Analogy and equivalence in play-labor and labor-play
“This is it” affirms that what is pointed at as this is like that other thing, it. “This is a tree” associates a thing with a category to affirm that it belongs to it without disclosing its kindness. This object at the end of the figurative finger may be the same as every object in this category or resemble some of these objects in some ways. What makes a tree a tree is only clear if one knows what it consists of as a whole. Knowing its consistence in every part to form a whole brings up the question of what one thinks as parts. If everyone thinks about parts in the same way then they must think the same way about its parts and parts that follow it to be able to say that they think about the same thing. But then associations wouldn’t be able to affirm anything but the same: this tree is the same as every other tree in every part. Would we then point at objects to affirm that they’re the same; would we use pointing to affirm the same; would we affirm the same if every affirmation affirms the same; and so on. Yet, we exclaim “This is it!” all the time whenever an association strikes us that asserts pointing’s ambiguity.
Industrial production, however, are made it possible to create objects that are made of the same matter and in the same way. Whether these production methods create objects that are the same or not has no relevancy to pointing as it can only refer to parts of an object it points at. One may point at an object with a name that distinguishes it from objects that are similar or the same: This is Tree. If it is the same as every tree but in name, then one points at its name to affirm difference in things associated with it, such as its identity, origin, and so on. Industrial production strips objects of difference by rendering them the same through reproduction that pointing reinserts with ambiguity from where associations can reign free.
A web of associations float free, its contours outlined by history, its emergence controlled by events and institutional powers, and its shape influenced by ambiguities lying between these contours and emergences. Analogy is one operational mode that comes into play from the ambiguity of pointing. It follows the logic of how this points at it to affirm similarity between them by unveiling some parts that conceal others. When these become cemented into everyday language, they make notions analogous to each other that come to operate in a mode prescribed by the analogy. This and it are one emergence that become contours that operate with ambiguity, which emerges in the second order in name called words that become contours that operate with ambiguity in being similar to different words in name. This similarity and difference between words in name gives way to associations that assemble into aphorisms. These contourous aphorisms come and go as history changes with events and institutional power movements, but they remain connected by reference points that reverberate as echoes long past the erosion that washed away everyday cementation. Connection remains by association, transformed and transforming by ambiguity. Memory is such an operational mode that transforms, keeps and takes away parts in an individual, resurrected in a collective to form such wholes as words that build on references through associations.
Capital is another operative mode that imbues contours, emergences and ambiguities without giving a chance for cementation by its liquid-like movement. It submerges and subsumes the system that cannot keep up with it so it plays catch-up by movements of acceleration and deceleration in relation to itself in violent conflicts, within itself as economic crises, and outside of itself as ecological catastrophes, while the boundaries between these relations are subsumed within itself as contours, emergences and ambiguities.
Subsumed in capital’s contours, emergences and ambiguities is labor that generates capital that generates labor while utilizing everything in subsuming to sustain itself, from the manipulation of masses through language by propaganda to the bastardization of language by marketing. Its contour floats between a web of referees and referents towards itself that drifts away just before reaching its ambiguous self to take shape as emergence in eluding itself.
Leisure and play are often conceived as opposing notions to labor that represent everything but what’s grueling about work, going as far to say that play liberates from labor. If it does, then how come one must resume work after leisure, or is it the other way around? This is it or it is this? What follows what, what is the pointer and pointee, who is the referent and referee, becomes ambiguous in capital’s subsuming logic that renders conventional notions of origin, cause and effect, and so on, incomprehensible in this system. Yet, their echoes remain as reference points that emerge in associations only to be submerged in the transformative and transforming contours, emergences and ambiguities of capital.
Play in this sense is submerged along with labor in a system that transforms them to be ungraspable with conventional notions of labor and play. Is it play or labor to make purchases in videogame systems; is it labor or play to engage in a videogame activity that simulates farming? It’s labor-play and play-labor that’s neither play nor labor that resembles both play and labor, indistinguishable from one another. The glib notion that doing videogame related work equals play isn’t necessarily true nor necessarily false, but can be true or false depending on associations with labor and play.
These associations operate with notions of equivalence to say that one thing is like another while these things are neither one nor another but float in a web of associations to emerge as equivalents in labor-play and play-labor to be submerged again and emerge as play-labor and labor-play that resembles the previous emergence. What is considered to be previous or next implies equivalence in emergence that the reproductive logic of production renders to be neither one or another but one and one and one in a series of equivalent ones. The universality of equivalence emerges in reproduction that becomes submerged in a web of ambiguities that point at this and it that contain and subsume a series of associations that affirm resemblance but attempt affirming the same.
Capital rises to make sense of the ambiguity of pointing by way of affirming equivalence through exchange, labor, reproduction and systems whose contours operate with ambiguities that give way to emergences of associations that equivalence subsumes in itself. “This is play” and “it is play” become equivalents in this system that subsumes residues breaking off from ambiguities that reverberate by associations. Subsumption of equivalence remains intact as long as it aims to make sense of ambiguity, while ambiguity reverberates as long as it creates associations by reference. This transforms modes of subsumption and modes of referencing that empty the system of ambiguities and fill it with echoes of ambiguities, leaving behind modes of transformation in company of echous emptiness and emptious echoes. Equivalence points towards producing the One but creates notions indistinguishable from one another, subsumed in this mode of production that recreates one and one and one that are neither playful nor laborious but pang from emptiness that loses its initial echous and empty properties in reproduction. Only the transformative mode itself isn’t transformed.
