Notes for a Non-​Statocentric Politics

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fish

The stato­centric gaze pro­poses to think of so­cial change as a con­flict between the polit­ical class (“chan­cers, crooks, liars”) and a “we” that is es­sen­tially healthy (“the real people”, “de­cent folk”, “the mul­ti­tudes”). It would be suf­fi­cient for “the good guys” to reach power (through their rep­res­ent­at­ives) to change the state of things. But neo­lib­er­alism is in fact a co-​production. With dif­ferent levels, but we all pro­duce it among ourselves (by en­tering into com­pet­i­tion with our neigh­bour, by spec­u­lating, etc.). It is not enough to be against “the bad guys” as if there were about the place some­where a “good us” that already ex­isted. A new reality has to be cre­ated (and we have to change with it).

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Ukraine Crisis Timeline — Updated to 23 April 2014

Six Theses on Anxiety & the Prevention of Militancy

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vogue1-604x400

Today’s public secret is that everyone is anxious. Anxiety has spread from its pre­vious loc­al­ised loc­a­tions (such as sexu­ality) to the whole of the so­cial field. All forms of in­tensity, self-​expression, emo­tional con­nec­tion, im­me­diacy, and en­joy­ment are now laced with anxiety. It has be­come the linchpin of sub­or­din­a­tion. One major part of the so­cial un­der­pin­ning of anxiety is the multi-​faceted om­ni­present web of sur­veil­lance. The NSA, CCTV, per­form­ance man­age­ment re­views, the Job Centre, the priv­ileges system in the prisons, the con­stant ex­am­in­a­tion and clas­si­fic­a­tion of the youngest school­chil­dren. But this ob­vious web is only the outer car­a­pace. We need to think about the ways in which a neo­lib­eral idea of suc­cess in­cul­cates these sur­veil­lance mech­an­isms in­side the sub­jectiv­ities and life-​stories of most of the population.

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Cupcake Fascism: Gentrification, Infantilisation and Cake

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Eliza Koch

The Cupcake as Object The cup­cake is barely a cake. When we think about what “the cake-​like” ideal should be, it is some­thing spongy, moist, char­ac­ter­ized by ex­cess, col­lapsing under its own weight of gooey jam, me­ringue, and cream. It is some­thing sickly and wet that makes your fin­gers sticky. The cup­cake is none of these things; that is, it pos­sesses none of the ideal es­sence of cak­i­ness. The cup­cake is neat, pre­cise, and uni­form. It is dry, po­lite, and low-​fat. It is defined by its shape, not its taste, and the cake-​cup limits any po­ten­tial ex­cess. The cup­cake is largely aimed at the sort of flat-​stomached people who think con­suming sweet things is “a bit naughty,” and who won’t even…

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Improper attachments, or who do anti-​abortion posters belong to?

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Anti-abortion protestors, Thrin and Joan Short, on Fox News

The events dis­cussed below took place at the University of California Santa Barbara, on 4th March 2014. I had planned to meet Mireille Miller-​Young, a pro­fessor in Feminist Studies, who was chairing a talk I was giving. When I ar­rived, Mireille was in the sem­inar room looking upset and frightened, and vis­ibly trem­bling. She’d just had an al­ter­ca­tion with anti-​abortion pro­testers she said; sev­eral weeks preg­nant she was par­tic­u­larly upset by the im­ages they were dis­playing, and now there was a po­lice car out­side the building. A col­league, en­tering the room, said there were ten cars out­side. On 4th March, Mireille Miller-​Young, a Feminist Studies pro­fessor at UCSB, was walking back to her of­fice with a group of stu­dents. As they passed through the campus ‘free speech zone’, they were…

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“Peace! I Hate the Word!” A Few Thoughts in Favour of Conflict

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Anthony Freda, Peace Prize

The world is riven by con­flict. The re­cent events in Ukraine are just the most re­cent ex­ample. The value and ne­ces­sity of con­flict should not be sub­sumed within the en­tirely un­der­stand­able de­sire to pre­vent vi­ol­ence. I want to argue that peace, as a goal, is not some­thing worth striving for. It is dif­fi­cult to com­ment crit­ic­ally on the topic of law, ne­go­ti­ation, and con­flict. Most com­ments and dis­cus­sions never shy away from re­cog­nising the limits of law in con­flict situ­ations. Furthermore, the politics in­herent in the ne­go­ti­ation of peace have also been covered very well, and from a number of dif­ferent angles. One thing which hasn’t been con­sidered crit­ic­ally though is the sub­ject of con­flict it­self. Conflict has in fact come in for…

