Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9716267
J. C. Velásquez
Abstract:This article examines the relationship between work, capitalist productivity, and the filmmaking practice of Pier Paolo Pasolini. This article examines how Pasolini’s La ricotta and Teorema represent an interruption of labor and a contestation of the disciplining mechanisms that compel workers to work. Recuperating Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of acinema, this inquiry suggests that Pasolini creates scenes that oppose the capitalist work ethic through formal techniques associated with immobility and contingency. It deploys Hannah Arendt’s concept of action and Jacques Rancière’s dissensus to describe workers’ political actions in these films as gestures where they shed their identity as workers to enjoy life as humans. The purpose of this intervention is to reframe academic debates of anticapitalism around workers’ desire not to work. Pasolini’s films give viewers images that highlight workers’ unproductive potentials, thereby giving them examples of immobile, nonwork dissensual actions, or Herculean unproductivity.
{"title":"Herculean Unproductivity in Pasolini’s La ricotta and Teorema","authors":"J. C. Velásquez","doi":"10.1215/17432197-9716267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-9716267","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines the relationship between work, capitalist productivity, and the filmmaking practice of Pier Paolo Pasolini. This article examines how Pasolini’s La ricotta and Teorema represent an interruption of labor and a contestation of the disciplining mechanisms that compel workers to work. Recuperating Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of acinema, this inquiry suggests that Pasolini creates scenes that oppose the capitalist work ethic through formal techniques associated with immobility and contingency. It deploys Hannah Arendt’s concept of action and Jacques Rancière’s dissensus to describe workers’ political actions in these films as gestures where they shed their identity as workers to enjoy life as humans. The purpose of this intervention is to reframe academic debates of anticapitalism around workers’ desire not to work. Pasolini’s films give viewers images that highlight workers’ unproductive potentials, thereby giving them examples of immobile, nonwork dissensual actions, or Herculean unproductivity.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":"31 1","pages":"208 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89979796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9716196
Danielle Ross
Abstract:The French philosopher Bernard Stiegler published Pharmacologie du Front national in 2013. It is above all a response to the 2012 French presidential election, which, despite the election of François Hollande, gave evidence of the rising influence of the far-right National Front, and thus of a growing regressive tendency in the politics of the Western representative democracies. But Stiegler’s concern in this regard can be traced back to his first book and is present throughout his work, which has always been concerned with the positive technical (default of) origin of the conjunction of desire and knowledge, and the irreducibility of the tendency for these to be undermined by what he will call the negative pharmacological side of technics. In Pharmacologie du Front national, he draws attention to a third dimension of the pharmakon: its tendency to lead to the designation of the pharmakos, or the scapegoat, as that negative side takes hold. For Stiegler, the industrial populism characteristic of today’s consumerist economico-technological model inevitably and dangerously leads to political populism. He thus calls for a new critique of ideology, one that returns to its starting point in Marx and Engels, overcomes the limitations of Marxist and Althusserian materialisms that ultimately remain grounded in an oppositional metaphysics, and provides new practical and conceptual weapons in the struggle against contemporary ideology, whose essential motto is that “there is no alternative.”
