2017 Singh Becoming A Commoner Nov17

What is ephemera: theory & politics in organization?
ephemera is an independent journal, founded in 2001. ephemera provides its

content free of charge, and charges its readers only with free thought.
theory
ephemera encourages contributions that explicitly engage with theoretical and
conceptual understandings of organizational issues, organizational processes and
organizational life. This does not preclude empirical studies or commentaries on
contemporary issues, but such contributions consider how theory and practice
intersect in these cases. We especially publish articles that apply or develop
theoretical insights that are not part of the established canon of organization
studies. ephemera counters the current hegemonization of social theory and
operates at the borders of organization studies in that it continuously seeks to
question what organization studies is and what it can become.
politics
ephemera encourages the amplification of the political problematics of
organization within academic debate, which today is being actively de-politized by
the current organization of thought within and without universities and business
schools. We welcome papers that engage the political in a variety of ways as
required by the organizational forms being interrogated in a given instance.
organization
Articles published in ephemera are concerned with theoretical and political aspects
of organizations, organization and organizing. We refrain from imposing a narrow
definition of organization, which would unnecessarily halt debate. Eager to avoid
the charge of ‘anything goes’ however, we do invite our authors to state how their
contributions connect to questions of organization and organizing, both
theoretical and practical.
ephemera 17(4), Nov 2017
Whither emergence?
Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Christian
Garmann Johnsen and Konstantin
Stoborod
in association with:
may f l y
www.mayflybooks.org
Published by the ephemera editorial collective: Bent Meier Sørensen, Bernadette Loacker, Birke
Otto, Christian Garmann Johnsen, Christos Giotitsas, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Emil Husted,
Helen Delaney, Justine Grønbæk Pors, Katie Sullivan, Kenneth Weir, Konstantin Stoborod, Lena
Olaison, Márton Rácz, Martyna Śliwa, Matthew Allen, Nick Butler, Ozan Nadir Alakavuklar, Randi
Heinrichs, Rowland Curtis, Sara Louise Muhr, Stephen Dunne.
First published for free online at www.ephemerajournal.org and in print in association with
MayFlyBooks (www.mayflybooks.org) in 2017.
ISSN (Online) 1473-2866

ISSN (Print) 2052-1499
ISBN (Print) 978-1-906948-39-9
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative

Works 3.0 Unported. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
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Table of Contents
Editorial
Hosting emergence with hospitality 733-749

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Christian Garmann Johnsen and Konstantin
Stoborod
Articles
Becoming a commoner: The commons as sites for affective socio-nature

encounters and co-becomings 751-776
Neera Singh
A pre-individual perspective to organizational action 777-799

Nicolas Bencherki
Street level tinkering in the times of ‘Make in India’ 801-817

Maitrayee Deka
Perverse particles, entangled monsters and psychedelic pilgrimages:

Emergence as an onto-epistemology of not-knowing 819-839
Bayo Akomolafe and Alnoor Ladha
Notes
A chronology of fragments: Struggling to write a story alternative to the

grand narrative of emerging economies 841-847
Matilda Dahl
Market fundamentalism in the age of ‘haute finance’: The enclosing of

policy space in ‘emerging’ India 849-865
Srivatsan Lakshminarayan
The rise of stagnancy and emergent possibilities for young radicals:
Deleuze and the perils of idolatry 867-876
Andrei Botez and Joel Hietanen
Political art without words: Art’s threat of emergence, and its capture
within signification and commodification 877-894
Autonomous Artists Anonymous
Play
Leviathan lives: A short play about hierarchy and cooperation 895-905

Brian Showalter Matlock
Comic
Killer jellyfish rock Rio 907-918

Eileen Laurie
Reviews
Art at the margins of contemporary democracies 919-924

Beata Sirowy
Resistance in vulnerability
with an eye to the vulnerability of power 925-931
Marco Checchi
No future. Utopia now! 933-936

Martin Parker
the author(s) 2017
ISSN 1473-2866 (Online)
ISSN 2052-1499 (Print)
www.ephemerajournal.org
volume 17(4): 733-749
Hosting emergence with hospitality

Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Christian Garmann Johnsen and Konstantin
Stoborod
Introduction
This special issue follows from the location of our 2015 conference, which took
place in Moscow, the capital of a country that is often referred to as ‘emerging’.
What does it mean to be ‘emerging’, we thought, and (how) can this concept be
mobilised to mean something else? When we speak of an ‘emerging’
country/market/economy, ‘emerging’ – a politically correct version of what was
previously called ‘lesser developed’ – refers to an entity that has supposedly opened
its doors to growth-oriented capitalism and is catching up with the ‘developed’
countries of this world. In our view, this conception of ‘emergence’ is problematic
in at least two ways.
First, it creates divisions by maintaining a hierarchy of ‘developed’ and ‘emerging’

countries, in which the latter are positioned as lagging behind. Regardless of
whether these are mainstream business magazines or critical left-wing journals,
such divisions are constantly reproduced: developed – developing, core –
periphery, First World – (ex-)Second/Third World, North – South, West – East.
There are, of course, geopolitical and cultural differences that have implications
for analysing certain areas separately (e.g. Alcadipani et al., 2012; Gorbach and
Salamanyuk, 2014), as well as for epistemologies to do this from, without
succumbing to the global coloniality of knowledge (Ibarra-Colado, 2006; Castro-
Gómez, 2007; Tlostanova, 2012). However, ‘the “West” – that damned word! –
names this disjunction’ (Badiou, 2008: 60), suggesting that the path the
‘developed’ countries have taken is the only possible option for humanity.
Second, ‘emergence’ entails a capitalist teleology. However, as they face entangled

ecological, economic, social and political crises, which can be referred to as
ephemera: theory & politics in organization 17(4): 733-749
‘multiple crisis’ rooted in the capitalist system itself (Brand and Wissen, 2012), the
‘vanguard’ countries have lost sight of their telos. The recent US elections and the
Brexit referendum, as well as the rise of the far right in Europe and the US are all
harbingers of a dramatic change in the perspective. Alongside this, the ultimate
goal of capitalist growth is becoming increasingly unclear. Vitality is being
squeezed out of human lives, while austerity, precarity (Standing, 2011) and
inequality (Piketty, 2014) are increasingly on offer. The countries that have stepped
onto the path of ‘emergence’ by adopting some form of neoliberalism are not
necessarily in bloom either (e.g. Dale, 2011). Furthermore, it is no secret that such
emergence takes place at the expense of certain localities and groups of people
(Escobar, 1995; Badiou, 2008).
Ironically, one crucial concern is whether there are any alternatives to the world
that has ‘emerged’ in this way. With its publication on the 100-year anniversary of
the Russian Revolution, this special issue offers an occasion for reflection. This
remarkable event created room for radical alternatives and progressive change to
arise, such as the Soviet environmentalism of the 1920s (Gare, 1993) and the
implementation of women’s rights in the Soviet Union, including equal pay and
abortion rights, much earlier than in the ‘Western’ countries. At the same time,
with growth dominating the economic and social agenda, combined with
authoritarianism, it ‘emerged’ into a social, economic and environmental disaster.
As such, even though ‘anti-emergence’ seems to be the only response to
‘emergence’ in terms of capitalism and economic growth, we do not want to
dismiss the word itself. Instead, we argue that a different understanding of the
notion of ‘emergence’ can help us to (re-)imagine alternatives and open a myriad
of mutually enriching ways of thinking – the focus of this issue.
The rest of this editorial unfolds as follows. First, we outline the different
conceptualisations of the notion of emergence. Second, based on the approach
adopted in this special issue, we follow Derrida in offering to rethink emergence
with hospitality. Third, we ponder over the contributions that have come out of
adopting this approach in practice and the contradictions of the process. Finally,
we outline the contributions.
Emergence without politics?
‘Emergence’ comes from the Latin e-, which means ‘out, forth’, and mergere, which
means ‘to dip’. As such, the term suggests openness, undecidedness and multiple
potentialities. For example, it may be defined as ‘the process of becoming visible
after being concealed’, with emergere in Latin also meaning ‘bring to light’ (Oxford
dictionary, online). This suggests multiple ways to think about emergence, which
734 | editorial
Ekaterina Chertkovskaya et al. Hosting emergence with hospitality
is what we invited this issue’s contributors to do. We did so without suggesting a

focus on certain streams of literature or research traditions, thereby staying true to
the openness that the etymology of the word entails. However, we are well aware
that some conceptual literature has dealt with emergence in the fields of
philosophy, sociology, and, indeed, organisation studies. In this section, we offer
an overview of the term in light of the earlier literature and argue that, although
insightful as a philosophical concept, it lacks engagement with politics.
The British ethologist and psychologist Conwy Lloyd Morgan initially coined the
concept in 1923, although it can be traced to earlier philosophers like Leibniz and
Shelling (Gare, 2002). Emergence has been conceptualised through either a
diachronic or a synchronic understanding. A diachronic understanding of
emergence refers to the appearance or development of a phenomenon, while a
synchronic understanding focuses on the relationship between the properties and
powers of the whole and its parts (Elder-Vass, 2005). Thus, in the ‘emerging’
economies/markets/countries discourse, a diachronic emergence takes place, with
countries that were not previously part of the global market entering it, i.e.
establishing market-oriented systems and experiencing fast economic growth via
economic liberalisation (Hoskisson et al., 2009). However, it is emergence in the
synchronic sense that has received most attention in the conceptual literature
(Elder-Vass, 2005; Sawyer, 2001).
In the conceptual discussion of synchronic emergence, a key question is whether

the whole can be explained solely by its parts. Is the whole larger or different from
its parts? Alternatively, is the whole simply the sum of the individual components?
‘Individual emergentists’ maintain that society is nothing but the collection of
individuals. This position is mostly defended by economists as well as some
sociologists, including F.A. von Hayek, one of the ‘founding fathers’ of
neoliberalism, who argued that higher-level social phenomena emerged from
individual actions (see Sawyer, 2001). This understanding of emergence resonates
with the ‘emerging market economies’ discourse in which the individualist ethos
is complementary to economic liberalisation. The calculable and elsewhere-tested
recipes that are forced upon ‘emerging’ entities often do not work. Moreover, they
exclude ideas, practices and people not seen as fitting into these recipes, thereby
testifying to a complete disregard for specific contexts.
In sharp contrast, the ‘collectivist emergentists’ insist that the whole cannot be
explained by the properties of its parts (see Sawyer, 2001). A common example is
water, which consists of hydrogen and oxygen but has properties that are different
from both of these elements (Elder-Vass, 2005). Sawyer (2006: 148) uses the
examples of collective music creation, especially jazz, and improvisational theatre
to demonstrate how the outcomes of each of these activities are unpredictable,
editorial | 735
contingent and not fully explainable by the group’s components. For him,
emergence is a collective phenomenon. In their own unique ways, the
contributions to this issue offer different approaches to exploring emergence
beyond an individualistic mode of reasoning.
Emergence has also been connected to questions of organisation (e.g. Lissack,

*
1999 ). Elder-Vass (2005) argues that organisation is actually central to emergence,
as it brings the ‘more than’ into the mere collection of elements, allowing
emergence to take place. Relatedly, Sawyer (2006) stresses the self-organised
character of emergence, which he refers to as organising without the organiser, as
seen in a flock of birds flying in a V-shape or an orchestra not necessarily in need
of a conductor to perform. Although readers of ephemera will immediately connect
such self-organisation to political questions of organisation (e.g. Bell, 2014;
Stoborod and Swann, 2014), this connection is manifestly lacking in most
conceptual discussions of emergence. Indeed, it is surprising that ‘emergence’ is
mostly used in descriptive and somewhat rigid ways, even in explicitly critical
strands of thought.
This point echoes Protevi (2006), who notes that scholars have been too
preoccupied with the synchronic understanding of emergence. In contrast, he uses
Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy to zoom in on a diachronic understanding, and
he speaks of emergence as the ‘novelty’ that is located outside of the existing
system. For us the point here is not to call for a prioritisation of understanding
emergence in the diachronic sense. As noted earlier, diachronic emergence might
as well denote a shift to capitalism, as experienced by ‘emerging economies’.
However, the connection of emergence to going outside the existing system
resonates with us and, in fact, points to where our interest in the concept lies. This
connection can be found in some scholarship, where emergence has been mainly
associated with going outside the dominant systems of thought. It has helped
highlight the inseparability of the physical and the mental, of nature and society,
and of nature and culture – in other words, it has been used to problematise the
many schisms by which today’s societies, as well as sciences, are divided, and
recognise the wholeness of the world (e.g. Gare, 2002; Pueyo, 2014).
Gunnarsson (2013) pushes this discussion even further and uses the concept of
emergence to understand nature and culture as inseparable, but without one being
subsumed by the other (see also Soper, 1995; Malm, forthcoming). In so doing,
she not only critiques the tendency to conflate nature and culture when arguing
for their connection, but also voices the ambition for feminist research to

*
This is what the whole journal Emergence: Complexity and Organization is devoted to,
the first issue of which we are referring to here.
736 | editorial
understand the political and, consequently, drive social change (see Gunnarsson,
2013: 18). The attempt to mobilise the notion of emergence to address the
problems and possible transformations of our troubled world is exactly what unites
the contributions to this issue. However, to be able to unpack the various views on
emergence driven by these intentions, the concept needs to be met with
‘hospitality’. Hence, we must remain open to new understandings of emergence
and think creatively about how it can be conceptualised. Next, we explore the very
possibility of remaining open by drawing on Derrida’s discussion of hospitality.
Rethinking emergence with hospitality
With the intention of moving organisation studies toward a new location, we

hosted the 2015 ephemera conference in Moscow. The aim was to explore different
understandings of emergence. This issue, which stems from the Moscow
conference, uses the concept of emergence to explore alternative politics,
epistemologies and ontologies. By virtue of casting our eyes on these issues, we
are, in fact, going back to the genesis of ephemera. The original vision for the
journal, as stated in its very first editorial, was to ‘produce a space for the
articulation of alternative models of critique’ insofar as critique ‘challenges
orthodoxies, questions power relations, [and] disrupts the normal’ (Böhm et al.,
2001: 4, original italics). To achieve this goal, Steffen Böhm, Campbell Jones and
Chris Land – the journal’s founders – hoped that ephemera would facilitate a
dialogue that would ‘interrupt and erupt’ (ibid.) by creating a space for critical
discussion around organisation. For us, emergence is linked to attempts to explore
alternative terrains for engaging in various practices, obtaining knowledge,
organising politics and understanding the world around us.
Along these lines, we wanted to seek out other ways of exploring the concept of
emergence, which offers fertile soil for grappling with alternatives due to its
polysemy. Nevertheless, this endeavour entails a certain impossibility. While we
intend to introduce alternative perspectives on emergence in organisation studies
and academia more generally, we might simultaneously be laying the premises for
how such a conversation would take place. In other words, we want to remain open
to new ways of thinking about emergence, but we might have already presupposed
what those ways of thinking entail. Such an approach would proceed on the basis
of having unconsciously prepared for the unpreparable, expected the unexpected
and foreseen the unforeseeable. However, in order to truly remain open to new
ways of thinking, we must receive the unexpected, tolerate the unforeseeable and
accept the fact that we might be taken by surprise.
editorial | 737
No one is more aware of this ‘aporia’ or ‘self-engendered paradox’ (Norris, 2002:

49) than Jacques Derrida. In his discussion of hospitality – the event of receiving
the arrivant or the guest – Derrida makes the following argument:
The absolute arrivant must not be merely an invited guest, someone I’m prepared
to welcome, whom I have the ability to welcome. It must be someone whose
unexpected, unforeseeable arrival, whose visitation—and here I’m opposing
visitation to invitation—is such an irruption that I’m not prepared to receive the
person. I must not even be prepared to receive the person, for there to be genuine
hospitality: not only have no prior notice of the arrival but no prior definition of the
newcomer, and no way of asking, as is done at a border, “Name? Nationality? Place
of origin? Purpose of visit? Will you be working here?” The absolute guest [hôte] is
this arrivant for whom there is not even a horizon of expectation, who bursts onto
my horizon of expectations when I am not even prepared to receive the one who I’ll
be receiving. That’s hospitality. Hospitality is not merely receiving that which we are
able to receive. (Derrida, 2007a: 451)
Here, Derrida reflects upon the impossibility of remaining open to the other. If
our horizon of expectation has certain preconfigured expectations of who the guest
will be, or what he or she will say or do, then no genuine hospitality can take place,
as we are only able to recognise the guest on the basis of those expectations. Hence,
we are neither open to what the other represents nor able to receive the unexpected.
For this reason, genuine hospitality, according to Derrida, can only take place when
we are confronted with someone whom we are unprepared to receive. Derrida
further remarks:
The arrival of the arrivant will constitute an event only if I’m not capable of receiving
him or her, only if I receive the coming of the newcomer precisely when I’m not
capable of doing so. (2007a: 451)
In other words, it is only on the basis of a fundamental impossibility that

hospitality can take place. It is important to emphasise that the fact that Derrida
considers the event impossible does not imply that it never takes place. Quite the
contrary, the event does occur, perhaps more often than we think. The main point
is that, in the words of Derrida, ‘I cannot say the event in theoretical terms and I
cannot pre-dict it either’ (ibid.: 452). Genuine hospitality manifests itself when we
least expect it – when our preconceived beliefs are challenged or when we are
confronted with something that transcends our current expectation horizon. What,
then, are the necessary conditions for this to happen? How can we, as scholars,
allow new insights to enter our field? How can we, paradoxically, remain open so
that the event can take place?
For Derrida, an event entails the emergence of the new. However, what does it
mean to invent the new? Invention of the new, Derrida emphasises, involves
embracing the ‘new, original, unique’, which requires us to ‘[break] with
738 | editorial
convention’ (2007b: 1). Moreover, invention ‘inserts a disorder into the peaceful
ordering of things’ (ibid.). At the same time, Derrida notes that in order for an
invention to be acknowledged as new, it has to be ‘evaluated, recognized, and
legitimized by someone else’ (ibid.: 5). Any new insights must comply with
expectations about what is considered original, unique and inventive. Herein lies
a paradox. On the one hand, any invention has to transcend established social
conventions in order to avoid merely repeating the old. On the other hand, any
invention has to appeal to the established order insofar as it is recognised as
inventive. In other words, an invention has to simultaneously transcend and
conform to a system of conventions. In turn, any attempt to invent the new must
confront a paradox: the new is possible insofar as it is impossible.
This paradox is embedded in the academic discourse in which we partake.

Although we strive for innovative research, we remain within an academic
tradition that operates on the basis of conventions for what is considered, for
example, ‘excellent’, ‘relevant’ or ‘impactful’ (Butler and Spoelstra, 2012; see also
the recent special issue on ‘The labour of academia’, Butler et al., 2017). Any
discourse, especially the academic one, remains governed by rather rigid
conventions that deem certain utterances appropriate and others inappropriate.
These are fundamental assumptions about what is right and wrong, true and false,
rational and irrational – de facto, what is acceptable and what is not. This is
particularly evident in the literature on, for instance, emerging economies.
Paradoxically, having confronted truly unforeseen and complex phenomena (like
post-colonial independent India or post-Soviet neoliberally reformed Russia), the
respective fields of inquiry came up with nothing better than measuring them
against the yardstick of ‘developed’ countries – that is, with the West. This was an
outcome of operating within what Derrida terms the ‘binary oppositions’ that
govern our thinking.
In academic discourse, we always have certain expectations of what serves as a

rational argument, what constitutes a solid concept and how persuasive academic
writing should look. There are methodological standards, criteria of consistency,
structures of argumentation and specific terminologies to which academic writing
should adhere. Any discourse, as Böhm et al. (2001) recognised, following the
work of Foucault, is embedded in power relations. Therefore, it is neither
necessary to abandon those conventions nor easy to do away with them.
Nevertheless, we should be aware of the fact that academic work, including
organisation studies, proceeds with certain presuppositions, and that any new
insights must both transcend and conform with those presuppositions. They will
invariably confine experience to certain preconceived oppositions that prevent
alternative modes of reasoning from emerging (Cooper, 1986).
editorial | 739
In line with Derrida, we posit that our task in not only this special issue but also
the field of organisation studies and academia in general is to ‘destabiliz[e]
foreclusionary structures’ (Derrida, 2007b: 45). This allows for the release of new
modes of experience and new ways of looking at the world – in short, that which
is yet to come. The challenge is driving a wedge between the oppositions that
inevitably define the field. This is not a dialectical pursuit of arriving at synthesis.
Quite the opposite – we must learn to live with aporias. On the one hand, the
understanding of emergence that we offer here is about openness, undecidedness
and multiple potentialities. On the other, for this understanding to assume a
comfortable position within organisation studies, it has to be brushed against what
we know to be conventions of the discipline. To put it differently, we face the
impossible task of being a good host to emergence.
On the possibility of being a good host
The self-engendered paradox that Derrida identifies is common for both scientific
and social-scientific epistemologies. Yet, while the paradox is somewhat accounted
for in such fields as quantum physics, the social sciences, including organisation
studies, lack a coping strategy. The radical twist that we dare to introduce here is
to let emergence, so to speak, host itself. Indeed, when offering his metaphorical
language of hospitality, Derrida makes it tempting to further indulge in musing
with it. One cannot help but notice that the setup to which Derrida alludes in his
analogy is very specific, arguably of a petit bourgeois kind. Imagine, instead, that
you have a guest who does not expect much and brings their own booze, and that
you do not suffer from any philistine qualms. That is the kind of guest we expected
when wondering ‘Whither emergence?’.
In the case of apolitical deployment of the concept of ‘emergence’, we witness a

conspicuous inability to challenge ‘the peaceful order of things’ and a rather ardent
desire to subject emergent phenomena to the conventional framework of knowing
and interpreting. How does this issue allow us to think and act differently? It is
not straightforward, but not impossible. The key is to allow emergence to navigate
between the Scylla of reproduction of convention and the Charybdis of putting
anything under the banner of new and innovative. This implies that we have been
guided by the following less metaphorical considerations.
Fundamentally, we refrained from adopting an expert position suggesting that ‘we’

are the ones who represent Western/developed academia. It was also paramount
for us to avoid creating yet another collection of contributions that would represent
a different (from Western) point of view, for this would have undermined the idea
of the world as one. Our approach aims to transcend the divisions mentioned
740 | editorial
earlier by thinking beyond the dualisms between developed and developing, core
and periphery, First World and (ex-)Second/Third World, North and South, and
West and East. In this way, the issue is performative. This being noted, the marker
of ‘emergence’ inevitably opens up spatial contexts to non-Western areas of
interests. Albeit some scholars might not be domiciled in these respective
geographies, which highlights the futility of any attempt to demarcate between
‘here’ and ‘there’. As a result, when we task ourselves with creating the basis for
new ways of thinking about emergence, it is vital to avoid traps of exotifying,
romanticising or othering. Although this special issue covers contexts that are
conventionally referred to as ‘emerging’, we insist on engaging with them as parts
that make up a whole.
A more explicit approach to becoming a good host that would satisfy Derrida’s
criteria for genuine hospitality to some extent would be to adhere to an ‘open-door’
policy. Contributions could channel through, but we would not know their take on
emergence. ephemera has always been open to submissions that are ‘experimental
modes of representation’. Yet, it is important to remain aware of the challenge of
thinking beyond established formats and conventions. In preparing this issue,
while keeping the doors open and remaining open to surprises, we witnessed
apprehensions of the theme of emergence that made themselves comfortable
within the offered space: a play, a comic and unconventional polemic. At the same
time, it is crucial that openness is not confined to a particular special issue.
A final consideration relates to making decisions, which cannot be avoided. Merely

