Entreprecariat reader synopses and abstracts
Synopsis and Abstract
Steve's synopsis
Writer: Michel Foucault
Title: The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France 1978-1979
Publisher and date: Picador, 2004
Abstract: At the heart of Foucault’s notion of governmentatlity is the idea that everyone from the office cleaner to the director of the company has an investment in an understanding of themselves as economic units, and as producers of their own freedom. This understanding grew after the enlightenment (1700s), through the construction of the welfare state (1940s) and into the present neo-liberal era. At the heart of governance is the production of the desire of the subject to improve, to calculate their own best interests, and to minimize risk to themselves
Synopsis: "Toward the end of his life Michel Foucault became fascinated with how, during the seventeenth century and after, the state became preoccupied with the care of the individual citizen. This is particularly curious because it was at times when the state was at its most violent that it made its greatest investment in the care of its citizenry (during the French Revolution and World War Two, for instance). It is almost as if a paradoxical contract had been agreed upon: if you are prepared to die for the state then the state owes you your wellbeing. The antinomy arises: as the state apparatus constructs large destructive mechanisms (land armies and weapons systems) it simultaneously constructs technologies of care (culminating in the social democratic welfare state in the twentieth century). Foucault characterizes the antinomy with the phrase: ‘Go get slaughtered and we promise you a long and pleasant life. Life insurance is connected with a death command.’[1] It was in this period that the state was formed as the state per se, that it made it its business to make a political object of human happiness.
It was in the seventeenth century that the state formulated the notion of police, not in the sense of a force that would fight and prevent crime, but as a form of statecraft that would oversee the wellbeing of its citizenry, which would view (and construct) the citizen not only through their judicial status but as working, trading, living beings. By the nineteenth century German universities taught Polizeiwissenschaft, which concerned itself with describing, defining and organizing the new technologies of state power. It was then that the happiness of individuals was seen as a requirement for the survival and development of the state and it also became axiomatic that positive intervention in the behaviour of individuals was the state’s task. It was within this context that the political rationality arose that, as the individual had an effect on society (either positively or negatively) it was beholden on the state to compile information about the wellbeing and aptitude of the individual. This political technology, Foucault argues, provides the basic reason for the existence of the modern state and is therefore more important than any arguments about ideology, because whichever government is in power, the needs of the state prevail. The state can govern directly, through legislation, or indirectly by formulating values of individuality that the individual will seek to preserve.[2]
We now see the emergence of two seemingly contradictory values within modern society: the state produces the individual and the state sets itself the task to care for that individual. At the moment the individual is defined, however, he or she seeks autonomy from the state and, in order to foster their independence pays close attention to better self-management (forgetting perhaps that a well managed and efficient individual is precisely what the state desires). The state has to deal with a similar paradox to the individual, this is generated by the new forms of freedom liberalism produces (“freedom of the market, freedom to buy and sell, the free exercise of property rights, freedom of discussion, possible freedom of expression”). [3] Whilst the state produces these freedoms it must at the same time create regulative devices that describe limits to those freedoms. Neo-liberalism provides some accommodation of that paradox, because it is these freedoms that serve to construct the self-dependent neo-liberal subject – Homo-Economicus – who goes beyond the logic of the welfare state.
