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The speaker introduces the film, its exhibition context, and the three analytical lenses used to discuss it. He outlines the comparative visual method and situates the work within broader debates about image, evidence, and historical investigation.
this podcast is brought to you by the school of advanced study University of London it's great to see everybody here on a Friday night um of course I'd like to thank uh Gail day and uh Steve Edwards forinviting me here to talk about um bro's uh D Sila UNS the silver and the cross from 2010 um it is a continuation of a conversation that we had at the uh historical materialism conference last Autumn and uhit's a conversation I hope to continue because I think it's one of Fry's um most important films but for for a number of reasons really not very well known in the UK um so I'm really going to talkabout it in terms of um three aspects um first of all in terms of um Nicole brz's notion of uh visual study um and then uh Al wiseman's notion of um the forensic which we can understand as a
kind of radicalization of on one hand um Patrick keeler's notion of the fixed 12 second image which you'll know from films like London and Lon in space and also in a sense a radicalization of stra and related stratorgraphic image and then thirdly uh I'll reference um Thomas El sassa's notion of black leader the the kind of the black non-image that we see in froy's film respite from 2007 so made a bit before uh the silverand the cross um but first um for those of you who who um undoubtedly have some cont for this film but it helps to set these these kind of formal aesthetic and political uh methods and principles into acontext uh I'll begin by saying that the silver and the cross can be characterized as a comparative visual investigation of the painting description of Sero Rico and the Imperial City of poto description delico Imperial Villa De uh which
was painted over two years by the Spanish artist Gaspar mugel deio in 1758 uh a comparison of this painting with the city of poto itself in Bolivia in 2010 400 m above sea level and then a comparison ofum an open air museum which is kind of next to uh the Rich Hill the Silver Hill so it's it's a film of uh so it's a film in which three sets of events and three sets of locationsare brought together it's going to be recorded for posterity on a podcast I'm so sorry so so we have three sets of scenes we have uh the Rich Hill in 2010 the open air museum in 2010 and thenthis painting uh from 17 uh 85 which is uh uh filmed in 2010 in Bolivia in the city of sucra and this was commissioned uh by the curators the artist U aliia ker Andrea sikman and the curator Max
J hinder for this exhibition this is the catalog of the exhibition called um the pzi principal how can we sing the song of the Lord in an alien land subtitled Colonial image production in the global economy uh anexhibition that went to three cities uh Muse National Cent rain sfia in Madrid H culture and devel in Berlin Muse National de and mograph at laaz in
This section explains the historical background of Potosí, the silver economy, and primitive accumulation. It also describes how the filmmaker researched the painting and discovered details that were invisible in standard reproductions.
Bolivia and uh uh Manuel J borer Vel the director of Raina sopia writes the following he says in the 17th century barely 100 years after its Discovery and conquest by the Spanish poto in what is now Bolivia butwas then a a so-called Vice royalty of uh Peru was one of the most important cities in the planet with a population larger than London or Paris the silver and the other metals that were mined from the RichMountain said Riso or Rich Hill as was known circulated the planet and were used to fund the hapsburg wars in Europe and to repay the Dynasty's enormous loans to German and Jes Bankers the exploitation of the ptoi minesproduced the first accumulation of capital in the modern period and was the Forerunner of the model for present day financial globalization in putto this excess of wealth was founded on the meter MIT the slave based system in which