succumbing to an ‘anything goes’ approach would risk devaluing all knowledge
claims. This would also undermine Derrida’s requirement for validation of
innovative disruptive knowledge. Thus, although this is considered commonplace,
we urge scholars who are ready to take part in our pursuit of ‘genuine hospitality’
to be truly self-reflective about the degree to which the field of enquiry is really
open. In addition, despite the openness and multiple possibilities that the
etymology of the word ‘emergence’ suggests, it is not simply a useful philosophical
concept that helps clarify positions within critical research – it is also a political
commitment. This is a thread and intention common to the contributions to this
issue.
Overview of the contributions
Now that we have declared our epistemological and political commitments, it is

time to see whether the contributions that found their way through our open doors
have managed to make themselves feel at home. We are not going to introduce the
contributions in the order of their appearance in this issue or in any other pecking
editorial | 741
order. Instead, we are going to waltz between them, as they rather naturally share
topics relevant for conversation, like good guests would at a drinks reception.
We move first to the buzz of legitimate discontent over the totalising liberal
conceptions of ‘emergence’. The article by Maitrayee Deka takes us geographically
to the ‘I’ in a praised BRICS quintet and goes straight to the heart of the problem
with economistic grand narratives of emergence, which always overlook the finer
details. On the basis of her rich fieldwork material gathered from the ‘labyrinth
like bazaars’ of Delhi, the author critically evaluates the nature and impact of the
‘Make in India’ programme. This top-down governmental programme designed
to bolster India’s manufacturing sector and attract foreign investments completely
disregarded the knowledge and skills of the actors in the informal economy, who
nurtured an ethos of turning obstacles inherent to Indian economy and society
into opportunities. This was achieved through what Deka calls practices of
‘tinkering’ or ‘improvisation’ – the sort of grass-roots ingenuity reflective of a
much more heterogeneous social world than the state pundits were willing to
recognise. Their vision, instead, was that of an imposing lion (the logo of the ‘Make
in India’ programme) that safeguards formalisation of the economy according to
a particular imperative of neoliberal globalisation.
Srivatsan Lakshminarayan picks up on those zoological obsessions of

policymakers and explains that roaring tigers, lions, confident elephants and other
beasts are ways to package up a country and sell it on the global financial market.
By providing a detailed analysis of macroeconomic policies, the ins and outs of
‘haute finance’ and various mediated discourses of growth and competitiveness,
this contribution tackles the core mechanics of ruthless international competition.
The main observation here is that in the post-reform India (and by no means it
should be treated as a unique and isolated case) all the powerful actors are paddling
a very narrow and instrumentally economic understanding of what constitutes
emergence. By employing the work of Karl Polanyi for his critical analysis,
Lakshminarayan warns that such parochialism sweeps through the diversity and
humanness of collective histories and geographies and results in ‘the non-reflexive
advancement of performative growth over its subjective and substantial
alternatives’.
Thus far we have got two very poignant accounts of how distinctively jejune,
reductive and yet very potent narratives of emergence dictate the terms on which
peoples and entire geographies have to advance. In fact, they even colonised the
language with which we could tell different stories, articulate different
understandings and conceive of an alternative world. Journalists, politicians, lay
public, as well as academics have been so taken with this only existing way of
742 | editorial
telling the stories of catching up with the developed world that any attempt to
escape them is bound to face difficulties.
The grand narratives of growth and emergence that Deka and Lakshminarayan
bring to our attention are extremely strong. In fact, they are so strong that they
tend to become omnipresent, making it very difficult to build narratives that are
not centred around them, regardless of whether those narratives aim to praise or
critique. This is demonstrated in Matilda Dahl’s contribution, which zooms in on
the phenomenon of M-pesa mobile money in Kenya – a way to exchange money
using mobile phones that existed even before Swish. Dahl experienced the
technology first-hand while working in one of the mobile money booths, where
she engaged with people within and around M-pesa. However, she does not wish
to offer insights into the business’s success nor provide a counter-narrative to it.
Instead, she tells a different story, a story that is difficult to tell due to predefined
ways of thinking and writing. In telling this story, she shares her thoughts and
frustrations, but actively chooses not to make a knowledge claim, thereby leaving
the story incomplete. This allows for the story to unfold in readers’ minds in a
myriad of ways. This introspective piece, which is infused with personal affect,
testifies to the difficulties anyone willing to escape a well-rehearsed emergence
narrative would encounter.
If emergence is to be taken outside the existing system, as we invited our

contributors to do, then one would have to go beyond traditional tropes and
conventional focal points. In this regard, Dahl’s rejection of making a point about
emergence may be seen as creating a crack that might open up the concept to other
understandings. Bayo Akomolafe and Alnoor Ladha, in their piece, focus on
precisely this crack and conceptualise emergence as the ‘onto-epistemology of not-
knowing’. In their provocative (by academic standards) article, the authors take
inspiration from a wide range of sources, including popular culture, psychedelics,
quantum physics and, notably, the work of Karen Barad. They reject the linear and
calculable understanding of emergence as catching up in terms of economic
growth via economic liberation. More importantly, they reject pre-conceived
recipes for social change, suggesting that ‘knowing’ and claiming to know
inevitably close off some potentialities and, consequently, emergence. Instead,
they ‘reimagine emergence as a radical indeterminacy that unsettles the grounds
upon which the exclusionary discourse/practices of neoliberal expansionism as
emergence are built’.
We read the approaches of Akomolafe and Ladha, and Dahl not as surrender or
recognition of the futility of efforts to enact change, but as a call to keep our eyes
open, regardless of whether we are trying to organise alternatives, undertake
research or engage in other praxes. At the same time, it is as important to open
editorial | 743
our eyes to and make sense of existing phenomena that may help to engender a
better world.
Neera Singh brings to our attention the community forestry initiatives in Odisha,
India, where affects, emotions and subjectivities shape up the practices of
commoning. Being key to forest protection, they make commons a lot more than
just an organisational form. She argues for thinking of the commons as ‘affective
socio-nature relations’ and practices of commoning as a means of nurturing this
relationship. Thus, if we open our eyes, it is actually possible to see manifestations
of emergence that are already happening. Emergence, in Singh’s study, can be
found in the ‘lived practices of dwelling in the environment and making it home’,
with human beings, too, being seen as ‘emergent rather than fixed and
immutable’.
Without undermining affect’s potential to bring social transformation of the kind

that many readers of ephemera would like to see, it is important to remember that
affect can also be used to pursue capitalist goals or certain organisational agendas
(see Karppi et al., 2016). This is highlighted in Nicolas Bencherki’s piece (this
issue), which examines the case of military wives, and how their self-organising
attempts are either discouraged or inevitably claimed by the military organisation
depending on how they fit with the organisation’s image. The military is by no
means an alternative organisation that threatens capitalist emergence. However,
this example should stimulate thinking about any groups or organisations
positioning themselves as alternative or anti-capitalist – regardless of whether they
are collectives, cooperatives or commons. Even organisations with the ‘best
intentions’ tend to put organisational interests at the fore by, for example,
sanctioning open critique or appropriating individual actions for organisational
ends. Such subordination of people makes even politically just alternatives
problematic and is far from encouraging of social transformation.
Nicolas Bencherki uses the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon’s concept of the
pre-individual to rethink the relationship between organisations and their
members. Traditionally, social sciences in general and organisation studies in
particular have either considered organisations as the aggregation of individual
actions (individualism) or systems that constitute their members (holism). With
the concept of the pre-individual, Bencherki circumvents the dualism between
holism and individualism, and suggests that we should pay attention to the pre-
individual processes that constitute actions. To illustrate this approach, Bencherki
offers an analysis of the documentary Nomad’s land, focusing on the relationship
between the army and a group of military wives. His analysis suggests that we
should remain sensitive to the politics involved in individualisation processes and
look at how actions are always configured by pre-individual forces.
744 | editorial
The contributors to this issue have different takes on emergence, and trying to
pinpoint the ‘right’ one is not our task. This openness, we suggest, hints in the
direction of active politics. This can be best demonstrated by art, as art does not
necessarily posit where or what the ‘truth’ is, but creates affect and invites people
to think and feel. This issue offers a whole set of contributions devoted to art and
artistic interventions, highlighting the centrality of art in imagining and acting for
a different world. However, the art world itself is not without problems, with
precarity, marketisation and, as Autonomous Artists Anonymous vividly
demonstrate, the vicious circles of signification and commodification at the
forefront from an early point in one’s life as an artist. According to this collective,
even explicit political statements on art always run the risk of being captured
within them, feeding into capitalism’s value creation. Emergence instead arises
from the engagement with art itself and is seen as ‘new forms, sensations and
affects which operate outside and beyond signification and cognition, and which
can provoke change, within us, between us and in how we live together, in and of
the world’. As such, there is hope in art’s radical potential via the refusal to
commodify it or the affects it creates. This has clear political implications without
screaming about politics.
We think this is exactly what the artistic contributions to this special issue do. In
order to avoid overburdening them with our interpretations and in line with the
understanding of emergence in this issue, we keep their descriptions brief. Brian
Showalter Matlock’s play on hierarchy and cooperation brings together thinkers
and strands of thought from different times in dialogues on these themes or the
lack thereof. Eileen Laurie’s comic takes us to an academic conference in Rio (what
an emergent destination!), with climate change happening in the background and
jellyfish paying a visit. Both the play and the comic drive our attention toward
particular themes – hierarchy and cooperation, and climate change – and are
political in this sense. However, they do not point fingers in overly obvious ways,
leaving the space for thinking and imagination, as well as emotional and affective
responses from the readers.
We have not been fully able to stick to our promises, however, adding some
interpretations and pointing some fingers. More broadly, despite claiming
openness when introducing the contributions, we have still said quite a lot. After
highlighting undecidedness and multiple potentialities, we have insisted on taking
stances and acting politically. This speaks to the topic of Andrei Botez and Joel
Hietanen’s note, which reflects on the paradox associated with following Gilles
Deleuze and explores the possibilities of enabling new thought to emerge. While
Deleuze explicitly takes issue with the idea of one final truth and embraces the idea
of thinking differently, the reception of his philosophy has turned him into what
the authors call ‘the “official philosopher”, the oracle that speaks the non-truth’.
editorial | 745
This poses a fundamental challenge for those who choose to draw inspiration from
Deleuze’s philosophy in their own scholarship, as one can only remain loyal to
Deleuze’s legacy by betraying it. These authors emphasise that thinking requires
violence, and that without this violence new thought cannot emerge.
This point resonates with us. We are willing to open up the concept of emergence
and host its different interpretations while also trying to think and make our voices
heard. Violence has certainly been committed, but it is up to our readers to decide
whether the sacrifice was worthwhile.
This special issue is rounded off by reviews of recent books that have been carefully
tailored to the subject of the issue. They offer additional forays into a multifaceted
understanding of emergence and augment the view presented in the issue’s
original contributions. Think of them as a book stall that you happen to notice
while leaving a post-conference discussion.
Beata Sirowy’s review of Santiago Zabala’s Why only art can save us is another
contribution highlighting art’s key importance for social change. Drawing on
Heidegger’s thought and, to some extent, on critical social theory, it argues that art
can foster a return to Being, which is currently dominated by technology and
instrumental rationality. This Being would be in a non-reductionist perception of
the world and human existence. Empty aestheticisation of art will not awaken it,
but there is much more hope in art that creates a sense of emergency and an
awareness that a different world is possible.
Marco Checchi reviews Vulnerability in resistance – an edited volume that is

comprised of a series of essays that engage with the interplay between vulnerability
and resistance. Those essays take us to a variety of geographical and political
contexts. Departing from and being largely indebted to the work of Judith Butler,
the contributions in this book make various attempts at rethinking the nature of
vulnerability and its occurrences on a diverse political landscape. The book, as
Checchi hints, can propel further reflections on what possibilities for resistance
can be created and spotted once we realise that power is vulnerable too.
In Martin Parker’s review of David Bell’s thoroughly scholarly monograph

Rethinking utopia we get to the question that is always on many sceptical lips when,
like in this issue, different and ultimately better worlds are being argued for.
Namely, is this not all a bit unrealistic? The answer is ‘no’, if we follow the
argument of the book, which rejects the usual thinking that eventually renders
utopia as a desire, as something which is never here and now, a ‘nice idea’ for
which we are always longing. The point of the book, which this issue is
746 | editorial
wholeheartedly willing to solidarise with, is that utopia is a collective practice of

creating new forms of affect in the prefigurative present.
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the editors
Ekaterina Chertkovskaya is a member of the editorial collective of ephemera.
Email: [email protected]
Christian Garmann Johnsen is a member of the editorial collective of ephemera.

Konstantin Stoborod is a member of the editorial collective of ephemera.

editorial | 749
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 751-776
Becoming a commoner: The commons as sites

for affective socio-nature encounters and co-
becomings
Neera Singh
abstract
This paper draws attention to the somewhat neglected domains of affects, emotions, and
subjectivity in the study of the commons. The paper argues that a focus on affective and
communicative relations among humans and between humans and more-than-humans
can enrich our understanding of the practices of commoning and the processes of becoming
a commoner. Using the case of community forestry initiatives in Odisha, India, it
illustrates how rural people become commoners through the embodied practices of caring
for the forests as a shared common. The paper uses this empirical example and conceptual
resources from affect theory and relational ontology to think about the commons as
affective socio-nature entanglements and as a nurturing ground for subjectivity. It
discusses the implications of attention on the commons and the practices of commoning
for enabling the emergence of other-than-capitalist subjectivities.
Introduction
Let us begin with the story of a pasture ‘open to all’ and the herdsman and his herd
of sheep that Garrett Hardin uses to illustrate his prediction of the ‘tragedy of the
commons’. Hardin’s herdsman, as a ‘rational being’, strives to maximize his gains
by adding sheep to his herd until his actions inevitably lead to the degradation of
the common grazing pasture (Hardin, 1968). In this ‘mini-maxi’ model of
humans, where humans are seen to minimize efforts or inputs and maximize
returns (Graeber, 2001: 6), the affective life of the shepherd is muted. In the
picture that Hardin invites us to imagine, the pursuit of self-interest by all actors
article | 751
leads to ‘ruin for all’. This caricature does not take into account the possibility that
the shepherd might grieve the loss of his green valley when it degrades, or that
grief might galvanize him into action to avert the tragedy. The affective and
communicative relations between the pasture and the shepherd and amongst the
shepherds and their power to bring both the commoner and the commons into
1
being remain invisible in this picture.
Scholars working on common pool resources have extensively critiqued Hardin’s

2
prediction of the tragedy. Elinor Ostrom’s landmark work has been especially
influential in showing that local communities can self-organize and craft
institutions to avert this tragedy (see especially Ostrom, 1990; Ostrom and
Gardener, 1993) and that private property or state authorities are not the only
means by which to solve common pool resource problems. While common pool
resources (CPR) work in the Ostrom tradition seeks an alternative to the powerful
and reductive narratives derived from liberal and neoliberal economic theory, it
tends to reproduce the very defining features of these narratives (Bresnihan, 2016).
Working with the same methodological individualist assumptions of neoliberal
economic theory that it critiques, it assumes that without proper rules, incentives,
and sanctions, individuals will degrade and ultimately destroy common resources
(Bresnihan, 2016; Cleaver, 2007). It thus pays insufficient attention to alternative
conceptions of rationality and to humans as ‘thinking-feeling’ empathetic beings.
This paper draws attention to this neglect and argues that attention on affective
and communicative relations between the commons and the commoners can lead
to more robust theorizing about the commons, and also possibly help in bringing
together divergent ways of thinking about the commons.
The uses of the term commons, as McCarthy (2009: 498) points out, are manifold,
and the term can be thought of as a ‘keyword’ in Raymond Williams’ sense of the
word. While CPR theorists predominantly focus on small-scale natural resources
as shared commons, autonomous Marxists talk about ‘the common’ in the
singular as a principle of organizing production and as the shared commonwealth
of humanity. As enclosure of the commons intensifies, and all realms of life are
increasingly commodified, the calls for reclaiming commons or inventing new
commons are growing strong. These calls are coming from diverse sources that do
not necessarily share similar theoretical foundations (McCarthy, 2006). On the

1
Peter Linebaugh (2010) observes Hardin’s ‘rational’ herdsman is likely to be a selfish
or lonely herdsman. He says that in history, the commons have mostly been governed,
and the greedy shepherd is likely to be punished by some community governance
system.
2
Hardin also admitted, in an article written in 1998 (p. 682), that ‘the weightiest
mistake’ in the paper was the omission of the modifying adjective ‘unmanaged’.
752 | article
Neera Singh Becoming a commoner
one hand, there are activists involved in struggles to ‘reclaim’ the historically
enclosed commons, or reassert local rights over land, forests, and water bodies as
part of the struggles against extractive capitalism; on the other hand, there are
emerging practices of creating new commons, especially in the global North in
spheres such as open-source software, urban gardens, and the reclamation of
cities. Traditionally, CPR theory has engaged with shared natural resources, such
as forests, land, and water bodies that need collectively respected rules to manage
them. It has expanded its ambit to include non-material social and cultural
resources such as information and intellectual property or even shared culture
itself as the ‘new commons’ (for a review see Hess, 2012). In contrast to the work
of CPR scholars, a growing number of commons activists suggest that diverse
commoning projects represent ‘an alternative form of production in the make’
(Caffentzis and Federici, 2014: i95) and are reminders that ‘alternative social
relations are entirely thinkable’ (McCarthy 2005: 16). Summing up this
perspective, Federici and Caffentzis (2014) emphasize that the commons are not
only the practices for sharing in an egalitarian manner the resources we produce
but are also a commitment to the fostering of common interest in every aspect of
our lives and political work. These activists advocate thinking about commoning
as a set of generative practices that support sustenance and enhancement of life
(Linebaugh, 2008; Bollier, 2014; Bollier and Helfrich, 2014).
As the Austrian philosopher Ivan Illich, in his brief but powerful essay titled
‘Silence is a common’ (1983), reminded us that the process of ‘enclosure of the
commons’ was not merely a physical takeover of the commons by the lords in
eighteenth century England, but signified a shift in the attitudes of society towards
the environment. This shift entailed seeing the environment as a resource to be
exploited for human needs instead of as a commons to be cherished, shared, and
nourished through practices of care (Illich, 1983). Resisting this dominant shift,
indigenous peoples and other locally-rooted cultures around the world have often
continued to view the common(s) as a source of sustenance of life that needs to be
3
nurtured with relations of care (Kimmerer, 2013; Sullivan, 2009; and many
4
others). ‘Thinking and feeling with the Earth ’ (Escobar, 2016), these cultures

3
Instead of essentializing indigenous cultures, I am following scholars like Escobar and
Ingold who emphasize how indigenous onto-epistemologies emerge from lived
practices of dwelling in the environmental and making it home.
4
Escobar’s idea of ‘Thinking and feeling with the Earth’ is based on Colombian sociologist
Orlando Fals Borda (1984)’s use of sentipensar and sentipensamiento to elaborate the ‘art
of living based on thinking with both heart and mind’. The notion of sentipensamiento was
later popularized by the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano as the ability found among the
popular classes to act without separating mind and body, reason and emotion (Escobar,
2016). These ideas resonate with a Spinozian perspective of affects.
article | 753
often embrace a stance of deep interdependence and a sense of ‘being-in-common’

with the rest of the world. This perspective underpins countless examples of place-
based movements and resistance against extractive industries around the world.
For example, Mapuche activists protesting petroleum extraction from Vaca Nuerta
in Argentina assert, ‘Our territories are not “resources” but lives that make the
5
Ixofijmogen of which we are part, not its owners’ (cited by de la Cadena, 2015a).
This perspective is also reflected in the work of feminist scholars (Shiva, 1988;
Mies & Bennholdt-Thomsen 1999; Federici, 2011; Gibson-Graham, 2011) and the
recent work of anthropologists (de la Cadena 2015b; Tsing 2010) who emphasize
on the need to nurture the commons through an ethics of care.
The calls for commoning emanating from this tradition highlight the
revolutionary potential of the commons in anti-capitalist struggles (Caffentzis and
Federici, 2014; de Angelis, 2013); the commons’ capacity to perform counter-
hegemonic common(s) senses (Garcia Lopez et al., 2017); and the need to include
more-than-humans in our thinking about the commons’ community (Breshninan,
2016). Building on this work, I emphasize the need to conceptualize and nurture
the commons as a site for becoming a commoner. I argue that the commons can
be conceptualized as a site of affective socio-nature encounters or as affective socio-
nature relations that can foster subjectivities of ‘being in common’ with others. I
emphasize that thinking in terms of affective relations and the work that commons
do (other than producing goods or resources) provides a helpful way of bringing
together diverse ways of thinking about the commons.
The paper engages a critical question of our times, which is how to transform our
ways of being human and relating to the rest of the world. Felix Guattari (1995:
119-20) once eloquently said that one of the most pressing questions of our times
is ‘how do we change mentalities, how do we reinvent social practices that would
give back to humanity – if it ever had it – a sense of responsibility, not only for its
own survival, but equally for the future of all life on the planet?’ I bring attention
to the potential of the commons and practices of commoning to nurture this sense
of responsibility by posing the following questions: What are the conditions that
foster affective relations between the commons and commoners? How do people
become commoners and imbibe norms that foster other-regarding behavior and
support collective action to govern the commons?
With the affective turn, Western social sciences and humanities are embracing
perspectives that are remarkably similar to indigenous ontologies. Using

