through europe - work

The Discovery Of A Malign Host: Anxiety and Work

Federico Campagna — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 11:48:41 +0000

Apollonio di Giovanni, Ulysses and Nausicaa, 1435

Notes for a talk at South London Gallery, 20th June 2014, as part of Anxiety Festival

I would like to discuss anxiety and its relationship with work today, from a philosophical perspective. I will examine anxiety as connected to the problem of hospitality, and particularly to broken hospitality, then I will explore the changes that the traditional concept of hospitality has undergone under the current condition of Nihilism. It will be in the field of Nihilism that I will explore the connections between anxiety and contemporary work. Finally, I will try to look for a philosophical alternative.

Before starting, I must acknowledge two debts. Most of the first part of this talk derives from a conversation I had with my friend and fellow writer Robert Prouse, whom I would like to thank. The final part of this talk, on the other hand, has been very influenced by the poet Lucy Mercer, and I would like to thank her for that.

Total Working Soldiers

Federico Campagna — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 17:25:51 +0000

Der Arbeiter

In 1932, Ernst Junger published the first edition of Der Arbeiter (The Worker), one of the most penetrating and controversial investigations of modernity to have appeared during the 20th century. At that time, Junger – later to become an anarchist – was one of the most prominent voices of the young German national-bolshevik movement, and one of the sources of inspiration for Adolf Hitler’s party. Decorated as a hero after WWI, Junger wrote Der Arbeiter both as a description of a future world in which the ‘form’ of the Worker (a new human ‘type’ which expresses itself through ‘technic’) would take dominion over the world, and as an invitation to take part to the ‘total mobilization’ operated by the new regime of ‘total work’.

Mixing a crystalline prose with ante litteram cyberpunk visions, Der Arbeiter reads today as a bleak premonition of the world that is unfolding in front of our eyes. Its prediction of the rise of a ‘new race of the Worker’, transcending nationality and ethnicity, finds its realisation in the human landscape of today’s metropolises. Its description of a future ‘cult’ of work - so deep as to invade every aspect of the daily, social or personal, rational or emotional life – loses its sci-fi tone if applied to the world we live in. Junger’s vision of a world ‘totally mobilised’ by work appears to have found a much greater application within contemporary capitalism, than it ever did during the brief experience of national-socialist Germany. It might not be a coincidence that Heidegger’s text The Question Concerning Technology – deeply inspired by the book of his friend Junger – only appeared in 1949, under the dawning light of the new world order.

The sadness of “I Quit” videos

Paolo Mossetti — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 19:04:21 +0000

Like many other viral videos on Youtube, this liberating, mildly choreographic effort to say “goodbye” to a despotic boss made me release more depressant toxins that it apparently did to other million viewers.

The story behind it is now a popular fabula: Marina Shifrin, 25, was employed by “an awesome company” (her words) that produces animation videos. “For almost two years”, she explains, “I’ve sacrificed my relationships, time and energy for this job”.

It’s 4.30am and she’s still at work. It doesn’t seem to be an exception.

She positions her camera in strategic spots, looking straight into it with her thick glasses, then she unexpectedly starts to dance around the office, lonely yet glowing. “I quit”, is the caption flashing multiple times under her moves.

Weaponising Workfare

Aaron Peters — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:06:39 +0000

The potential list of objectionable adjectives that have been extended to the medley of policies collectively understood as ‘workfare’ is, much like any credibility once invested in the present coalition government, indubitably nearing the point of expiry. Indeed workfare, and its present puppeteer the Home Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, are now not not only regarded as mad, bad and malicious but alsothoroughly inept. Surely even ‘IDS’ thought the numbers, the returns on government ‘investment’ in awarding these deals to A4E and others would not be so precociously dreadful as to place the programs beyond the parameters of any credible defence?

The contribution of groups such asBoycott Workfare,DPAC and Solfed, among others, in discrediting workfare programmes is impressive. At the same time such a contribution has undoubtedly been embedded within a defensive approach that has come to characterize anti-austerity struggles throughout the OECD. At times, as with workfare, such a response can be impressive. The student movement of 2010 was similarly a defensive struggle but was nonetheless possessed of admirable flexibility, scale and intensity. The same is true, indeed to a greater extent, with the ultimately victorious Quebecois student movement of the last two years, impressively coordinated byClasse. Conversely the UK ‘pensions fightback’ by public sector unions in 2011, again essentially defensive, shared few if any of these qualities. This is for a variety of reasons and has nothing to do with the intelligence or integrity of those involved, nor the quantity or quality of legitimate grievances they possessed. Indeed for all its scale, tenacity and openness the UK student movement of 2010 likewise failed to achieve its objectives or indeed really catalyse a larger movement beyond itself - although in retrospect it undoubtedly undermined any credible argument the coalition could communicate about its ambition to ‘share’ the burden of austerity.

Semio-capital and the problem of solidarity

Franco Berardi Bifo — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:49:53 +0000

This text is based on a panel talk (together with Nina Power) by Bifo during the event ‘We Have Our Own Concept of Time and Motion’, organised by Auto Italia in collaboration with Federico Campagna, Huw Lemmey, Michael Oswell and Charlie Woolley in August 2011.

I beg your pardon for the frantic way of my exposition, but the problem is that the object of my reflections is frantic. We are doing so many things without really understanding what is the framework of our actions. I do not pretend to clarify this framework or our understanding of it; I don’t even pretend to come to some conclusions in this short time. But I will try to say something about the coming problem; the coming collapse; the coming insurrection.