the indigenous population was worked in subhuman conditions the meter Mita was a system of coercive labor practiced within the Peruvian Vice royalty according to the historian Peter bakell in his book miners of the Red Mountain so Bell goeson to say the meter was not based on the arbitrary brutality of uh IL conquista The Conquistadors but was the means by which a modern State supplied its entrepreneurs with the population required to create added value the populationrequired to create added value there was no immutable distinction between forced labor and Free Labor The Continuous shift between wage labor and free labor in puty reveals a system in which work has become a commodity and survival dependson money and then Sylvia federici in caliban and the witch states that primitive accumulation is the term that Marx uses to characterize the historical process of capitalist relation of capitalist relations its importance lies above all in the fact
that primitive accumulation is treated by Marx as a foundational process revealing the structural conditions for the existence of capitalist Society this enables us to read the past a something which survives into the present so it's this last pointof federi to read the past as something which survives into the present which clearly carried over in Faro's methodology we can say that the the purpose the imperative the method the force of the silver and cross is forfari to take on this analysis of what of what survives into the present using a small number of constrained means uh in his essay for the catalog uh the essay it's a short kind of analysis of the processof making the film froy admits that he never embarked on a project before with so little prior knowledge uh a project which demanded so much research and whose research was so difficult for him to undertake such that it
wasn't until he journeyed to Bolivia itself that the research was really able to take form in the shape of the of the actual work that we see so what froi points out then is uh is a key aspectwhen he was based in Berlin he found the existing reproductions of the painting of the description of s Rico to be inadequate they were mostly black and white prints found in the New York exhibition catalog and there werea number of Publications and there there was one uh color poster frocky says this a crucial point he says the original painting measuring some 350X 200 CM so 3 and 1/2 M by 2 m featured a number ofimportant details such as figures under a centimeter in size representing workers that in these reproductions remain unidentifiable in other words in reproduction there is something like a threshold of detectability already operative in the painting of barrier from 1758
not 1785 as I said earlier so the the threshold of detectability that Al wisan will later on attribute to satellite imagery to the ability of satellites to well the ability of Civilian satellites not to be able to detectpeople below a certain threshold of pixels this principle which exists in satellit is already operative in the reproductions of the painting and in a sense froi goes to sucra he goes to the Museo Colonial chakas univers San Franciscojaier de chisaka excuse excuse my pronunciation in order to study and to make visible and to to find evidence for himself of these figures under a centimeter in size the workers that in these reproductions remain identif unidentifiable thisis what's crucial for froi to travel there himself and to study workers that remain unidentifiable so when froi and his colleagues the cameraman Ingo ksh who he's worked with who he worked with from the 7s onwards the sound
engineer researcher and producer matius Ryman traveled from uh Madrid from Berlin to Madrid from Madrid to Santa Cruz and from Santa Cruz to sucra in Bolivia uh they found the painting and proy describes it as follows uh thepainting was uh poorly lit but the accommodating Museum director oreta durandal granted us permission to open the windows and climb on a chair to study the details when we began filming the following day the painting was placed intoan antichamber where it was illuminated indirectly and evenly by daylight the museum staff readily assisted Us in discovering and interpreting some of the details so in the several days of which uh frocky and his team of ksh and
The speaker analyzes the film’s fixed shots, moving shots, and black leader as formal tools for revealing hidden labor and violence. He connects these methods to the idea of visual study and to the possibility of a future forensic approach.
