through europe - exploitation

Fragments on the zombie myth: the mortification of general intellect and the half-life of the cognitariat

Toby Austin Locke — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 12:55:55 +0000

The only modern myth is the myth of zombies—mortified schizos, good for work, brought back to reason.

- Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari

The zombie is the point at which power’s domination, the domination of the state and of capital in all its shades - subjective, existential, epistemological, even ontological - has entered so completely into our communities that the unquestioning automaton is the most recurrent and common form-of-life to be encountered. It is the point at which subjectivity has been so deeply infested by the love of power, the micro-facism that is diffused across the global bio-political mass, that life only appears as a half-death, an existence the potential forms of which are predetermined, prelimited, constrained. The images of loved ones appear, but terrify; intimacy gives way to disgust, and those who break free of their cages of isolation, who demand to reclaim life from its half-death, are confronted by the utter terror that surrounds them.

A sarà dura. Per loro!

Stefano Dorigo — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:08:34 +0000

Il grosso del concentramento è sotto il fortino militare di Exilles, da cui partirà il corteo principale in direzione del cantiere dove sorgerà il Treno ad alta velocità. In testa, lo spezzone dei sindaci no tav, con tanto di fascia tricolore a tracolla. Dietro i bambini, con palloncini e cartelloni colorati.
Prima della partenza del corteo principale, un nutrito gruppo di giovani si stacca per dirigersi verso Sant’Antonio. Siamo tra loro.
Il sole splende sulle nostre teste, mentre proviamo a immaginare quanto forte potrà battere sulle zucche vuote chiuse dai caschi blu.

test drive

tragicoptimist — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:06:04 +0000

rubber to the road, roaring rage : burning. shelby gt and he jet setting arizona afternoon sunbaked desert setting, black and blasting fast. busting past, empty space. dense air, hot and sand. salt white blurring visions blinding, grey strip scissions sections right and left : Lee racing leftlane lest he die – test drive.

he hand heel holding the wheel, right between bottle and gear. whiskey wet his lips, cigarette breath. chuck the butt, had enough : eight years of endless effort, crosscountry constant concrete slabbing. fatigue facing, work waking fifteen hour days exerting. building bridges, making gaps : pissing from pittsburgh to portland, constructing the world. tens of tons a son of steel and stone, unshaven. alone.

Night of the living geeks

Federico Campagna — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 15:25:39 +0000

Geeks are a nice species of creature. Cutely dressed, delicate, fragile, softly spoken to the point of mutism. Yet, they have managed to colonize the collective imagination of an entire generation. This generation. But who are the geeks? And how could this species of shy elves take over the innermost sanctums of the western cultural environment?

Dopo Cristo

Franco Berardi Bifo — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 22:00:00 +0000

All’inizio dell’autunno 2010 Sergio Marchionne ha dichiarato che lui vive nell’epoca dopo Cristo, e non può stare ad ascoltare le considerazioni che provengono da gente che vive nell’epoca prima di Cristo. La blasfema metafora di Marchionne vuol dire che da quando esiste la globalizzazione non si possono rivendicare quei diritti e quelle garanzie sociali che vigevano prima della globalizzazione.

Anno Domini

Franco Berardi Bifo — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 22:00:00 +0000

In the early autumn of 2010, Sergio Marchionne declared that he lives in the AD era and cannot be dealing with listening to people who come from the time Before Christ. This blasphemous metaphor means that from the moment globalisation came into existence it has become impossible to defend the social rights that predated it.

Stud's Jouissance

Richard John Jones — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:49:45 +0000

"The first thing you have to understand is that this is a fucking professional environment. "It's like any other job. "But its also a lot tougher, you can't blink for a minute, there is always an opportunity to boost your value, make connections, develop your brand. "But we're also not looking for any grandstanding, you aint shit at the moment, and if you peacock yourself around like an asshole, no one is going to want to give your tragic ass a break - no one wants some over inflated ego or some old meat.

Fish

Federico Campagna — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:27:14 +0000

He hadn’t the time to get changed and the collar of his shirt was starting to annoy him. It was a stiff collar, almost ceremonial. Considering the total price of the shirt, that short strip of fabric must have been worth at least ten pounds. More or less the reimbursement fund for a whole day spent at ‘work’. And, to be at ‘work’, this kind of shirt was compulsory. There wasn’t a real uniform, apart from the price-tag of the clothes.

Intensities of Labour: From Amphetamine to Cocaine

Federico Campagna — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:33:33 +0000

At the end of the 1960s young and cocky Situationists like myself talked of the Japanese economic miracle – because then it was the Japanese miracle –as being fuelled by amphetamine. The evidence was anecdotal, but it was well known that the cheaply-made drug was a major business for the Yakuza. This particular miracle was manufacturing-based, electronics and autos figured prominently. In modern parlance, it was Fordist.

Internship - A Periphery

Federico Campagna — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:40:12 +0000

There is a place, at the periphery of the work market, where many of us are still held. It is a space that resembles that of the ‘sweat lodge’, the tent at the periphery of the village where teenage Lakota Native Americans used to spend a few weeks of sacrifice and purification before entering the adult age. This place is now called internship, and, like all peripheries, it is a grey limbo, a space of suspension, where the laws of the centre do not apply and the freedom of the terra incognita remains only as the memory of a mythical past.