Tame Beasts: on obedience

Federico Campagna — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:18:41 +0000

In 1959, Dr. Dimitriy Belyaev and his colleagues of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Russia, started a long-term experiment in the domestication of the silver fox (Vulpes vulpes). From an original population of 130 farm-bred foxes, the research team progressively selected those who showed the least avoidance behaviour towards humans and separated them from the rest of the group. By allowing them to breed only amongst themselves – while avoiding interbreeding – by 1985 the researchers had managed to have 18% of the tenth generation of foxes showing extremely tame behavior. Their experiment was interrupted in that year, but other, more recent experiments have shown very similar results. Foxes, some of the least domesticable animals in nature, can be tamed as a species.^{^[1]}

Let’s compare the transformation of the Vulpes vulpes over the relatively short time-span of ten generations, with the evolution of humans over the vastly longer period of History, which we presume began in 3200 BC, with the first written records in Mesopotamia. That is, over 200 generations ago.

Squandering: the case for disrespectful opportunism

Federico Campagna — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:38:15 +0000

Hitherto you have believed there were tyrants.

Well, you are mistaken: there are only slaves.

When nobody obeys nobody commands.

Anselme Bellegarigue, 1850

Promises

Why do people work? If they are not insane, they do it for the money. And what do they need this money for? To buy freedom from work. At the same time, money seems to be necessary to escape from the money-obsession of the poor, just like work seems to be necessary to escape from the work-obsession of the unemployed. The apparent non sequitur of these connections is the description of the logical loop in which most humans live and function in today’s society. Strangely enough, the very origin of their endless tail-chasing seems to be their desire to achieve a state of freedom, that is, an escape form the loop itself.

How could the human desire for freedom turn into a self-perpetuating and enslaving mechanism? Within the contemporary landscape, the answer lies in the way capitalism, as it always does, manages to take our requests to the letter, and to return them to us realized, if slightly modified. That slight modification, as we all know, is the tiny poison pill that turns all our ‘realized’ demands into even stricter chains. This is how, over the years, capitalism realized the requests for flexible work, sexual liberation, democracy, and so on. Capitalism always gives us what we want, but it does so in such a way that brings to reality the darkest warnings of the old saying, ‘be careful what you wish for’.

To Do and Do Not

Federico Campagna — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:35:42 +0000

Stuff

The supposed invasion of the being by the having has been a recurrent theme throughout the history of Western civilization. Long before the advent of capitalism, one’s material possessions and social status in the community were already deeply intertwined. It was not by accident that the mention of a king in the pages of the Iliad was often followed by the endless list of his possessions, as if the number of sheep and pigs one possessed helped in some way to express the personality of the individual.

As time went by, the crass simplicity of the lists of the Iliad, turned into a more sophisticated catalogue of belongings. As already noted by Suetonius, first, and by Sallust later, at the time of the Roman empire fashion had already entered the equation of material wealth and social subjectivity. Above a certain threshold of wealth, It wasn’t just the sheer amount of stuff that one owned that was used to define his (rarely her) social status, but it was what he owned. His possessions did not simply have to be opulent and abundant – they also had to be filtered by the whims of fashion.

This trend proved unstoppable even during the so-called dark ages, and when private wealth could not keep pace with a minimum level of sophistication, the Church stepped in by prodigally investing in the assertion of its hegemony over fashion. If, out of laziness, we did not want to look back to those remote times for proof, we would simply have to look at the obsession for fashionable opulence of the current Pope, Benedictus XVI, rightly considered by many as the reincarnation of a medieval Pope in present times.

The politics of adventure - part 1

Federico Campagna — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:58:55 +0000

It is surely not in vain that I myself am in need of thy words:

those of the future norms of strength,

those of the future norms of a valorous heart,

those of the future norms of fervor.

Nothing now, among all things, inspires my heart with valor.

Nothing now points me to the future norms of my existence.

Guarani prayer, as recorded and translated by Leon Cadogan (1966).

It I have often encountered a problem, when talking or writing about anti-work politics. While busy producing my proclamations against the dictatorship of Work’s ‘activity of repetition’, the strangulating theism on which it lies, the unforgivable sacrifice of one’s life which it imposes, and so on, I found that the alternative which I was able to offer did not match the narrative and environmental qualities offered by the ideology I was opposing.

Radical Atheism

Federico Campagna — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:17:08 +0000

in loving memory of Pierre Clastres and Max Stirner

Few places in the world are more secular than the United Kingdom. The laughable origins of the Anglican church, mixed with the centuries-old hegemony of capitalist ethics seem to have finally killed the religious spirit of the people of Albion. Religion, in the UK, is a mark of underdevelopment usually reserved for impoverished ethnic minorities or for the inhabitants of rural areas.

As a migrant from Catholic Italy, when I first arrived in the UK I thought I couldn't have asked for more. Not only were the remnants of the church so liberal and progressive that even homosexuals were allowed to be priests, but also people did not feel the need to fight off the presence of the church by indulging in God-oriented swearing, as is the common habit in Italy. God seemed to have finally disappeared, both as an unrequested father figure and as the millenarian oppressor of all living creatures. Back then, I thought I had arrived in the promised land of ‘really existing atheism’. And yet, I couldn’t have been more mistaken.