Ryman began filming um a vocabulary develops a vocabulary that we can see clearly in the film uh we can we can enumerate this vocabulary uh one by one first of all we can see uh the fixed shot thefixed camera shot which scrutinizes the details of the painting let's remember that the figures many of the key figures as we'll see later well the key distinction that froy realizes as soon as he starts to look at thefilm the painting carefully is the distinction between what he calls uh the non-w workers and the workers it is the non-w workers that are over a centimeter and the workers the indigenous population are still too small for hiscamera to see as you'll see there's there's certain points where his camera is still straining to see the actual non the actual indigenous population in other words froi uses his camera as a kind of magnifying uh enlarging device
in order to first of all render the distinction between so-called non-workers and so-called workers and then secondly to make the distinction between the in distinction between so-called free laborers and So-Cal called Force laborers so first we have firstwe have a a distinction and then second within that distinction we have an in distinction and it's only by traveling to sucra that froi can begin to gauge that double level of Distinction and indistinction through the fixed perspectivewe could characterize the fixed perspective shot in terms of in terms of P kila's notion uh which he he narrates in the beginning of London if you remember patri Kila says the following Robinson believed that if he lookedat it hard enough he can cause the surface of the city to reveal to him the molecular basis of his own sorrowful events and in this way he hoped to see into the future the molecular basis of his
own sorrowful events so the fixed camera in pilo's 12 seconds Rocky's fixed camera is much less but the notion of revealing the molecular basis of sorrowful events is gestured at in the fixed camera so next to that isof course the traveling shot and frocky uses this as we can see to reveal Pathways to reveal waterways to reveal the processions of pack animals to reveal Water Works VI ducts to reveal the distinction between the houses ofthe wealthy and the houses of the indigenous in other words to trace through the painting a notion of cartography a notion of mapping and a notion of the evidentiary between the fixed shot and the moving shot what becomesavailable is the painting as the scene of a crime the scene of genocide uh froy says or rather uh froy's uh voice uh froy's voice uh voice over person cyia bataa who's a filmmaker in her own right and
who plays the kind of the role that Alexandra Stewart played for marker cin Bata points out that the the the notion of genocide the the fact of genocide is the fundamental condition of the rich h it is thefundamental condition of Sero Rico but she says that nowhere is that genocide directly portrayed nowhere is the violence that the indigenous population undergo nowhere is that made visible in fact she says it's silenced in other words for allthe panoramic epic perspective of berio's painting there is something like not just a visual silence but a constitutive silence built into the perspective of the painting and this constitutive silence is shared not just by barrier but is canbe generalized throughout philosophy throughout European philosophy so the pictorial silence which is understood as a as a kind of visual transposition of of a of a disappearing this disappearing has an epistemic implication which is generalized across philosophy uh
European philosophy is also in this sense uh an epistemic disappearing of this genocide and in this sense also carries the traces of the crime of the genocide so it's clear that berio's painting is not simply a witness toa crime it is not simply uh a commemoration of a crime it is a participant in its disappearing and in its elevation of the rich hail it is a participant in a crime and we could say that umnot only the still and fixed perspective and the moving perspective but froy's use of the the black leader the digital black act as a kind of respite a kind of respite which registers the visual silencing or we couldreverse it and say the audible audible non-visibility of genocide and in this sense the the way in which uh the black image plays out the way which it plays out in the film is evoked and calls upon the
earlier film respite I'm just going to quote from Thomas elsasser who talks about spite a bit earlier on Thomas elsasser
says I can just find thas elasa talks about the uh the image as a respite from
the hold on a
second okay froy's splicing of black leader this is Thomas elass for's splicing of black leader creates the necessary gaps The Spectator the the necessary gaps into which The Spectator May ins insert their own memories be they media imagesfilm narratives history books or Civic lessons froy's gaps in other words engender a kind of forgetting that should neither be filled with more evidence or forensic investigation and this is El SATA talking about respite in 2007 which isfroy's um visual study of images taken dur taken in the Wester Borg camp in which uh victims of the Nazis were placed while they were waiting to be transported by train to concentration camps and uh so these imagesin Wester Borg function something like a promotional campaign for Wester Borg Camp itself so there Elsas is saying that no forensic investigation is needed but in this film twice cin says uh the role of uh barriers painting the
necessity of barriers painting has hardly been investigated in other words the future task the future task of filmmakers to come is to carry out a new kind of forensics based upon visual methods of study so the three methods
This chapter develops the film’s use of scale, time, and image permutation to build a comparative method. It ends by showing how the film prepares a new kind of forensic imagery that scrutinizes both the represented object and the medium itself.