5
Ixofijmogen, the Mapuche concept of ‘biodiversity’, resonates with the perspective of
seeing the forest as kin or a parent amongst other indigenous peoples (de la Cadena,
2015a).
754 | article
conceptual resources offered by affect theory and relational ontology in

conjunction with my empirical work with forest communities in Odisha, India, I
argue that we need to think of the commons as ‘affective socio-nature relations’
and practices of commoning as a means of nurturing this relationship. I argue that
a focus on affects and affective relationality helps to transcend the dualism of
subject and object, the commons and the commoners, and encourages us to think
instead of the commons and commoners as co-constituted through intersubjective
communication and affective relations. Doing so helps us to envision alternate
ways of valuing nature and to see the commons as a site for fostering subjectivities
of being commoners.
I begin with a brief description of the empirical context of my work which, to use
Guattari’s imaginary here, is for me the ‘force to think with’. In subsequent
sections, I discuss theoretical resources on affects, affective relationality, and
subjectivity and how they lead to different ways of conceptualizing human and
human-nature relationality. These two theoretical sections are followed by a
discussion of how these conceptual resources help us to think about the
production of the commons and commoners through affective socio-nature
relations. I conclude with a discussion on practical implications of using theories
of affect to think about transformations in environmental behavior and
subjectivities.
Collective action to conserve forests in Odisha, India
Odisha’s case of collective action to conserve forests is the empirical context that
informs my work and the theoretical arguments in this paper. My engagement
with community forestry initiatives in Odisha spans more than twenty-five years
and the theoretical arguments in the paper emerge from this long engagement.
The state of Odisha lies on the eastern coast of India. It is one of the poorest
provinces in the country as per the traditional economic parameters of assessing
poverty. Almost 80 percent of the state’s population is rural and depends on
subsistence agriculture. Forests play an important role in the rural subsistence
economy and have been the site of acute contestations following their enclosure
by the colonial state.
As was the case elsewhere in India, the British delineated large tracts of Odisha’s
geographical area as forests and brought them under state control. This enclosure
of commons as state-owned forests disrupted local forest-people relationships and
governance arrangements similar to those described for other parts of India in the
vast literature on environmental history (among others, these include Guha, 1990;
Gadgil and Guha, 1993; Sivaramakrishnan, 1999). The post-colonial state
article | 755
continued with the colonial forest governance framework and forests were charted
into the nation-building project. Various state governments prioritized
commercial extraction of timber and pulp for paper industries over local needs. By
the late 1970s and early 1980s, the effects of extensive commercial timber
extraction combined with unrestricted local use had started becoming visible.
Many villages started experiencing serious shortages of supply of wood and forest
products due to degradation of forests. In some cases, villagers narrated that the
forests had become so degraded and the wood so scarce that they had begun
digging out the roots of trees to use as fuel. In one village, people recounted the
frustration they experienced when they could not find wood for a cremation pyre
for a homeless man. When confronted with such dire situations, villagers realized
that they needed to do something before it was too late. Triggered by such
experiences, many villages decided to devise rules and undertake patrolling
measures to protect their local state-owned forests. By the 1990s several thousand
villages were actively protecting neighboring forests through community-based
arrangements. It is estimated that as many as 10,000 villages in Odisha have
elaborate community-based forest governance arrangements (for descriptions and
details of such governance arrangements see Human and Pattanaik, 2000; Kant
et al., 1991; Singh, 2002).
These collective arrangements to conserve forests emerged in the absence of

6
formal rights over forests and without any financial incentives to trigger
conservation. They are typical examples of collective actions documented by
scholars working on the commons in the Ostrom tradition. They demonstrate how
local residents, or the commoners, do not stand as silent spectators in the face of
an unfolding ‘tragedy’ but rather devise rules to self-govern and avert the tragedy
through a ‘bottoms-up crafting of institutions’ (cf. Haller et al., 2016). In many of
these conservation initiatives, people have borne enormous personal costs to
protect forests. In the district of Nayagarh, for example, several villages made the
decision to give up goat rearing for many years to help the forest regenerate by
alleviating grazing pressure. Though not a common occurrence, there have been
several instances where villagers on patrolling duty have been murdered by small-
time timber mafia, and individuals have often guarded forests at considerable risk
to their own lives. While Ostrom’s design principles for collective action explain
how collective action is sustained and institutions endure over time, institutional
approaches do not offer good explanations about what drives people to protect
forests, often risking their own lives, or what fosters the intimate relationship that

6
India’s Recognition of Forest Rights Act (FRA), enacted in 2006, provides for
recognition of community rights over forests. This law is yet to be fully implemented,
and the community forestry initiatives in Odisha predate this law.
756 | article
7
underpins such actions. As I have discussed elsewhere in greater detail (Singh,
2013, 2015), villagers in Odisha have forged intimate relations with forests in the
process of taking care of them.
Through their embodied caring labour, local residents have not only grown forests
but also their sense of community and ‘being-in-common’ with the rest of nature
and with each other. In the process, they have cultivated new subjectivities of being
forest caregivers (Singh, 2013). The villagers use a local system for sharing forest
patrolling labour, called thengapalli, in which a walking stick is passed around
signaling a household’s turn to contribute labour for forest patrolling. Partaking
in thengapalli provides an opportunity for villagers to enter into an embodied
relationship with the forest. Usually two to four people go to the forest daily for
thengapalli. In Dengajhari village in Nayagarh, where I recently undertook a
participatory videography project, women described to me how their daily
patrolling work is made into an event of joyful sociality. One woman described it
thus,
Someone takes salt, someone dry fish, and someone mango kernel. …We all sit
together and eat. We watch (keep a vigil on the forest) till evening and then return
home.
Another added,
We tell our children, ‘come, let us go to the forest. Fruits or roots whatever we will
get, we will eat. We will have a feast’. The children accompany us happily. We cook
and eat inside the forest and return home in the evening.
The daily patrolling trips thus provide opportunities for affective sociality in which
intimate knowledge and ways of relating to nature emerge (Raffles, 2002), and the
forests become sites of constituting social relations (cf. Gururani, 2002). Through
the daily patrolling trips for thengapalli, villagers come to know the forest
intimately and learn to respond affectively to its needs for care. Women often
gather a variety of berries, dig tubers and root vegetables, and gather greens for
cooking while on patrolling duty in the forest, while at the same time looking out
for any instances of fresh cutting of trees in the forest. These everyday actions and
performances (cf. Garcia Lopez et al., 2017) foster or reinforce affective relations.
In view of the material dependence on the forest, local villagers had strong affective
ties to begin with, and active care of the forest as a cherished common further
strengthened these affective ties. People began to care for the forest – including
the trees, plants, and the wildlife that returned to the forest as it regenerated – in
the same way as intimate social relations are developed, by spending time together

7
For a good overview of emergence of institutions see McKay (2002).
article | 757
and paying attention to each other. Anthropologist Tim Ingold (2000: 47) argues
that hunter-gatherers in widely separate parts of the world view forests as parents,
and he suggests that ‘to speak of the forest as a parent is not to model object
relations in terms of primary intersubjectivity, but to recognize that at root, the
constitutive quality of intimate relations with non-human and human components
of the environment is one and the same’. Similarly, anthropologist Nurit Bird-
David illustrates that the Nayaka in South India develop intimate relations with the
forest ‘by spending time with them’ and by investing in the relation the same ‘care,
feeling and attention’ (1992: 29-30) that they do in social relations. Through
thengapalli, the labour of patrolling and taking care of the forests is dispersed, and
the opportunity to develop an affective relationship with the forest through active
attention is shared broadly within the community. In my research, I have found
that when villagers delegate patrolling responsibilities to a hired watchman, they
have fewer opportunities to develop affective relations with the forest, which
dramatically diminishes their overall enthusiasm for the forest. Even though other
activities, such as visiting the forest to gather wood or other forest produce, offer
opportunities for an embodied connection, thengapalli offers a different
attunement to the forest due to the labour invested in its care. This resonates with
Norton et al.’s (2012) findings about the so-called IKEA effect, which suggests that
people love what they create, especially when their labour leads to successful
completion of tasks. Still, more systematic research is needed to understand the
processes and conditions that lead to affective relations between people and
forests.
Understanding the conditions that lead to these affective relations and foster
environmental subjectivities is of central importance for fostering care of the
commons. In the following sections, I elaborate the conceptual ideas about affect
and affective relationality followed by a discussion about subjectivity and discuss
how attention on affects and subjectivity helps think about fostering the
subjectivity of being a commoner.
Affect and affective relationality
In recent years, the social sciences and humanities have seen an explosion of
interest in the ideas of affect and emotions. What is now labeled as the ‘affective
turn’ in cultural studies (Clough and Halley, 2007) has been animated by different
orientations to affect that range from Silvan Tomkin’s psychobiological approach
to Deleuze’s Spinozist ethology of bodily capacities (Gregg and Seigworth, 2010).
I draw upon the Spinozian theory of affects as elaborated in the work of Brian
Massumi, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Giles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari,
among others. Affect in this formulation is seen as the power to affect and be
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affected, and the relationship between these two powers (Hardt, 2007). Affect is
different from emotions as conventionally understood and denotes a relational
force that flows between bodies and which enhances or diminishes their power of
acting (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988). To affect and be affected is to be open to the
world and to the possibility of being transformed through this engagement with
the material world.
Affect is a pre-cognitive and transpersonal intensity that flows through and defines
bodies – where bodies are not limited to human bodies. Initially nameless and
potentially ‘unruly’, relational affects often consolidate and manifest as emotions
and emotion episodes are themselves specific affective dynamics, temporarily
stabilized by patterns of reflection and narration (Slaby et al., 2016). To fully
capture the entirety of human experience, it is important to focus on the
interrelated domains of feelings, emotions, and affects, and to recognize that they
are a necessary accompaniment of cognition and rationality (instead of an
8
impediment to it). Also, attention on affect does not mean an inversion of
Descartes’ proposition ‘I think, therefore I am’ into ‘I feel, therefore I am’. Rather,
it compels appreciation that thinking and feeling are inseparable. And the ‘I’ that
appears as stable and fully formed is relationally entangled in the processes of
becoming. Thus a more appropriate proposition might be ‘I feel, think, and relate
and therefore I become’. And this becoming is necessarily a process of ‘becoming
with’ the many others with whom we share this planet (Haraway, 2008). This
perspective is echoed in indigenous thought and activism around the world, for
example in this assertion by an Indigenous Elder in Guatemala, ‘I am the land that
thinks’ (Desjarlais, 2014), or in Escobar (2016)’s examples of ‘Epistemologies of
the South’ in which many different ways of understanding the world emerge from
‘Thinking and feeling with the Earth’.
Scholars associated with the affective turn have pointed out that Spinozian
philosophy and his theory of affects inspires ecological thinking (Bennett, 2009;
Smith, 2012) and enables a ‘dialectics of the positive’ (Ruddick, 2010) given its
emphasis on relations, possibilities, and emergences. Spinoza’s conception of
conatus as a striving of all bodies to continue to exist and enhance the scope of their
existence further supports an ecological perspective that decenters humans.
Instead of the striving for utility maximization that dominates economic
imagination, Spinoza offers conatus, that is, a striving for associations that
enhance our capacity to act and give us joy (Read, 2015). Spinozian theories about
affect and conatus support a relational ontological perspective that shifts attention

8
As I elaborate later, neuroscience and behavioral economics are also emphasizing this
aspect; especially notable is the work of Antonio Damasio and Dan Ariely, among
many others.
article | 759
from essences or totalities to relations, emergence, and co-becomings. In this

ontological perspective, humans and ‘human nature’ are seen as emergent rather
than fixed and immutable.
Challenging the conception of humans as homo economicus, a Spinozian

perspective suggests that we are not only hardwired to maximize utility but are also
driven by the desire to care, give, and be valued as givers. Questioning the homo
economicus model of humans is, of course, not new. Starting with Amartya Sen’s
(1977) essay titled ‘The Rational Fools’, the rational economic actor has been
challenged in diverse disciplines, and alternate conceptions of humans have
gained ground. In evolutionary biology, for example, Jeremy Rifkin’s work (2009)
shows that cooperation and empathy are important evolutionary traits, and Frans
de Waal (2010) further elaborates that humans are not the only species capable of
displaying empathy and a preference for fairness and justice (also see Brosnan and
de Waal, 2003). In the field of behavioral economics, a large body of literature
establishes that emotions and the subconscious realm play an important role in
human decision-making (Norton et al., 2011) and that we are often ‘predictably
irrational’ (Ariely, 2008). Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s work (1999, 2003)
shows that emotions and rationality are intermeshed and that our ability to make
decisions relies on and mobilizes our ability to feel. Furthermore, thinking and
feeling happens not only in our brains but is also connected to embodied ways of
being and negotiating our way through the environment. Neuroscience is thus
confirming what Spinoza intuited more than three centuries ago and expressed in
the form of his theory of mind and body parallelism.
To return to our herdsman and his herd, the herdsman’s decision to add another
sheep – or not – is not solely a rational decision but is an affective decision made
by a thinking-feeling-relational being in response to cues from her social and
biophysical environments. In addition to governance institutions, affects and
affective capacities play a central role in shaping both the shepherd’s socio-natural
environment and her responses to it. Moreover, the shepherd is not a stand-alone
actor but a relational being entangled in a complex set of relations with other
human and nonhuman actors. The process of ‘dwelling in the environment’
(Ingold, 2000) entails not simply the most efficient extraction of ‘resources’ from
one’s environment but the forging of relations of care and reciprocity with nature
and other species in the process. The self that emerges through these affective
socio-natural interactions differs from the atomized individual subject of Western
thought. This self includes a sensibility and concern for the well-being of others
with whom it is relationally entangled, a point that I elaborate in greater detail in
the following section on subjectivities.
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Subjectivity and the commons
Philosophers and activists alike have highlighted that the current ecological crisis
demands us to rethink our modes of being human (Plumwood, 2007; Klein, 2015).
As feminist eco-philosopher Val Plumwood (2007: 1, cited in Roelvink, 2013) puts
it:
If our species does not survive the ecological crisis, it will probably be due to our
failure…to work out new ways to live with the earth, to rework ourselves…We will go
onwards in a different mode of humanity, or not at all.
Reinventing a different mode of being human is thus one of the most critical
challenges of our time, which compels attention to the conditions of subjectivity
formation.
Subjectivity, which can be broadly understood as ‘ways of perceiving,

understanding, and relating to the world’ (Read, 2011) or ‘one’s sense of what it
means and feels like to exist within a specific place, time, or set of relationships’
(Morales & Harris, 2014: 706), has been an important concept of academic
research since the 1960s. But in nature-society studies, the issue of subjectivities
has been relatively neglected (Morales and Harris, 2014). This is changing,
however, with an increasing realization that the crisis of the environment is
connected fundamentally to human ways of being and relating to the world.
Some of the recent works in nature-society studies on the issue of subjectivity

include Arun Agarwal’s deployment of the Foucauldian notion of governmentality
to understand how subjects develop disciplinary environmentality (Agrawal,
2005); Andrea Nightingale’s work on the role of emotions in the production of
subjectivity (Nightingale, 2011); and Robert Fletcher’s elaboration of Foucault’s
different modalities of governmentalities to understand neoliberal conservation
(Fletcher, 2010). While there is growing body of work by feminist political
ecologists and science and technology studies scholars (Latour, 2004; Nightingale,
2013; Sultana, 2011; Whatmore, 1997) that shows that subjectivities emerge from
engagement with the world, ‘the subject’ of Western social sciences as a stand-
alone actor is yet to be dethroned. In my earlier work (Singh, 2013), I have critiqued
the emphasis in governmentality-inspired approaches on the making of the subject
and invited attention instead on the processes of becoming and the emergence of
collective subjectivities through affective relations and immersion in one’s total
(social and biophysical) environment (also see Milton, 2002; Ingold, 2000).
Here, I deepen this analysis by arguing that we need to analyze how collective
subjectivities emerge from the entangled affective ecologies of nature, society, and
the self. Thinking in terms of ‘affective ecologies’ allows us to think transversally
article | 761
across the three ecologies of ‘nature, society, and the self’ that Felix Guattari (1989)
encourages us to do. Affect theory presents analytical tools for such transversal
thinking that unravels the conditions for our subjectification.
The commons, as autonomous Marxist Antonio Negri tells us, are not just
resources for supporting material existence but are sources for nurturance of our
subjectivity. Enclosure of the commons, thus, is not just a physical enclosure and
‘primitive accumulation of wealth’ by the elite but is fundamentally a process of
‘primitive accumulation of the conatus’ (Read, 2015, citing Albiac, 1996: 15)
through homogenization of subjectivities and the creation of a ‘one-world world’
while limiting other worlds and ‘anthropos-not-seen’ (de la Cadena, 2015a). It
denotes a loss of control over the conditions for the production of subjectivity. As
Read (2011) puts it, Marx’s concept of alienation denotes ‘not a loss of what is most
unique and personal but a loss of connection to what is most generic and shared,
i.e., it is a separation from the conditions of the production of subjectivity’ (124).
The current capitalist order is not only destroying the natural environment and
eroding social relations but is also engaged in a far more insidious and invisible
‘penetration of people’s attitudes, sensibility, and minds’ (Guattari and Negri,
1990: 53). Freeing up the conatus, or human striving, from the narrowly defined
striving of utility maximization, and allowing alternate ways of being and
subjectivities outside of the dominant market logic to emerge, is fundamental to
the process of revival of the commons. Revival of the commons, then, becomes
critical not simply from the perspective of restoration of access and control over
physical resources, but from the perspective of countering this alienation and
finding a way to produce alternate subjectivities and alternate worlds. From this
perspective, we need to reclaim the commons as material resources not only for
subsistence and livelihood but also as the grounds for the production of
subjectivity. As Read (2011) emphasizes, the struggle over the commons, including
the knowledge commons and the digital commons, is as much a struggle over the
forces and relations that produce subjectivity as it is a struggle over wealth and
value (Read, 2011).
In view of this, commons scholars need to pay attention to the conditions of

subjectivity production in addition to institutions, discourses, and power relations
that shape the production or disappearance of the commons. Beyond the structure-
agency dualism, this perspective helps us appreciate, as Guattari says, that
‘[v]ectors of subjectification do not necessarily pass through the individual’; rather,
the individual is ‘something like a terminal for processes that involve human
groups, socio-economic ensembles, data processing machines etc.’ (Guattari,
2000 [1989]: 25). Expanding subjectivities beyond the realm of the psyche, we
need to theorize and analyze them as collectively experienced and not only a means
762 | article
of understanding and making sense of the world, but also as a major force shaping
the world that we live in.
For conceptualizing and analyzing subjectivities as collective and emergent from

the ‘in-between space’ of structure and agency, philosopher Gilbert Simondon’s
theory about individuation is very useful. Simondon (1924-1989) is one of the
most inventive thinkers of twentieth-century philosophy whose work has been
somewhat neglected within the English-speaking audience. His work, however,
has influenced philosophers such as Deleuze and Guattari, who use Simondon’s
theory of individuation centrally in their work. Simondon’s ideas help us to focus
on the process of individuation, that is, the process through which a being becomes
an individual, and conceptualize it as not only a psychic but also a pyscho-social
process. Through his theory of transindividuality, Simondon questions the
centrality of the individual and the principle of individuation within Western
philosophy (Read, 2015; Combes, 2013). He argues that the Western notion of the
individual tends to equate existence, or ‘being’, with ‘being as an individual’, and
it ignores existence that is prior to or outside of existence as an individual. In
privileging the essence of things, it overlooks the fact that the ultimate reality is
made up of ‘relations, tensions and potentials’ (Read, 2015). In contrast to
historically reductionist ways of looking at social phenomenon as either emerging
from rational actions of isolated individual actors or as a product of social
structures, Simondon’s ideas help us grasp the productive nexus from which both
individualities and collectivities emerge (Read, 2011). According to Simondon, ‘the
conditions of our subjectivity, language, knowledge, and habits are neither
individual nor part of any collective, but are the conditions of individual identity
and collective belonging, remaining irreducible to each’ (Read, 2011: 113). His ideas
have been taken up by Deleuze and Guattari to reconceptualize the self as
‘spatialized, decentered, multiple, and nomadic’ in contrast to the conventional
view of the self as ‘coherent, enduring, and individualized’ (Rose, 1998).
This reconceptualization of the subject is supported by two of Simondon’s theses

(Virno, 2004). The first thesis states that individuation is never concluded, which
suggests that the pre-individual is never fully translated into singularity, rather the
subject is the interweaving of pre-individual elements and individuated
characteristics (ibid.: 78). The subject is a composite mix of ‘I’ and ‘one’, ‘standing
for unrepeatable uniqueness, but also anonymous universality’ (ibid.). For
example, the subjectivity of being a forest conservationist in Odisha is an
interweaving of the individuated ‘I’ and an anonymous collective ‘one’ who
depends on sensory perceptions of the species, the collective heritage of language
and forms of cooperation, and the general intellect. The day-to-day embodied
practices in the forest, through which one sees the mahua flowers spread on the
forest floor, smells its intoxicating scent, and feels the shade of the tree in the
article | 763
smoldering heat as one gathers and touches the flower are all affects that depend
on senses that are part of a generic biological endowment (Singh, 2013).
Simondon’s second thesis states that the collective, or the collective experience, is
not the sphere within which the salient traits of a singular individual diminish or
disappear; ‘on the contrary, it is the terrain of a new and more radical
individuation’ (Virno, 2004: 78). This thesis leads Simondon to conclude that
‘within the collective we endeavor to refine our singularity, to bring it to its climax’
(ibid.: 79). Simondon thus insists that we ‘seek to know the individual through
individuation rather than individuation through the individual’ and that we focus
on the process of individuation rather than look for a principle of individuation
(Combes, 2013: 2). In doing so, he calls for a radical understanding of the process
wherein a principle is not only put to work but is also constituted through the
process. Such a processual understanding of subjectivity has important
implications for rethinking the notion of the subject in political thought and
practice.
These ways of conceptualizing the self and subjectivity resonate strongly with
indigenous views of thinking about the self as entangled with the rest of the world
(de Castro, 2015; Kohn, 2015; Ingold, 2000; Suchet-Pearson et al., 2013, Escobar,
2016, among others) and also with emerging insights in biology and physical
sciences (Barad, 2007; Escobar, 2007; Weber, 2016). Indigenous cultures around
the world give primacy to relations and relational existence that emerge from their
stance of connectedness, gratitude, and solidarity with the rest of the world. In this
view, the self is not seen as an autonomous subject acting on the world, but as a
relational emergence responding to the world. In the recent academic turn to the
ideas of affect, materiality, and relationality, the connections and intellectual debt
to indigenous thought are not acknowledged adequately (Escobar, 2016; Todd,
2016) and there are calls for seeking connections between Indigenous thinkers
and Western scholars driving the ‘affective’ or ‘new materialist’ turn in social
sciences in ways that are not colonizing.
Commons scholars and activists are well-positioned to contribute to the cross-

fertilization of these ideas and to explore empirically and theoretically how
different ways of being in the world are conditioned by ways of relating to the
commons. A critical opening to explore is how different understandings of the self
and relational ethics emerge from certain ways of being with the world and how
Indigenous perspectives about the commons can offer ways of nurturing a stance
of interdependence and care for the more-than-human world.
Returning to my example of community initiatives to conserve forests, a

processual understanding of subjectivity helps us explore how embodied practices
764 | article
of caring for the forest lead to subjectivities of ‘forest caregivers’, whose sense of
the self includes thinking about forest conservation. Through the process of taking
care of their local forests and creating conditions for the forest’s enrichment,
villagers have not only regenerated forests but have cultivated or strengthened
subjectivities of being conservation-oriented and of being commoners. The
subjectivity of being forest caregivers emerges from their everyday actions of
caring for the forest. These caring practices include patrolling the forest, picking
up dead and dried wood, removing weeds, picking berries, and so on and so forth
to support the conditions for forests’ regeneration and enrichment. These activities
draw people into affective relations with their local forests, its vegetation, and its
wildlife and generate a sense of ‘being-in-common’ with the forest and with the
other members of human community. Affects play an important role in the
process and are the medium by which intersubjective relations with their social
and natural environment are strengthened, as a growing body of literature is now
beginning to appreciate (Anderson, 2009; Sultana, 2011; Nightingale, 2013;
Milton, 2002; Dallman et al., 2012, among many others). These affective relations
are similar to the relations of care and affection that people are likely to develop
with pets as ‘companion species’ (Haraway, 2008) or relations of love with plants
in one’s garden (Archambault, 2016). In this case, affective relations with forests
are also shaped by the materiality of the forest and local subsistence dependence
on it. These affective relations are further strengthened through conservation care
practices and play an important role in strengthening subjectivities of being a
commoner in active relationship with the forest and with other villagers who share
these landscapes. This subjectivity of ‘being-in-common with’ is eloquently
summed up in this proclamation by one of the community leaders: Samaste
samaston ko bandhi ke achanti, which implies that ‘all [bodies] are holding everyone
else together’ – a sentiment that resonates with the idea of affective relations tying
everyone together into a collectivity. Although he was referring to social relations
and relations of accountability within a social setting, he could have been
espousing relational ontology and echoing a Spinozan conception of collective
bodies.
These new subjectivities of forest conservationists include a sense of being part of