摘要:法国哲学家斯蒂格勒(Bernard Stiegler)于2013年出版《Pharmacologie du Front national》。这首先是对2012年法国总统大选的回应,尽管弗朗索瓦·奥朗德(francois Hollande)当选,但那次大选证明了极右翼的国民阵线(National Front)的影响力不断上升,从而表明西方代议制民主国家的政治日益倒退。但斯蒂格勒在这方面的关注可以追溯到他的第一本书,并贯穿他的整个作品,他一直关注的是欲望和知识结合的积极技术(默认)起源,以及这种趋势的不可约性,这种趋势被他称之为技术的消极药理方面所破坏。在《国民阵线药理学》一书中,他将人们的注意力引向了制药商的第三个维度:当消极的一面占据上风时,它往往会导致制药商被指定为替罪羊。斯蒂格勒认为,当今消费主义经济技术模式的工业民粹主义特征不可避免地危险地导致政治民粹主义。因此,他呼吁对意识形态进行一种新的批判,这种批判要回到马克思和恩格斯的起点,克服马克思主义和阿尔都塞唯物主义最终仍以对立形而上学为基础的局限性,并为与当代意识形态的斗争提供新的实践和概念武器,当代意识形态的基本座右铭是“别无选择”。
{"title":"Introduction to Bernard Stiegler, “The National Front and Ultraliberalism” (Extract from Pharmacologie du Front national, 2013)","authors":"Danielle Ross","doi":"10.1215/17432197-9716196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-9716196","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The French philosopher Bernard Stiegler published Pharmacologie du Front national in 2013. It is above all a response to the 2012 French presidential election, which, despite the election of François Hollande, gave evidence of the rising influence of the far-right National Front, and thus of a growing regressive tendency in the politics of the Western representative democracies. But Stiegler’s concern in this regard can be traced back to his first book and is present throughout his work, which has always been concerned with the positive technical (default of) origin of the conjunction of desire and knowledge, and the irreducibility of the tendency for these to be undermined by what he will call the negative pharmacological side of technics. In Pharmacologie du Front national, he draws attention to a third dimension of the pharmakon: its tendency to lead to the designation of the pharmakos, or the scapegoat, as that negative side takes hold. For Stiegler, the industrial populism characteristic of today’s consumerist economico-technological model inevitably and dangerously leads to political populism. He thus calls for a new critique of ideology, one that returns to its starting point in Marx and Engels, overcomes the limitations of Marxist and Althusserian materialisms that ultimately remain grounded in an oppositional metaphysics, and provides new practical and conceptual weapons in the struggle against contemporary ideology, whose essential motto is that “there is no alternative.”","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":"27 1","pages":"119 - 129"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82460913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9716296
B. Diken, Carsten Bagge Laustsen
In the Clouds, Aristophanes apparently ridicules Socratic philosophy as a useless, essentially passive preoccupation, which, “twisted” in the wrong hands, can seriously harm the City. But such an instrumentalist reading of the Clouds (and of philosophy) misses a crucial point regarding the relation between philosophy and comedy. Insofar as philosophy, love of wisdom, is irreducible to wisdom—insofar as, in other words, philosophy is also a matter of taste (a concept which seeks to combine knowledge and pleasure)—the Clouds can be read as an ironic-comic defense of philosophy. To discuss this, the article reads the Clouds in the perspective of free use. This reading makes it possible to articulate two distinct but related senses of perverting philosophy, which are evidenced with material from within the play: the reduction of reason to instrumental reason and/or to state philosophy. To end with, the article discusses the relationship between comedy and philosophy in more general terms.
{"title":"Comic Socrates?","authors":"B. Diken, Carsten Bagge Laustsen","doi":"10.1215/17432197-9716296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-9716296","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In the Clouds, Aristophanes apparently ridicules Socratic philosophy as a useless, essentially passive preoccupation, which, “twisted” in the wrong hands, can seriously harm the City. But such an instrumentalist reading of the Clouds (and of philosophy) misses a crucial point regarding the relation between philosophy and comedy. Insofar as philosophy, love of wisdom, is irreducible to wisdom—insofar as, in other words, philosophy is also a matter of taste (a concept which seeks to combine knowledge and pleasure)—the Clouds can be read as an ironic-comic defense of philosophy. To discuss this, the article reads the Clouds in the perspective of free use. This reading makes it possible to articulate two distinct but related senses of perverting philosophy, which are evidenced with material from within the play: the reduction of reason to instrumental reason and/or to state philosophy. To end with, the article discusses the relationship between comedy and philosophy in more general terms.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82211664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9716253
T. Roy, Rossella Biscotti
{"title":"From Buru to Giudecca","authors":"T. Roy, Rossella Biscotti","doi":"10.1215/17432197-9716253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-9716253","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":"76 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78650963","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9716239
M. Haiven, A. Komporozos-Athanasiou
Financialization is transforming social subjects and institutions, including the university. This article explores overlooked links between the financialization of public postsecondary education on both sides of the North Atlantic and the ongoing “anxiety epidemic” among students (and, indeed, staff). The article argues that the “anxious university” represents a unique space to study the economic, political, social, and cultural impact of the rise in power and influence of the financial sector. By unraveling the complex sociological dimensions of the anxiety epidemic, we offer a vantage on the emergence of new forms and platforms of struggle within, against, and beyond financialization.
