Refrains of the Future: about Rhythmic Machines of Capitalism

Abstract

In this article we seek to outline a thought on the temporal character of the experience in capitalism through the concept of refrain, proposed by Guattari and Deleuze. To this end, we turn mainly to the Guattarian texts. The refrains are the rhythmic machines that temporalize the experience, components of passage that tend to autonomization and adaptability. From these qualities, the ritornelos in capitalism can be understood in three cores of temporalization: domestic-affective, labor-social and mutant-rhizomatic. We understand the first as a musically activated affective link that tends to control a small territory, while the second is activated by neoliberal flexibilization and the chronographic slavery that follows from it. The third core would be able to annul the other two in an opening to the cosmos, time and desire. Thinking about rhythmic innovations that go in that direction, we arrive at the idea of futurythmachine (Eshun) and its development in the Global ghettotech (Goodman), the fusion of folk elements with electronic music by marginalized populations around the world. two rhythms from this periphery break into the temporal structure of pop: the solidified syncopation of reggaeton and the inorganic collapse of trap. However, the algorithmic conditions that increasingly manage labor and consumption extend to the circulation of aesthetic refrains. Algorithms are complex refrains, so to recover the singularity of aesthetic processes it is also necessary to enter in the algorithmic plane of composition, intervening in a different level of creation.