Love and resistance: re-inventing radical nurses in everyday struggles

In an editorial concerned with radicalism, it is perhaps appropriate to start with Karl Marx. To paraphrase this greatest of political philosophers, we must learn the lessons of history. So, I wish to consider the idea of nursing radicalism, with recourse to a selective consideration of the past, contemplation of the present, and, most crucially, to inspire a critical imagination of what could be the future. Latterly, the very vocabulary of ‘radical’ has been demeaned, denigrated and demonised. I wish to reclaim an appreciation of nursing radicals as a wholesome and positive force for good, with huge potential for making a difference at various degrees of scale; from the global to the everyday. Indeed, I contend no change of any worth can neglect attention to the everyday human relationships bound up in making the change happen

Algorithmic States of Exception

In this paper I argue that pervasive tracking and data-mining are leading to shifts in governmentality that can be characterised as algorithmic states of exception. I also argue that the apparatus that performs this change owes as much to everyday business models as it does to mass surveillance. I look at technical changes at the level of data structures, such as the move to NoSQL databases, and how this combines with data-mining and machine learning to accelerate the use of prediction as a form of governance. The consequent confusion between correlation and causation leads, I assert, to the creation of states of exception. I set out what I mean by states of exception using the ideas of Giorgio Agamben, focusing on the aspects most relevant to algorithmic regulation: force-of and topology. I argue that the effects of these states of exception escape legal constraints such as concepts of privacy. Having characterised this as a potentially totalising change and an erosion of civil liberties, I ask in what ways the states of exception might be opposed. I follow Agamben by drawing on Walter Benjamin's concept of pure means as a tactic that is itself outside the frame of law-producing or law-preserving activity. However, the urgent need to respond requires more than a philosophical stance, and I examine two examples of historical resistance that satisfy Benjamin's criteria. For each in turn I draw connections to contemporary cases of digital dissent that exhibit some of the same characteristics. I conclude that it is possible both theoretically and practically to resist the coming states of exception and I end by warning what is at stake if we do not

The quantified self: what counts in the neoliberal workplace

Implementation of quantified self technologies in workplaces relies on the ontological premise of Cartesian dualism with mind dominant over body. Contributing to debates in new materialism, we demonstrate that workers are now being asked to measure our own productivity and health and wellbeing in art-houses and warehouses alike in both the global north and south. Workers experience intensified precarity, austerity, intense competition for jobs, and anxieties about the replacement of labour-power with robots and other machines as well as, ourselves replaceable, other humans. Workers have internalized the imperative to perform, a subjectification process as we become observing, entrepreneurial subjects and observed, objectified labouring bodies. Thinking through the implications of the use of wearable technologies in workplaces, this article shows that these technologies introduce a heightened Taylorist influence on precarious working bodies within neoliberal workplaces

Situationism and the recuperation of an ideology in the era of Trump, fake news and post-truth politics

As a variant ideology based on libertarian Marxism, the philosophy of situationism failed to achieve widespread popularity beyond a relatively brief timeframe between the late 1950s and early 1970s. Despite this short-lived period of ascendency, the impact of Situationist concepts such as psychogeography, recuperation and the Spectacle have continued to play a role in the ongoing study of how reality is constructed in a system of advanced capitalism. Situationism’s concern with the perception of reality as shaped by the mass media is of particular significance in the context of contemporary politics that has been dubbed the ‘post-truth era’. The disavowal of the mass media by US President Donald Trump may give the impression of a Situationist approach that rejects the impact of such reality-shaping tools, yet a closer inspection of his actions suggests that Trump himself is responsible for the construction of a neo-Spectacle in which the recuperation of anti-establishment sentiment provides the basis for the reconsolidation of the position held by the capitalist elite within American society

In the social factory? Immaterial labour, precariousness and cultural work

This article introduces a special section concerned with precariousness and cultural work. Its aim is to bring into dialogue three bodies of ideas -- the work of the autonomous Marxist 'Italian laboratory'; activist writings about precariousness and precarity; and the emerging empirical scholarship concerned with the distinctive features of cultural work, at a moment when artists, designers and (new) media workers have taken centre stage as a supposed 'creative class' of model entrepreneurs. The paper is divided into three sections. It starts by introducing the ideas of the autonomous Marxist tradition, highlighting arguments about the autonomy of labour, informational capitalism and the 'factory without walls', as well as key concepts such as multitude and immaterial labour. The impact of these ideas and of Operaismo politics more generally on the precarity movement is then considered in the second section, discussing some of the issues that have animated debate both within and outside this movement, which has often treated cultural workers as exemplifying the experiences of a new 'precariat'. In the third and final section of the paper we turn to the empirical literature about cultural work, pointing to its main features before bringing it into debate with the ideas already discussed. Several points of overlap and critique are elaborated -- focusing in particular on issues of affect, temporality, subjectivity and solidarity

Psychogeography and Feminist Methodology

This paper will suggest how a psychogeographical methodology can be developed as a new method for feminist psychologists, in the study of urban and rural environments. One of the limitations of situationist psychogeography is its grounding in the male gaze. In addition, men have had privileged access to and time to participate in such activities. Drawing on Feminist geography, Queer theory and Gay/Lesbian writing, core concepts such as embodied subjectivity and heteronormativity can be used to develop the theoretical base of a feminist psychogeographical methodology. In this paper I will outline how feminist psychogeographical research might be conducted; the ‘situationist‘ approach of using bodies as research ‘instruments’ means that innovative data may be gathered through the experience of walking and seeing the world through the situationist lens. Finally, the implications of this work for personal and political social transformation will be addressed

Review exchange: resistance today

Margarita Palacios reviews Howard Caygill's On Resistance: A Philosophy of Defiance, 2013. Howard Caygill reviews Margarita Palacios's Radical Sociality: On Disobedience, Violence and Belonging, 2013

Revolution and Diavolution: What is the Difference?

Whereas revolution has been often viewed as contrary to organization, it in fact requires the overcoming of a present organization in the promise of achieving another superior organization. The revolutionaries of every age have always harboured a dream of organization. In an attempt to achieve better understanding of the relationship between organization and revolution, the article conducts a theoretical, rather than historical, reflection on the interplay among three concepts: organization, revolution, and diavolution. By exploring the modernist conception of revolution and its religious substratum, the idea is advanced that the relationship can be framed as follows: organization is the katéchon of revolution, whereas revolution is the éschaton of organization. The last part of the article introduces and discusses the concept of diavolution as an attempt to overcome the dichotomy between the subjectivist and the structuralist view both at the theoretical and the practical level. Diavolution is a style of inhabiting organizations that differs from the revolutionary one; a style of resistance that, although much more elusive and difficult to capture, may prove to be at the same time more human