a community of forest caregivers and of having affective relations with the forests
that they have cared for. As I have emphasized in my earlier work, it is important
to understand that these relations and ways of relating are not ‘natural’ to
‘Indigenous’ peoples or an essential part of their culture; rather, these ways of
being emerge from affective interactions. By creating conditions for such
emergences, these kinds of subjectivities can be fostered. Understanding the
conditions that enable such emergences, then, becomes critical from the
perspective of nurturing alternate subjectivities and post-capitalist futures.
Examining how subjectivity is produced becomes critical and an important
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political project as it can help us understand, as Read (2011: 114) puts it, ‘how
subjectivity might be produced otherwise, ultimately transforming itself, turning
a passive condition into an active process’. The multitudes of examples of collective
action for reclaiming or creating new commons are appropriate sites to explore
processes contributing to the production of subjectivity.
From commons to commoning: Commons as affective socio-nature

relations and commoning as world-making practices
In recent years, the concept of the commons has become central to anti-capitalist
struggles. Diverse projects for commoning that include community gardens, local
currencies, community supported agriculture, bio-cultural restoration efforts,
peer-to-peer production initiatives, and so on (see Bollier and Heinrich, 2015, for
several dozen examples). A wide range of activists and practitioners are invoking
the vocabulary of the commons to defend the disappearing material commons as
well as to expand non-material commons as practices for building communities,
solidarity, and alternate subjectivities (De Peuter and Dyer-Witheford, 2010, De
Angelis, 2013). In so doing, commoning is seen as a world-making practice that
leads the creation of ‘a collective subject or multiple collective subjects’ who foster
the common interest in every aspect of our lives and political work (Federici and
Caffentizis, 2014). Commoning is seen as a way to reclaim control over our lives
and over the conditions of our reproduction (ibid.).
In contrast to the CPR scholars who focus on the commons as shared natural
resources, autonomous Marxists refer to ‘the common’ as a singular and following
Hardt and Negri’s lead maintain that ‘the common’ is not only the earth that we
share but also the ‘languages we create, the social practices we establish, the modes
of sociality that define our relationships, and so forth’ (Hardt and Negri, 2009:
139). In this invoking of humanity’s commonwealth they emphasize that instead
of seeing humanity as separate from nature, as either its exploiter or its custodian,
such a notion of ‘the common’ focuses on ‘the practices of interaction, care, and
cohabitation in a common world’ (Hardt and Negri, 2009: viii). While natural
resource commons in the CPR theories are defined in terms of rivalry and
possibilities of exclusion, the cultural and intellectual commons are not subject to
a similar logic of scarcity and exclusionary use (McCarthy, 2006) and are rather
seen as abundant. The cultural common, Hardt and Negri (2009: 139) write, ‘is
dynamic, involving both the product of labor and the means of future production’.
While this diversity in talking about the commons creates analytical challenges, it
also offers productive openings, by drawing attention to the world-making
possibilities of commoning practices to create the pluriverse, that is, the Zapatista
766 | article
vision of a ‘world where many worlds fit’ (Escobar, 2016). The analytical lens of
affect and relational ontology helps bring to light the productive overlaps between
these diverse ways of thinking about the commons. It helps us to think of the
commons as ‘affective socio-nature relations’ and as sites of affective encounters
productive of novel subjectivities. The commons are not just shared natural
resources but are also our shared affective capacities to act and respond, and these
affective capacities shape encounters, driven by conatus or striving as a force for
becoming. The commons are thus sites for affective encounters between humans
and the more-than-human material world, as well as practices that nurture these
relations. Thinking in relational terms about affective encounters helps us
appreciate the important role of the more-than-human actors in the production of
the commons and commoners. The commons, both as material resources and as
conditions for subjectivity, get produced due to the coming together of the labour
and creative energies of humans and more-than-human actors. And value emerges
from this coming together, and thus what we need to cherish, value, and advance
are opportunities for such coming together and for co-flourishing. Seeing
commons as spaces for affective encounters between humans and more-than-
humans helps us appreciate that they are the nurturing grounds for fostering what
Haraway terms ‘response-ability’ – that is, our ability to respond ethically to the
demands of the many others with whom we share this world. Commons are
nurtured through commoning practices that, in turn, enable us to think, feel, and
act as a commoner.
Such a perspective helps us to think about the commons not just as lived-in
landscapes but as living landscapes that are alive with dynamic social and ecological
relations. The Western social sciences are now engaging with renewed interests in
the material world and are insisting that this ‘new materialism’ take the vitality of
all matter and agency of the more-than-human world more seriously and inspire
an environmentalism that is driven by a deeper love for the material world
(Bennett, 2009). Instead of using the God’s eye perspective of seeing the world as
fully knowable from the outside, and largely as dead matter, the ontological
revisioning ushered in by the ideas of vibrant materiality helps see us the world as
alive and things and beings always in the process of making – a process, moreover,
that can only be experienced and explained from partial, situated perspectives. The
latest developments in the sciences, especially within quantum physics and new
biology, also lend support to these perspectives of connectedness, emergence, and
contingency.
While these ideas may be new, or newly rediscovered, in the social sciences, they
form the bedrock of Indigenous worldviews, where the world is seen as alive and
as an active participant in the unfolding of human drama instead of being merely
an inert backdrop for it. The current time of environmental crisis demands that
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we embrace such perspectives, but do so through processes of respectful

engagement (Todd, 2016). Most importantly, we need to explore how to foster
conditions that support such perspectives and lead to an emergence of a stance of
openness, gratitude, and appreciation for the interconnectedness of all life.
Cultivating alternate modes of being through friendships and alliances is an
important part of strategies for emancipatory social formations (Igoe, 2015).
To summarize, attention on affective relations enables: 1) a different conception of

the human – as more-than-rational, open-ended, in the process of becoming; 2) a
different understanding of the realm of the ‘social’ and of social processes – not as
emerging from individual actions or from structures that enable or constrain
individual action but as emergent in the processes that constitute both the
individual and the collective but which are reducible to neither (and the collective
includes more-than-humans as well); 3) a different conception of nature as socio-
natures or as affective ecology animated with affective social-nature relations that
co-constitute the social and the natural realms.
While it is now commonplace to talk about socio-natures, the conditions for the
production of socio-nature relations are typically not critically examined. We need
to develop analytical tools that help unravel the process of emergence of socio-
nature entanglements and the production of socio-natures. The conceptual
resources and insights emerging from the recent affective and ontological turn
provide openings for more of this kind of robust theorizing about the commons
and about the processes of becoming a commoner. The methodological challenge
for us is to find tools to explore affective dimensions. Our traditional tools of
analysis that are rooted in an ontological perspective are focused on signification
and representational politics; non-representational theory, on the other hand,
requires tools that call attention to the ‘onflow’ of everyday life, focus on practices,
explore the pre-cognitive realm, and draw from performing arts to reintroduce a
‘sense of wonder’ into the social sciences (Thrift, 2008).
Conclusions
Reflecting on the future of the commons, David Harvey (2011) notes that our
thinking about the commons has been enclosed in a far-too-narrow set of
assumptions and caught in the debate about private-property versus state
interventions. Ugo Mattei (2012) has similarly emphasized the need to think
beyond the state-market duopoly and see the commons and practices of
commoning as not only a property rights arrangement but as articulating an
alternate set of values. Instead of seeing the commons as a third-way or as an
alternative to the state or the market, seeing the commons as affective socio-nature
768 | article
relations helps to rethink what value is and focus on what value we want any
governance or property rights arrangement to deliver. In addition to exchange
value and use value, it helps to think in terms of what Haraway (2008) terms as
‘encounter value’ of human and more-than-human encounters. Thinking about
the commons in terms of affective relationality, as sites or space of affective
encounters and as a set of practices that nurture the subjectivity opens space for
other-than-capitalist subjectivities and post-capitalist futures.
I have emphasized the need for a processual understanding of subjectivity and

attention to the conditions for subjectivity production. Why are issues of
subjectivity important for scholars working on the commons? First, the current
ecological crisis is deeply connected with our ways of being human. Second, the
solutions that we are seeking to find our way out of this crisis are increasingly
market-based and likely to reproduce the subjectivities and modes of being human
that have gotten us into this situation in the first place. Third, we need to
understand how subjectivities are produced so that we can actively produce
alternate subjectivities. Commons scholars can make significant contributions in
this regard because the commons are important grounds of producing subjectivity.
Relating to a place or a resource as a common calls upon us to act like a commoner
and through these actions inculcate subjectivities of being a commoner.
While institutions and ‘rules-in-use’ play important roles in constituting

subjectivity, affects are the medium through which institutions are experienced,
interpreted, and reworked. For this reason, analytical attention on institutions
needs to be complemented with attention on affects, emotions, and subjectivity.
Analytical attention on affects helps unravel conditions of subjectivity formation.
As discussed in the paper, it helps us to appreciate that the conditions of
subjectivity do not reside solely in an individual or in the environment but are part
of the conditions that constitute both but cannot be reduced to either. By analyzing
how affects circulate and subjectivity is produced, we may begin to find ways to
nurture and expand our ‘response-ability’ and ‘becoming with’ the world that we
share with many others.
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the author
Neera M. Singh is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography and Planning,
University of Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include the affective dimensions of
human and more-than-human relations, environmental behaviour and subjectivity, the
commons and participatory visual ethnography. She continues to be actively associated
with the issues of community forest rights and governance in India through Vasundhara,
a Bhubaneswar-based NGO, in her role as founding member and president.
776 | article
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 777-799
A pre-individual perspective to organizational

action
Nicolas Bencherki
abstract
While organization studies and sociology have put considerable effort in attempting to
explicate the way individual and organizational action are related, this paper proposes to
borrow from the insights of French philosopher Gilbert Simondon, and to begin with
action first by thinking of it as pre-individual, i.e. logically prior to any individual. This
recognition turns the spotlight to the processes by which action, at once, contributes to the
individuation of both people and organizations, thus constituting them. Affect plays a
central role in the continuation of personal individuation processes into collective ones.
The theory is illustrated through the analysis of segments of a documentary, Nomad’s land
(Corriveau, 2007), which tells the story of the tumultuous relationship between the
Canadian army and the spouses of military members. The analysis will show how thinking
of action as pre-individual reveals co-individuation’s political implications.
Introduction
A newspaper headline reads ‘Canadian army heading for Africa’, but the
photograph that accompanies it shows that it is men and women who are being
deployed, leaving their families behind. The slip from individual to organizational
action is common, and has preoccupied organization studies and sociology alike.
Both disciplines have kept busy attempting to connect the two levels and
understand the passage from individual to organizational action ‒ and the other
way around (Eisenhardt, 1989; Emirbayer and Mische, 1998). The prevalence of
Durkheimian sociology has led to a framing of the problem following an ontology
of being, i.e., thinking of organizations and their members as distinct entities
whose relation needs to be understood (Bencherki and Snack, 2016). For
article | 777
Durkheim, indeed, ‘Collective tendencies have an existence of their own […] they
too affect the individual from without’ (1951: 309).
Attempts to connect the collective and the individual have ranged from the
principal-agent model (e.g. Grossman and Hart, 1983) to Giddens’s structuration
theory (Giddens, 1984; McPhee and Zaug, 2000; Scott et al., 1998), and to studies
of institutional work (Phillips and Lawrence, 2012; Zundel et al., 2013).
Individuals, it has been suggested, carry out actions on behalf of the organization,
enact the structures that constrain them, or alter these structures. In all cases, the
assumption remains that there are, on the one hand, organizations, and on the
other, people. The theoretical problem here consists of understanding how
communication can take place between these two autonomous levels.
Rather than inferring the sort of relation that would allow the passage of action
between already-constituted people and organizations, I propose to turn the
investigation on its head. Following the ideas of French philosopher Gilbert
Simondon, I will suggest acknowledging that action is pre-individual, i.e. logically
prior to any individual. This recognition turns the spotlight to the processes by
which action, at once, contributes to the individuation of both people and
organizations, thus constituting them. In this process, affect plays a central role in
the continuation of personal individuation processes into collective ones. Through
the illustrative case of a documentary about the wives of Canadian military
members, I will show how thinking of action as pre-individual reveals the political
implications of co-individuation.
Connecting the individual and the collective
The various perspectives seeking to reconcile individual and collective action have,
in fact, remained vague on their definition of action. Similarly, while they each
suggest some form of communication between the two levels, they provide no clear
definition of communication. For instance, the principal-agent model suggests
that organizations delegate actions to their stewards, but does not provide concrete
accounts of how delegation takes place (Vickers, 1985). Structuration theory, for its
part, has a richer discussion of action (Giddens, 1984: 3), but provides few
empirical descriptions of the collective–individual relationship, and Giddens
himself offers no clear definition of communication (McPhee and Iverson, 2009).
As for the institutional work approach, it paradoxically alternates between the
stable ‘it-ness’ of structure, and the agentic capabilities of people who, it turns out,
can alter it (Zundel et al., 2013). Current approaches, in summary, presuppose the
substantial existence of beings, and each one ‘stands for itself, by itself, and has to
be (causally) re-linked, which takes a major theoretical effort’ (Weik, 2011: 658).
778 | article
Nicolas Bencherki A pre-individual perspective to organizational action
Said otherwise, collectives and individuals are two banks that need to be bridged,
and it seems that the bridge is harder to build than expected.
The difficulty comes in part from the presumption that only the organization’s
non-problematic members are worthy of study, thus ignoring those whose
belonging is not so clear. For instance, consultants’ membership in client
organizations is ambiguous (Wright, 2009), and new forms of work blur
conventional employment relations (Barley, 1996; Barley and Kunda, 2004), while
people with fringe socioeconomic conditions ‘dwell and work in the periphery’ of
organization studies (Imas and Weston, 2012: 206). Literature finds only specific
kinds of workers to be relevant, although organizations become increasingly post-
bureaucratic (Hodgson, 2004; Kellogg et al., 2006), and precarious work is
normalized. The need to redefine the organization–person link is even more
obvious when studying alternative organizations – for instance criminal
organizations (Dobusch and Schoeneborn, 2015; Scott, 2013; Zundel et al., 2013).
Instead of deciding in advance on who or what matters – which people, what

structures, etc. – and then attempt to clarify their relations, starting from the
relation itself turns this into an empirical question. In doing so, a relational
perspective renders obsolete the project of bridging the so-called micro–macro gap
(Emirbayer, 1997; Latour, 2005, 2008). A relational approach views action as a
difference, and refrains from deciding in advance who or what makes a relevant
difference in a given situation: whether someone or something is marginal or in a
dominant position is the outcome of relations rather than being predetermined.
What matters is the genetic process that constitutes beings by distinguishing
between systems and their environment, and carves out individuals from the
continuous stream of reality; any distinction or stabilization is therefore an
empirical accomplishment (Cooper, 2005). Authors who have adopted such
process metaphysics have borrowed the insights of many different philosophers.
For example, Tsoukas and Chia (2002) borrow from Bergson (1944) to suggest
thinking in terms of becoming rather than being, and that organizations are ever-
changing, while Czarniawska and Hernes (2005) show how actor-network theory
allows accounting for so-called macro-actors without the need to posit an
unobservable level of reality. Others have espoused the views of Whitehead (1979)
to discuss organizational learning as a process (Clegg et al., 2005) and the role of
possession in organizing (Bencherki and Cooren, 2011). Bergson and Deleuze
have been shown to provide alternatives to a linear view of information when
studying organizational knowledge (Wood and Ferlie, 2003).
These works, however, still tend to distinguish between different types of entities
ahead of any empirical investigation. For instance, they often assume that
organizations are ever-changing, but humans are not. Bergson, for example, takes
article | 779
a point of departure in the idea of human interpretation. Furthermore, his concept

of élan vital, some have argued, accounts for living beings in different terms than
those that are used to describe material reality (Deleuze, 1966). Along the same
lines, Weik (2011) convincingly shows that Whitehead’s understanding of the
ontogenetic process rests on Platonic eternal objects that shape reality. More
recently, Cooper (2005) has advanced a relational ontology, but he nevertheless
retains the notion of a human agent as distinct from its ever-changing
environment. As Barthélémy (2005) explains, these perspectives display a
continued belief in Aristotelician hylemorphism, whereby creativity consists in the
meeting of form and matter. Yes, beings are processual, but they need a blueprint
– be it ideal forms, human understanding, or people’s agency. I would like to
propose, instead, that when something appears to be created from the interaction
between beings, organization scholars should empirically explore these
interactions as a communicational process. Drawing on insights from French
philosopher Gilbert Simondon, I will show that when attention is paid to
communication, it reveals how action circulates between people and
organizations, and, in doing so, constitutes them. This view allows speaking of the
individuation of human beings and that of the organization in the same terms,
without needing to suppose that either is stable while the other is changing. To
allow such a conceptual shift, it must be acknowledged that action logically
precedes the beings that appear to be its authors.
Action as pre-individual
Explicitly opposing hylemorphism, Simondon (2005) proposed an ontogenetic

theory to account in the same terms for the constitution of physical, biological,
psychical and trans-individual beings. While Simondon’s work has received some
attention in academic literature, in particular in discussions of technology and
society (e.g. Bardini, 2014), it has received only limited attention in organization
studies (rare exceptions include Leonardi, 2010; as well as a special issue of Culture
and Organization, see Letiche and Moriceau, 2017; Styhre, 2010). For example, the
philosophy of Simondon has been shown to subsume the opposition between
structure and agency in routines (Styhre, 2017). In his ‘allagmatic’ perspective
(Simondon, 1989: 82) – allagma means ‘change’ in Greek – there is no need to
postulate an ontologically prior blueprint, to reconcile levels, or a form with a
substance, or understanding with reality, for in fact the phases of being coexist. I
am not, as a human being, anterior to society; at any moment, I am
780 | article
contemporaneous to each of my cells and to the whole universe. The constitution

1
of beings proceeds from kin to kin, in an open-ended process :
an individuated life is neither the unfolding of what it has been originally, nor a
journey towards its ultimate term, which it would be preparing. […] The present of
being is its problematic as it is resolving. (Simondon, 2005: 322)
Action, for Simondon, is not the deed of any agent – indeed, such thinking would
grant ‘an ontological privilege to the constituted individual’ (2005: 23) – but rather
a difference that tilts the stability of a being and provokes change. Whether a
particular action makes a difference for a human being, a collective, or something
else is an empirical question. Several individuation processes take place at once,
and as an individual is constituted, so is its ‘associated milieu’. For instance, the
body is thought’s associated milieu (Simondon, 2005: 132), but the body’s
individuation is contemporaneous to that of thought, and whether one of them is
the focal point and others are considered the milieu is a matter of perspective.
Action is therefore pre-individual to beings, but it is not chronologically prior to
them. A being does not participate in the individuation of others only once it has
completed its own; individuations continue into each other ceaselessly. It is as I
learn more, as I get older, as I accrue lived experiences, that I am contributing to
my department, to my field of research, or to my students’ individuation.
Regarding human individuation, Simondon speaks of pre-individual action in

terms of affect. Simondon does not use the concept of affect in the common
psychological sense, as regularly discussed in organizational contexts (Fineman,
2008; Hjorth and Pelzer, 2007; Styhre et al., 2002). Rather, affect is autonomous
(Massumi, 1995), operating contemporaneously but logically prior to any subject:
it is ‘affect-itself’ (Clough et al., 2007). Following Spinoza (1981), affect must be
thought as ad-facere, as an action on something, such as the body (Massumi, 1995,
2002). This definition turns the spotlight to the organs by which bodies may sense
and capture affections, and engage in affective relations. Sørensen (2006: 139)
summarizes Spinoza’s thought: ‘the body does not yet know what it can do, it does
not know what it is capable of, it has not yet found the thresholds of its powers to
affect and be affected’ (see also Deleuze, 1988).
Affect is not limited to human bodies; it extends to organizational and social

bodies, as illustrated by the ephemera special issue on the ‘symptoms of
organization’ (Raastrup Kristensen et al., 2008). ‘Affectivo-emotivity,’ for
Simondon, is essential to the constitution of collectives. It is an ‘emotional and
provisional disindividuation of the subject’ which ‘prepares a step back towards