we've looked at so far the very simple ones of the fixed shot the moving shot and the black leader and we can see at least three more obviously uh we can see the closeup the medium shot and thelong shot and then we can see uh the movement in time from uh 1758 in 2010 and 2010 in 2010 and then most important of all is froy's notion of succession and simultaneity so by simply placing two imagestogether by placing by creating something like um a comparative method or what frocky would call a construction method frocky is able to enumerate uh processes of successive succession and successive simultaneity simultaneous succession and simultaneous simultaneity so he's ableto read one and two two and one one and one one and two in able in other words he's able to permutate the relation between the closed shot and the traveling shot between the fixed shot and the moving
shot between the close up the mid shot and the long shot between the black abstract non-image and the image and he's able to move and create a permutation between these three between all these kinds of images which createnot just not just a visual study but which open out to something like a rethinking of Faro's notion of visual study which he inherits from God which inherits specifically from Nim in 1976 and in this film the notionof visual study the notion of comparative visual methods starts to move towards the notion of forensic investigation um so you'll remember in the final end of the in the very end of the film uh cint Vata makes thispoint she says that um not only is it necessary to use the larger images of figures to understand the smaller images of figures in other words not only is it necessary to use visible characters to understand characters who
are not distinguished but she says that uh she says that archaeology has already begun to work out methods for distinguishing the food that people at in centuries gone by uh archaeology can now investigate the food that was digestedin the stomachs and the guts of people from centuries ago and were able and is thus able to distinguish whether these people had enough to eat or whether they starved so here froi is gesturing towards a future forensicimage which can move from the distinction between a pictorial hierarchy within the image in which we go from a visible image of a non-worker to an in to an indistinguishable image between the fourth laborer and the free laborto a kind of magnification to a kind of perspective which is able to as it were make visible the guts of the indigenous population subjected to a kind of social death subjected to a life in death because let's
remember the the key point of s Rico of the Rich Hill is that the indigenous population are not subject to genocide they are kept alive purely so that they can be worked to death so there is a kindof Life exposed to death that frocky wishes to make visible through these regist through these simple registers so just to wrap up I'm going to read from uh from uh A's notion of the threshold of detectability which typicallyhas been articulated in terms of satellite imagery and in a sense show the project is to take this project over and then use it to return to the Past in order to show something like a new imperative projectfor visual imagery so that something like a visual forensics which this work enacts and performs becomes a future project so wisman says the threshold of detectability is the state of visibility at which an object Teeters on the brink
of being observable or not observable this is an epistemologically enriched status in forensic terms in it the materiality of the thing representing represented a building for example and the materiality of the thing representing that object a film aphoto a satellite in this case a painting in such conditions both the material State and the mechanical means whereby the that condition is archived or witnessed both come simultaneously interview and under scrutiny and this notion of both amaterial State and mechanical means that come simultaneously into view and under scrutiny this is what's at stake in those two final scenes of the silver and the cross and as you remember there is a a long shot inin which we see uh we see the hills we see the mountains behind the rich Hills and then we go to Black and then the next shot we see black and then we see the rich Hills now if
you if you look at those in turn you'll realize that frocky actually matches them the shot of the rich the shot of the mountains behind the Rich Hill which starts with black and then the shot of Sarah Ricoand puty now actually match but froy separates them and then the final shot is the matching it's the matching of the the the Hill from 1758 and then the hill in 2010 and in this matching in this matchingof two times the time of 1758 and the time of 2010 the time of painting and the time of video recording in this comparative method what frocky seeks to do is to lay the ground for a new kindof forensic imagery in which the material State and the mechanical means simultaneously come into view and under intense scrutiny and froy's next project was to work with a precisely on this question thank you thank you very much um
A second speaker shifts to a broader historical and political reflection on conquest, Christianity, and extractivism. He questions simplified myths of colonial passivity and begins to reframe the conquest as a more complex historical process.
