Just a link to some video, found at American Samizdat. And following on from here. Update: um, alright. Who says we have to let them vote? In an entirely more frivolous vein (or sinister, depending on how you look at it...and not that we'd ever want to become that kind of blog, heavens forbid!) here's the Fema Rap For Kids (courtesy of Mefi). More on Katrina from a rhetoric/discourse-analysis tack here.
And on yet another note, some congratulations to Baghdad Burning are in order.
For your quick or leisurely perusal, the compilation of Long Sunday's recent symposium on Mario Tronti's "The Strategy of the Refusal", and some remarks. The multitudinous, but alphabetised, contributions:
»Jon Beasley-Murray, The new barbarians
»Eric Beck, Minor refusals
»George Ciccariello-Maher, Class and subalternity
»Jodi Dean, Two questions on Tronti [follow-up]
»Roger Gathman Fantasy sites and the conquistadors of the planet
»Nate Hawthorne, Notes on "The Strategy of the Refusal"
»John Holloway, Adorno meets Tronti
»Doug Johnson, Intellectuals, the refusal of power, office workers' unions
»Brian Lamb, I would prefer not to bore you
»Craig McFarlane, Refusing to engage
»David McInerney, Tronti and Althusser
»Angela Mitropoulos, When will this labour end?
»Brett Neilson, Five theses on Tronti
»Stephen Squibb, Strategy of refusal of strategy
»Keith Tilford, How no can you go? Part I [Part II]
The preamble to the Long Sunday symposium, which includes links to related texts. The relevant essay by Tronti is here, and a quick link to Long Sunday's Tronti folder.
There were also a number of related posts elsewhere: Destructive Creation, Northanger, Going Somewhere, Philosophy.com, pas au-delà, Attitude Adjustor. (Those are the most directly related to the discussion, though I wouldn't be surprised if I've missed some.) And, not least, there is always the ongoing reading at Leggiamo Tronti.
My immense gratitude to all those who contributed their writings, readings and questions - those who simply took the time to read along with, and specifically those, such as Matt, who spent much time coding and uploading.
Already, Jon has the ball rolling for another reading, and I'm hoping that blogweaving continues, mutates and grows. Not only because it creates a shared conversation that cuts across various blogs without converging along the one line, but also because - in ways that have yet to be fully explored - it marks an autonomy of writing, reading and research from the university that, particularly in times such as these, becomes an imperative. Needless to say, what we read and write is related to how we read and write, no less than it is to the diificult questions of who, how and why this 'we' might appear, in that process.
Many thanks for the adventure.
Hot on the heels of the rather successful Tronti symposium, it has been suggested that we turn our collective attention and efforts to Gayatri Spivak.
It is possible that this might be an enterprise that would bring together the forces of Long Sunday, the Weblog, and the Valve.
The proposed text is "Scattered Speculations on the Question of Value".
Update: We now have a preliminary schedule. Further participants and suggestions always welcome.
In Planet of Slums Mike Davis writes:
the future of human solidarity depends upon the militant refusal of the new urban poor to accept their marginality within global capitalism.
The book, an extension of Davis's earlier New Left Review article, documents the horrors of a world with over 900 million slum dwellers, the world wrought by neoliberalism. As I read it, the book also puts the so-called war in terror in sharp relief as a new global class war, one fought to protect the way of life of those who can afford cars, gas, movies, water, reasonably secure housing.
On July 22, 1997 Alan Greenspan testified before Congress to give his views on the so-called new economy. Growth was high, unemployment was low, and yet inflation remained perfectly under control. Greenspan had a simple explanation for that. Worker insecurity:
But even if the perceived quicker pace of application of our newer technologies turns out to be mere wheel-spinning rather than true productivity advance, it has brought with it a heightened sense of job insecurity and, as a consequence, subdued wage gains. As I pointed out here last February, polls indicated that despite the significant fall in the unemployment rate, the proportion of workers in larger establishments fearful of being laid off rose from 25 percent in 1991 to 46 percent by 1996. It should not have been surprising then that strike activity in the 1990s has been lower than it has been in decades and that new labor union contracts have been longer and have given greater emphasis to job security. Nor should it have been unexpected that the number of workers voluntarily leaving their jobs to seek other employment has not risen in this period of tight labor markets. To be sure, since last year, surveys have indicated that the proportion of workers fearful of layoff has stabilized and the number of voluntary job leavers has edged up. And, indeed, perhaps as a consequence, wage gains have accelerated some.
As long as people are scared to lose their jobs they don't ask for more money. And that is of course the reason to bring this up today. The CPE. The conventional wisdom is that the mob just doesn't understand that if it's easy to fire people, employers will sooner hire them. Maybe so, though it should perhaps also be pointed out that if it's easy to fire people, it's easy to fire people, and that too has an effect on unemployment figures. But ultimately unemployment is not what laws like the CPE are about. The worker insecurity they create is not some accidental side-effect; it has a very clear function.
Another site, in addition to the one already on the sidebar, carries brave sarcasm and commentary, as well as translations of graffiti (courtesy of s0metim3s). In the US meanwhile, we're striking brave new blows in the fundamentalist reactionary nostalgic "preemptive" war on democratic dissidents.
Labouring against work. Mulling over the contributions and remarks made during the course of these readings, this is what strikes me as the first paradox, which is also the specific paradox of abstract labour and concrete labours that, in turn, characterises Marx's distinctive account of capitalism, that which brings all others paradoxes to the fore and makes them boil over. It's all about specificity, the difference and the cut. And is there anything more paradoxical than communism, a class politics that gears itself toward the abolition of class society? Operaismo - ie., workerism - against work. And Tronti's essay is nothing if not paradoxical.
Who would have guessed that a discussion of the refusal of work would result in so much toil?
Reading Tronti has been somewhat of an experience. Consequently, I'm not sure how to proceed with my comments because my reading of Tronti has alternated between fascination and boredom. Perhaps these two responses to Tronti are closely related because, Tronti, who I've never read before, appears both as new and sedimented. Some of the ideas are quite familiar and in this respect we might speak of Tronti as an origin and thus an interesting spark of creativity, but, at the same time, his ideas have appeared over the past forty years in fragmented form, most notably in Antonio Negri and Paolo Virno. Fascination & boredom; new & old.
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