Call centers give consumers their most direct experience of capital’s centerlessness
Evidence
The call center experience distils the political phenomenology of late capitalism: the boredom and frustration punctuated by cheerily piped PR, the repeating of the same dreary details many times to different poorly trained and badly informed operatives, the building rage that must remain impotent because it can have no legitimate object, since – as is very quickly clear to the caller –there is no-one who knows, and no-one who could do anything even if they could. … In this experience of a system that is unresponsive, impersonal, centerless, abstract and fragmentary, you are as close as you can be to confronting the artificial stupidity of Capital in itself. — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 132
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Capital’s center is missing yet still posited as a responsible agent — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 138; Call centers reveal Capital’s systemic inefficiency as a profit fixation — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 131; Call centers embody capitalism’s centerlessness yet fail to undermine faith in its efficiency — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 131 (+1 more)
Related
- Call centers give consumers their only direct experience of capitalism’s centerlessness (similarity 0.93)
- Call centers reveal Capital’s systemic inefficiency as a profit fixation (similarity 0.93)
- Call centers embody capitalism’s centerlessness yet fail to undermine faith in its efficiency (similarity 0.92)
- Call center rage is directed at a fellow victim with no effect (similarity 0.86)
- Capital’s center is missing yet still posited as a responsible agent (similarity 0.79)