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To Demonstrate a Right: Police Power Jurisprudence and the Rule of Law in Zuccotti Plaza

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Zuccotti Police 2011

Waller v City of New York, 2011 At ap­prox­im­ately 1:00 am on the morning of November 15, 2011 the NYPD entered Zuccotti Plaza with ar­mored vehicles, bar­ri­cades and bull­horns and an­nounced to ‘those oc­cupying Zuccotti Park’ that they were to im­me­di­ately re­move all prop­erty and leave the park or be sub­ject to ar­rest. Thus began a four-​hour long co­ordin­ated po­lice se­quest­ra­tion of the area sur­rounding Zuccotti Plaza and the forceful evic­tion of the protestors, achieved by the closing of bridges and street ac­cess, a media blackout and the use of ex­treme force using sound can­nons, pepper spray and mass ar­rests of hun­dreds in­cluding journ­al­ists. Lawyers for the oc­cu­pa­tion frantic­ally sub­mitted an ap­plic­a­tion for a tem­porary re­straining order to the City of New York which requested…

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Five Theses on the Aftermath of the Ukrainian Revolution

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Protesters rally round the monument to founders of Kiev in Independence square

1 The es­cal­a­tion of the Crimean crisis has all but ob­scured the events in the Ukraine during November 2013 – February 2014 that led to it and which alone make it in­tel­li­gible. What took place during this period was a re­volu­tion in the full sense of the word, i.e. without the qual­i­fying ad­ject­ives such as ‘velvet’, ‘colour’, etc., that we have be­come ac­cus­tomed to. What aligns this re­volu­tion with the clas­sical re­volu­tions of mod­ernity was the rad­ical af­firm­a­tion of pop­ular sov­er­eignty or con­stituent power as the found­a­tion of any con­sti­tuted struc­ture of au­thority. While the ‘colour re­volu­tions’ in the post-​Soviet states during 2003 – 2005 are best un­der­stood as inter-​elite con­flicts with an ele­ment of pop­ular par­ti­cip­a­tion, the Euromaidan move­ment is clearly ir­re­du­cible to the…

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The Market as the Unique Site of Truth: On Foucault & Milk

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Foucault

Whom would you ask in order to check if the milk you are drinking is fresh? This trivial ques­tion can be answered in mul­tiple ways. For ex­ample, one could ask a farmer, a bio­lo­gist, a chemist, or even a grand­parent that lives in a rural area. One could even rest upon his or her common sense, saying that prob­ably a (very) few days after its pro­duc­tion, it is counter-​intuitive to label any­thing as fresh. Nevertheless, it would have been quite ec­centric for someone to turn to the Organisation of Economic Co-​operation and Development (OECD) to seek ad­vice on this ques­tion. Still, the OECD in its latest re­port on the Greek eco­nomy dealt ex­tensive with the issue of fresh milk, the reg­u­la­tion of which was considered…

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Five Theses on Financialisation

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matrix

1 The dual nature of con­tem­porary cap­it­alism resides in the sep­ar­a­tion of ‘politics’ and ‘eco­nomics’ on one side, and ‘fin­ance’ and ‘pro­duc­tion’ on the other. However, in fin­an­cial­isa­tion ‘politics’ and ‘fin­ance’ are con­nected, spe­cific­ally by an un­spoken pact of unity whose most sig­ni­ficant fea­tures will be re­vealed below. Financialisation is a typ­ic­ally cap­it­alist sep­ar­a­tion between ‘fin­ance’ and ‘pro­duc­tion’. To para­phrase Ellen M. Wood, it is, first, a system whereby all eco­nomic agents — both buyers and pro­du­cers — must buy or sell fin­an­cial ser­vices to sat­isfy their basic needs. Second, this system or­gan­ises and me­di­ates, above our heads (or you could say from ‘the Cloud’, as with cloud com­puting), a system of global wagers (‘de­riv­at­ives’) with which to spec­u­late on the fu­ture value of com­mer­cial fin­an­cial products: savings…

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The ‘Lawful’ Political Killing of Bogotá’s Mayor: Gustavo Petro

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Gustavo Petro (holding mic) at a rally

One of the longest living myths in Latin America is that Colombia is one of its most stable demo­cra­cies. Of course, form­ally, the country has not suffered a mil­itary dic­tat­or­ship in the last fifty some years and all the in­ternal clock­work of a re­pub­lican system seems to work har­mo­ni­ously: a con­sti­tu­tion packed with rights and guar­an­tees; reg­ular, open elec­tions; a neat and clean di­vi­sion of powers; and the list goes on. Yet this ap­parent in­sti­tu­tional sturdi­ness con­ceals a civil war that has been on­going for more than sixty years. This war has al­most bled rural Colombia to death and has made urban areas a bizarre col­lage of wealth and poverty. It is a tale of two coun­tries: on one side Colombia has now sur­passed Argentina as the third…

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If the state isn’t a corporation, what might it become?