{"title":"An “Anxiety Epidemic” in the Financialized University","authors":"M. Haiven, A. Komporozos-Athanasiou","doi":"10.1215/17432197-9716239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-9716239","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Financialization is transforming social subjects and institutions, including the university. This article explores overlooked links between the financialization of public postsecondary education on both sides of the North Atlantic and the ongoing “anxiety epidemic” among students (and, indeed, staff). The article argues that the “anxious university” represents a unique space to study the economic, political, social, and cultural impact of the rise in power and influence of the financial sector. By unraveling the complex sociological dimensions of the anxiety epidemic, we offer a vantage on the emergence of new forms and platforms of struggle within, against, and beyond financialization.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89367053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9516897
Srila Roy
Young urban Indian women have made women's rights to seek pleasure and have fun, especially in public, central to a new repertoire of feminist resistance and also as a way of demarcating themselves from “joyless” feminisms of the past. Concerns around pleasure, fun, and joy appear far removed from the everyday lives of poor and marginalized rural women. In this contribution, the author foregrounds rural women's pleasure-seeking practices, in consumption, fun, and friendship, which were the unanticipated outcomes of their involvement with a local NGO seeking to empower poor women. These were primarily lower-caste, lower-class women who were partially included in the aspirational futures of a globalized India, through poorly paid and precarious development work. Their participation in such work—a disciplinary domain imbued with its own regulatory potentials—enabled the development of new skills, techniques, and capacities in an entirely other domain, of nonwork or fun. The fact that fun, pleasure, and self-making relied on cultures of enterprise, empowerment, and aspiration also brings into view some of the contradictions at stake in neoliberal India.
{"title":"From Feminist Killjoy to Joyful Feminisms","authors":"Srila Roy","doi":"10.1215/17432197-9516897","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-9516897","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Young urban Indian women have made women's rights to seek pleasure and have fun, especially in public, central to a new repertoire of feminist resistance and also as a way of demarcating themselves from “joyless” feminisms of the past. Concerns around pleasure, fun, and joy appear far removed from the everyday lives of poor and marginalized rural women. In this contribution, the author foregrounds rural women's pleasure-seeking practices, in consumption, fun, and friendship, which were the unanticipated outcomes of their involvement with a local NGO seeking to empower poor women. These were primarily lower-caste, lower-class women who were partially included in the aspirational futures of a globalized India, through poorly paid and precarious development work. Their participation in such work—a disciplinary domain imbued with its own regulatory potentials—enabled the development of new skills, techniques, and capacities in an entirely other domain, of nonwork or fun. The fact that fun, pleasure, and self-making relied on cultures of enterprise, empowerment, and aspiration also brings into view some of the contradictions at stake in neoliberal India.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":"4 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89039552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9516954
M. Iqani
This article explores the ways in which patina is deployed in gendered celebrity culture, specifically through forms of visual communication in relation to luxury. The article is framed by literature on race and gender from apartheid to postapartheid, and texture in visual communication in relation to luxury in Africa. The author uses three magazine covers featuring beloved Black South African women celebrities to illustrate three aesthetics of Black feminine success: glitter, shine, and glow. Visually, the three patinas are linked and on the surface might seem indistinguishable, but a difference in positioning and ethic comes through in the discourse animated by each. Glitter is linked to the classic narratives of sexy fame, in which the woman featured is portrayed as the heteronormatively desirable archetype of fun and glamour. Shine is linked to a politicized ethic of visibility, the work of spotlighting presence, legitimacy, and excellence as a role model for a broader feminine community. Glow is linked to a narrative of feminine enlightenment and inner peace, in which beauty comes from within and radiates outward from the skin, and feminine aesthetic labor is harnessed to the project of transcending gross materialism while simultaneously using material cues to communicate that joyful transcendence.
