Technology, Labor and Urban Space: For a New Theory of the Humanities
My paper investigates postcontemporary readings
which claim that the city is remade by
technology into nodal network spaces of a new economy. Such a view of the city, I believe, implies an understanding of the
humanities as a pragmatic negotiation of signs and sub-cultures. These interpretations, I will argue, are ultimately grounded in the post-industrial and post-capitalist theories of a "new" society; they read the city as a (post exploitative) cultural space, formed by knowledge and technology, not labor. The role of the humanities in this city is to prepare a workforce which is literate but post-critical: a workforce that acts efficiently within existing social relations but is indifferent to their transformation.
Beginning with a re-reading of David Harvey's and Saskia Sassen's argument that cities in the new economy are shaped by telecommunications and cybertechnology, I will demonstrate that such understandings of technology are idealist and that while the city's forms may have changed, its economic function remains the same. New technologies do not bring about a radical break in labor relations but are new means for accumulating profit. Profit is always produced by (living) labor. In the city of labor, the role of the humanities is not, as the "new economy" dictates, to prepare a labor force which is technologically skilled yet lacking a critical awareness of the uses toward which their skills are being put. Rather, humanities, by engaging technologies as accumulated labor, should educate citizens for whom the goal of human labor (i.e. technology) is always freedom of the city-zens from necessity and not further commodifications of social space.