The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance (Semiotext(e) / Intervention Series)

In "The Uprising" Franco Berardi examines the social and political context of the European uprising, whose American counterpart was the Occupy movement. The book's subtitle, "On Poetry and Finance," refers to the sickness of which the uprising was a symptom and to the author's remedy.The sickness, which is still upon us, is the disempowerment of human beings caused by what Berardi calls "semio-capitalism." Unlike early capitalism which grew up around networks of people trading material objects (wool, salt, copper, textiles), semio-capitalism trades in information. As we saw in 2008, it damages entire economies while enriching a few members of the financial class.As traded assets become ever more abstract (derivatives of derivatives), the profits that befall the manipulators of these assets increase exponentially. (This is still going on unchecked throughout the globe in a high-risk manner - see Michael Sivy's recent article in "Time.") What happens to ordinary people when a privileged few create value by herding bytes through the infosphere via "chaotic flows of financial microtrading?" This book explores that question.Aside from the financial sphere, information in general (news, technological discoveries, gossip, political scandal) has become a huge economic driver. The toilers in the media and cyber vineyards (what Berardi calls "the cognitariat") endure precarious terms of employment--for instance, being hired as contractors rather than employees. And those with other work lead lives increasingly severed from nature, meaning, and human contact due to our culture's increasing immersion in the infosphere. This leads to Berardi's notion of semio-inflation: "I say that semio-inflation is when you need more signs, words, and information to buy less meaning."So what does poetry have to do with all this? Berardi draws a parallel between the increasing abstraction of financial instruments with a movement toward abstraction in modern poetry. According to him, this movement began in the 1800s with the Symbolist poets like Arthur Rimbaud, who proposed the notion of "dereglement" (deregulation). Dereglement in poetic terms meant divorcing the poetic image from its concrete referent to create mindscapes that transcended material reality.In Berardi's words: "So the word and the senses started to invent a new world of their own, rather than reflect or reproduce existing reality." This rupture between word and tangible thing ushered in a new approach to language, making it into a more finely-chiseled tool for creating a human-centered world severed from the body of nature. And indeed the author is correct, for, as the 20th century progressed, we became more and more cut off from the world of the senses and of nature. We replaced the enlivening images of dream, myth, and poetry with the enslaving images brought to us by the media and advertisers.If at first it seems preposterous to link increasing abstraction in finance with the same in poetic language, consider that all aspects of human culture are interrelated. Berardi is correct that the level of abstraction has increased in recent decades due to technological advances. However, this has been going on for a few thousand years. Since the discovery of mathematics we humans have been busily generating abstract notions from the concrete details around us, little by little creating a conceptual landscape that, like a house of mirrors, refers only to human concerns. Meanwhile we have relegated the body of the natural world, our own bodies, and our natural instincts to objects of exploitation. This theme has been fully explored in Ralph Abrams' book "The Spell of the Sensuous." However, as Berardi points out, the outcome of this trend is reaching grotesque proportions.Berardi's solution is "reactivation of the social body," that is, forging links between us and other living beings and the planet we all inhabit. And this is where poetry can heal us, because the original task of poetry was making and carrying meaningful connections with our elemental surroundings. Berardi urges a re-enchantment of language to awaken our collective psyche, so that we can "shift from one paradigm to another."Poetic imagery expresses that which cannot be expressed in ordinary language. The power to create and to understand poetry depends on our being able to take the time to pay attention to the non-verbal language of each other and the world, so as to have the "ability to understand what cannot be expressed in forms that have a finite syntax." In other words, taking time to restore our six senses, our intuition, and our wisdom. Thus poetry is subversive, since it is "what in language cannot be reduced to information, and is not exchangeable, but gives way to a new common ground of understanding, of shared meaning: the creation of a new world."Berardi obviously has a deep understanding of the power of poetry, and yet his prose is not poetic. It is densely packed with abstract words. Many of the words are undefined and difficult for the reader to parse. What is deterritorialization? Indexicalization? Mathematical interfunctionality? And I'm still not sure I'm using the term semio-capitalism properly, since I never found a definition for it. (I ask the author's forgiveness if I have used it incorrectly.)In a book about the merits of poetry, there has to be a way to talk to us that is more along the lines of Wordsworth's notion of a poet as a "man speaking to men." Some of the problematic prose may be due to the translation - I recently read an interview in Spanish with the author (Literal Magazine), and it was a much easier read. Still, it seems that Berardi's prose is aimed at fellow intellectuals--a great many of whom, I would guess, are already open to his ideas.Despite this, I was deeply moved by this book. I am neither a leftist nor an intellectual, but I have always valued poetry, dreams, and the natural world, all of which our modern commercial juggernaut has trashed. Because I am not a leftist or even a standard liberal type, I am comfortable speaking of "soul," and I think it fitting to use the word here: Berardi describes a social body which has withered because it has lost its soul, and lost touch with the soul of the world. But that withered body is not the end of the story. As Alan Kay said, "the best way to predict the future is to invent it." This book will inspire you to invent another world.