Liberalism and Neo-liberalism share a fundamental political reasoning. This reasoning – echoing Adam Smith’s conviction that it is in man’s nature to ‘barter, truck, and exchange’ – holds that the economic man is the subject at the basis of politics.[4] The difference between the liberal and neo-liberal positions is characterized by the shift in emphasis from trade (in the liberal era) to competition (in the era of neo-liberalism). In the latter scheme the human subject comes to be understood, and to understand himself, as ‘human capital’.[5]
Given that the basic elements of the self are biologically determined (our body, intelligence, skin colour et cetera) we are beholden to make investment in the self in order to maximize its earning potential and compete in the market place. In this sense, Foucault suggests, ‘homo economicus is an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur of himself.’[6] In today’s labour market where the distinction between labour and leisure are blurred – the world of wofe (work-life) and prosumers (producer-consumers) – the production and care of the self become matters of urgency. Foucault:
The new governmental reason needs freedom; therefore, the new art of government consumes freedom. It produces freedom, which means it must produce it. It must produce it, it must organise it. The new art of government therefore appears as the management of freedom, not in the sense of the imperative: ‘be free’, with the immediate contradiction that this imperative may contain. (…) [T]he liberalism we can describe as the art of government formed in the eighteenth century entails at its heart a productive/destructive relationship with freedom. Liberalism must produce freedom, but this very act entails the establishment of limitations, controls, forms of coercion, and obligations relying on threats, et cetera.[7]
At the heart of Foucault’s governmentatlity is the notion that everyone from the office cleaner to the director of the company has an investment in an understanding of themselves as economic units, and as producers of their own freedom. It is this belief in the self that allows for control through mechanisms of governmentality through the investment in the economic unit of the self. In the neo-liberal scheme rights and laws give way to an emphasis on (self)interest and (self)investment within a context of competition. This is when the economics of desire and affect become so important to the art of politics. Jason Read puts it succinctly: ‘The state channels flows of interest and desire by making desirable activities inexpensive and undesirable activities costly, counting on the fact that subjects calculate their interests.’[8] At the heart of governance is the production of the desire of the subject to improve, to calculate their own best interests, and to minimize risk to themselves."
From Masters Of Reality, p 105-110, Sternberg Press, 2011
[SEE PAD FOR DETAILS]
Pedro
Writer — Jamie Woodcock
Title — Subjectivity in the "Gig Economy": From the entreprecariat to base union militancy
Publisher and date — Pervasive Labour Union Zine #11 - The Entreprecariat, September 10th, 2017
Abstract
This article addresses the issue of the rise of the “gig-economy“ where temporary positions are endorsed instead of long-term work contracted jobs and also the relationship between this phenomenon and the digital mediated entrepreneurialism.
It establishes the relationships among the development of the “gig-economy“, the digital context that this one lies in and the effect that both have on the rise of the Entreprecariat. Self-employed/independent workers are attracted for a job where they find a precarious sense of flexibility and are stuck to a platform that is in need of real demands made online. The deprivation of rights imposed to self-employed riders was used as a tool in the food-delivery sector. Workers that found themselves in this contractless situation claimed their right to organize strikes without the need to follow trade union rules.
Synopsis
Subjectivity in the “Gig Economy: From the entreprecariat to base union militancy” is an article by Jamie Woodcock published in the Issue #11 of the Pervasive Labour Union Zine from September 2017. The article addresses the issue of the rise of the “gig-economy“ where temporary positions are endorsed instead of long-term work contracted jobs and also the relationship between this phenomenon and the digital mediated entrepreneurialism.
The author starts the article establishing the relationships among the development of the “gig-economy“, the digital context that this one lies in and the effect that both have on the rise of the Entreprecariat.
In this precarious economy what is portrayed is that in the foundation of this contractless job positions there are employment places that provide a lot of freedom to those who are applying.
Companies created some sort of propaganda about this free space for someone with limited availability, but with the fast rise of what the author calls the “platform capitalism“ where companies outsource their work through online systems, the reality is that people are in reality in a precarious flexibility.
Self-employed/independent workers are stuck to a platform that is in need of real demands made online, no minimum wages or sick pays are assured and you have to invest in your working equipment.
It is interesting how this deprivation of rights was used by employers has a tool in the food-delivery sector. Workers that find themselves in this contractless situation and that are used as a company outsource claimed their right to organize strikes without the need to follow trade union rules.
This strategy was only possible because, in theory, they are their self-employed. Workers who had no prior knowledge of organizing in mainstream trade unions are now taking action in their own self-union organizations.
Jamie Woodcock finishes his article raising awareness to the increase of this kind of business models and the fact that they are being used across different sectors but also bring up the fact that these self-employed people are reorganizing themselves collectively as a counter-power to work in the so-called “gig-economy“.