1 All translations from French works are my own unless noted otherwise.

article | 781
the pre-individual before the new step forward, towards (psycho) social
individuation’ (Barthélémy, 2014: 67). In Simondon’s own words:
the relation to the milieu […] is accomplished, in the case of individuation, through
emotion, which indicates that the principles of existence of the individual being are
questioned. […] This state implicates forces that put on trial the individual’s
existence as an individuated being. (Simondon, 1989: 130)
For Simondon, affectivo-emotivity corresponds to an individual’s (re)discovery of

the pre-individual load it/he/she carries, in order to resolve it not within
it/him/herself, but through participation in a collective, for an individual ‘does not
exhaust the tensions that allowed its constitution.’ It is from ‘that load of reality
that is still non-individuated that man (sic) seeks his kindred to constitute a group
where he will achieve presence through a second individuation’ (Simondon, 1989:
192). Social realities, including organizational settings, is ‘not a term in a relation,’
but rather a ‘system of relations’ established through ‘relational activities’
(Simondon, 1989: 179). These activities are communicational: ‘The
transindividual does not localize individuals: it makes them coincide; it makes
them communicate through significations: it is those information relationships
that are primordial’ (Simondon, 1989: 192). The philosophy of Simondon can
therefore be summarized through the following motto: the being in relation and
‘relation in the being’ (Simondon, 1989: 24).
Communication, for Simondon, takes a special meaning. The individuation of any

being occurs as a structuring movement propagates from kin to kin, as a process
he calls transduction (see also Styhre, 2010): ‘there is transduction where an
activity starts from the center of being […] and extends in diverse directions’
(Simondon, 1989: 25). The transductive establishment of relations consists in
circulating actions from one center to another, and in so doing structuring and
individuating the collective being. Those actions are pre-individual, which means
that transduction does not happen inside, say, an organization. Whether
something gets organized or structured due to the transductive circulation of
action is an empirical matter. An organizational or human body provides a context
or a milieu to its actions to the extent that they contribute to it, but the actions also
escape any given body ‒ they are never quite its actions. Said otherwise, a being
only possesses its components from a particular perspective: their contribution to
its individuation process; possession is never complete or univocal.
This understanding of organizations does not preclude the importance of

signification processes in constituting organizations (Cooren, 2000; Cornelissen
et al., 2015; McPhee and Zaug, 2000). For Simondon, though, signification does
not precede the collective individuation process: ‘The existence of the collective is
necessary for information to be significant’ (2005: 307). Information here refers
782 | article
to the in-formation of a being, the process through which it is constituted. An action

acquires signification through its participation in one or several individuation
processes, thus allowing for multiple significations. Concurrent significations,
then, are not mere misunderstandings, but rather the outcomes of simultaneous
individuation processes.
Finally, individuation processes are never final. Organizations, people and things
continue, perpetually, their individuation. While there is clearly a challenge in
attempting to account for one being’s individuation when everything else is
moving, recourse to seemingly stable beings is but an analytical shortcut that
already implies the outcome of the individuation process. Fully embracing a pre-
individual approach, in summary, contributes to organizational studies in at least
three ways:
1. Communication becomes crucial for the study of organizational

constitution and action, but it must be understood as the propagation of action ‒
what Simondon calls transduction;
2. Relatedly, signification becomes the study of the participation of action

in a given process of individuation, while keeping in mind that a same action may
take part in several individuation processes at a time, and therefore be captured in
several configurations that provide it with different significations;
3. No privilege may be given to any particular being or type of being,

including humans, since what is being investigated is precisely their individuation;
it is only at the conclusion of the study that the analyst will be able to determine
for whom or for what a particular action was carried out and a particular
signification produced.
Methodological and analytical implications
Few Simondon-inspired empirical studies exist, and it is therefore difficult to refer

to precedents to describe potential designs for such a study. It is possible, though,
to outline a Simondonian research approach from his work. An allagmatic
perspective emphasizing individuation processes requires a resolutely empirical
approach that does not simply assume that any action occurring within an
organization, or any action performed by a formal member, contributes to its
individuation (Bencherki and Snack, 2016). Scholars must instead observe,
concretely, how action moves around, thus at once structuring and individuating
human beings, things, and organizations, and simultaneously making them all
act. Hence, empirical research must remain agnostic as to who or what counts, or
article | 783
what actions matter. For instance, postulating structural influences would amount
to granting an ontological privilege to structures.
What makes an action relevant or significant is its contribution to an individuation

process. Research must therefore describe those contributions or, conversely, the
way individuation processes may be put at risk. I propose to do so by combining a
form of second-hand ethnography with a narrative analysis. Cooren’s (2004)
ethnographic description of the way action may be passed from a person to a note,
and the other way around, exemplifies the empirical work an allagmatic
perspective demands. Ethnography is also the approach used in many empirical
studies conducted in the process tradition (c.f. Jarzabkowski and Balogun, 2009;
Langley, 1999). Simondon’s insistence on the circulation of action also parallels
narrative analysis’ focus on the way action is distributed among actors (Greimas,
1987; c.f. Robichaud, 2003).
As an illustration, I suggest looking at excerpts from the documentary Nomad’s

land, written and directed by Claire Corriveau (2007) and produced by the National
Film Board of Canada. The documentary tells the stories of military wives who
have little control over their life because of frequent moves, and whose relation
with the army is ambiguous. The experience reported by the women she interviews
echo not only current literature on gender-biased division of work (cf. Alvesson
and Billing, 2009) but even the very recognition of women as contributing at all
to the organization, even in the most gender-stereotypical forms. The documentary
thus provides an extreme example of the intricate relation between individuals and
their organization.
For the purpose of this article and given the illustrative status of this data, the
documentary serves as a form of second-hand ethnography. Cunliffe and
Coupland (2012), for example, have drawn from a documentary about a rugby
team to illustrate the embodied nature of sense making. Zundel, Holt and
Cornelissen’s (2013) study of institutional work rests on excerpts from the popular
TV series The wire. In each case, researchers are careful to only make claims their
data affords. Corriveau’s film being a documentary and somewhat reflexive about
her own process allows confidence in this data source for the humble, illustrative
purpose for which it is intended. Furthermore, Corriveau’s account is consistent
with research on the hardships and stress of military families, and spouses in
particular (c.f. Asbury and Martin, 2012).
Yet, the documentary has limitations. First, it provides imperfect access to male
military members’ voices or to those of army representatives. Also, critiques
accused Corriveau of describing a reality that was true decades prior to the film’s
release – and it is now another decade later. Second, it fails to grasp the diversity
784 | article
of the Canadian army, by only interviewing women in heterosexual relationships.

Third, another limitation is that the documentary switches between English and
French regularly (a typical Canadian reality), and some of the data presented here
uses the translation provided in the closed captioning. Finally, and most
importantly, using a documentary limits the analysis to what is being said and
shown, which in this case leads to the impression of a somewhat stiff opposition
between the women and the army, both described by the director as already-
constituted entities. I will show that even within available data, it is possible to
shake this supposition, in particular by showing that the individuation of both the
women and the army is at stake and far from being completed.
My analysis will focus on the women who testify in the documentary, as they are
attempting to continue their personal individuation process through the collective
individuation of the army. I may suppose that OSSOM, the organization they
created to defend their rights, serves as an alternative outlet for their frustrated
individuation. Had the documentary provided more data, I could study the way
OSSOM’s individuation is continued as it captures and channels the available
affectivo-emotive loads of the women, as there are clues to the effect that many
volunteer organizations may operate similarly (McAllum, 2014). The women’s
families also take charge of the brimful pre-individual load they carry. The
documentary, however, in what may appear as a somewhat conservative move,
appears to associate the women with their children, thus conflating the family’s
individuation with that of the women – not being able to school their children
becomes the women’s own problem. The husbands are extraordinarily absent
from the documentary, an exception being Lucie Laliberté’s retired spouse, whose
intervention is limited to laconically praising his wife’s determination. This may
have to do with military regulations on their speech. I may speculate, of course,
that the men’s individuation is very much affected by the situation of their spouses:
there is no reason to suppose that they are not also continuing their individuation
processes as members of their family, as fathers of their children, as participants
to their communities and as contributors to many other collectives besides the
army. For instance, in the analysis below, I will be making the assumption that
officer Saint-Laurent speaks on behalf of the military organization – but of course
I have no knowledge of his own family situation, his opinion about the women’s
situation, or whether he has suffered himself from the throes of deployment. In
other words, the pre-individual actions that I study do not only concern the women
and their relation to the army. They could contribute to many different
individuation processes, and the limited conversation offered below is an artifact
of the analysis of the documentary’s own partial depiction of the women’s reality.
article | 785
Illustration: Nomad’s land
Three excerpts will be presented. The first is a commentary made by Lucie

Laliberté, an advocate for the rights of military wives. She introduces a women’s
group she founded in 1984 to meet and discuss a certain number of issues among
them. The group’s efforts, though, were met with hostility by the base commander.
The second and third excerpts relate to the creation of an army-run community
center where women offer each other services on a voluntary basis.
To account for the circulation of action between individuation processes, I will

focus on the narrative performance of alternative relations between action, the
human author, and the organization. More specifically, I will focus on the
relationship between two beings: the women and the army as an organization.
Throughout the documentary, the women speak of their outrage at being denied a
place in the military. This affectivo-emotivity corresponds to the disinviduation
process that renders problematic again the pre-individual load of the women. This
load must be resolved into a collective individuation (Barthélémy, 2014). Table 1
presents a few possible relations between pre-individual action and the
individuation of either the women or the army. An action may contribute to either
a human being’s individuation, or to that of an organization. Depending on which
contribution is recognized, the human member is allowed or not to continue his
or her individuation process into the collective. Possible scenarios include, when
both are recognized, either co-individuation (when the recognition is positive) or
the channeling of individuation (when constraints are posed); they can also include
usurpation on either side (cells 2 and 3). The final cell of Table 1, where both the
human being and the organization do not incorporate the action, is more difficult
to imagine empirically: it may correspond to acts of God, or to the denial of the
action’s very existence. While reductive, these four situations highlight that
deciding on an author is the outcome of individuation, not its starting point.
Precisely, the documentary’s argument is that the women’s subaltern position
resides in the negation of their own action’s authorship. As revealed in the analysis
below, depending on how action is allowed to participate into individuation
processes, the women may be controlled and, to a lesser extent, exercise resistance.
786 | article
Action contributes to human individuation

Allowed Prevented
organizational individuation
Allowed (1) Co-individuation / (2) Usurpation of human action

Action contributes to
Channeling individuation by the organization
(3) Usurpation of
Prevented
organizational action by (4) Denial of the existence of the

the human / Avoidance of action, or act of God
contamination
Table 1: The contribution of action to human and organizational individuation

processes
Excerpt 1 – Political activity
The first excerpt consists of a comment by Lucie Laliberté, an advocate, lawyer, and
spouse of a military member. She explains the beginning of the Organization of
Spouses of Military Members (OSOMM):
What we did is was… we decided to organize a meeting, and we outlined in the

newsletter where and when the meeting was going to be. We were told that the base
commander had to approve our newsletter before we could distribute it, and we had
no intention of doing that. Hum, we thought we’re civilians, we just happen to live
on this base, and we’ve got some legitimate things we want to talk about, and we’re
just going to distribute the newsletter. [...] We wanted to talk about pensions,
daycare, the dental plan, those kinds of things. The... The base administrative officer
basically just went down our list and he said ‘this one’s political activity, this one’s
political activity.’ Daycare was political activity, trying to get daycare. Dental plan,
that was political activity. You know, pensions, was political activity. And we learned
very quickly, that when the military wanted not to give us things that we wanted,
they called us civilians, and when they wanted to control us, they always reminded
us that we were part of the military. […] But what they threatened to do was to arrest
us under the trespass regulations. And, keeping in mind that this is where we lived,
our schools were there, the churches are there, our houses are there.
A possible reading of this excerpt consists in recognizing that the women are
individuals, but their individuality is an ongoing process that includes preserving
their teeth, caring for their offspring, and planning for their old age. As they realize
that their personal individuation may only continue through the army’s, they
experience affective-emotivity when they are prevented from doing so. Their
existence as mothers, as bodies in need of healthcare, and as persons who will age,
article | 787
is at stake. That is why they view their requests for daycare, dental plans and
pension, as legitimate.
To negotiate the integration of their pre-individual loads – their teeth, their health,
their children – into the collective, they wished to publish a newsletter and
organize a meeting among themselves. However, Lucie explains, the base
commander needed to approve the newsletter. He described their demands as
political activities, which are forbidden on the base. If they insisted on publishing
the newsletter, he would accuse them of trespassing – into their very own homes.
Figure 1: Lucie Laliberté founded OSOMM to defend the rights of military spouses
(screen capture, reproduced with permission from the National Film Board of
Canada).
The base commander does acknowledge that the women’s concerns are also the
army’s, but not in the way Lucie expected: these actions are the army’s because
they are political activity – such a label seems to be the only organ available to the
army’s body to capture these actions. The army channels the women’s
individuation process: if they wish to participate in the military collective, they will
do so as trespassers. Lucie describes this situation quite clearly: the army
acknowledges them as members whenever it wishes to control them. The women
are therefore partial members – Lucie agrees that the women are civilians living
on a military base – but the way various pre-individual loads are allowed to
participate in collective individuation is the object of disagreement. The
commander’s refusal puts at stake not only the particular concerns they raised, but
all aspects of their existence as individuals and participants to the army collective.
788 | article
If they are deemed to be trespassing, then the army is denying their ownership of
their very homes, their belonging to their churches, their children’s schools.
The army’s perspective is not presented in the documentary. However, it is

possible to assume that the commander regards extending privileges to spouses as
a threat to the army’s (masculine) individuation, as the army is based on ‘social
instincts, thus contributing an erotic factor to friendship and comradeship, to esprit
de corps and to the love of mankind in general’ (Butler, 1997: 109). In that sense,
it is the commander’s – and other men’s – own male individuation process and its
ability to continue into an all-male army collective individuation that is possibly at
stake, at least in its current form. It is conceivable that, to the commander,
acknowledging women’s contribution in the army is not only nonsensical, but is
also a threat to the organization’s and to male personnel’s ongoing individuations.
However, the documentary does not present enough data to confirm these
speculations.
The base commander’s seemingly paradoxical move – recognizing actions as

belonging to the army, since they are political activity, but then forbidding them –
reveals that control implicates a form of participation. To be subjected to power is,
after all, to be a subject. If the actions only belonged to the women – for instance
if he could only describe them as private – then they would not have had anything
to do with the army, and he could not forbid them, but the women could not have
continued their individuation in the army collective in any way. This would have
corresponded to the third cell of Table 1: the army attempting to avoid
contamination by the women’s actions. The commander’s narrative therefore
allows the actions to participate in both the women’s and the army’s individuation
processes, as illustrated in the first cell. If limited to the role of trespassers, the
women still have a role, and their struggle is recognized as political.
Excerpt 2 – The list
Later in the documentary, Corriveau focuses on the then-new Valcartier family

centre, on a military base located in Quebec City. The centre’s liaison and
information officer, Dany St-Laurent, presents ‘Operation Oasis’:
One of the major services we offer here in Valcartier is called ‘Operation Oasis.’
Here’s an example of concrete help. This is what we call ‘The Checklist.’ It’s a little
exercise we ask families to do before the husband or wife leaves on a mission abroad.
For example, the car. The Mrs. doesn’t know mechanics, or even where the
husband’s garage is located. They identify all that together. What must be done to
have the fewest crises possible while our spouse is away on a mission. The beauty
of this is that it wasn’t family-center employees who created this, it was community
members. That’s how we support families undergoing deployment.
article | 789
Figure 2: Officer Saint-Laurent presents the checklist (screen capture).
Again, the analysis must presume that St-Laurent’s voice is also the army’s, which
the documentary takes for granted. The way the officer skillfully presents the
‘checklist’, and gives the example of a practical problem ‘the Mrs.’ may face
following her spouse’s departure: figuring out how to get the family car repaired.
While the example builds on a gender stereotype, it reveals that St-Laurent is aware
of the affectivo-emotional potential of the spouse’s absence.
There are at least two ways in which the checklist helps continue the women’s
individuation into that of the army collective. First, St-Laurent presents the
checklist as a service offered by the military to take over the individuating role of
the missing spouse, i.e. it is a service ‘we offer’. The army, thanks to the checklist,
acts as a surrogate husband, and permits the women to reroute their individuation
process towards the collective. Second, St-Laurent presents the checklist (which
consists in a brochure) as an exercise ‘we ask families to do’, and as one of the ways
‘we support families’. Through the use of personal pronouns, St-Laurent
appropriates these actions (creating of the checklist, offering support) for the army,
but also acknowledges the women’s participation in the collective: the tool was
created by the ‘community’. The army is able to offer that service because the
women (and possibly the men) created it; action is shared between the two, which
corresponds again to the first cell of Table 1. However, this time, it is presented as
a positive co-individuation process: that contribution is not used to control people;
rather, it is described as being ‘the beauty of this’.
790 | article
Excerpt 3 – The daycare
In this third excerpt, the narrator explains how it is possible for the military to
provide many services, including daycare:
Many of the activities and services offered in the resource centres rely on volunteers.
For this, the army depends on the abundant workforce of women, who in many
cases have been forced into unemployment. The paradox is that most of the services
women are being offered are being donated by the women themselves. [...] The
invisible work of the military wives contributes directly to army logistics. It’s a
military expense we each cover personally. It goes unacknowledged, unrecorded,
and unpaid.
Figure 3: The women have to volunteer their time in order to be offered free daycare
(screen capture).
An example of such a service is the daycare, where, according to one of the

interviewees: ‘If I volunteered, my daughter could go to daycare for free for the
duration’. In other words, parents could send their kids to daycare for free, but only
if they were also present to take care of the other children, which in a sense cancels it
being daycare. If I continue assuming that documentary reflects the events as they
unfolded, the army appears to appropriate the women’s actions: the daycare is
offered within the army’s facilities and is ‘one of the services we offer’, according
to St-Laurent. As with the checklist, St-Laurent discursively attributes the action
(watching over the children) to the army, whose individuation is therefore
continued through those actions. It becomes a more caring organization that offers
additional services to its members. However, here the women are not recognized
as those who contribute those actions to the army in the first place, before it – the
army – offers them back to them. According to the narrator, the work of women
article | 791
in the army ‘goes unacknowledged, unrecorded, and unpaid’. The daycare is

therefore an example of Table 1’s second cell and a case of usurpation: the army
recognizes the actions as its own and incorporates them into its own individuation
process, but ignores the women as also being their authors and prevents them
from incorporating these actions into their own individuation processes. Beyond
the practical problem of affordable daycare on the base, the excerpt expresses the
women’s feeling of injustice, an affectivo-emotivity that leads the narrator, but also
the women she interviews, to feel a form of disindividuation where their existence
as mothers, but also as neighbors and friends taking care of the children of other
families, finds no resonance in the organizational collective.
Discussion
The purpose of the analysis is to illustrate, by focusing on the women’s experience

as presented in Corriveau’s documentary, the analytical framework that could be
made using a perspective that considers action as pre-individual – and therefore
as not belonging a priori to one actor or another, but rather as circulating and
contributing to the individuation of various beings.
Nomad’s land emphasizes the way that women’s actions, in fact, do not necessarily
belong to them. Each action may or may not participate in either their own
individuation or to the continuation of their individuation into the army collective.
The distribution of action to various individuation processes is achieved, among
others, through the speech acts of interviewees (and the documentary itself is a set
of speech acts). Still, the women’s authorship of their actions is not always denied.
But when it is recognized, it may be to channel their individuation process and
make them ‘trespassers’, or to highlight their positive contribution to family
center’s activities. In the case of the daycare, however, women’s actions were
entirely usurped by the army, which constituted itself as a caring organization at
their expense. Therefore, individuation processes are always at play. Even when an
action is not acknowledged as contributing to the women’s individuation, it is
because other individuation processes – for instance, the army as a male
organization – are privileged.
A humanist perspective may refuse to accept the separation between women (and
people more generally) and their actions. After all, they invested time and toil in
activities that were, then, denied to them. Yet, while the documentary sheds a grim
look on that separation, my point is that it is central to the pre-individual character
of action. In turn, it allows us to acknowledge the political and constitutive nature
of individuation processes. It is precisely because military spouses need those
actions to continue their individuation that the army’s denial of their contribution
792 | article
affects them and leads to affectivo-emotivity. What is at stake is the possibility for
these women to continue their personal individuation into a collective
individuation. If their actions intrinsically belonged to them, then officer St-
Laurent would have done little more than misrepresent reality, with little
consequence on the women’s individuation. Relatedly, the army’s efforts to
appropriate the women’s actions would make little sense, if it did not need to
integrate those actions into its own ongoing individuation, whether as a male
organization or as a caring one. When action’s pre-individual character is
acknowledged, then the interplay of concurrent individuation processes becomes
salient and offers an analytical lens to understand the relationship between
identity, organizational membership and power.
In particular, the excerpts show that communication does not only represent prior
actions; communication is itself a set of actions – including speech acts – through
which other actions transductively circulate from one entity to the next, and in
doing so, constitutes relational configurations that allows them to exist and to act.
Each voice, including the documentary itself, is an attempt to offer an alternative
relational configuration. As participants seek to continue their respective
individuations through communication that they exist via the relation.
This pre-individual and relational perspective allows us to understand the

existence of multiple significations for a same action. What an action – say,
requesting a dental plan – signifies corresponds to its contribution to the
individuation of the entities at play. From the army’s perspective, the women’s
actions are either political activities to be controlled, or services benevolently
offered to members of the community. From the women’s standpoint, they are
legitimate demands whose denial threatens their existence as mothers and aging
bodies.
The literature on ‘post-bureaucratic’ organizing (Hodgson, 2004; Kellogg et al.,

2006) suggests that new forms of work are more fragmented and horizontal, and
one could argue that they consist in blurring the processes by which people and
organizations share their actions. Indeed, while in conventional workplaces, the
employer may claim its employee’s actions carried out during work hours
(Pagnattaro, 2003), ownership of work is made ambiguous by flexible schedules,
telework, and new contractual forms. Action now circulates between domains that
are structured in vastly different ways, such as, for instance, the relationship
between family life and work life. The pre-individual perspective suggests
beginning the investigation of contemporary forms of work from action itself.
It is not up to the analyst to privilege one individuation process, one configuration

of relations or a set of significations over others. Multiple individuations coexist,
article | 793
for actions contribute to several individuation processes at once. Presuming that

one individuation is truer or of greater priority would amount to downplaying
others and those to whom they matter, in addition to assessing individuation
processes from the perspective of one of the already-individuated beings.
Conclusion
The excerpts from Corriveau’s Nomad’s land show the potential of recasting
organizational action through a pre-individual lens. Reducing action to its alleged
author would render the intricate situation of military spouses, but also more
broadly the relationship between persons and collectives, senseless. Instead, a
Simondonian view draws attention to action itself, whose contribution to a
person’s and/or an organization’s individuation process is discovered through
affectivo-emotivity and the risk of disindividuation. People do matter and make a
difference, but an exclusive focus on them would fail to explain why some actions
matter to their personal existence, and what makes those same actions
organizational.
In Corriveau’s documentary, each of the women’s actions is singularly captured,

allowing or not the women to be (partially) included in the army… in the same way
as Corriveau has included some aspect of the women’s lives in the documentary
and left aside others, and in turn as I have resignified the documentary in this
article by selectively incorporating some of its actions and left aside others. The
women’s actions are therefore recaptured and continue participating in the
individuation of beings (a documentary, an article) through Corriveau’s work and
my own, without necessarily transiting through each individuated woman. The
documentary’s protagonists admit the difficulty of deciding on the ownership of
action. By admitting that there is no ready-made answer, organizational
researchers may observe the circulation, from kin-to-kin (there is no abstract
communication), of action and its ability to contribute to the individuation of
people and organizations alike.
The idea that relevant social actors could be other than humans or organizations
(understood as groupings of humans) may appear counter-intuitive. Yet, a pre-
individual perspective shows that what scholars commonly call individuals are the
outcome of ontogenetic processes whose units are not persons, but actions. It is
only at the price of this step back from personhood that, in fact, a person’s quality
may be understood. If people or organizations were already given, then why worry
that their actions may be usurped from them? When it is understood that
individuals are delicate, instable coalitions of actions, then the importance of
caring for our relations with them takes on its full meaning.
794 | article
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the author
Nicolas Bencherki is an assistant professor of organizational communication at TÉLUQ
Montréal, in Canada. He holds a PhD in communication from the Université de Montréal
and in sociology of action from Sciences Po Paris. His research focuses on the intersecting
roles of organizational communication and materiality in the interactional constitution of
membership, strategy and other conventional organizational issues in the setting of non-
profit and community-based organizations, with a special interest for the concept of
property. His work has been published, among others, in Human Relations, Management
Communication Quarterly, and the Journal of Communication.
article | 799
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 801-817
Street level tinkering in the times of ‘Make in

