David R. Cole - Capitalised Education: An Immanent Materialist Account of Kate Middleton

Kate Middleton is an international celebrity, as well as a crucial figure in the biological, economic, and cultural reproduction of the British class system. In this book, David R Cole offers us a multifaceted analysis of Middleton as media object. Touching on topics as diverse as courtly love in medieval Europe and derivatives markets in contemporary finance, Capitalised Education traces a web of far-flung relationships that fatally lead us back to the absurdities of our collective fascination with the British Royal Family.

Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University

The pomp and ceremony of a royal wedding might seem a strange anachronism in a world of global finance and cyber-capitalism. Yet, as David Cole demonstrates, the two are folded intricately into each other. Through an immanent materialist analysis that brings together key recent and historical moments or plateaus in the emergence of capitalism, liberalism, and constitutional monarchy, and culminating in Kate Middletons 2011 marriage to Prince William, Coles wide ranging and provocative work reveals the complex and subtle ways in which capitalisms decoding and deterritorialization go hand-in-hand with the continuation of social privileges and hierarchies. Along the way he speaks to the major political movements of the last century (liberalism, communism, fascism, empire, and decolonization), the globalization of media, the 2008 financial crisis, and more. Linking these to both established and emerging theories of radical political action, Cole traces the moments of rupture that might allow another politics to come to the fore.

Nathan Widder, Royal Holloway, University of London

Cole has produced a masterful and critical evaluation of how the British Monarchy continues to assert and grow its influence in the 21st century. He significantly contributes to an almost muted discourse which critically explores how this influence is achieved and what is risked and gained in its attainment. The reader cant but be left with a desire to question whether we should be comfortable with the process and effects this has on our behaviour, development and socialisation.

Roberto H Parada, University of Western Sydney

First published by Zero Books, 2014
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Text copyright: David R. Cole 2013

ISBN: 978 1 78279 036 5

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An immanent materialist account of Kate Middleton

The Hindus teach that the Heaven World is more dangerous for the soul than the Hell World, since it is more deceptive and conduces to the fatal error of overconfidence and assumption of immunity. Like a fighter, the soul must be constantly in training lest it grow soft on an ephemeral throne. So the splendour of the palace, the constant parades, the state barges, the gold and lapis lazuli, the chariots and bowmen, eat away ones awareness of the ultimate reality of conflict.

On April the 29th, 2011, I attended a performance of an amateur stage show which included my nine-year-old daughter as a backing dancer and singer in the western Sydney suburb of Penrith, Australia. This was the day of the royal wedding in London, UK, and as I sat in the third row of the audience, I noticed that many people in the hall were dressed as fake princes, princesses, kings and queens. I wondered: Were the people of Penrith making an ironic and rather silly gesture? Or were they actually saluting the royal event respectfully from across the globe, but in this peculiar and clownish way? Later that night, as I watched the events of the royal wedding unfold on my Chinese made, flat-screen television, with commentary by the celebrity persona Dame Edna Everage, and with an almost exclusive focus on the apparel of the wedding guests, I realised something more fundamental and alarming about the truth of what was taking place. That realisation led me to write these words, and forces the research necessary to square the almost unfathomable conundrum that was presented by the processes and reality of the royal wedding on April the 29th, 2011. I want to express these paradoxes and charades in straightforward terms and in direct statements, yet of course, I cannot, because the . Immanent materialism is a term that explains the production of plateaux such as that of April the 29th, 2011, and the proper name Kate Middleton as the locus of this specific plateau (chapter 7). This book describes a weird knot of bio-cultural accidents that have conjoined the movement of post-modern capital with: social-climbing, heterosexuality, Christian union, elite education, female body-image, clothes sales and the maintenance of royal privilege.

It should be clear to the reader that I am not using the proper name of Kate Middleton in a recognisably human or ascribed manner. Her biography is only of interest in that it demonstrates aspects of the plateau of April the 29th, 2011 (see fake royal costumes to parade in the auditorium, were participating in a global phenomenon: this is an international, one world system, whereby we are connected in previously unrealisable and hyper-commercial ways. The people of Penriths subjective inclinations, or my bemused reaction to such fancy dress, are irrelevant compared to the ways in which Kate Middleton as media object now directs global trade and its requisite attitudes.

The chapters of this book will bring us to the point of understanding Kate Middleton as the media focus that she is today through an examination of plateaux that have defined the ways in which the British royal family have negotiated the power struggles around them. I borrow the term plateau from Deleuze and Guattaris (1988) usage in 1000 Plateaus, who in turn took the term from Gregory Batesons understanding of social-biological-cultural power, and its webs of interconnected subsidiary phenomena:

.

2. Immanent materialism is in this book an example of applied philosophy. Whilst I believe that the construction of the position of immanent materialism is rigorous and fully locatable in the history of philosophy, I do not wish to dwell on the specific metaphysical system that has derived immanent materialism as such. The primary locus of this study is Kate Middleton as media convergence and object. The secondary objects in this study are the focal points and control mechanisms of post-industrial capitalism that maintain Kate Middleton (henceforth sometimes referred to as KM) as object and the subjective positioning that is ascribed to KM as object. One of the most relevant ways in which this happens is through learning. We now learn about KM as media object, and are saturated with this (re)constituted thought by existing and negotiating in contemporary culture. As such, the use of immanent materialism introduces learning as a vital means to understand how our brains are now structured and (re)structured to recognise KM as media object and to behave accordingly. For example, the people in Australia of Penrith dress up in fake costumes, wedding guests trot along happily to the wedding with their partners and in their Sunday best, and I react with a certain amount of revulsion and credulity at the unremitting, naked power displayed on my flat-screen TV on the other side of the world. These behaviours have come about due to learning, and immanent materialism introduces the many-layered thought of learning about the media focus of KM as a historical and affective presence. The future of KM is involved and mixed up with these thoughts, yet this future is defined as a bio-cultural knot of tendencies and flows, that may alter as the ways in which the British royal family incur capital differentiation (currently increasing) and the world economic environment changes. This study therefore has a parallel and complementary underbelly in learning and education to explain KM as a sustained media object which is through the unconscious constructivism of immanent materialism.