Paloma
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Tancredi
Writers: Joost de Bloois, Frans Willem Korsten
Title: Introduction: From Autonomism to Post-Autonomia: From Class Composition to a New Political Anthropology?
Publisher and date: Rethinking Marxism Volume 26 Issue 2 April 2014
Abstract:
Synopsis:
Bo
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Synopsis The Chapter starts explaining about the discontents on the digital media industry including dot-com boom and 24-7 electronic sweatshop. With her text, she describes what it means to be a digital worker today which points to an unavoidable opposition towards the glamorisation of digital labor that emphasises on the modern exploitation of manpower.
This idea brings to another story about describing a process of the society-factory that have shifted to a truly complex machine. The author supports the argument on how we should speak of labor in cultural and technical way. By mentioning a postmodern socialist who referred a Cyborg Manifesto which explicitly explained the antipathy of Marxist analyses of labor, she also discussed the Internet as a site of disintermediation. Furtherrmore she explained that the chapter doesn’t deliver a judgmental opinion of the Internet on society, however it map the way that the Internet is a place to connect to the autonomist social factory.
In conclusion, the author wrapped up the story with the centralisation of cultural and technical work of the Internet and its broad activity on advanced capitalist societies.
Artemis
Writer: Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri
Title: Assembly - Chapter 9: Entrepreneurship of the Multitude
Publisher and date: Oxford University Press, 2017
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Rita
Writer — Richard Sennet
Title — The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (chapter 1 and 2)
Publisher and date — W. W. Norton & Company, 2000
Abstract
The relation between work, time and the more personal aspect of life is a focal point in Sennet’s book. The state of today’s economy, described as “flexible capitalism”, has forced a constant rotation of jobs, cities, and friends which can be stimulating but can also contribute to an unstructured and meaningless life.
The author addresses these problems by analyzing his encounter with Rico, a successful man suffering from the uncertainty of life and the lack of longstanding values in society.
Synopsis
The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (chapter 1 and 2) addresses the problems and challenges that have arisen in an economy that has changed tremendously in the last 30 years. The author Richard Sennet talks about “flexible capitalism” as an economic and political system where everything feels fast-paced and unstable.
Values of loyalty and devotedness were substituted by detachment to accommodate more superficial relations.
The first chapters, Routine and Drift, are centered in a working man called Rico. Rico is economically successful but he suffers from the uncertainty of his work-life. The traditional idea of building a lifelong career in one place has changed and for the new worker this means shifting lives often. This constant change of jobs, cities, and friends makes the fractured pieces of Rico’s life difficult to understand. It’s hard to build a story for himself.
Although Rico understands the characteristics of the new worker and adapts to his new situation, he lacks the lasting values and guiding principles he feels are necessary to educate his children. The old debate between the philosophers Denis Diderot and Adam Smith resurfaces, discussing if routine is necessary to compose a life or if we should search for more flexible experiences.
The author provides a historical contextualization to these issues, writing about how time and routine has influenced the management and workforce of factories since the transition from manual labor to more sophisticated industrial systems. A pin factory and the Ford Motor Company are examples of how time control can lead to better productivity or to depression. There is no clear answer on how the human being will react to the continuous lack of routine in today’s dynamic economy but Rico embodies some of the conflicts that are already surfacing in his personal life.
Simon
Writer: Lidia Pereira
Title: Towards an Incoherent Refusal of Efficiency
Publisher and date: Pervasive Labour Union Zine Issue #11: The Entreprecariat (ed. Silvio Lorusso), 2018
Abstract: A historical account of the scientific management of labour and the concept of efficiency leads to the central question of this essay; what functions as deviant and cannot be exploited by capital, within neoliberalism? Lidia Pereira proposes incoherence as a counterbehaviour to promote acceptance, rather than adaption to the norm.