thanks everyone and especially G and the rest of the organizers of Marxism in culture for inviting me I'm uh I will be a bit alien to the uh to the cont I think I'm coming from a different asG already introduced you I came from a different background uh just by chance not really by decision um but I will try to um so I'll try to do two things today and uh and I hope uh Iwill succeed so the the things that the first thing I had in mind when when uh watching the film which I have only seen um a trailer before today was uh to become a sort of mythologist and andand and try to find out why would someone try in the in our context today to go back to a painting of the 17th century and what's about uh the cross and the silver and where are we going
so my first uh reaction was wrong and I thought had to do with New York the discussion on extractivism and and and the uses of uh what's now called neoism but then U I found uh other phrases thatI think were more indicative what was coming on and then I could sort of quickly I will do quickly trace of what I think uh is the the context of how um these discussions around uh the cross andthe silver and the the role of Mining and the conquers have been have been used in Latin America also in Europe so um so the first one was a quick thing that's um National Rock from Argentina and basicallythey say they came and they cover us cover us g game word with uh this cover us um they found that dancing gods and they say close your eyes give me the land and take the Bible and then
they said time is money and in this land you're a foreign so this is um this idea that close your eyes give me the land and I give you the Bible has been repeated many many times it's repeatedalso somehow in the beginning of the term when they say we brought the cross and took I took the silver it's something similar the original one if you care is from Des tutu but it's been repeated by umby Gano in the open base of Latin America many fs and and it's been used quite a lot um I had selections with I'll go quickly so basically uh if you try to find out what was what's theidea behind um behind this sort of equation exchanging Christianity for for land or for whatever was was good about the the pre Colonial period um you also find this this whole this whole idea that's quite strong and this
about the decimation or the complete anation I think it says in the film of the population of the Americans so says Gano says for instance the price of the ti of the sorry Terror and ferocity basically meant thatafter a few years the a population of 70 million was reduced to 3.5 million so uh behind Thea of genocide and uh this there is like what I what I've been trying to capture the title of what II wanted to to speak about today is this Triad of colonialism capitalism commercial capitalism maybe and Christianity and so the idea that behind the development of of of capitalism there is there is an important genocide that's sort ofhidden I think um was quite helpful C showing that uh in far's film idea that this is hidden from uh all the suffering is hidden from the painting is quite useful so I could go on for a while
trying to to explain um an idea that was in the first uh slide about the L strike basically this this is a myth that uh for a while there was an agreement between men and women and um inMexico to uh to do a a l strike basically to stop having kids for two years in order to not to bring new people to this um this world that was becoming uh full of atrocities and and soon as I could also try to go on speaking about the way the quick spread of Christians in the Americas the decimation of of the Indian population and uh how on the development of capitalism at uh the expenseof simple robbery as it's called in the film but I won't do this because of two there will be two problems one is I wouldn't be adding much to what's been really I think eloquent in the film and
uh the second one is um because I think it's mostly wrong uh so I will uh I will try to do my two things uh the first one is to show and this a more Nuance image of whatwas the conquest like and the second one will be I will not skip the challenge of what this myths speak about and try to discuss in our context what this really means uh because otherwise I would have been
This section offers a more detailed historical account of Potosí’s mining system, labor arrangements, and technical changes. It emphasizes negotiation, resistance, and the complexity of colonial labor rather than a simple story of robbery.