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Enrique Chagoya. The Pastoral or Arcadian State, Illegal Alien’s Guide to Greater America, 2006

That British and other states are be­coming in­creas­ingly privat­ised is the sad litany of our age. So too is the way states in­cor­porate market prin­ciples of price and com­pet­i­tion within their own in­ternal gov­ernance struc­tures. And now, with com­panies run­ning public ser­vices, owning public as­sets, and providing a model for how state bodies should in­teract, the state it­self is being re-​imagined: as a public cor­por­a­tion — form­ally ac­count­able, at in/​decent in­ter­vals, to its share-​holders (the elect­orate); sub­stant­ively ac­count­able to its stake-​holders (that chan­ging array of sec­toral in­terests). The cor­porate state It is not dif­fi­cult to de­velop this cor­por­atist line of thinking. Repeatedly, we are told states com­pete with each other, in a mar­ket­place of states, for in­vestors, cus­tomers and cli­ents, that’s why levels of corporation…

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“We are not from another planet”: Justice 4 Cleaners Campaign and the Struggle for Recognition

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Subaltern Speak

The on-​going struggle of the SOAS Cleaners for ac­cept­able working con­di­tions and equality in the work­place has re­ceived some media at­ten­tion since its in­cep­tion in 2007 – 2008. For a thor­ough and en­ga­ging ana­lysis of the his­tory of cleaners’ la­bour act­ivism across the city, in­cluding the massive con­tri­bu­tions they have made to the London Living Wage Campaign, see Robert B’s piece “Crisis in the Cleaning Sector”, pub­lished in December 2013. Employed by the out­sourced com­pany ISS since 1993, SOAS cleaning staff are de­prived of ad­equate sick pay, pen­sion be­ne­fits, and hol­iday pay. In other words, they are denied the same con­trac­tual be­ne­fits, job se­curity, and working con­di­tions that those em­ployed dir­ectly by SOAS cur­rently have. Working in a de facto se­greg­ated en­vir­on­ment, SOAS cleaners…

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(K)not Politics: Thoughts on Ukraine and Protest

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Freedom and Kiev central square, Maidan Nezalezhnosti.

The events in Ukraine have caused many to wonder what sparked the protests in November and why things un­folded into such vi­ol­ence this February. How do we un­der­stand European and Russian in­terest in this country, and what media, what sources of in­form­a­tion can be trusted? Ukraine has once again raised the ques­tion of the polit­ical; the ques­tion of Europe; the spectre of Cold War Empires. Perhaps un­like the many other horrid, vi­olent dic­tat­or­ships that are con­tinuing to op­press people (DRC) or up­ris­ings that im­min­ently threaten more blood­shed (Venezuela), Ukraine en­cap­su­lates twen­tieth cen­tury polit­ical myth­o­logy. Onto Ukraine, the fantasies of the Cold War con­tinue to be pro­jected. It is the country bor­dering Russia, the European Union and the Black Sea. It…

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Some Reflections on the #ACCELERATE MANIFESTO

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Xanti Schawinsky, Shakespeare Die beiden Veroneser, Räuberballett, 1925Xanti Schawinsky Estate © Xanti Schawinsky Estate

The Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics (MAP) opens by noting the depth of the cur­rent crisis – “cataclysm” – and a neg­a­tion of the fu­ture by “coming apo­ca­lypses”. No need for alarm how­ever: there is nothing political-​theological here what­so­ever, so those who came looking for that might as well stop reading now. Absent, too, is the usual re­frain about the im­minent break­down of the plan­etary cli­matic system. Or rather, it is men­tioned, its im­port­ance, but it is wholly sub­or­din­ated to in­dus­trial politics, and can be ad­dressed only through the cri­tique thereof. What is es­sen­tial is in­stead “the in­creasing auto­ma­tion of pro­ductive processes” – including “in­tel­lec­tual labour” – which is presented as evid­ence of the crisis of cap­it­alism. Catastrophism? Improper use of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to…

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What’s Going on in Venezuela?

