“ every thing is AWesoMe.” spreAdibilit y And THE LEGO MOVIE
189
“derivatives are not essentially economic but feature in all manner of
social relations, sites and forms,” then the legof ication of industry, the
market, and entertainment commodities may have a serious impact
on us as subjects. 29 In other words, as lightly as one would like to take
this fictional account of parental heartbreak over the need to explain to
children that their “hands will never come to resemble half-eaten Hula
Hoops, nor will [their] head[s] develop a circular growth onto which
various hats and hairstyles can be clicked,” it is nonetheless true that
children’s stories, games, and toys mold us as children in ways that stay
with us into adulthood.
As I have been arguing, the current economic order favors the progressive
legofication of businesses, corporations, and public institutions and deals
in mass layoffs, constant restructuring, and the loss of job security. This
model both requires and shapes a specific kind of legofied subjectivity;
that is, people who are separate yet interchangeable and perform much like
minifigures who can figuratively click on whatever hat or hairstyle they
need to move from job to job, or contract to contract, having given up on the
notion of a professional calling or lifelong career. This kind of postmodern
subject was first referred to by Deleuze as a “dividual” – that is, constituted
from a mixed bag of “sub- and trans-individual arrangements of intensities
at the level of bodies-in-formation.” 30 According to Appadurai, this kind
of subjectivity comes into sharp focus in what he refers to as our current
“predatory” capitalist mode, wherein,
[n]umbers are attached to consumer purchases, discrete interactions,
credit, life-changes, health profiles, educational test results and a whole
battery of related life events, so as to make these parts of the individual
combinable and customizable in such ways as to render moot or irrelevant
the idea of the “whole,” the classic individual. 31
The upshot is a world of “dividuals” whose information, the substance of
who we are, can then be “further searched, combined and re-aggregated” to
increase profits, and thoroughly legofied worker subjects capable of snapping
on a different hat as they move from one temporary contract to the next,
taking on legofied work-packages that amount to a parcel – a brick – of
29 Randy Martin, “After Economy? Social Logics of the Derivative.” Social Text 114. 31.1 (Spring
2013): 83–106, 85.
30 Anderson, 165.
31 Ibid., 109–110.
189
“derivatives are not essentially economic but feature in all manner of
social relations, sites and forms,” then the legof ication of industry, the
market, and entertainment commodities may have a serious impact
on us as subjects. 29 In other words, as lightly as one would like to take
this fictional account of parental heartbreak over the need to explain to
children that their “hands will never come to resemble half-eaten Hula
Hoops, nor will [their] head[s] develop a circular growth onto which
various hats and hairstyles can be clicked,” it is nonetheless true that
children’s stories, games, and toys mold us as children in ways that stay
with us into adulthood.
As I have been arguing, the current economic order favors the progressive
legofication of businesses, corporations, and public institutions and deals
in mass layoffs, constant restructuring, and the loss of job security. This
model both requires and shapes a specific kind of legofied subjectivity;
that is, people who are separate yet interchangeable and perform much like
minifigures who can figuratively click on whatever hat or hairstyle they
need to move from job to job, or contract to contract, having given up on the
notion of a professional calling or lifelong career. This kind of postmodern
subject was first referred to by Deleuze as a “dividual” – that is, constituted
from a mixed bag of “sub- and trans-individual arrangements of intensities
at the level of bodies-in-formation.” 30 According to Appadurai, this kind
of subjectivity comes into sharp focus in what he refers to as our current
“predatory” capitalist mode, wherein,
[n]umbers are attached to consumer purchases, discrete interactions,
credit, life-changes, health profiles, educational test results and a whole
battery of related life events, so as to make these parts of the individual
combinable and customizable in such ways as to render moot or irrelevant
the idea of the “whole,” the classic individual. 31
The upshot is a world of “dividuals” whose information, the substance of
who we are, can then be “further searched, combined and re-aggregated” to
increase profits, and thoroughly legofied worker subjects capable of snapping
on a different hat as they move from one temporary contract to the next,
taking on legofied work-packages that amount to a parcel – a brick – of
29 Randy Martin, “After Economy? Social Logics of the Derivative.” Social Text 114. 31.1 (Spring
2013): 83–106, 85.
30 Anderson, 165.
31 Ibid., 109–110.