kind of embedded by the um by the atmosphere of this uh sort of fascist building and end up like in spreading the relation of positivism so I will not do I would not be become just bunker of mythsbut well I'll try to deal with them politically I think if if I can um so bear with me uh what's the most uh what's mostly wrong about the myth behind this discourse I think it's the myth ofpassivity and the way the colonization has been shaped is really uh wrong in this in this specific sense uh where Christianity comes as a sort of gift in exchange of a simple robbery and um so one will bea closer look at the historical record that's what uh we historians love to do but um let's go but there is some interest in that uh um honestly um so uh let's have a look at poy poy was
the of course the like most important center of the Spanish Empire in the 16th century um it brought 90% of the silver from the Americans and it was uh discovered in 1545 so the behind this myth of thestory which is mention as a myth in in the film and that's correct there is there are many interesting things that speak L about the conquest in high world so um the minds were so the the the thekind of the the most um most simple myth of the conquest is that a small group of spaniel came and conquer all the land in America in in the Americas uh and this there is of course the uhum there is lacking there uh all the complex politics of how they made local alliances the thousands of Inca Warriors in the cases of in the case of Peru the many uh Arrangements in which the social relation the
existing social relations were re of course reshaped into this new Colonial situation but had still lot to do with how and and and and ex L who and where profits went and and and and in which ways labelwas was to so uh the history of ptoy is that it was well known for before even before Inca times and was was well known by Incas and so basically they decided to let spers know about the existenceof of of the m at a moment in time it was 1545 uh when when the the span arrived it was already inhabited and uh there were 3,000 Indians living there and using all these methods that uh basicallyI'll speak a bit about the the furnaces that were that were useful for the traditional method of smelting so uh of course the uh arrival of these Piers made an important scale change and this in in in in
a few years everything be we can to should to change rapidly but uh we should not forget that they were not doing a simple robbery as as is said but rather a complex alliance with certain groups with certainlocal groups and uh a complex um a complex building of of of of Labor and the and an exploitation using so far traditional means so if you if we try to look at the at the complexities of themining system uh the thing is it's not easy to SC was was really three centuries of of of a mining system so basically it changed a lot during all those those moments um the the most important um pointof change is 1570s when uh the spers introduced a new uh a new method of of smelting basically they introduced the the idea of uh uh doing um amalgamation with Mercury and that that that they did for a
technical reason but also for a political one so um the let me explain a bit about the the mining system in the first in the first place uh it is true that the mining system dependent on on onmeta on what's been called uh slave labor but but let's like before quickly applying C let's try to think a bit about what was was the meal like first of all the meter was only was not was onlyis is around um it's estimated that the meter was around 10% of the label used in mind so it was important but not just was not even dominant in in a sense in this sense U the Met wasforc Labor Cor in many senses and it it was introduced in the 1570s and it it it was used till the till the 17th century uh but the the guy who is under meter was not a permanent slave
was rather under meter for a certain specific period of time U from 10 to 20 years and he could or she but he could it was basically made he could buy a replacement mha so someone who will dothe work for for him and so according of course to the previous um social statification you'll find that certain people would end up doing that doing the meet and certain others just uh end the appointment appointing there areall sorts of discussions in this in this in the 15 and the 16th century about and discussions have been uh in which way is the meter to be covered whether that's an amount of Labor or whether that's anamount of products and whether those products are raw products or they are um they are cooked in in in one sense or the other so meat is one of the many um of the many um forms of Labor
I say roughly 10% you also have shonas which are sort of inventure servants and they are basically involved as Artisans of silver silver was also being um was was was was in many cases um being manufactured in inin po itself you also have large amounts of mingas which were free laborers and some who were um mous so so who were met in other places of of the country but would would go voluntarily to to dolabor in in py and to so as to pay the rent uh in silver that was quickly to gain than than than going back uh I would like I I don't want to to go into all the thethe details but but what what's what's important here is that the you have a system that that was uh really complex in the sense that the contest was depending a bit on individual entrepreneurs so you have the crown
and you have all the many Spaniard where they are not representing the crown but trying to represent themselves so they had rights to collect the rent and this was so this already began to be a negotiation um Christianitywas for many of those uh individual um Colonial interpret rurs was a cost that was added by the crown so they had to basically sustain the charge against their own will so what I'm I'm trying to to goquickly is that um let me go to other details so or was extracted from M galleries but then what you will find is um that until the until the reforms of of until the introduction of of um amamand Mercury the only way span had to force and and discuss how was all distributed was basically by um by putting some control on uh on the on on the coka that was entering the city so you know
it was basically they have they don't didn't have any access to to the traditional meals that were basically U mostly um administered by women so and they would not be able to to uh to get as much uhmetal as they wanted from from the refining of ore because they had no no no no deal with that and this was was done in a traditional way so changing the uh the technical system was a way ofbreaking these traditional laws but they had to they had still they had to um they had to give the the the Indians the legal right to was called corpa which was basically a share of the ore they producedso if masas were slaves say or for labor will into the into the the mine and will will keep a share of of the or they brought so that they could they could then uh basically tray the the
the the the silver in this case uh outside the the colonial system well the not the colonial system the the um the Spanish uh this or Market was around 25% of silver by the 1850s and the 80s instill the 80s in the 1580s sorry um 1580s if you uh they were still complaining about um how uh 38% of silver was was kept by the uh masas and other and others who would also go on theweekends and at night to collect silver on their own so what I'm saying is um what I wish to smash is I'm not saying how good it was to be colonized that's not really nice as I as afriend pointed out in in in a discussion about slavery what I'm saying is what we should not assume is that colonization was simple robbery and was basically a matter of encountering the passivity of Indians so what I'm trying
to show quickly is that resistance was strictly and and and and though these kind of political negotiations was strictly uh the part of the core of of of of of colan uh which is fair for all the subjectsthat were colonized that is also fair to our own understanding of what what's going to come next so uh I won't get into the details now whether this was U uh within commercial capitalism or or not I think
The speaker turns to the relationship between Christianity and capitalism, drawing on Leon Ferrari and Marx. He argues that the film invites a political rethinking of myth, subjectivity, and collective resistance.
