ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with the discussions of, and resistance to, international norms of intellectual property (IP) as they consistently stumble against the unresolved problem of materiality. On the one hand, new technosocial regimes allow for a seemingly unrestrained production of immaterial culture: file sharing, remixes, even 3-D printing. On the other hand, material conditions—whether based on the uneven distribution of hardware, access to resources, or the economic ramifications of the commodification of information—reflect the heightened and growing global inequality that has come to define the twenty-first century. Below this tension pulse the geopolitical problems of biopiracy and the appropriation of traditional knowledges. In opposition to the reductionist models of creativity and cultural circulation codified by the IP sections of free trade agreements (FTAs), the chapter proposes a theorization of cultural production based on the wave-particle duality that is axiomatic for quantum mechanics. Culture, it argues, can be observed to behave like a propagating wave, leading to theories of abundance, cultural commons, and free culture; but it can also be observed to function like a particle, and accordingly becomes an object available for appropriation, commodification, and regulation. The recognition of the fundamentally dual nature of the creative process, the chapter suggests, could have profound ramifications for the theorization of global IP norms.