This small, dense book reads like a (very complicated) primer for what Barardi believes is the coming worldwide economic (and likely political) revolution.I would have given it a fifth star if I hadn't found his use of language so complex and challenging that I suspect only those of us fascinated by the complexities of the recent global financial collapse, would stay with.I had to look up, and then struggle with, semiotext (which this spell check doesn't recognize). Not only is it part of the book's title, but is central to the book's thesis. It refers to how invented language and concepts – that refer to other concepts rather than any actual event or thing – have become the basis for international finance.If you are as eager as I am to make some sense of what happened when everything fell apart in 2008, and where we now are, and liable to go from here, maybe you will have the patience to stay with what I think is a brave and insightful effort by Berardi.I am not a fast reader, but I have now spent hours and weeks with this short book, reading a paragraph, then going back to reread it. His insight is as helpful as anything I've yet read. I don't know yet whether – besides his prediction of major upheaval and unrest – he has much helpful to say about how to navigate the way from here.

Berardi's The Uprising is a powerful explanation of the predicament most of us face each day. He suggests the way out lies in our taking back control of our language, re-invigorating its poetic use, and refusing the techno-machinic manipulation of our social lives. While most contemporary European critical thought can sometimes feel like trying to find a milion needles in a billion haystacks, Berardi's writing is clear, almost as if he's making damn sure we get the message. He lines up ideas leading to his conclusion effectively and never lets us get lost by using a repetition that comfortably reinforces his direction and conclusion.According to Berardi, we need take back our language, take it back from the forces that have framed it to their advantage, their economic advantage and our spiritual damage. Anyone stuck in the morass we know as today's economy, the unending debt and the desperation it creates will find hope in this short but powerful text.

If you have had enough of the idiocy that passes for political analysis in the States then I'd recommend this book. It's incisive, passionate and clear-eyed, remarkably so for something produced out of the convoluted tangles of European theory. The analysis is influenced by the sense of world-wide crisis in the worst days of the Great Recession. Nonetheless, the underlying social and cultural ills he identifies are, I believe, as worrying as ever. It's a neat little book, something to carry around in one's back pocket and dip into from time to time amidst the world's craziness.

I very much like his conclusions before I read the book. However, as I read the book, I often find his examples not making any sense. Too many assertions on economic and financial sides are presented as facts. Extremely subjective judgements without persuasive proofs or iterations. Frankly speakingly, I am very frustrating. I expected a lot more than this.

If reading this doesn't impact your life, your life might need changing the way a light's bulb sometimes does. Hopeful, insightful, clearly written yet plenty of fun to be found in the style. Read it. Please.

An electric distillation of the last century of radical autonomous sociopolitical thought delivered through meditations on the power of poetry, the brutality of abstraction and the importance of community, rooted in luminous analyses of recent and ongoing global social, political and financial crises.

Interesting book, with too much financial and too few poetry. Suggesting ideas more than elaborating them.

Very confused about the American language of it. Content subject juxtaposition interesting enough.Part way through yet feels like a good read so far in as much as it does provoke.When I have finished and if I remember I will add to here!