we can discuss that later on what I wish what I long wish to miss is to take the chat I think have five minutes yeah to take the challenge of what's this myth about and what why this speaksto us by U thear the old idea that this famous speaks of you um so why can we present together passivity Christianity def defeat and death and uh what has that has uh to do and um or tryto think about the question of Christianity in capitalism this is by Leon Ferrari who is um uh it came immediately to my my mind um I will keep in yours for for a while um and um I triedto think about why we have this strong myth of uh passivity and and colonialism and that ends with the exchange of close your eyes and and take the the Bible while I take your land
um I first came to um and I was just try to briefly quote a few few things from um while showing this pictures of of Leon Ferrari we quot from Le someone who basically tried to say that theChristian spirit and capital have been have complementary metaphysical premises and we have not from the left criticized them enough actually he uh also in last time tried to show how uh even the left was saying that the Saintsare models of uh of activism and we should we should go back I won't I won't get into those uh wrong uh wrong PA so to say so should be pris uh but but basically he try to chokehow the Christian technology has reorganized the human mind and has allowed for capitalism to be possible because he says without an expropriation of human mind and body and subjectivity it's not possible to have uh capitalism so he speaks
of the thing and the cross and um one of an interesting quote is from Capital volume one when Mark says the religious world is about the reflex of the real world for and for society Society B based onthe production of commodities for such Society where they reduce their individual private labor to the standard homogeneous human labor Society Christianity with its Cult of abstract man is the most fitting form of religion so I think there isa call there to to for us to to take uh and to think about um in the in the future as as fari might like to say so that we have to think about how TR from capitalism hasbeen possible by uh by this symbolical reorganization of such activity in the new religion of the Roman Empire and um R tries to speak of Grace and Terror and um how you have in in in um you have
within Christianity the two sides of what's really the same thing terror is inscribed in our bodies and inscribes in our own subjectivity and he says by the the the most important myth which is Jesus who was a surerebel against the political power of the Romans and who is now shown as someone who's been defeated and dead and is is repeatedly shown as uh someone who uh basically fail in that sense so and he says inthis way the terror is being intern internalized is is certainly becoming parts of our own uh minds and subjectivity and so in order to do any kind of resistance we should confront the anxiety of death that terror isis has been is is the can in on in onel that's that's been inscribed in ourselves so um I think it the the call of pro to think about Christianity and capis and the many ways they have been
uh intertwined and and have uh even though Christianity of course predes capitalism it has some some some uh strong connections with it it's a way of we constructing the uh affective dimensions of Pol of politics and um itmade me think that it's actually in the myth we we s today and I try to First the bank and then uh try to think about what it really means is it's actually us the ones who talk tookthe Bible and and and lost the land and not the Indians of what to see so uh I think the Fe of your assistance depends a bit of on on opposing our adult and real and Collective resistance thatis to say what we can call politics so thank you very much thank you