{"title":"Glitter, Shine, Glow","authors":"M. Iqani","doi":"10.1215/17432197-9516954","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-9516954","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores the ways in which patina is deployed in gendered celebrity culture, specifically through forms of visual communication in relation to luxury. The article is framed by literature on race and gender from apartheid to postapartheid, and texture in visual communication in relation to luxury in Africa. The author uses three magazine covers featuring beloved Black South African women celebrities to illustrate three aesthetics of Black feminine success: glitter, shine, and glow. Visually, the three patinas are linked and on the surface might seem indistinguishable, but a difference in positioning and ethic comes through in the discourse animated by each. Glitter is linked to the classic narratives of sexy fame, in which the woman featured is portrayed as the heteronormatively desirable archetype of fun and glamour. Shine is linked to a politicized ethic of visibility, the work of spotlighting presence, legitimacy, and excellence as a role model for a broader feminine community. Glow is linked to a narrative of feminine enlightenment and inner peace, in which beauty comes from within and radiates outward from the skin, and feminine aesthetic labor is harnessed to the project of transcending gross materialism while simultaneously using material cues to communicate that joyful transcendence.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90518474","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/17432197-9516940
S. Viljoen
Writing in 2004, bell hooks suggests that Black men respond to histories of patriarchal domination and emotional isolation through a “politics of cool.” She ties the notion of cool to the ability to be “real.” For her this is epitomized by the vulnerability of blues and jazz musicians whose art was historically a form of lament. She contrasts this with the versions of rap and hip-hop that, she says, use “cool” to distance men from their feelings. Whether empowering or a form of further disenfranchisement, the strategies of cool are the subject of this article. It asks how the politics of cool intersects with race and gender. The article considers the epistemology of “cool” across different consumer media. The music video, This Is America, it is argued, resists easy classification but expands the concept of and jouissance of ‘cool’ so that violence too becomes a kind of vulnerability, an expression of pain. The art of Mohau Modisakeng likewise pulls the politics of cool into the gallery and creates new possibilities for the sublimation of righteous anger. Through iterations of cool, Black masculine subjectivities are discussed as in tension with the dream of decolonization and the transnational reality of capitalization.
贝尔·胡克斯在2004年的一篇文章中指出,黑人男性通过“酷政治”来回应男权统治和情感孤立的历史。她将酷的概念与“真实”的能力联系在一起。对她来说,这是布鲁斯和爵士音乐家的脆弱性的缩影,他们的艺术在历史上是一种哀叹的形式。她将这与说唱和嘻哈的版本进行了对比,她说,这些版本用“酷”来让男人远离他们的感情。无论是授权还是进一步剥夺权利,酷的策略都是本文的主题。它探讨了酷的政治是如何与种族和性别交叉的。本文考虑了不同消费媒体中“酷”的认识论。有人认为,mv《这就是美国》(This Is America)拒绝简单的分类,而是扩展了“酷”的概念和爽爽,以至于暴力也成为一种脆弱,一种痛苦的表达。Mohau Modisakeng的艺术同样将“酷”的政治拉进画廊,并为升华正义的愤怒创造了新的可能性。通过对酷的、黑人男性的主体性的反复讨论,它与非殖民化的梦想和资本主义的跨国现实是紧张的。
{"title":"The Politics of Cool","authors":"S. Viljoen","doi":"10.1215/17432197-9516940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/17432197-9516940","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Writing in 2004, bell hooks suggests that Black men respond to histories of patriarchal domination and emotional isolation through a “politics of cool.” She ties the notion of cool to the ability to be “real.” For her this is epitomized by the vulnerability of blues and jazz musicians whose art was historically a form of lament. She contrasts this with the versions of rap and hip-hop that, she says, use “cool” to distance men from their feelings. Whether empowering or a form of further disenfranchisement, the strategies of cool are the subject of this article. It asks how the politics of cool intersects with race and gender. The article considers the epistemology of “cool” across different consumer media. The music video, This Is America, it is argued, resists easy classification but expands the concept of and jouissance of ‘cool’ so that violence too becomes a kind of vulnerability, an expression of pain. The art of Mohau Modisakeng likewise pulls the politics of cool into the gallery and creates new possibilities for the sublimation of righteous anger. Through iterations of cool, Black masculine subjectivities are discussed as in tension with the dream of decolonization and the transnational reality of capitalization.","PeriodicalId":35197,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Politics","volume":"67 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79823097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}