Rewriting Modernity

This article rereads Paul Virilio, drawing on the distinctionbetween topography and topology to argue a case for Virilio as a rewriter of modernity. Invoking Jean-François Lyotard’s notion of rewriting modernity as an unbroken process of accumulation founded on affective life in “Re-writing Modernity” and “Argumentation and Presentation: The Foundation Crisis,” it enlists topology as a horizontal spatial structure that enables us to rethink space, time,and modernity outside the limits of the “squared horizon,” where the“squared horizon” is viewed as a spatial and textual metaphor for framing perspectives on the past, present, and future. The analysis deconstructs the topography of the “squared horizon” as a relationality in an unfolding continuum, where spaces exist ontologically and where the immaterial forces of the dromospheric and the atmospheric generate a relational and historical connectedness

Comfort radicalism and NEETs: a conservative praxis

Young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are construed by policy makers as a pressing problem about which something should be done. Such young people's lack of employment is thought to pose difficulties for wider society in relation to social cohesion and inclusion and it is feared that they will become a 'lost generation'. This paper(1) draws upon English research, seeking to historicise the debate whilst acknowledging that these issues have a much wider purchase. The notion of NEETs rests alongside longstanding concerns of the English state and middle classes, addressing unruly male working class youth as well as the moral turpitude of working class girls. Waged labour and domesticity are seen as a means to integrate such groups into society thereby generating social cohesion. The paper places the debate within it socio-economic context and draws on theorisations of cognitive capitalism, Italian workerism, as well as emerging theories of antiwork to analyse these. It concludes by arguing that ‘radical’ approaches to NEETs that point towards inequities embedded in the social structure and call for social democratic solutions veer towards a form of comfort radicalism. Such approaches leave in place the dominance of capitalist relations as well as productivist orientations that celebrate waged labour

The politics of collective repair: examining object-relations in a postwork society

In this article we look at repair as an emergent focus of recent activism in affluent societies, where a number of groups are reclaiming practices of repair as a form of political and ecological action. Ranging from those that fight for legislative change to those groups who are trying to support ecological and social change through everyday life practices, repair is beginning to surface tensions in everyday life and as such poses opportunities for its transformation. We survey a few of the practices that make up this movement in its various articulations, to take stock of their current political import. While we suggest that these practices can be seen as an emergent lifestyle movement, they should not be seen as presenting a unified statement. Rather, we aim to show that they articulate a spectrum of political positions, particularly in relation to the three specific issues of property, pedagogy and sociality. These three dimensions are all facets of current internal discrepancies of repair practices and moreover express potential bifurcations as this movement evolves. Drawing on a diverse methodology that includes discourse analysis and participant observation, we suggest some of the ways in which this growing area of activity could play a significant role in resisting the commodification of the everyday and inventing postwork alternatives

Studying work in theory and practice: Insights for a globalising academia from the IR trajectory in Italy

This article investigates the relevance of context to the study of industrial relations by analysing the trajectory of an under-researched case outside the Anglo-Saxon hotspots, Italy. Three phases are put under the spotlight revealing a trajectory anchored to the pluralist fulcrum, but with influence first from radical perspectives and then from unitarist ones

The autonomous city: towards a critical geography of occupation

This paper explores the recent resurgence of occupation-based practices across the globe, from the seizure of public space to the assembling of improvised protest camps. It re-examines the relationship between the figure of occupation and the affirmation of an alternative ‘right to the city’. The paper develops a critical understanding of occupation as a political process that prefigures and materializes the social order which it seeks to enact. The paper highlights the constituent role of occupation as an autonomous form of urban dwelling, as a radical politics of infrastructure and as a set of relations that produce common spaces for political action

Coins and the Archaeologist, ed. by John Casey and Richard Reece.

Lotringer L. Coins and the Archaeologist, ed. by John Casey and Richard Reece.. In: Revue numismatique, 6e série - Tome 19, année 1977 pp. 201-202

Sade incesticide

Lotringer Sylvère. Sade incesticide. In: Littérature, n°30, 1978. Motifs, transferts, reécriture. pp. 67-78

Coins and the Archaeologist, ed. by John Casey and Richard Reece.

Lotringer L. Coins and the Archaeologist, ed. by John Casey and Richard Reece.. In: Revue numismatique, 6e série - Tome 19, année 1977 pp. 201-202

La Perversion Pervertie

Este ensaio propõe uma análise dos problemas da perversão pervertida na sociedade contemporânea. O aspecto comportamental em si é realmente muito mais futurista, e mais perto do status agora que assume de agora em diante o sexo nas sociedades contemporâneas. A sociedade americana, em particular, não "admite", como se poderia pensar, pela simples razão de que não há mais nada a admitir. Como na sexologia clínica, pode-se dizer tudo, porque tudo já foi dito, porque não há nada a dizer e a se dizer. A mensagem é passada inteiramente no meio. A Terapia de tédio, neste sentido, é uma terapia corretiva, mas também a antecipação de uma sociedade realmente "perversa", na qual a sexualidade não teria mais nada a dizer, apenas mostrar em silêncio, de modo obsceno, sem sequer olhar. Resta ainda aos perversos aprender que o sexo pós-moderno perverso não tem nada de pessoal, e, finalmente, nada humano