From the Reserve Army of Labour to the Standing Reserve of Nature

• Published in: History After Lacan pp. 118 - 165
• Main Author: Brennan, Teresa
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 1993
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Natural Reproduction; Energy Sources; Variable Capital; Young Man; Social Reproduction; Reproduction Time; Social Reproduction Costs; Foundational Fantasy; Natural Substances; Reproducing Labour Power; Measur Ement; Subject Object Thinking; Medium Term Profit; Standing Reserve; Instant Gratification; Temporal Constraint; Natural Forces; Constant Capital; Including Labour Power; Long Term Profit; Subject Object Distinction; Extending Acquisition; Two-fold Nature
• ISBN: 0415011175; 9780415011167; 0415011167; 9780415011174
• DOI: 10.4324/9780203005095-6

In this chapter I will suppose that the construction of a commodity binds energy in the same way that it is bound in the r epression of a hallucination. The energy bound in this way is that of living nature; it correlates with Freud's 'freely mobile energy'. I have suggested that the paths of freely mobile energy and those of the life drive are the same, once we analyse the idea that freely mobile energy follows the path of least resistance. Freely mobile energy only follows this path because something exists that resists. Like the hallucination, the commodity provides a point of resistance, in that it encapsulates living nature in forms which remove them from the flow of life. It functions analogously with hallucinations in that it binds living substances in forms which are inert, relative to the energetic movement of life. We can assume that the more of these relatively inert points there are, the slower the movement of life becomes. This slow movement underpins a different sense of time, which presents itself to consciousness, via a paradox, as the rapid time of modernity.