It’s tempting to think demons, trolls & vamps are mere playful categories, and indeed they are, but they’re also grounded in some fascinating research, both coming from management theory (Venkat) and political theory (k-punk’s work). In a way, by adding a fictional spin to the understanding of subject-positions — ie speaking of vampires, trolls, demons — one is also revealing the genesis of such figures in the popular imagination. Vampires especially have a history in writings on capital, dating back to Marx himself, who uses a number of vampiric metaphors to describe the “vampiric” or “parasitic” relations of capital. The popular resurgence of this discourse was launched by Derrida who, in -Specters of Marx-, spent some time tracing the way in which the language of spirits, ghosts and vampires in Marx’s discourse is more than just a rhetorical flourish, but functions as a logic of what Derrida calls “hauntology.” This is another way of demonstrating that there is no ontological basis of presence, or nonparasitical ground, to which capital would be a parasitism — in short ontology itself is already hauntology, already simulacra, and so forth. The implication is that capital does not come from without, but is integral to the structure of the system within, all the way through to the hauntological level. It gets more interesting than this, in terms of effects for such incorporation theory when thinking of political programs that would go forward from this position (which would perhaps deconstruct left/right political spectrums), but that’s the nut of it. The next step was this language of hauntology and its basic precepts being picked up by the likes of k-punk, who expanded the use of hauntology in his writings on capitalist realism (now out as a book on Zero Press).

So the use of grey vampires, trolls and psychodrama demons is part speculative theory but also part post-Freudian use of deconstructive archetypes to talk about subject positions within the system of global capital. Like Eco’s morons, lunatics and so on, grey vampires, trolls and demons are subject positions one can fall into, or rather be seduced by. But unlike Eco’s archetypes, the work I am pursuing here only considers such subject positions as contingent upon frameworks of life and work. In this sense, they are critical assessments of contemporary labour conditions under capital, with parallels in other fields such as sociology and political economy (especially in flexitarian or precarious labour). Eco’s use of his human archetypes, on the other hand, seem to operate in a kind of nebulous way, without reference to a system of economic exploitation which would make such archetypes preconditions for being-in-the-world. Which is fine; but in this sense I do not think that Eco’s archetypes can be related to Venkat’s. Sociopaths are much more complex than lunatics; as Eco says, lunatics are morons without a functional logic. Au contraire, Sociopaths are highly functional in capitalist systems. And being a Loser does not necessarily mean being a fool, in the sense of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, as all Sociopaths begin as Losers, and Sociopaths master the language of Powertalk. Losers are a category without content, in a sense, the great multitude, and the position of Loser has more to do with an economic categorization.

As for exodus, I do not think any transcendence is needed. Indeed, most Losers are Losers precisely because they do not invest in (corporate) work, and instead are operating a life elsewhere that, for them, has more significance, even if it has not economic value. In short, such Losers appear as such to corporate Sociopaths, but in other qualitative (and usually not quantitatively-assessed) circles, they might be revered, well-respected beings. For example, the dude who works a dayjob at the gas station might be the city’s best tango dancer at night. In ski towns, such positions of exodus abound. That Sandwich Artist just might be a deadly rider or a committed mountaineer. And in the gravitas of life, it will be one’s actions and not one’s jobs that define’s one’s being. Such ‘elsewhere’ life opens the stirrings of exodus. Exodus proper occurs when it collectivizes: when such streams of people move en masse toward alternative actions of life that their refuse to measure labour under capital as the ruler of existence produces two effects: (1) a destabilization of the quantitative system; and (2) the generation of a functioning alternative socius elsewhere.

Some forms of technoculture performed exemplary movements of exodus. Some never came back.

http://www.dyscordia.nl/articles/61/cretins_fools_morons_and_lunatics.html

In terms of Venkat’s corporate structure, basically lunatic=Sociopath, fool=Loser and moron=Clueless. In terms of Daemons and Vampyres I’m not sure, when you bring in the supernatural we’re probably moving outside the bounds of mere logic. Could there be a a fourth category of Magicians who transcend the limitations of the three others, and is this where we can start to talk about exodus?

Or maybe they’re just cretins.

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Exodus is a contentious strategy if seen as one. And the references certainly become Biblical. Indeed.

In one way, exodus is the general malaise of democracy. Most of us don’t vote and don’t care, for example. This kind of exodus from participation can be seen in two ways. In one way, it signals that conventional involvement in political life is falling apart. Democracy itself might be at stake. But in another way, it signals that people are making-do in other ways. That by exiting en masse from political life, they are creating networks and ways of coexisting in their own manner (and the Net has much to do with this).

As for work, you are absolutely right. One needs to work and exodus is something of a privilege if thought as ‘leaving one’s job’. But exodus can be more subtle, in the sense that the Checkout Losers have invested meaning in their lives somewhere other than work, and are willing to sacrifice work, and its monetary reward, in order to live otherwise.

I live in a ski bum town at the moment, one about to be overrun by the world — yes, Whistler, heart of the Olympicon. And here exodus is the modus operandi of the workforce. Bums since time immemorial have drifted off when the big machine comes in, or the boss demands too much. Quite simply, the possibility of picking up and going elsewhere is the main trend of economic activity here for Losers. The local economy itself recognises this; it’s called the “seasonal workforce.” But what is also interesting about exodus in this manner is that other values beside work mean more for many people in a place such as this. Outdoor activities, and life itself, has more value than having a lot of money.

There is a paradox of course; Whistler is increasingly prohibitive to live in. A recent study (see the Pique January newspaper) shows that 85% of Whistler residents don’t make enough money to cover their living costs. That number corresponds with the number of seasonal workers. Most people working here technically live below the poverty line (though in Western comfort), and earn less so they can, usually, ski more.

Of course at some point, it all caves in, and either you ‘grow up and get a real job’ or become the toothless hippy living in a shack in the woods (a lot of those dudes have been kicked out by the military with the Olympics comin’).

Or you find some kind of way to make it work — that dream exodus job, as a pro snowboarder, photographer, in the outdoor industry somehow, that kind of thing, where work and life mesh. Where your job is something you love.

In Italian Autonomist thought, such as that of Paolo Virno, exodus is the general response since the ’90s of the worldwide workforce to increased demands on their time for a decreasing average wage. Mass amounts of people check-out in many ways. Heck, what we’re really talking about what was picked up by Douglas Coupland in -Generation X- and Richard Linklater in -Slacker-. A kind of drifting-away from exhausting demands toward living life the way one wants it, now, in whatever meaningful one can find.

Of course to engage in exodus on this level means that one already inhabits a fairly privileged sphere of existence. Most of the world is still trapped in slave labour factories, without any of the complex relations of the Gervais Principle at stake; most of the world is hungry, and getting by any way they can.

But perhaps the West’s exodus opens the territory for the great flood of the world’s underdeveloped.