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venezuela-uprising-2

It’s dif­fi­cult to briefly ex­plain the situ­ation in Venezuela right now. The dif­fi­culty lies in the fact that it is com­plic­ated, like most things. No matter how various polit­ical prot­ag­on­ists, human rights groups and news media would like to paint things as simple, black and white, they are not. To un­der­stand one has to dig down, deep. A par­tic­u­larly galling video on YouTube ex­plains that mil­lions of stu­dents took to the street to protest about crime and the se­curity situ­ation. The com­ments by Venezuelans on said video are telling. In fact, what English-​speakers hear about Venezuela is one of the biggest prob­lems – if a Venezuelan speaks English, chances are that they are part of the small minority of the (re­l­at­ively) ultra-​rich who’ve been fighting to…

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Racism as Excessive Legalism

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Queue

We rightly cel­eb­rate that we live in a so­ciety where law and order pre­vail. The ca­pa­city to follow es­tab­lished rules al­lows for the smooth op­er­a­tion of the many ne­ces­sary trans­ac­tions that make up our everyday life. And the law, among other things, guar­an­tees that we as cit­izens can ac­cess cer­tain goods and ser­vices by right rather than at the whim of someone who is in a po­s­i­tion of power over us. As those of us who have lived in so­ci­eties where law and order is min­imal know, without law and order, even a small trans­ac­tion like get­ting a driver’s li­cense can be­come so­cially and psy­cho­lo­gic­ally ex­hausting: a circus of going up and down build­ings, beg­ging people, ex­plaining to them what should be ob­vious, seeing people…

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#Accelerationism: Remembering the Future

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Automat, 977 Eighth Avenue, Manhattan, 1936. Gelatin silver print.

For the last forty years the vision of our so­ci­eties as pro­gressive and heading in a better dir­ec­tion has been sys­tem­at­ic­ally eroded. Under the per­muta­tion of cap­it­alism that began in the 1970s, gained trac­tion in the 1980s, ap­peared vic­torious in the 1990s, and faced ser­ious prob­lems in the late 2000s — the fu­ture has been can­celled. Today, it is common sense to pre­sume that cli­mate change and its ef­fects will wreak havoc on the en­vir­on­ment, that real wages will con­tinue to stag­nate, that jobs will be­come more pre­carious, that re­tire­ments and pen­sions will be elim­in­ated, and that in­equality and the ex­ploit­a­tion of society’s weakest will only worsen. This is the fu­ture offered by the vari­ants of neo­lib­eral polit­ical eco­nomy that dom­inate the developed…

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The Insecurity of Public Interest: Criminal Law and Dumpster Diving

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Paul May outside Iceland

The idea of in­sec­urity seems to have an ever in­creasing hold on our con­tem­porary so­cial ima­ginary, a tend­ency which is now reg­u­larly used by the au­thor­ities in order to le­git­imise a spe­cific no­tion of public in­terest. Last week, this no­tion came to the fore when the Guardian news­paper re­vealed that three men were ar­rested, de­tained and very briefly charged for taking food from a dustbin be­hind one of the Iceland su­per­mar­kets. Paul May, Jason Chan and William James were ar­rested on 25 October last year, just be­fore mid­night, for climbing over a wall at the back of Iceland in Kentish town and taking some to­ma­toes, mush­rooms, cheese and Mr Kipling cakes that were destined for a land­fill. Initially ar­rested for burg­lary, the three men were…

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For a Theory of Destituent Power

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Kelesidi_Bliss_Watercolour-on-paper_40x40-24ddadf7

A re­flec­tion on the des­tiny of demo­cracy today here in Athens is in some way dis­turbing, be­cause it ob­liges to think the end of demo­cracy in the very place where it was born. As a matter of fact, the hy­po­thesis I would like to sug­gest is that the pre­vailing gov­ern­mental paradigm in Europe today is not only non demo­cratic, but that it cannot either be con­sidered as polit­ical. I will try there­fore to show that the European so­ciety today is no more a polit­ical so­ciety: it is some­thing en­tirely new, for which we lack a proper ter­min­o­logy and we have there­fore to in­vent a new strategy. Let me begin with a concept which seems, starting from September 2001, to have re­placed any other polit­ical no­tion: se­curity. As…

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