relations and means of production. (Hegel's abstract dialecticism assumed that ideas were the basis of history; for Marx, materially-based economic relationships informed ideas.) As economic relationships grow more complex, they require technological changes or advances; these changes come about because people
think technological change will make the existing system run more smoothly. The economic relationships produce a superstructure, a mental picture or model of reality. The superstructure-- which has been changed by means of production and by economic relationships-- causes folks to believe in a "perfectible" reality that can be made, through technology, to correspond to the model or superstructure... (Welcome to dialecticism.) These technological advances appear at first to promote and stabilize existing economic relationships, but by their very nature, technological advances eventually
change economic relationships, and this in turn eventually changes the superstructure.
(Thinkers such as Gramsci, Marcuse, and Negri have some interesting things to say about and offer some interesting modifications to this particular aspect of Marxism, and I think Gramsci's notion of hegemonic capitalism is relevant to the show
in general, but I don''t think any of these things are particularly relevant to the point, so I'll mention them in passing, and I'll move on.)
To use a pretty well-known example, specific economic practices-- the development and refinement of capitalist practices-- gave rise to industrialization, but industrialization changed the nature of labor. This in turn changed how people thought about slavery... and discussions about slavery fed into discussions of labor rights, etc. Women's rights-- previously taken for granted-- became a matter of discussion. Even the
nature of families was changed by economic relationships, as families became spread out, decentralized. And slowly, the superstructure-- the domain of thinking, attitudes, society, and culture-- changed. Various revolutions and social upheavals were the result of changes in the base, and were manifestations of the resulting tensions...
Basically, it works in a bottom-to-top way, with the bottom being the economic relationships and means of production and labor, and the top being ideas, attitudes, aesthetics, etc. But it's an ongoing dialectic-- the economic relations and means change, then the superstructure change, then the economic things change, then the superstructure changes, then the economics change...
Simply put, the physical shapes the ideational, but the ideational only exists in terms of the physical, in terms of production and economics. Hence the phrase "dialectical materialism."
There's been a pretty wide gap between post-structuralist and postmodern thinking and Marxism, largely because most types of poststructuralism and postmodernism consider languages, cultures, ideas, philosophies, etc. as completely separate from the means of production. Post-structuralists and postmodernists often look at aspects of the superstructure-- particular discourses or works-- without looking at how the base informs the superstructure.
But if the superstructure itself becomes manifest, if it becomes something like a biosphere, it could take on a life of its own, and that would in turn change the relationship between the base and the superstructure in a pretty fundamental way...
As the Tachikomas said of the comparison between biospheres and gene/memes, the same principles would apply and act on both the macro- (superstructural) and micro- (base) levels.
As above, so below.
It sounds like Marxism, but it ain't Marxism, if that makes sense.
Basically, if I'm following the argument, Kuze is saying that the Net was devised as what Marxists call a means of production-- in this case, a tool for data storage, transfer, and exchange-- for an existing social order. It's served that purpose, but the Net is creating economic and social conditions which conflict with or call into question the original system's social relations and values. And it's become a
actual manifestation of the superstructure-- of the cultural, philosophical, and social spheres. Now that people can connect and communicate on an ideational level-- now that abstract sorts of information such as culture, etc. are manifest-- the
nature of the superstructure is changing. The transmission of memes is accelerated. The
manner of memetic transmission and infection is different; what was abstract has become literal, with ideas acting like computer viruses. What had been a concept or mental framework-- the more abstract part of the dialectic-- is "real" in a way it hasn't been. As a result, the relationship between the base and the superstructure-- between modes of production and the cultural and social spheres-- is changing, and the potential for truly radical social change has arisen within and through the Net.
A true technological singularity, with the revolution as a mere taste, a foreshadowing, a minor tremor before the earthquake...
Animals sensing and anticipating a catastrophe that's yet to arrive and is unavoidable, and that they perhaps desire on some basic level.
Something that resonates with their natures...
(Notice how this relates to the Big G's manipulation of data to bring about accelerated change in the material world... Our favorite peanut-headed baddy is trying to manipulate the superstructure to change the base, while Kuze sees his revolution as the embodiment of
unplanned changes brought on by superstructure. The positions are dialectically related, and as Lightice has suggested elsewhere, there's a kind of feedback loop, a two-way memetic contamination, that's taking place. Both men have pretty much claimed that they're manifesting or acting as agents/embodiments of history... So they're both claiming that they're acting on behalf of the superstructure, even when they use or tamper with the superstructure. And if you take the discussions about heroes into account, the show's also implying that the Net is acting as something like a manifestation of Jung's collective unconscious. The Tachikomas were, at one point in "Pat.", basically discussing the Net not just in terms of synchronizing or sharing conscious information but as a sort of literal and externalized collective unconscious or perhaps subconscious mind for humans, and they were exploring what these sorts of things mean when humans use words like "individual" and "collective". I think both men believe they understand the nature of the change to the superstructure-- to the nature of information and data exchange-- more than they do...)
For Kuze, the revolution is connected with the broader social shifts, with a foundational change to a technologically-based society. His revolution will simply be the first manifestation of the broader social change. It will precede and perhaps guide the change. (The argument seems to resemble Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" or Lenin's "revolutionary vanguard" idea, although Kuze is suggesting that the superstructure and base are more or less in tandem.)
Or I could be wrong. Someone who's seen the last three episodes of the series might tell me I'm full of doodoo, and Kuze's spiel to Aramaki's brother doesn't suggest any of this.
P.S. I don't think it would've been a smart move to put up sandbags etc. It would create the impression that the JSDF anticipates a prolonged siege within its own borders, and that's hardly the image the government would want to project in a nuclear crisis with global media coverage... Having soldiers stand there makes it look like the government's actually doing-- or is on the verge of doing-- something. The soldiers are expendable; they signed on knowing they might get shot. And spin is everything in the
GitS world...