Synopsis: Lidia Pereira's essay begins with an etymological and historical tracing of the modern sense of efficiency as an ideal condition of labour. Arising in conjunction with the nascent Industrial Revolution, this notion of efficiency was spurred on by proponents such as Frederick Winslow Taylor, a driving force in the Efficiency Movement, and a Soviet pioneer of scientific management of labour, Alexei Gastev, who both held that workers should operate in machine-like ways in order to optimise efficiency.
With an escalated demand for production due to the outbreak of World War I, the limitations of the human body and psyche were revealed, resulting in the establishment of the field of industrial psychology in the United Kingdom and the development of employee management techniques in the United States. These aimed to rethink efficiency by mediating the relationship between company and employer, aiming to instil in workers a sense of personal investment in the company’s success.
This enmeshment of worker’s subjectivity within the life of the company led to a shift in responsibility for addressing discontent with systematic inequality from employer to worker by "centering problems on the self and its immediate conditions". Pereira makes a connection between this individualisation with an obscured infra- and superstructure, leading to the collective exploitation of workers. Isabelle Lorey's research on the governmentality of workers, drawn from Foucault’s biopolitics and History of Sexuality draws the concept of self-development, or an individual's need to govern and adapt themselves as an extension of state power. This leads to a question; why might individuals opt for self-precarization in Western capitalist societies? These individuals are often celebrated within neoliberal discourse as entrepreneurial role models that are coherent with the hegemonic norm; white, male, nationalised and with highly developed social and creative skills. Pereira suggest it is a state-imposed narrative that imbues these individuals with authenticity while obscuring decisive factors that hinder access to equal opportunity for those outside of the norm, shifting responsibility for failure and its consequences (for both those who are forced into precarity and those who choose self-precarization) from the state to the governed subject.
The pressure on those outside the norm to adapt in order to gain acceptance leads to their diversity being conflated with their ability to be productive, but only if these differences are coherent with their official portrait and to the extent that they may be exploited by capital. Social pressures to self-improve and preoccupation with individuals “becoming themselves” through self-promotion and networking is paradoxically at the cost of building important social bonds.
In conclusion Pereira offers coherence as a concept to be explored further, proposing that by taking an incoherent, inconsistent and idiosyncratic position, individuals who deviate from the norm could be protected from exploitation by refusing to adapt.
Bi Yi
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LIST OF TEXTS
MICHEL FOUCAULT The Birth of Biopolitics (Steve= i will write a synopsis of this text)
The Creative Response in Economic History Joseph A Schumpeter
William Powell The Anarchist Cookbook
(ed. Silvio Lorusso) Pervasive Labour Union Zine #11 - The Entreprecariat
http://ilu.servus.at/issue11.html
Pedro will write about this text from the Pervasive Labour Union Zine #11 - The Entreprecariat Subjectivity in the "Gig Economy":From the entreprecariat to base union milirancy Jamie Woodcok
Simon will write a synposis of this text from the Pervasive Labour Union Zine #11 Lidia Pereira Towards an Incoherent Refusal of Efficiency
Zygmunt Bauman From Pilgrim to Tourist - or a Short History of Identity
http://pages.mtu.edu/~jdslack/readings/CSReadings/Bauman_From_Pilgrim_to_Tourist.pdf
Assembly - Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri Chapter 9: Entrepreneurship of the Multitude (Artemis = I will write a synopsis of this text)
Hito Steyrerl: Duty Free Art: Art in the Age of Planetary War (Biyi) Chapters: Proxy Politics Signal and Noise,,Apophenia and Pattern (Mis) Recognition,,Medya: Autonomy of Images
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron The Californian Ideology
Paul Graham Hackers and Painters
Introduction: From Autonomism to Post-Autonomia: From Class Composition to a New Political Anthropology? by Joost de Bloois, Frans Willem Korsten [TANCRE]
Richard Sennett The Corrosion of Character, The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism chapter 1 and 2 (RITA)
Digital labour the internet as playground and factory - Bohye
Fake It till You Make It - Genesis of the Entrepreneurial Precariat-Silvio Lorusso (Paloma)