Martina Tazzioli and Oana Pârvan - Technologies of Control and Infrastructures of Redistribution

A well-known slogan that emerged from the disability movement during the 1990s goes: “Nothing about us without us.” It stresses that no policy should be adopted without fully involving those who are affected by that policy. Nowadays, it is a catchphrase used across different fields and institutional settings, signaling that “participation” has become a placeholder for inclusion, democracy, and horizontal decision-making processes. Yet, what does “participation” in a given system mean when the epistemic-political codes, the ability to maneuver, and the stakes of the participation are set in advance by the party in control? So-called “participatory programs,” like surveys and other forms of data acquisition, have been used extensively by humanitarian agencies since the 1990s, and more recently have shifted into systems for practicing what I instead call “participatory confinement.” In such systems, individuals are nudged and encouraged to actively participate in their own confinement and governmentality, “for their own good.” Christopher Kelty, a scholar of science studies and anthropology, rightly claims that this sort of “participation is more often a formatted procedure by which autonomous individuals attempt to reach calculated consensus.” Not only are the goals and forms of participation often preestablished and surreptitiously imposed, but individuals are also de facto pushed to corroborate, contribute to, and improve mechanisms of confinement and coercion. Here, I focus on refugee humanitarianism as a case study for coming to grips with modes of participatory confinement as a systematic political technology of governmentality.

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/123/436863/technologies-of-control-and-infrastructures-of-redistribution/

Каролин Констан - Укрупнение СМИ – старая новая угроза демократии

Быстро расширяющиеся в последние месяцы медиакомпании представляют угрозу для демократии. Во Франции представители крупного бизнеса устремились осваивать информационный рынок с целью укрепить своё влияние на политические процессы в преддверии президентских выборов.

https://humanite-russie.ru/2021/12/17/ukrupnenie-smi-staraya-novaya-ugroza-democratii/

Slavoj Žižek - Heaven in Disorder

As we emerge (though perhaps only temporarily) from the pandemic, other crises move center stage: outrageous inequality, climate disaster, desperate refugees, mounting tensions of a new cold war. The abiding motif of our time is relentless chaos. Acknowledging the possibilities for new beginnings at such moments, Mao Zedong famously proclaimed "There is great disorder under heaven; the situation is excellent." The contemporary relevance of Mao's observation depends on whether today's catastrophes can be a catalyst for progress or have passed over into something terrible and irretrievable. Perhaps the disorder is no longer under, but in heaven itself. Characteristically rich in paradoxes and reversals that entertain as well as illuminate, Slavoj Žižek's new book treats with equal analytical depth the lessons of Rammstein and Corbyn, Morales and Orwell, Lenin and Christ. It excavates universal truths from local political sites across Palestine and Chile, France and Kurdistan, and beyond. Heaven In Disorder looks with fervid dispassion at the fracturing of the Left, the empty promises of liberal democracy, and the tepid compromises offered by the powerful. From the ashes of these failures, Žižek asserts the need for international solidarity, economic transformation, an -above all an urgent, "wartime" communism.

Todd McGowan - The State of Capital: Hegel’s Critique of Bourgeois Society

Hegel’s Philosophy of Right openly proclaims itself to be a work without a political agenda, an interpretation of politics rather than a political project. This essay contends that Hegel’s decision to locate the universality of the state as the culminating point of the political structure represents itself a political intervention that occurs through the act of interpretation. Hegel’s analysis of the relationship between capitalism (or civil society) and the state reveals that we must adopt the perspective of
the state when looking at capitalist society. By doing so, we can recognize the political exigency of moving from capitalist particularism to the universality of the state form

https://crisiscritique.org/volume_8-issue_2/CC_8.2_Todd%20McGowan.pdf

Ralph Wilson, Isaac Kamola - Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War

In recent years hundreds of high-profile ‘free speech’ incidents have rocked US college campuses. Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter and other right-wing speakers have faced considerable protest, with many being disinvited from speaking. These incidents are widely circulated as examples of the academy’s intolerance towards conservative views. But this response is not the spontaneous outrage of the liberal colleges. There is a darker element manufacturing the crisis, funded by political operatives, and designed to achieve specific political outcomes. If you follow the money, at the heart of the issue lies the infamous and ultra-libertarian Koch donor network. Grooming extremist celebrities, funding media platforms that promote these controversies, developing legal organizations to sue universities and corrupting legislators, the influence of the Koch network runs deep. We need to abandon the ‘campus free speech’ narrative and instead follow the money if we ever want to root out this dangerous network from our universities.

Nathan J. Robinson - Are NFTs Any More Stupid Than Everything Else?

People attach value to all kinds of nonsense. While “NFTs” are not uniquely ridiculous, their rise is an extreme illustration of status anxiety in our grossly unequal economy.

A JPG file of a work by the digital artist “Beeple” had sold for $69 million at the auction house Christie’s. A pixelated graphic of a man smoking a pipe sold for over $7 million. The works are sold as what are called “non-fungible tokens” or NFTs, which means that the sale of the work is recorded in a secure digital ledger, giving buyers permanent proof of their “ownership.” 

