Cognitive capitalism blurs the work-play divide by investing in minds and social relations

Evidence

Pokémon, we might say, is an example of what Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter (2009), writing about video games, call a “game of empire”: a technologically augmented form of social interaction, learning and social practice that stresses agency and creativity but within a very particular, capitalist-driven context. Like the large, multiplayer online worlds that have shocked economists and sociologists by creating gigantic digital societies and economies, Pokémon emerged in a very particular moment of capitalist accumulation. It is a moment when capital is no longer solely interested in command over workers’ bodies but is increasingly invested in their minds and social relations. In this age of so-called cognitive capitalism we see the emergence of “playbour,” the blurring of work and play in the sense that, where capitalism is increasingly predicated on crafting subjectivities, the clean divide between labour and leisure begins to erode (Kücklich 2005). — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 366

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘playbour’ and ‘game of empire’ — precise vocabulary the reader needs for the financialization-culture argument.
• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s goal of bridging to deWaard’s argument: the colonization of social life by capital is the same move as finance colonizing culture. — connects to: Workers compensated for meaningless rationalized jobs with glittering distractions instead of class consciousness — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 469; Gig-economy liberation rhetoric masks new and deeper labor exploitation — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 225; Postmodern mental fragmentation internalizes social division of labor into cognition itself — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 789 (+13 more)
• SEED: Angle: children’s play commodities as the training ground for financialized subjectivity — Pokémon cards as proto-derivatives participants learn to value and trade.

Broader Connections

• The plastic-brain model emerged alongside capitalism’s shift to auto-organization #expands (0.85) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 18
• Capitalism’s socialized labor is experienced by individuals as alien market relations #corroborates (0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 889
• Postmodern mental fragmentation internalizes social division of labor into cognition itself #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 789
• Monopoly capitalism splits lived experience from the structures governing it #expands (0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 877
• The divide between representation and material reality is itself a constructed effect of capitalism #complicates (0.78) — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 94
• Capitalism’s resilience comes from its plasticity in adopting new social forms #qualifies (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1647
• The division of learning in society is the critical axis of social order #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 69
• Market-centered accounts of capitalism function as ideology masking production #responds-to (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 475