India’
Maitrayee Deka
abstract
The paper discusses the future of Delhi’s electronic bazaars in the wake of the ‘Make in
India’ (MiI) program. MiI aims to develop a home-grown manufacturing base that, among
its many goals, also targets the same popular market sector that the bazaars currently
operate in. However, there is virtually no consideration of the role of bazaars and the
informal economy within the MiI program. Rather, this initiative, along with similar efforts
to render the economy formal and transparent, sees the bazaars with their reliance on cash
transactions and their scant respect for intellectual property rights as part of a regressive
grey economy. This paper initiates a discussion on what could be the consequences of
following the present route of disregarding the informal economy that, in fact, has hosted
the most industrious model of production in the country.
Introduction
There has been much enthusiasm associated with the ‘Make in India’ (MiI)
program that was launched in September 2014 (Kala, 2015; Khedekar, 2014). The
program targets 25 core sectors to make India a manufacturing powerhouse. In a
country that did not develop a robust manufacturing base post-independence,
(Roy, 2012; Sanders, 1977), the MiI wants to make a significant contribution in
that direction. Growth in manufacturing is expected to garner revenue and create
employment opportunities for a large section of the population. The program was
seen as particularly timely in relation to the slowdown of the Chinese economy.
article | 801
Resource-rich India with low labour costs could compete with the Chinese
1
hegemony in world manufacturing (Zhong and Kala, 2015) .
I want to issue a caveat early on, namely that this paper does not discuss MiI in its
totality, nor does it go into an in-depth discussion on the various schemes
undertaken so far. Instead, the paper focuses more on the discourses surrounding
MiI in relation to the electronics industry. The paper is a speculation on the future
of local cultures of tinkering, as large-scale programs make headway into the
informal economy that has characterised much of the Indian market for low-cost
consumer electronics.
As far as the electronics industry is concerned, the MiI program wants to go

beyond the $65 billion domestic market for electronics and make India a
competitive actor in the $2 trillion global market. The turnover of the Indian
electronics industry (including consumer electronics, electronic components,
industrial electronics, computer hardware, communication, broadcast equipment,
and strategic electronics) is currently at $6 billion or less than 0.5% of the world
market. To increase the share of Indian electronics in the global market, the
government has welcomed investments from foreign companies such as
Samsung, Eriksson and Foxconn (Seth, 2015; Thevar, 2015). These initiatives are
primarily geared towards export. In the immediate future, however, the MiI
intends to support manufacturing and foreign investment that addresses the
domestic market (D’costa, 2015). The ASSOCHAM and EY report (2016: 12)
estimates, ‘around 50-60% of the demand for electronic products is fulfilled
through imports, while nearly 70-80% of the electronic components market is
import-dependent’. MiI is keen to meet the internal demands for electronics as
well as make the domestic market attractive to foreign investors.
As a manufacturing plan, with its eye on the domestic market and local innovation
cultures, MiI could collaborate with bazaar actors. However, to the extent that
bazaars are considered in MiI, they are expected to wither away and their
participants become a reservoir of cheap labour for the formal economy
(Bhattacharyya and Verma, 2016; Green 2014; Karnik, 2016). Other aspects of the
bazaars such as their understanding of the local consumers, their practices of
market-friendly technical fixes, and their industrious nature are ignored.
The rest of the paper analyses the foreseeable links that MiI could have with the
informal economy, and how its present agenda of limiting its interaction with

1
ASSOCHAM (The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India) and EY
(Ernst and Young) report (2016) states that as of 2014, the average manufacturing
labour cost per hour in India was US$0.92 as compared to US$3.52 in China.
802 | article
Maitrayee Deka Street level tinkering in the times of ‘Make in India’
formal actors and institutions could play out in the larger context. To this end, I
describe the role that bazaars have played historically as an important place for
disruptive improvisation, and how the bazaars have always experimented with
electronic products. Through empirical examples, I analyse the everyday
improvisation that makes the bazaar an important player in the domestic market
of electronics in India. I further depict the type of consumers that are dependent
on the bazaars for their purchases of cheap electronics. In the final section, I show
how, historically, the bazaar-like mode of transactions and the accompanying
survival instinct has been part of the manufacturing process in India, and how the
hasty and one-dimensional approach that MiI seems to be undertaking, is
foolhardy when it comes to dealing with the informal economy. A large part of the
population became involved in state-led modernising programs by semi-legal
routes. In order for MiI to truly reach the bulk of the people, first there needs to be
an understanding of bazaar level conditions and then a willingness to make real
changes in the MiI agenda to involve people who do not have elite privileges.
Electronic bazaars and improvising2
Traditionally, the bazaars have played a crucial role in the domestic market for
electronics. They are places for selling products, and for tinkering with them,
creating new kinds of cheap and accessible products. The bazaars are part of a
transnational network of ‘globalization from below’, where semi-legal goods and
crisscrossing trade networks have made electronics accessible to growing sections
of the urban underclass, whether in original (often recycled) or in counterfeit
versions. Gordon Mathews and his colleagues contrast this to the
high-end globalization, governed by the multinational corporations whose names

everyone knows, from Apple to Nokia to McDonald’s to Coca Cola to Samsung, and
by institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO. It is globalization as
championed by nation-states, as well as by mainstream media outlets as The Wall
Street Journal and The Economist. It operates, at least in theory, in a legal and
transparent way. ‘Lower-end globalization’ on the other hand, operates under the
radar of the law. It may involve obtaining knock-off goods, whose logos have been
appropriated from the brands of ‘high-end globalization’, and smuggling those
goods across borders for sale by street vendors in cities across the globe. (Mathews
and Yang, 2012: 97-98)
While speaking about Delhi’s bazaars, Lajpat Rai market, Palika Bazaar and Nehru
Place, Ravi Sundaram (2010) sees them as part of a ‘Pirate Kingdom’, which
describes the other side of India’s postcolonial existence. Sundaram maps out

2 The terms ‘improvising’ and ‘tinkering’ are used interchangeably to contrast bazaar
level technological fixes with the top down ‘innovation’ models that are more respectful
of intellectual property laws as well as institutional training and research.
article | 803
Delhi’s Masterplan of 1962 that privileges the vision for the future from the elites’
perspective (politicians, technocrats and the burgeoning section of bureaucrats).
The modernist plan laid the grounds for the zoning of the city into residential,
commercial and industrial zones.
The displacement of ‘noxious’ trade and ‘non-confirming industries’ outside the

city, along with private dairies and gwalas, which were to be removed to designated
areas. Slums were to be subject to clearance and renewal based on a survey and
3
classification of slum areas. (Sundaram, 2010: 46)
As the process of ordering the city along the lines of the Delhi’s Masterplan began,
the bazaar became one of the few places where a less disciplined life existed and
flourished. In the Mughal era and in colonial times, bazaars were open places, a
meeting ground for merchants and tradesmen from villages and towns (Bayly,
1998; Fanselow, 1990; Yang, 1998). Sundaram (2010) argues that Delhi’s Lajpat
Rai market, Palika Bazaar and Nehru Place are an extension of the ‘secret’ life of
the bazaars of the eighteenth and nineteenth century – a diverse range of
commodities sold face-to-face via messy networks of people, products and power
alliances.
Lajpat Rai market, Palika Bazaar and Nehru Place were built in the early decades
of the country’s independence to largely rehabilitate Sikh and Hindu partition
refugees. Lajpat Rai market in the old Delhi area, overlooking the Historic Red
Fort was developed in the 1960s as a wholesale electronics market. Over the years,
the market has sold a host of products: transistors, switchboards, wires, TVs, music
cassettes, bulbs, and video games to name a few. Palika Bazaar located in the
central district of Delhi was the first underground air-conditioned market in Delhi.
Established in the 1970s, it came to host a number of traders from the
neighbouring areas. The dome-shaped building with a number of concentric
circles is a retail market selling clothes, electronics, food, toys, and books, among
other things. In the 1970s, town planner Jagmohan imagined Nehru Place as a
kind of European ‘piazza’ where cultural and intellectual life would mix with
commerce. By the 1990s, Nehru Place had become one of the important markets
in Asia, selling computer hardware, assembled computers, and pirated
software/video games. The market also has a number of corporate offices,
computer showrooms and repair centres.
Sundaram (2010) and Liang (2010) described the urban bazaars as vibrant places
that throw light on ordinary lives and their politics. The chaotic physical landscape

3
‘Gwalas’ means ‘herdsmen’ in Hindi. The urbanization schemes made them marginal
and many of them gave up their traditional trade in favour of pursuits more suitable
for an urban context.
804 | article
and commercial exchanges paved the way for the presence of media goods in forms
unanticipated by their original creators. In his analysis of counterfeited brands in
Tamil Nadu, Constantin Nakassis (2013) used the words ‘surfeits’ to include the
grey domain in which products circulate outside of authorised consumption.
Nakassis places the discourses and practices of ‘surfeits’ in the world of fake
brands and copies that has opened up a whole world of negotiation for the non-
elites to legitimise global brands.
Apart from providing access to consumer products, Sundaram (2010) observes

that the labyrinth like bazaars provide protection to people who have been displaced
by the urban plans, such as groups of migrants, slum dwellers and labourers.
Sundaram shows how the dense and crowded shops in Palika Bazaar help traders
to evade police raids by retreating to the interior parts of their shops.
Pointing out the relation that bazaar-like places develop with commerce and
legality, Liang (2010) uses Partha Chatterjee’s distinction between a civic and
political society to show how the non-elites’ relation to state laws and policies is
different to how ‘citizens’ perceive it. As he puts it:
In India, for instance, the creation of the category of the citizen subject demanded
a move away from the oversignified body of the individual marked by religion,
gender, caste, and so on to an unmarked subject position, ‘the citizen’, a category
based on equality and access and guaranteed rights within the constitutional
framework. But the majority of the people in India are only precarious who often do
not have the ability to claim rights in the same manner as the Indian elites do.
Instead, the manner in which they access the institutions of democracy and ‘welfare’
is often through complex negotiations and networks and often is marketed by their
illegal status. (Liang, 2010: 360)
Gulshan Kumar, a fruit seller in the Daryaganj market established the T-Series
Music and Film production company by recording popular Hindi film songs with
lesser-known artists. Taking advantage of the ‘fair use’ clause of the Indian
copyright Act, Kumar was able to circulate his cassettes to every nook and cranny
of the country. His story represents how ordinary people use loopholes in the legal
systems and form lucrative alliances to get past their own limitations of wealth, or
education (Liang 2005).
In Liang and Sundaram’s work, ‘piracy’ is synonymous with the bazaar way of life.
The different practices of ‘counterfeiting, copying, smuggling, and trafficking’
create sources of livelihood for people who could not take part in the modernising
project in India through official channels (Dent, 2012: 29). With its decrepit
infrastructure and open networks of traders, distributors and importers, Delhi’s
bazaars create new media forms testing the legal and aesthetic limits of urban
existence.
article | 805
Improvising, from a fieldworker’s point of view
In this section, I use empirical examples to describe how the traders tinker with
the hardware of video games. Street level tinkering is significantly different from
the systematic way in which innovation is imagined in formal spaces such as
corporations and public institutions. While many of these innovations anticipate
profits through patents, it is the lack of a proprietary regime that gives the bazaars
the opportunity for tinkering. Needless to say, these disparate approaches to
intellectual property laws come from completely different motives. While for
formal actors, they communicate with an existing market, in most cases for the
informal actors the pressure is to constantly create a market for ‘small profits’,
which suit the needs of low level consumers.
I first visited Delhi’s bazaars towards the end of 2012 and conducted a year-long
ethnographic study that lasted from September 2012 to September 2013. I spent
time interacting with the traders. I had structured interviews with them and casual
conversations on a day-to-day basis. At times, I also interviewed consumers and
distributors who came to the shops. I went back to the markets in January 2015
and later in the months of March and April 2016. I focused mainly on the traders
of video games, seen by some scholars as an information product per excellence
(Dyer-Witheford and Sharman, 2005; Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter, 2009). I was
interested in finding out what happens when a sophisticated video game enters
the culture of backyard innovation in the bazaars.
In Lajpat Rai market, I spoke to close to 18 traders of video games. Most of the
shops were small, having enough space to accommodate a trader and his assistant.
A few of the shops were more spacious with organized displays on the walls. While
makeshift shops kept appearing and disappearing at regular intervals, by the time
I was well into my fieldwork, I had established good contacts with five shops that
I regularly visited, at least once a week. With other shops, my visits were contingent
on the trader’s willingness to talk to me on a given day. During the time that I
spent in Lajpat Rai, I saw the shops not just as places for selling products, but also
as places where a single product could be broken down into different parts based
on the needs of the market. A shop would have a ‘Made in China’ handheld video
game, but also circuit boards, parts of which were sold loosely or used for
repairing. There would be cartridges, original and pirated DVDs, knock-off and
original consoles. On top of that were the abandoned consoles, parts of which were
used for repair. The possibility of a product to be a finished good and a raw material
at the same time created the spirit of tinkering. As long as the assemblage or
dismantling of a product created new consumer bases, it was worth exploring in
the markets. To quote from field notes:
806 | article
Harish is a distributor who comes every other day to Lajpat Rai. He acquires TV
games from local manufacturers and sells them to the traders at a wholesale rate.
The local manufacturers import component parts such as circuit boards from China
and package the final product in India. In this way they are able to save custom
duties and can also provide a novelty to the product (by way of packaging and
attractive covers). In July 2013, I was at Bharat’s shop when Harish approached him
with new TV games. While dealing with locally assembled consoles, they started
talking about the skills that bazaar actors have. Both were in agreement; putting
together different parts produced in China needed one to have basic knowledge
about electronics. However, the skill and knowledge of Chinese workers were much
higher than Indians. Their analysis attributed the gap in Indian workers’ knowledge
to a lack of opportunity and resources. Bazaar actors do not get to work on
sophisticated machines, unlike their Chinese counterparts. They also pointed out
that any innovation, even grey ones, received appreciation from the Chinese
government. In contrast, the Indian government did not support bazaar level
solutions.
In Palika Bazaar, I interviewed 20 traders and shop assistants. Many of these

traders were from small business families in Delhi. A few traders were also
migrants in the city. Coming from the surrounding states of Delhi, these traders
had started their businesses by chance. Ramesh, a trader, recollected how in the
late 1990s, he was a delivery person with the popular gaming franchise Milestone.
On his many visits to the markets, he realised the possibility of having his own
shop there. After negotiating with an existing trader in one of the shops, he was
able to acquire a small corner. From there he started selling original and
contraband video games. Most of the shop assistants were migrants in the city.
They travelled from neighbouring states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar looking
for job opportunities in Delhi. Many of them had similar stories of how they had
found a job in the market by simply wondering around and interacting with the
existing traders.
The shops at Palika have original DVDs and consoles, second-hand and pirated
DVDs, refurbished consoles and gaming accessories. The second-hand economy
of games attracted a range of consumers to the market. With an ingenious trader
buying a used DVD from a consumer, it opened up the market for used games.
Simply by packing old DVDs with transparent paper and putting price tags on the
back (to give the impression of a new DVD), many traders found ways to
resuscitate their trade, foraying into areas the formal economy did not take into
account. The repairing and modding of gaming consoles are among the activities
that create a niche market.
Lalit is a repairperson of video games in Palika Bazaar. In early January 2015, he

bought an expensive ‘reballing’ machine from China costing him about ₹200,000.
He has been making a living out of cracking PlayStation and Xbox consoles since
the 1990s. He knew how to fix new hardware to the motherboard, enabling old
consoles to play new DVDs of video games. However, he has found it to be a good
article | 807
strategy to invest in ‘reballing’ machines. He believes that there is going to be more

work in the line of repairing IC boards of gaming consoles. According to him,
companies such as Sony and Microsoft are unable to create sound integrated circuit
boards, as they have to cram a number of functions into a tiny chip. The result is
that some of the solder balls get damaged. With the reballing machine, he is able to
fix the damaged solder balls. Lalit points out that it is a very delicate operation. He
took a week’s training from a person in Bombay to understand all the nitty-gritty of
reballing. Lalit recollects that it was very difficult to find someone working in this
particular area. He says, even after finding the right person, it took much persuasion
to convince the person to train him. He paid ₹30,000 for just a week’s training. Lalit
thinks that it was a worthwhile investment. He points out that the New Sony
PlayStation 4 is about ₹50,000. It is beyond the capacity of the average person in
India to afford such an expensive machine. Gamers are more likely to repair their
old consoles than to invest in new ones. This creates the space for someone like Lalit
to use his reballing skills and revive damaged IC boards. He is willing to spend
hours meticulously heating the chip to remove it from the motherboard. Then
carefully remove the old solder and replace it with new solder balls. For Lalit the test
is both physical as well as mental. A successful reballing procedure takes him close
to six hours and requires ₹1200 worth of electricity. Lalit thinks considering
everything else, it is turning out to be a lucrative investment. He gets approximately
₹2500 for each reballing job.
In Nehru Place, I interviewed approximately 50 street vendors of pirated software

and games. About 90% of them came from the Madanpur Khadar Resettlement
4
colony . Many of them grew up close to the market, and the market was like an
after-school playground. Seeing friends and acquaintances selling software and
games, the young men started as street vendors from a young age. They kept in
their stock pirated DVDs/CDs of computer games and other kinds of pirated
software. The DVDs/CDs were illegally downloaded in the Chandni Chowk area
in old Delhi. On most days, a delivery person arrived in the early hours with the
pre-ordered stock and distributed them to the different groups of street vendors.
The market picked up in the 1990s, and along with it, the trade of pirated software
and computer games. What was at that time seen as a luxury product, a single
DVD of Adobe, sold for close to ₹5000, but the pirated versions of them were
available for ₹500. The street vendors sold only pirated computer games and none
of the console games. A reason quoted for this was that their consumers did not
have enough money to buy a console. Most of them did not even own a personal
computer. The consumers that the street vendors encountered were likely to buy
an assembled computer and they bought gaming DVDs/CDs as an additional
purchase. The traders mentioned the consumers’ first interest was to download

4
The Delhi Development Authority relocated the residents from slums in Nehru Place,
Nizamuddin, Sarojini Nagar, Hauz Khas, Chanakyapuri, and Kalkaji to the Madanpur
Khadar Resettlement colony (Batra and Mehra, 2008).
808 | article
the pirated version of Microsoft word. If the gaming DVDs piqued their interest,
they also bought them.
The place of the bazaars in today’s consumer society
The last section analysed empirical examples of everyday improvisation in the

bazaar. This section develops how everyday improvisation connects video games
to the mass consumer in India. I describe the place of the bazaars in the
contemporary consumer society in India, taking into account the new middle class
as a harbinger of a new kind of consumerist aspiration.
The rise of a consumer society in India has received attention. The early 1990s
were the watershed years, when the country embarked on an era of economic
liberalization. Since then scholars have noticed marked changes in consumer
behaviour. Leela Fernandes (2006), for instance, argues that in the decades
following the country’s independence, frugality was a dominant trait of
consumers. However, she argues that the attitude changed dramatically following
the1990s:
In the 60s and 70s this whole bit of accumulation of wealth was still suffering from
a Gandhian hangover. Even though there were a whole lot of families who were
wealthy all over India in the north and south, if you notice, all their lifestyles were
very low key. They were not exhibitionists or they were into the whole consumer
culture. Now I see that changed completely… You want to spend on your lifestyle.
You want your cell phone. You want your second holiday home, and earlier, as I
said, people would feel a sense of guilt – that in a nation like this, a kind of vulgar
exhibition of wealth is contradictory to Indian values. I think now consumerism has
become an Indian value. (Fernandes, 2006: 29)
The changes in consumer habits are tied to the celebration of the middle class.
Even within the amorphous middle class, it is the urban English educated
professionals, the so-called ‘new middle class’ that has been the harbinger of the
consumer economy in India. Seen by some as the poster children of India’s
neoliberal ambition, this class of upwardly mobile professionals spends
substantially on clothes, gadgets and cars, placing them on a par with a global
consumer class (Butalia, 2013).
Although the middle class and the new middle class have directed the consumer
economy, the number of people who purchase consumer goods is difficult to
measure. One of the problems is the gap between people’s perception of belonging
to middle class and their actual income level (Bhattacharya and Unnikrishnan,
2016). Studies have noted that a large number of people think that they belong to
the middle class, although their income level is much lower to that of the median
article | 809
group. The 2011-12 India Human Development Survey (IHDS) jointly conducted
by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the
University of Maryland suggests that the Indian middle class composes 6% of the
total population. An annual income of 2.7-13.4 lakh was taken as the benchmark.
The same survey found out that about 49% of the population perceived themselves
as belonging to the middle class, although their monthly income was close to
₹5000, much lower than the average income of ₹22,000 (Kundu and Rathore,
2016). A Pew Research Centre Study puts the global middle class estimation at
$10-20 per capita daily income and defines a lower income group as earning
between $2-10 dollars daily. According to these estimates, only 2% of the
population in Indian fall into the middle class category. Most people are in the low-
income category: they rank much closer to the lower limit of $2 dollars rather than
$10 (Venkataramakrishnan, 2015).
If we take into account consumer behaviour per se, the IHDS study shows that
90% of the time, people had only one of the following consumer durables: a motor
vehicle, a computer or laptop, a TV set, a cooler or an air conditioner, and a
refrigerator. In most cases, people owned a TV set and not the others. Moreover, a
household having all of the five assets belonged to the top 2.75% of the entire
population (Kundu and Rathore, 2016). These studies highlight that the rich and
the new middle class constitute only a small part of the entire population (Anand
and Thampi, 2016). Most people are in the low-income group or poor, surviving
with a daily income of $2 or less.
The bazaars remain places that cater primarily to people who have consumer
desires but might not have the resources to translate them into reality. Many
people who came to the markets in 2013 were from low-income group and the
diverse middle class. In Palika Bazaar, a category of consumers was urban
professionals, people working in the corporate sector as either technological or
managerial professionals. Another popular category was school students who
came accompanied by their parents and guardians. A third category was buyers
who made home deliveries of games to individual customers. Finally, there were
gamers from lower and middle-income groups that came to repair consoles.
Being primarily a wholesale market, the main type of buyer in Lajpat Rai market
was the distributor who made deliveries to shops in the urban periphery, or to
other cities, small towns and villages in India. The individual consumers who came
to the market were mostly parents who wanted to give their children affordable
handheld games. The consumers coming to the Nehru Place were mostly young
men who bought pirated computer games. Much like the street vendors, the
consumers were immersed in the informal economy. Some of them worked as
810 | article
delivery boys or as shop assistants in parts of Delhi and in the national capital
region.
I encountered many young gamers in Nehru Place who were unemployed or were
in odd jobs. They liked to play combat games such as Mustapha on their cell
phones. The gamers downloaded pirated versions of different games on their
phones and approached their friend networks to acquire cheap DVDs. The markets
were attractive to people who could have the experience of playing games like
Counter-Strike on the assembled PCs they had bought in the market. Many of them
came to know of games by playing them in popular gaming cafés.
This section described the role of the bazaars in the contemporary consumer
economy particularly with respect to the outreach of the bazaar to mid- and low-
level income consumers. The next section analyses how bazaar practices have
historically resulted in a particular model of capitalism. Within this model,
manufacturing did not develop into a full-blown industry, but was characterised
by small ventures. The small and medium level enterprises were an outcome of
capital being diverted from industrial investments to speculative practices in the
bazaars.
Bazaars’ role in India’s manufacturing journey
This section describes the relationship between the growth of a native

manufacturing base and bazaar practices. Particularly in the nineteenth century,
bazaar level transactions began to form an important part of capitalist organization
and thus determined the shape that manufacturing and industrialization would
take in independent India. Historically, India’s manufacturing base was made up
of artisanal and craft units. In order to integrate the dispersed production units
into the market, there were informal arrangements. Tyabji (2015) argues that the
lack of plantation-like arrangement made it difficult for the colonial powers to
transform traditional household units into a large-scale industrial base. An
exception to this was tea plantation. The spatial location of labour in tea gardens
made it relatively easy to build industrial units, similar to the way industrialization
began in England. However, with most other businesses including those of cotton
and jute it was difficult to attain the same level of organization. As Tyabji (2015)
suggests, this led to the development of intermediaries and practices of speculation
that prevented the growth of an industrial culture.
Even after independence, major industrialists diverted capital from industries to

