Parody of political correctness or allegory of “Immaterial Labour”? A second look at Francis Veber’s Le Placard (2001)

This article questions whether readings of Francis Veber’s Le Placard (2001) as simply a parody of political correctness have tended to overlook the allegorical significance of its depiction of a middle-aged executive forced to pretend to be gay, simulating libidinal investments he does not in fact possess, in order to protect his job. It argues that the film merits re-interpretation as being not only a parody of political correctness but also a powerful allegory for the increasing demands placed on employees to invest their most personal affects and aptitudes in their work. Drawing on the work of Yann Moulier Boutang, the article interprets such demands as symptomatic of a regime of ‘cognitive capitalism’, in which ‘immaterial’ forms of labour represent the primary source of surplus value. The article thus offers an alternative reading of the film’s treatment of questions of work, gender, sexuality, family, and nation, before situating Le Placard in the context of a broader range of recent French filmic representations of the contemporary workplace

The Discourse of Digital Dispossession: Paid Modifications and Community Crisis on Steam

This article is a chronicle and analysis of a community crisis in digital space that took place on Valve Corporation’s digital distribution platform, Steam. When Valve and Bethesda (publisher and developer of Skyrim) decided to allow mods to be sold by mod makers themselves, there ensued a community revolt against the commodification of leisure and play. I put this crisis of play and work in dialogue with Harvey’s concept of “accumulation by dispossession,” firmly placing it within a longer history of disruptive capital accumulation strategies. I then conduct a discourse analysis of community members on reddit, as they make sense of and come to terms with this process of dispossession. Arising in the discourse was not class consciousness per se, but instead a pervasive feeling of helplessness and frustration as games, play, and leisure began to feel like work

New Keywords: Migration and Borders

“New Keywords: Migration and Borders” is a collaborative writing project aimed at developing a nexus of terms and concepts that fill-out the contemporary problematic of migration. It moves beyond traditional and critical migration studies by building on cultural studies and post-colonial analyses, and by drawing on a diverse set of longstanding author engagements with migrant movements. The paper is organized in four parts (i) Introduction, (ii) Migration, Knowledge, Politics, (iii) Bordering, and (iv) Migrant Space/Times. The keywords on which we focus are: Migration/Migration Studies; Militant Investigation; Counter-mapping; Border Spectacle; Border Regime; Politics of Protection; Externalization; Migrant Labour; Differential inclusion/exclusion; Migrant struggles; and Subjectivity

Activation of mirror-neuron system by erotic video clips predicts degree of induced erection: an fMRI study

International audienceAlthough visually-induced erection is a common Occurrence in human male behaviour, the cerebral underpinnings of this response are not well-known. We hypothesized that the magnitude of induced erection would be linearly correlated with the activation of the mirror-neuron system in response to sexually explicit films. When presented with sexual video clips, eight out of ten healthy subjects had an erectile response demonstrated through volumetric penile plethysmography. The level of activation of the left frontal operculum and of the inferior parietal lobules, areas which contain mirror neurons, predicted the magnitude of the erectile response. These results suggest that the response of the mirror-neuron system may not only code for the motor correlates of observed actions, but also for autonomic Correlates of these actions. (c) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Brain responses to pictures of children in men with pedophilic disorder: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study

Structural and functional neuroimaging techniques have recently been used to investigate the mechanisms of sexual attraction to children, a hallmark of pedophilic disorder, and have reported many contradictory or non-replicated findings. Here, our purpose was to identify through functional magnetic resonance imaging the brain responses of 25 male outpatients with pedophilic disorder to visual stimuli depicting children (VSc) and to compare them with 24 male healthy controls matched on sexual orientation (to female or male adults), age, and handedness. No region was differentially activated across the two groups in response to VSc. However, as shown by a random-effects statistical analysis (cluster-level pFWE-corrected \textless 0.05), in patients with pedophilia, but not in controls, the presentation of VSc induced a bilateral activation in the lateral occipital and temporal cortices, in particular in the right inferior temporal gyrus, as well as an activation in the declive of the cerebellar vermis. In addition, in patients the level of bilateral activation in the above-mentioned regions was positively correlated with ratings of perceived sexual arousal elicited by VSc. These results implicate these regions as possible candidate areas mediating sexual arousal in patients with pedophilic disorder