The trend went beyond artwork. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet as an NFT, and fetched over $2.9 million. A New York Times writer reporting on the phenomenon was shocked when he sold his column as an NFT and received $560,000. Tesla CEO Elon Musk offered an NFT of a tweet containing a techno song about NFTs. Bidding reached $1.1 million before Musk announced he had decided not to sell after all. Things have only gotten stranger since. People apparently pay hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to get a particular custom cartoon of a monkey to put on their social media profiles. A few weeks back, a simulated yacht in a computer game sold for $650,000 in real money. Not an actual yacht, a 3D image of a yacht. 

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/12/are-nfts-any-more-stupid-than-everything-else/

Slavoj Žižek - A Short Note on Hegel and the Exemplum of Christ

This article introduces a new element in the dialectical relationship between the concept and its examples. This new element, that is the third, is the exemplum, which is opposed to what we commonly understand by an example. This is done through Hegel’s reading of Christ and Christianity. In doing so, this work attempts to affirm the relevance of Hegel in our epoch.

https://crisiscritique.org/volume_8-issue_2/cc82slavoj-zizek.pdf

Rebecca Cassidy - Vicious Games: Capitalism And Gambling

Gambling is everywhere, on our TVs and phones, on billboards on our streets, and emblazoned across the chests of idolised sports stars. Why has gambling suddenly expanded? How was it transformed from a criminal activity to a respectable business run by multinational corporations listed on international stock markets? And who are the winners and losers created by this transformation? Vicious Games is based on field research with the people who produce, shape and consume gambling. Rebecca Cassidy explores the gambling industry's affinity with capitalism and the free market and how the UK has led the way in exporting 'light touch' regulation and 'responsible gambling' around the world. She reveals how the industry extracts wealth from some of our poorest communities, and examines the adverse health effects on those battling gambling addiction. The gambling industry has become increasingly profitable and influential, emboldened by thirty years of supportive government policies and boosted by unnatural profits. Through an anthropological excavation, Vicious Games opens up this process, with the intention of creating alternative, more equitable futures.

Kojin Karatani - Science of Spirit

This paper is an examination of “spirits”. There are four kinds of spirits, and they originate in the four modes of exchange A, B, C, and D, respectively. Spirits, in other words, are the powers that compel people. Understanding these spirits is essential for the realization of D (communism).

https://crisiscritique.org/volume_8-issue_2/CC_8.2_Kojin%20Karatani.pdf

Amelia Horgan - Lost in Work: Escaping Capitalism

'Work hard, get paid.' It's simple. Self-evident. But it's also a lie at least for most of us. For young people today, the old assumptions are crumbling; hard work in school no longer guarantees a secure, well-paying job in the future. Far from equating to riches and fulfilment, 'work' increasingly means precarity, anxiety and alienation. Amelia Horgan poses three big questions: what is work? How does it harm us? And what can we do about it? Along the way, she explores the many facets of work under capitalism: its encroachment on our personal lives; the proliferation of temporary and zero-hours contracts; burnout; and how different jobs are gendered or racialized. While abolishing work altogether is not the answer, Lost in Work shows that when workers are able to take control of their workplaces, they become less miserable, and even open doors allowing them to fight back against the elite.

Tiziana Terranova and Ravi Sundaram - Colonial Infrastructures and Techno-social Networks

The techno-social hypothesis concerns the idea that, over the last three decades or so, the technological and the social have become thoroughly enmeshed with each other. It also poses the question of how this new inseparability should be understood. The techno-social hypothesis is not about how, as Bernard Stiegler claimed, social media have bypassed “the traditional networks of proximity that have defined the social since time immemorial.” Neither is it about how technology has subsumed and colonized social life, and how this process might be reversed to gain access to a more authentic, embodied sociality. It is rather about the fundamental role played by “the social” in the modern age, and how contemporary digital and computational networks as technical beings do not just generate, as Gilbert Simondon suggested, a natural and technical milieu, but also a directly (techno-)social one.

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/123/437385/colonial-infrastructures-and-techno-social-networks/

Книжная экономика — Элинор Остром «Управляя общим»

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NhpGP0kJgjI&list=PLSlOrkUZEiSxfeNVza3p1amPzfm-ePJZB&index=9

Ben Tippet - Split: Class Divides Uncovered

In 1990, John Major hailed 'the classless society'; in 1997, New Labour announced that 'we're all middle class now', yet we live in an age where food banks, pay day lenders and zero-hour contracts proliferate: it's clear that class matters.  Foregrounding the economic nature of class, Split challenges the idea that class can be reduced to the cultural. From precarious labor to rising debt; from the housing crisis to environmental catastrophe; from an inflated prison population to the welfare state; Ben Tippet traces the class divide at the heart of all exploitation. Myth-busting meritocracy, he exposes the role that tax havens, colonialism and inheritance play in the wealth of the elite.  Split highlights the potential for a diverse and eclectic working-class bloc to fight back in an age of austerity and uncertainty.

Fanon: A Critical Reader

The wide range of disciplines represented here enables the volume to stand as a contextualizing work in Fanon studies. It contains new original essays on Africana philosophy, the human sciences, dialectical humanism, women of color studies, neocolonial and postcolonial studies, violence, and tragedy.