speculative practices. Profits were not kept aside for further investments but were
used to speculate in the bazaars, based on the rise and fall of global prices and local
article | 811
production. It was the physical bazaars, where credit operators worked that were
the centers of commerce. In an economy characterized by high credit risks at the
base, the bazaars represented a set of financial methods, which effectively exploited
the poverty of population and the uncertain seasonal agricultural conditions
(Tyabji, 2015: 9).
In India, we have seen a move from merchant to speculative capital without full-
fledged development of industrial capital (Arrighi, 1994). The bazaars, combining
the ethos of semi-legal transactions and a physical market place had an important
role in the growth of a unique culture of manufacturing.
The intermixing of institutional and traditional practices in the manufacturing

scene continues to this day. The ASSOCHAM and E&Y (2016) report points out
that small-scale units dominate the manufacturing scene in India. Most of the
time, they do not have the necessary resources and networks to complete
production in a single industrial unit (Raj and Sen, 2016). This results in small-
scale firms subcontracting parts of the production process to the informal
economy (Moreno-Monroy et al., 2014).
The closest that the MiI has come to considering the informal economy is by
foraying into the start-up economy. In fact, the ASSOCHAM and E&Y (2016:20)
report identifies start-ups as possible partners ‘to bring out the real spirit of the
“Make in India” initiative’. In order to ‘mix local production and assembly of parts’,
the report states the ‘focus needs to be on indigenous product conceptualizing to
manufacturing’. Start-ups are considered as agents that are able to build lucrative
enterprises amenable to the prevailing environment.
However, starts-ups have a completely different ecosystem from the bazaar and
the only way they can incorporate the informal economy is by transforming its
participants into a new kind of ‘platform labour’ (Srnicek, 2017). Start-ups have a
more systematic approach to intellectual property laws and innovation in general
and their ethics do not necessarily fit into the flexible improvising that bazaars are
known for. Aggregators, such as Ola and Uber, have an institutional culture that
uses algorithms to manage their business models and at the same time have a
traditional hiring process in which people are recruited by word of mouth
(Sakthivel and Joddar, 2006; Padmanabhan, 2016).
Conclusion
Bazaar actors are now caught in an environment where the only real form of
collaboration they see is through meeting the labour requirements of the
burgeoning start-up economy (Chakravarty, 2015; Crabtree, 2016; Lerche, 2015;
812 | article
Sethi, 2015). Otherwise they find themselves marginalized, as there is an urgency

for the government to formalize the informal economy. The spread of bank
accounts, the Aadhaar scheme, as well as the demonetization of 2016 are attempts
at tracking black transactions and formalizing credit exchanges (Ghosh, 2016; Rai,
5
2016) . Moreover, e-commerce businesses are targeting the same market for cheap
and second-hand goods, previously provided by the bazaars. It appears that if an
ambitious program like MiI does not see bazaar level economic practices as more
than a regressive grey economy, the infrastructure and knowledge of popular
consumers might be lost.
However, the loss is not one-sided. Outside of the corrupt networks, bazaars
embody an industrious way of life that is unique to India. The difficulty in building
a homogenous manufacturing base cannot be blamed only on self-interested
corrupt industrialists. The fact that India is a country with many small and
medium level enterprises shows that the problem is much wider than corruption
alone.
If we talk of Wittfogel’s (1957) thesis of oriental despotism, building on Karl Marx’s

notion of an Asiatic mode of production, then we need to take seriously the
hypothesis that unequal distribution of power was an integral part of productive
activities in the sub-continent. The centralized power that rulers held through
control over the canals that circulated water paved the way for large governable
communities. Moreover, colonial power did not establish its domain in an
egalitarian society. One of the reasons that colonial power succeeded was that it
fuelled the rivalries of princely states and later built a land tenure system that
empowered the landlords to collect taxes. Compared to the elites, the masses face
many constraints, not only economic, but cultural and religious as well, mainly
through the caste system and communal tensions. Things like professional
training, knowledge of the English language, access to capital and intellectual
property protection benefit mostly the elite knowledge workers.
If it were not for the bazaar-like places, different knowledge systems, and obsolete
products, the spirit to turn constraints into opportunities would not exist. This is
where MiI falters: it is unable to understand its own population and their everyday
struggles. It is constructing a completely new infrastructure of factories and shop
floors. Probably a more fulfilling exercise would be to continue conversations on
both sides: create new infrastructure and alliances with formal actors as well as
reach out to informal actors, include their popular knowledge and creative spirit.

5
Aadhaar is a 12-digit unique-identity number that is tied to an Indian citizen based on
his or her biometric and demographic data. This scheme has been criticized on privacy
grounds as it permits greater control over individual movements.
article | 813
The bazaars have always included more people and products, most of which are
otherwise rejected as excess as in the case of the urban poor or obsolete goods.
Most importantly, bazaars have an ecosystem, which allows the gainful
employment of a large number of people with a heterogeneous set of technical
skills and limitations.
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the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 819-839
Perverse particles, entangled monsters and

psychedelic pilgrimages: Emergence as an onto-
epistemology of not-knowing
Bayo Akomolafe and Alnoor Ladha
abstract
In contrast to the relative equilibrium and mechanical conservativism at the heart of
mainstream articulations of emergence, we ‘see’ emergence as errant, monstrous, ironical,
nonlinear and indeterminate. Progress is not emergence. And emergence is not an arrow.
There is a spontaneity at work that undermines the fundamental tenets of Calvinian
teleology – one of which is the story that the world is captive in an unending progression
towards grander sophistication, a process ineluctably steered by men (or to be more
precise, ‘educated’ white men). In this playful interdisciplinary analysis of emergence,
using ‘new’ insights into the ‘perverseness’ of the quantum world, and drawing from
psychedelic research, popular culture, and Indigenous wisdoms, we reimagine emergence
as a radical indeterminacy that unsettles the grounds upon which the exclusionary
discourse/practices of neoliberal expansionism as emergence are built. In doing this, we
point to other spaces of power, where new embodied forms of justice (in form of different
ethico-epistemo-political imaginaries) might thrive.
Introduction
If to write is to unsettle old assumptions, to hint at the unexpected, to form

trajectories to the effaced and inappropriate, and to make room for radically new
embodiments of justice, then the burden of this essay is truly an ethical intra-
1
vention (Barad, 2007) – a thought experiment into the embryonic elsewheres

1
We mischievously coined this word, pace Karen Barad’s neologism of ‘intra-action’ to
undermine the notion that we speak from a vantage, exterior point. In her book,
article | 819
tugging at our frames of the present. Jumping playfully from charged visions of
queer, self-birthing particles and ubiquitous, psychedelic compounds that
destabilize the primacy of a local, three-dimensional reality to considerations about
complex adaptive systems, climate justice, shamans and unwieldy sentences and
footnotes, we write to wrestle with the stabilized visions and fantasies of emergence
held by corporate hegemonies. We suggest that emergence is not the inevitable
march of Western progress denoted by trivialities such as GDP growth, corporate
revenue expansion, technological innovation or any other form of ‘achievement’.
The purpose of this interdisciplinary article is concerned with ethics: to open up

radical spaces of possibilities once we accept the possibility of not-knowing. The
aim is not to articulate a political manifesto that replaces capitalist accounts of
emergence with something as equally fictitious. We are not trying to supplant one
blueprint for another. Rather, we write to disturb convenient ways of reading the
world. We do this by pointing to other places of power – broadening the spectrum
of what is considered permissible. Jumping from here and there. Or making here
and there by jumping.
If one were interested in linearity, this essay proceeds from the context of the
climate change struggle to the root causes of this struggle – the deadening ideology
of late-stage capitalism and its corollaries of patriarchy, rationalism, white
supremacy and anthropocentrism. We draw on the concept of entanglement as a
primary metaphor for emergence, and an unfurling of the ‘other’ as a mirror into
our own souls, abandoning the fixity of any theoretical outside or of monsters
under the bed. We invoke quantum physics, neuroscience, behavioural psychology
and complexity economics as haptic heirs to their dualist counterparts, pointing to
a new direction of messiness, intra-action, and symbiotic evolution with Nature
and the universe itself. We pose paradoxes in order to challenge our notions of
agency and causality, to re/discover the potency of liminal edges, and of other
places of power where meaning and matter are intra-twined.
The context: COP21, climate change and other crises

Produce less climate change and more stuff!
Get satisfied (cartoon illustration by Mike Swofford)

Meeting the universe halfway (2007), Barad writes about intra-action (not interaction) to
illustrate how entanglement precedes thingness. In other words, there are no things,
just relationships, and these ongoing relational dynamics are responsible for how
things emerge. Similarly, an intra-vention is how we posit our complicity in
perpetuating the very circumstances we strive to disrupt.
820 | article
Bayo Akomolafe and Alnoor Ladha Perverse particles, entangled monsters and psychedelic pilgrimages
We do not do our writing in a void, but in a charged political space defined by

passive aggressive back-and-forths between Russia and Turkey and threats of
angry reprisals and economic sanctions (Al Jazeera, 2015); by the looming shadows
and inexplicability of ISIS and Boko Haram; by the escalating tensions brought
about by a Euro-migration crisis without convenient answers; and, by the
replicated masculinities and reinforced hopes of techno-rationalistic urgency
(perhaps best embodied by Bill Gates’ investment of billions of dollars in an
‘innovative’ private-public venture to create ‘clean’ technologies that mitigate the
climate crisis). As we write, the flickering pixels of the television screen are
animated by excited infographics about what is touted to be the most important
gathering on climate change – the COP21 (Conference of the Parties) summit
(November 30 - December 11, 2015) in Paris, a city still reeling in the eddies of an
unprecedented series of devastating attacks stemming from a legacy of crusades,
colonialism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, institutional racism and other
entanglements that defy causality.
Dancing flags, firm handshakes, sturdy lecterns, bold speeches and cut-away shots
to an ‘appropriate’ audience are all featured. ‘We have been presented with two
options and we need to choose’, the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia announces to
150 other heads of state; ‘[w]e either condemn our planet to further destruction…
or we save it’ (Hamilton, 2016). Commentators juggle the hefty consequences of
a successful summit, envisioning an international climate deal that ensures
nation-states move towards reducing carbon emissions, and eradicating
dependence on fossil fuels.
And yet, the very nature of the COP talks (which started in 1995 in Berlin) are the
site for the reproduction of the normative values, anthropocentric assumptions,
Western hegemony and phallic patriarchy that have contributed to ecological
destruction and necessitated climate action in the first place.
Climate change is not simply a political/environmental issue, something that can

be resolved in the sparkling glare of cameras and behind the forced smiles of world
leaders after a few carbon commitments. It is a spiritual crisis, an existential crisis,
an epistemological crisis. And to meet it, we must come face-to-face with the
noxious heap of ideologies we have swept under the carpet of orthodoxy. We must
confront what it means to be human, the ironies and impossibilities of growth for
2
growth’s sake , the impasses of human agency, the linearity and limitations of

2
See an earlier issue of ephemera 17(1), February 2017 for a detailed discussion of the
post-growth economy (Johnsen et al., 2017).
article| 821
capitalist teleology. The substructures of our experience as a species in these

moments of charged transitions need to be upturned.
Even if the highest ambitions of the talks are achieved, and reticent nations (which
directly correlate with the largest carbon emissions, as in the case of the US) strike
an unprecedented deal to drastically reduce carbon emissions (while providing
funding for ‘emerging’ nations like India), it most likely would not acknowledge
the marginalised and excluded among us, who are indeed the vast majority of
humanity. And of course, these talks and their ‘outcomes’ will reinforce the
dominance of one-way-of-knowing, leaving the capitalist trajectory intact.
The materiality of the talks contain an inner momentum towards replication, not
radical difference. The historical ‘phallogocentrism’ (Derrida, 1978: 20) of the COP
talks exemplify just how resolute its anthropocentric concerns are – how
resoundingly the discourse on emergence derives from capitalism, and excludes
other political modalities that do not coincide with the creed of commodity
production.
To truly meet the climate crisis is to confront patriarchy unfettered, the

phallocentric authority of science and its (not-so-)quiet delegitimization of
multiple cosmovisions and cacophonous nonhuman (transhuman, inhuman,
other-than-human) agencies, the Cartesian epistemology that believes in the
givenness of the subject-object dichotomy, and, among other entangling concerns,
the humanism that says ‘man makes everything, including himself, out of the
world that can only be resource and potency to his project and active agency’
(Haraway, 1991: 297).
In a nutshell (not that we presume anything could ever be resolved or spoken about
so conclusively!), to make space for a more ravishing climate justice, to ‘redeem’
emergence from a stultifying hall of mirrors, a deadening capitalist linearity, is to
contemplate the nature of Nature. And nothing short of a reconfiguring of our
familiar understandings of causality, locality, agency, intentionality, individuality,
choice, and subjectivity will constitute a potent ethical intra-vention.
In contrast to the relative equilibrium and mechanical conservativism at the heart

of mainstream articulations of emergence, we ‘see’ emergence as errant,
monstrous, ironical, nonlinear and indeterminate. Progress is not emergence.
And emergence is not an arrow. Emergence can ‘best’ be understood in terms of
entanglement, in terms of crisis, of shifting alliances and strange dalliances and
morphing identities. There is a spontaneity and indeterminacy at work that
undermines the fundamental tenets of Calvinian teleology – one of which is the
story that the world is captive in an unending progression towards grander
822 | article
sophistication, a process ineluctably steered by men (or to be more precise,

‘educated’ white men).
3
In place of this certitude, in this article we articulate an onto-epistemology of not-
knowing (with the help of Karen Barad and Niels Bohr), which is to say much more
than that there are critical limits to our abilities to access reality as it is. It is to say
that reality is indeterminate (as the paradoxes of studying particulate matter
eloquently suggest). It is to suggest that we re-situate ourselves
as spontaneously responsive, moving, embodied living beings – within a reality of

continuously intermingling, flowing lines or strands of unfolding, agential activity,
in which nothing (no thing) exists in separation from anything else, a reality within
which we are immersed both as participant agencies and to which we also owe
significant aspects of our own natures. (Shotter, 2014: 306)
It is to say the world unfurls not according to the predetermined logic of growth or
progress, not according to the marketplace, and certainly not around ‘us’. Such
geocentric and anthropocentric assumptions are caving in and hollowing out
giving birth to queer, troublesome visions that disturb our confident humanism,
make room for the perverse and return the gaze of the ‘other’ back upon ourselves.
The monster isn’t under the bed

I’ll be back!
Arnold Schwarzenegger (as ‘T-800 Model 101’ in The Terminator, 1984)
There’s nothing more toxic or deadly than a human child. A single touch could kill
you. Leave a door open, and one can walk right into this factory; right into the
monster world.
Henry J. Waternoose (voiced by James Coburn in Pixar’s Monster’s Inc.,

2001)
The tragedy of the monster is a recurring trope and energetic motif in modern
cinematic history. Whether it is the time-travelling cyborg in The Terminator
(1984), whose flesh (or living tissue) cleaves to metal, or the endearing animated
story about extra-dimensional creatures learning to exploit the fear of human

3 Karen Barad coined this term (2007). Onto-epistemology means what is in the world
(ontology) and how we know what is in the world (epistemology) are not separate, but
emerge materially in an ongoing dynamic. That is, the nature of reality and the nature
of knowledge are entangled, not fixed or final or determinate. In a fuller sense, none
of these can be divorced from power and what we find valuable or just, so to write about
an ‘onto-ethico-politico-epistemology’ is probably more appropriate, but no less
infuriating.
article| 823
children to power their own economy (in Monsters Inc., 2001), or the gripping
narrative of a psychopathic serial killer’s vicissitudes with emotions and a normal
suburban American existence (in the television series Dexter), our fascination with
monsters seems everlasting.
Invading aliens, melancholy moons that turn accursed persons into werewolves,
Frankensteinian contrivances (like bio-engineered super-dinosaurs or artificial
intelligence) whose ‘unnatural’ ferocity quickly teaches an audience that one
should not ‘play God’. These monsters touch tensions about the safe divides
between the essential and the adulterated, between what is natural and unnatural.
The image of a giant King Kong perched precariously on a New York skyscraper,
holding on to the object of his barbaric affections, Ann Darrow, as if she is his
shibboleth to a more humane existence. His cure from his gargantuan rage is a
poignant testament to our own collective quests for purity, for stable grounds.
Politically, and more contemporarily, the monster manifests as the teeming
population of Syrian refugees lingering at the barb-wired borders of nation-states
– inspiring anxious legislation and whispered questions about ‘who to let in’. Or a
transsexual showing up in a hyper-evangelistic Christian community.
The monster is Outside. That is his Luciferian place. To indwell the festering
swamplands outside all that is actually ordained. To melt through Cartesian
categories. To inhabit the unthought and the unthinkable. To sin. However, the
reserved area we allocated to monsters is shrinking, and we are coming to terms
with just how absent an ‘outside’ really is (Barad, 2007). The ‘world out there’ –
the eminent subject of representationalist scholarship – no longer lies at a distance
from us. We are very much in touch with the world, and produce it via techno-
scientific, cultural and political practices. The world is performed (ibid.); ‘our
understanding of phenomena is inseparable from the instruments we use to
measure them’ (Doyle, 2015: online), which means we do not have the luxury of
indifference or victimhood when we encounter monsters. We are entangled with
them.
The more we excavate our assumed pureness in search of firm grounds – of a

Cartesian kind – the more we run into irony. The more we get into turbulent,
riddling spaces. The more we find just how monstrous
/complicit/adulterated/impure/nonhuman/chimeric we are, so that the tale of
Ann Darrow and King Kong becomes not a narrative of beauty and the beast, but
a politics of mutual beastliness. Reminding us of one aspect of this beastliness,
Dorion Sagan (2011: online) reminds us how biologically compromised we are:
Ten percent of our dry weight is bacteria, but there are ten of ‘their’ cells in our body
for every one of ‘ours,’ and we cannot make vitamin K or B12 without them.
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Vernadsky thought of life as an impure, colloidal form of water. What we call

‘human’ [is] also impure, laced with germs. We have met the frenemy, and it is us.
Just before we turn our attention away, he adds, driving the knife into the body of
essentialism even further:
[B]efore leaving this point of the pointillist composition that is our Being made of
beings, please notice that even those cells that do not swarm in our guts, on our
skin, coming and going, invading pathogenically or aiding probiotically – please
notice that even these very central animal cells, the differentiated masses of lung,
skin, brain, pancreas, placental and other would be strictly human tissues that
belong to our body proper – even they are infiltrated, adulterated, and packed with
Lilliputian others. The mitochondria, for example, that reproduce in your muscles
when you work out, come from bacteria. We come messily from a motley. Indeed
we literally come from messmates and morphed diseases, organisms that ate and
did not digest one another, and organisms that infected one another and killed each
other and formed biochemical truces and merged.
Sagan’s point is that the human body or even ‘human nature’ is not some distinct
Platonic category, but an ongoing admixture of weird becomings – an inter-
speciated emerging deconstruction with no denominating logic or principle. There
is no golden rope through the mush, no guiding hand, no Promethean agenda.
Not even Darwinian teleology – and its presumed internal mechanism of natural
selection by slow mutation – touches on the radical ‘hospitality’ and strangeness
of being/becoming human/nonhuman.
However, the trouble we are encountering is not cosmetic. It is not merely bone-
deep or cell-deep; it strikes at the ‘heart of things’ – undoing the haughty distance
modern man supposed he had achieved by harnessing the power of the electron.
Particulate matter, like T800, is ‘back!’; it is more monstrous than anything we
can imagine. And it may be us.
Persistently perverse particles and the monster in us

You are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is
something that the whole ocean is doing.
Allan Watts, ‘The real you’ (2014)

th
At the turn of the 20 century, as our conventional notions of linearity, cause and
effect, and the inner workings of the human body were radically being upturned,
classical physics also began to run out of steam. It was fast becoming an
incomplete account for how the world works, and rumours were now rife that the
revered Newtonian/Einsteinian faith in the fundamental existence of a positivist,
objective world populated by discrete ‘things’ (with pre-set values that are
article| 825
consistent with or without an observer) was imploding. There are many ways to
map the historical uncoupling of classical physics – its inadequacy in the face of
black-body spectral emittance, for instance. However the site of our concern is
simultaneously the smallest and the largest space in our modern mattering: the
quantum.
The controversy surrounding quantum theory was really a high-stakes debate on

the nature of reality, and no other figures loomed large over the quantum
landscape like Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, arguably two of the most compelling
th
thinkers of the Western world and 20 century physics (Howard, 2009). As
Howard (ibid.: 3) avers, ‘both Bohr and Einstein understood early and clearly that
the chief novelty of the quantum theory was what we, today, call “entanglement”,
the non-factorizability of the joint states of previously interacting quantum
systems’.
At one end of the discourse was Einstein, who maintained the ‘thingness’ of
things, insisting that there was a spatial discretization of systems. It was necessary
to Einstein for a separation principle to exist. Physics – the entire enterprise of
science – was otherwise unintelligible. Bohr however adhered to an understanding
of entanglement and, drawing ideas from Chinese philosophy, articulated the
4
principle of complementarity and ontic indeterminacy .
For Bohr, there were no things (Howard, 2009). Identity is not inherent or
mutually independent, but entangled with the experimental circumstance or the
specific measuring apparatus. Thingness, the quality of being a ‘thing’, emerges as
a feature of indeterminate entanglement. Whether an electron behaves like a wave
or a particle – whatever value ‘it’ may take – is inseparable from (and/or
complementary to) the specificity of the measuring ‘paradigm’, and not an
intrinsic, predetermined feature.
The site of this contest about the nature of particulate matter (and therefore the
‘nature’ of emergence) was the dual slit experiment or two-slit apparatus.

4 The central question of ontology is what a thing really is – independent of opinion,
outside of interaction, in a neutral state. The matter behind the matter, if you will. Bohr
fashioned the concept of ontic indeterminacy, in effect rejecting the idea that things
have properties in themselves ‘outside’ of the myriad relationships and complex web
that grant them being. Ontic indeterminacy evokes the provisionality of the world and
the vagueness of boundaries (Barad, 2007). Karen Barad’s concept of ‘intra-action’ is
premised on ontic indeterminacy, which is the understanding that the identity of a
thing, its properties, the features that grant it its ‘thingness’, are not fixed or inherent,
and only emerge in the context of relationship. Light is not inherently a wave or a
particle; what it ‘is’ depends on how it is performed in concert with other agencies
(ibid.).
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Otherwise known as Young’s experiment (since it was first performed by Thomas

th
Young in the first years of the 19 century – long before quantum mechanics – to
demonstrate that light behaved like a wave), the apparatus was a simple way to
demonstrate whether an entity was a particle or a wave (Barad, 2007).
Bohr and Einstein agreed that entities would exhibit wave-like patterns once
diffracted through the double holes of the initial barrier: the experiment had been
performed many times before, and the results always showed an interference
pattern on the final screen. Their contentious disagreement arose from a thought
experiment, a Gedanken: what would happen if the experiment were modified so
that the particular entity, say, a photon (a quantum of light) traveling through the
slit, could be determined? What if we knew which slit allowed the entity to pass –
that is, what if we could observe the entity pass through the slits? Would the final
screen still measure a diffraction pattern, showing conclusively that the real nature
of light is wave-like?
Einstein felt that the results would be the same – that a diffraction pattern would
be recorded on the screen, and that if the passing entity could be detected, it would
be caught behaving like a particle at the slits – thus exposing the deficiencies of
quantum theory. Bohr took a radically different path, rejecting his colleague’s
classical ontology, insisting that the nature of an entity is not fixed or inherent, but
‘emergent’ – changing with the apparatus in place to determine its nature, and
intra-acting with meaning. Light is not inherently a wave or a particle. There are
no inherent objects with predetermined properties. Instead of a diffraction pattern,
Bohr predicted, a hypothetical ‘which-slit’ experiment would show the ‘solid-
looking, bam-bam-bam hits behind the individual slits on the final barrier that
measures the impacts’ (Lanza, 2010: 211).
As it turns out, Bohr’s prediction has been confirmed in hundreds of varying

‘which-slit’ experiments performed ever since:
[W]hen a which-slit detector is introduced, the pattern does indeed change from a
diffraction pattern to a scatter pattern, from wave behaviour to particle behaviour…
this finding goes against both Heisenberg and Einstein’s understandings, and
strongly confirms Bohr’s point of view, for it can be shown that the shift in pattern
is the result of the entanglement of the ‘object’ and the ‘agencies of observation’.
That is, there is empirical evidence for Bohr’s performative understanding of
identity: Identity is not inherent (e.g. entities are not inherently either a wave or a
particle), but rather ‘it’ is performed differently given different experimental
circumstances. (Barad, 2010: 259)
Bohr’s ‘dazzling proof that we live in an indeterministic universe’ (Bard and

Söderqvist, 2014: 134) disturbs the classical view that the world is a collection of
solid stuff, an arrangement of fixed attributes, subservient to physical law. It draws
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together the outside and inside, the monstrous and the proper, King Kong and
Ann.
We are no longer bounded ‘I’s whose task it is to study natural ‘laws’; we are inside
the frenzied equation. ‘We’ are an entanglement – always emerging. The very
materiality of the world is inescapably entangled with epistemology and justice (or
‘justice-to-come’). Karen Barad explains entanglement in terms of intra-activity, or
the ongoing dynamic of emergence that reconfigures everything:
Entanglements are not intertwinings of separate entities, but rather irreducible

relations of responsibility. There is no fixed dividing line between ‘self’ and ‘other’,
‘past’ and ‘present’ and ‘future’, ‘here’ and ‘now’, ‘cause’ and ‘effect’. (Barad, 2010:
265)
Since there are no dividing lines, there are no fixed exterior positions, except that
which has been excluded or cut out due to the specificity of a circumstance or
practice/performance. In Barad’s reckoning what gives an object its ‘specificity’,
5
its properties, is an entanglement ‘between’ things. Entanglement implies that
the ontic unit of reality is not a ‘thing’, but a congealed configuration of
cacophonous agencies. Nature is wild, precarious and exploratory, lacking the sort
of firmness and phallic permanence upon which an immutable grounding of
capitalist teleology can take place, and undercutting the foundational assumptions
that seems so central to the Western project. The Cartesian assumptions that
undergird the binary givenness of the world are undone. Even with an appreciation
of the notion that there are no individual things with fundamentally discrete and
pre-relational properties, it is easy to miss the quantum weirdness and profound
preposterousness of matter.
Dominant rationalist thought tells us, for instance, that cause always precedes
effect; that ‘things’ – boundaried and ‘featured’ and separate – are local (that is,
they cannot be situated in two places at the very same time); that what a thing ‘is’
– its fundamental nature – is fixed; that time flows ‘forward’, so that the distinction
between ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ is rigid; and that reality is composed of
infinitesimally small individual bits of ‘matter’.
Quantum theory discombobulates these classical notions, showing how at

6
quantum levels these Apollonian artefacts of ‘time’ and ‘space’ and ‘self’ and

5 Barad’s theoretical stance can be described as ‘agential realism’ – a non-
representationalist, post-humanist account of how the world materializes.
6 According to agential realism, the binary distinction between micro-reality and macro-
reality is intra-actively co-constituted, not ‘given’. So the usual retort that reality is
essentially weird at more basic levels, but adheres to a classical trope at macro-,
828 | article
‘other’ and ‘this’ and ‘that’ are already threaded through with ‘interferences’ and
infinite alterities, so that an entity is ‘an infinite sum over all possible histories’.
What we are talking about here is not that an electron, for instance, is a gradual
product of reverberating moments already past, but that an electron straddles the
fuzzy lines that distinguish past and future, playing with im/possible possibilities,
touching itself and perverting order.
It is this ardent spontaneity at the ‘heart’ of matter that, queerly enough, is the
condition for all forms of materialization and all forms of bodies. The classical idea
that nothing really comes to touch anything else – that what we feel in our hands
when we hold a book is not the ‘book’ but electromagnetic activity (similarly
charged particles repelling each other) – is replaced by quantum theory’s
submission that electrons are not tiny billiard balls hoisted in a vast space of no-
thing-ness, but inseparable wanderings of the void. We learn that:
the electron not only exchanges a virtual photon with itself, it is possible for that
virtual photon to enjoy other intra-actions with itself – for example, it can vanish,
turning itself into a virtual electron and positron which subsequently annihilate
each other before turning back into a virtual photon – before it is absorbed by the
electron. And so on. This ‘and so on’ is shorthand for an infinite set of possibilities
involving every possible kind of interaction with every possible kind of virtual
particle it can interact with. (Barad, 2012: 9)
Emergence, construed along the lines of ontological indeterminacy, does not

happen along pre-given trajectories. It is a wild madness. We are confronted with
the spectre of our bodies, with the perversity of electrons – noting that these
already entail an infinite alterity, ‘so that touching the other is touching all others,
including the “self”, and touching the “self” [an unfathomable multitude] entails
touching the strangers within’ (Barad, 2012: 7). In a time when the figure of a
monster/alien/abomination is still arguably the most magnetic cinematic draw,
how appropriate it would be to showcase the Other with muted visuals and no
commentary, but with the eminent reminder: the monster is ‘us’.
Haunted bodies and hidden ghosts

You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Well, who the hell else are
you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here. Who the f--k do you
think you’re talkin’ to?
Robert De Niro (as Travis Bickle in Taxi driver, 1976)

everyday levels is ‘itself’ a practice of denying the significance of entanglements
between the ‘two’.
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As quantum physics has maddeningly shown us the multi-faceted mirror of

monsters and denied the plausibility of the ‘other’, neuroscience, the other
pinnacle of the natural sciences, according to the rationalist’s own hierarchies, has
shown us the power of the unconscious, and that there is no ‘I’ that is in theoretical
control. At any given second, we consciously process only sixteen bits of the eleven
million bits of information our senses send to our brain, leading Tor
Nørretranders, the Danish science writer, to describe human consciousness as the
user illusion. He states:
There are no colors, sounds, or smells out there in the world. They are things we
experience. This does not mean that there is no world, for indeed there is: the world
just is. It has no properties until it is experienced. At any rate, not properties like
color, smell, and sound. I see a panorama, a field of visions, but it is not identical
with what arrives at my senses. It is a reconstruction, a simulation, a presentation
of what my senses receive. An interpretation, a hypothesis. (Nørretranders, 1998:
293)
Neuroscience is revealing the primary metaphor for the brain to be the elephant
and the rider. Our conscious mind is simply a passenger sitting upon a greater
essence that is directing the elephant/rider complex, or more aptly, the
elephant/rider entanglement, while allowing the rider to hold onto its illusion of
control, mastery, directionality and fixity.
As the pillars of Cartesian logic crumble from the calcification of false

assumptions, as we start to feel the presence of our self-induced veils, as we see
our host environment disintegrate in the face of our techno-utopian hubris, new
‘evidence’ is coming from every crevice of life, even from the very halls of power
that deny subjectivity, reminding us how intra-relational we really are. In a sense,
Robert De Niro’s character Travis Bickle in the film Taxi driver, asks an evocatively
critical question: when we stand before a mirror, who indeed are we talking to?
Our bodies are no longer ‘ours’, haunted as they are by the ‘other’, disturbed by
‘ghosts’ of restless entities whose feet have traversed preposterous times, worlds
and possibilities.
The social sciences are revealing that human beings are highly contextual, indeed,
intra-contextual. From the famous Stanley Milgram experiments of the 1960s
where subjects would torture strangers with an electric shock, simply because an
authority figure made the request (Romm, 2015), to the Good Samaritan studies
(Darley and Batson, 1973) where theologians and moral philosophers would walk
past bleeding subjects on the street if they were late for a sermon, we are being
shown that the ‘fundamental attribution error’, the belief that character traits are
fixed (as if such fixity could exist!), is giving way to the primacy of circumstance.
Or, queerly put, the primacy of non-primacy. Context comes before reality. And
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perhaps reality is simply context and intra-context subjectively witnessed by

entangled complexes and monsters within.
In the realms of economics, almost every tenet of neo-classical economics has been
falsified. Complexity economics, the branch of economics that finally incorporated
the second law of thermodynamics, has shown that there cannot be a perfect
equilibrium in a world of entropy. The self-evidence of wealth concentration,
regulatory capture and the arbitrage of high-velocity trading, have shown us that
‘perfect information’, the Cartesian dualists ex deus machina, is as elusive as a
theory of everything. Behavioral economics, in many ways one of the few ‘credible’
branches of modern economics, has shown that human beings are highly
irrational, prone to all sorts of biases from information framing to temporal
ordering.
What is clear is that a ‘thing’ is only a ‘thing’ in ‘context’ of relationship. This

includes us. If we change the relationship or the context, the ‘thing’ changes. We
may be ‘rational’ in some contexts, and not in others. In other words, there are no
‘things’, only entanglements, and, by definition, an entanglement is not an already
determined value. It is an ongoing promiscuity that makes thingness possible, the
waltz of a thousand im/possibilities.
How does one enter the plateaus of radical possibility rather than deadening
winnows of scientific reductionism or 3D banality? Our ancestors had many
avenues into the infinite, to non-ordinary states, from trance-induced dancing to
pack-hunting to the ingestion of hallucinogenic plants. They understood that there
was no ‘other’, no ‘outside’. In practice, they understood that we are Nature and
plants are Nature (whether psychedelic or not). They understood that communing
with teacher plants, as they are still known, allows us to create new neural synapses
and activate latent cells of potentiality.
Even the pagan traditions of Western Europe, the Indigenous Peoples of the ‘Old
World’, were deeply immersed in ritual and honoured sacraments to achieve these
states before the Crusades of Christianity forced the monoculture of the mind
upon all who survived their ‘rationalistic’ cleansing (Lash, 2006). Every complex
civilization has had a symbiotic relationship with plant medicines of some form:
the Mayans and Aztecs worked with psilocybin, the Incas with ayahuasca, the
Ancient Egyptians with blue lotus, the Vedic Indians with ganja and the elusive
soma, the Ancient Greeks with ergot and other plants in the mystery schools of
Eleusis (Hancock, 1995).
The psychedelic philosopher, Terrence McKenna, famously proposed the ‘Stoned

ape’ theory of human evolution where he suggested that psilocybin, the active
article| 831
ingredient in magic mushrooms, assisted in the human development of speech

among other major evolutionary developments. He argued that physical evolution
is a slow process, therefore we were capable of language thousands if not tens of
thousands of years before we actually used our latent physical potentiality
(McKenna, 1994). According to him, since psilocybin is one of the only
psychedelics found on every continent, it operated as a mycelial network, both
providing information and connecting this newly acquired wisdom to other
societies across the planet. This would explain why there are Axial Ages, where
exponential explosions of novelty take place, demonstrated by the earliest cave art,
cuneiform language, complex governance structures, the invention of the wheel,
and other ‘innovations’ appearing simultaneously on multiple continents. This
theory is the anthropological equivalent of quantum entanglement.
McKenna uses the language of ‘synesthesia’, the blurring of boundaries between

the senses which is caused by hallucinogens, which then leads to these
developments. McKenna helped to elucidate the link between psychedelics like
psilocybin and dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a naturally occurring compound in
many plants and animals, including humans, which is a structural analog
7
of serotonin and melatonin. Although humans produce DMT, the psychonauts
among us claim that DMT floods the human body in both the birth canal and
during the death process. As such, DMT has been called the spirit molecule by
psychiatrist Rick Strassman (1994). DMT can also be ingested as a psychedelic in
its own right. Strassman has stated that the ‘most intuitively satisfying’ explanation
for the DMT experience is that DMT allows a person to perceive genuine ‘parallel
realities’ inhabited by independently existing intelligent beings (ibid.).
During a 1998 workshop entitled the Valley of novelty, McKenna (2006: online)
explains:
Psilocybin and DMT invoke the Logos, although DMT is more intense and more
brief in its action. This means that they work directly on the language centers, so
that an important aspect of the experience is the interior dialogue. As soon as one
discovers this about psilocybin and about tryptamines in general, one must decide
whether or not to enter into the dialogue and to try and make sense of the incoming
signal.
In McKenna’s book, True hallucinations, he explains what the ‘spirit of the

mushroom’ has spoken to him directly on many occasions. Here is a direct quote
from the mushroom entity:

7 A psychonaut is someone who utilizes altered states of consciousness to explore a wide
range of activities.
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Symbiosis is a relation of mutual dependence and positive benefits for both of the
species involved. Symbiotic relationships between myself and civilized forms of
higher animals have been established many times and in many places throughout
the long ages of my development. (McKenna, 2006: online)
Now what is one to believe? Did mushrooms teach us to speak? Do they interact
with other species? Are they extra-terrestrial spores that we have been in symbiotic
relationship since the dawn of our ape ancestors? Are there parallel realities
occurring simultaneously that can be accessed through chemicals that exist in our
own bodies?
We do not ask these questions to simply invoke the Heyokah spirit – the sacred
8
clown that Indigenous cultures like the Lakota people of the Turtle Island actively
conjure, in order to interject humor and disrupt the pathos of hubris. We pose
these riddles in order to challenge our reconfigurations of agency. To re-direct our
gaze towards the excluded edges and other places of power, where story and
meaning are created and uncreated.
Perhaps these counter-narratives offer deeper truths that acknowledge perverse

particles, microbial symbiosis, cognitive biases, unconscious riders, haunted
bodies and hidden ghosts. Perhaps the scientific, rationalist worldview that would
tell us that 93% of our DNA is ‘junk DNA’ simply because we are yet to understand
it is as unlikely a scenario as speaking with extraterrestrial mushrooms. And
perhaps any claim of a positivist, objective reality that denies quantum physics,
separates us from Nature and tells us that selfishness will lead to a market
equilibrium is less useful than the notion of parallel realities. So what then shall
emerge?
Whither emergence?
God is ridiculous – but if you’re going to have one, make a good one.
Frederich Neitzche (1882)
We’re not in Infinity, we’re in the suburbs.
Jason Schwartzman (as Albert Markovski in I heart huckabees, 2004)
To see what is emerging, one must ask what has emerged to date. The very same
logic that has produced our climate crisis appears to be the logic that claims the
ability to solve what it has begotten. On what grounds then do we situate and
legitimize the capitalist meta-narrative of emergence? What is emerging? Surely

8 Turtle Island is now known as the North America.
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China, India, Nigeria, South Africa are not emerging, in any meaningful sense.
Just as they are not ‘developing’ in any sense outside of the economic relativity of
richer nations. If Nature withholds her sceptre, and cannot endorse the imperative
of growth, the typography of emerging markets and Comtean trajectories, what
does that augur for the sanctity of neoliberalism? Even more pressingly, what
socio-politico-economic imaginaries have we lost to allow the foreground of
frenzied commercialism and social hierarchy to matter?
As Luther Standing Bear, the Lakota elder, reminds us in his description of an

original wisdom and understanding that was trampled over by Western
cannibalism, linear ideals of progress, and a rationalism that could not see other
ontologies as part of a broader emergence:
We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and the winding
streams with tangled growth as ‘wild’. Only to the White man was nature a
‘wilderness’ and only to him was the land infested by ‘wild’ animals and ‘savage’
people. To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the
blessings of the Great Mystery. Not until the hairy man from the east came and with
brutal frenzy heaped injustices upon us and the families we loved was it ‘wild’ for
us. When the very animals of the forest began fleeing; from his approach, then it
was that for us the ‘wild west’ began. (Standing Bear, 2006: 22-23)
Perhaps we have permanently forgotten our other ways of knowing. Yet there seem
to be entangled possibilities in the idea of ancient futures; one can hear their
comforting murmurings on a quiet day. One may wonder whether the act of
invoking the plurality of tongues and myths may itself lead to emerging pathways
to different political imaginaries, without the fixity of linear time.
Surely, if the monster is us there must be an alternative (with apologies to Mrs.

Thatcher). The neoliberal capitalist perspective of emergence as progress defined
by GDP growth, technological advancement and material accumulation is laden
with commodification, extraction and self-interest. Not only does it talk about
‘emerging markets’, it also contains the idea that history is the gradual
mobilization of Nature for anthropocentric uses, and that commodity production
is the most beneficial aim of the collective politico-economic system.
How can we recast our gaze, as the Russian Cosmists did when they described
humans not as earthlings, but as ‘heaven dwellers’ (Young, 2013)? The emerging
onto-epistemology from quantum physics to evolutionary psychology is showing
us the severe limitations of our rationalistic, dualistic, Enlightenment model.
When we accept the simultaneous entanglement and limitations to traditional

ontologies and epistemological world views, we may conclude that we will not
arrive at the ‘base theorem’ or the final stream of logic; no political vision will be
834 | article
entirely adequate. Even ‘enemies’ are part of a tapestry of becoming. There is no

end point, no underlying motif, no bass tone, no hidden embroidery around which
we must stitch. There is a rich spontaneity that froths at the edge of action, and
accounting for this beyond the simple tropes of choice and intentionality is a
matter of justice. A deepening of responsibility might look like deep reflection or
it might look like communing with five grams of dried magic mushrooms in a
dark room. And/or it may look like an emerging form of revolution surpassing all
fixed notions of linearity.
Even among the intra-actions, the decision is not between action and non-action,
the vehement activist or the passive Buddhist. These dualities no longer serve us.
We can simultaneously recognize the pain of the world in non-amputation and full
feeling, while delegitimizing the capitalist system and overthrowing the
imperialist tendencies of in/humanity that is within us all. Action is the movement
of multitudes and multiple realities; it is not a solitary act. We can reclaim the
colonized notion of emergence and engage in an autopoietic dance of creation and
surrender, action and reflection, intra-action and observation.
Pyotr Kropotkin, the formative anarchist philosopher, reminds us that just as our
crisis is not simply a political crisis, but a metaphysical crisis, the coming shifts
and desire for radical change will not be one-dimensional, but rather intra-
relational:
One feels the inevitability of a revolution, vast, implacable, whose role will be not
merely to throw down the political ladder that sustains the rule of the few through
cunning, intrigue and lies, but also to stir up the intellectual and moral life of
society, shake it out of its torpor, reshape our moral life and set blowing in the midst
of the low and paltry passions that occupy us now the livening wind of noble
passions, great impulses and generous dedications. (Kropotkin, 1992/1879-1882: 7)
This brings us back to the deafening banality of COP. Although the negotiators in
Paris do not represent the best interests of the planet in any meaningful sense
(how could they when they are intoxicated with the memetic virus of growth-at-all-
costs?), we are still entangled with their cosmologies and their pathologies. We are
enmeshed in a system of late-stage capitalism based on profit-maximization,
detached individualism, and deadly consumerist logic. Yet there is no ‘solution’ in
the tidy activist sense. No final answers.
As the great anarchist mystic and trickster spirit, Hakim Bey, boldly claims:
In one sense, the sons and daughters of Gaia have never left the Paleolithic; in
another sense, all the perfections of the future are already ours. Only insurrection
will ‘solve’ this paradox – only the uprising against false consciousness in both
ourselves and others will sweep away the technology of oppression and the poverty
of the Spectacle. In this battle a painted mask or shaman’s rattle may prove as vital
article| 835
as the seizing of a communications satellite or secret computer network. (Bey, 2003:

46)
The Biblical text tells the story of a famous ziggurat, the so-called Tower of Babel
(Genesis 11:9), as a mythical insurgency of men against the feminine profligacy of
Nature. In the wake of an Earth-shattering deluge, with men still trembling from
the echoes of such a devastation, it was decided that a tower was to be built – to
mitigate (a favourite word of climate change proceedings!) the impact of unsavoury
weather:
Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly’; then they said, ‘Come, let us
build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make
a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.
(Genesis 11:4)
Their hopes for ascendancy were summarily dashed when God introduced
confusion and turbulence to their project:
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech… [But the Lord said]
Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each
other. (ibid. 11: 7)
The escape from telluric grounds, the attempt to instigate a less than radical
openness to the world and enclose the modern self away from its spontaneous
entanglement with the outside, was thus halted by confused speech. By trouble.
In a time when moral lessons are eschewed with postmodern cynicism, perhaps
there is something ethically vital to note here: it is that Nature resists fixity or the
foundational stability of emergence-by-commercialization. No matter how much
we try to escape it, we are part of a cacophonous parliament of things.
As we recognize emergence as entanglement, as trouble, as a haptic involution,

and we see modernity as some kind of epistemic incarceration from the wildness
of things – as a practice of denying the significance of our already in-touchness,
we will create more room for emerging counter-narratives and mythologies – for
the multiple primacies of psilocybin and the shaman’s rattle and our
grandmother’s epistemology and the soft embrace of other dimensional beings,
diminishing the monologue of political emergence as correspondent with an
inherent scheme of things. Only then we will create the capacity to activate ‘junk
DNA’, surrender to diffraction, embrace a politics of not-knowing and birth
emergent futures worth living.
836 | article
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the authors
Bayo Akomolafe holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Covenant University in Nigeria.
He is author and editor of We will tell our own story with Molefi Kete Asante and Augustine
Nwoye and These wilds beyond our fences: Letters to my daughter on humanity’s search for home
838 | article
(in press; North Atlantic Books, 2017). He sits on the boards of the Mutual Aid Network
(USA) and the Real Economy Lab (UK).
Bayo lives in Chennai India with his wife EJ and their two children Alethea and Kyah.
Alnoor Ladha’s work focuses on the intersection of political organizing, systems thinking,
storytelling, technology and the decentralization of power. He is a founding member and
the Executive Director of The rules (/TR), a global network of activists, organizers,
designers, coders, researchers, writers and others dedicated to changing the rules that
create inequality, poverty and climate change around the world.
He is a Board Member of Greenpeace International USA and the P2P Foundation, a
leading think-tank for commons-based alternatives. Alnoor holds an MSc in Philosophy
and Public Policy from the London School of Economics.
article| 839
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 841-847
A chronology of fragments: Struggling to write a

story alternative to the grand narrative of
emerging economies
Matilda Dahl
Nairobi, Kenya (spring 2011):
As I am to walk out the door of our apartment in central Nairobi where we have
been living for a few months, in order to go to the grocery store, the cleaning lady,
Imma, who has become almost like a family member, stops me and asks:
‘Matilda, while you are going out, could you please tell Fred at the gates to send me
1
20 shillings , because I need to make a call?’
‘Of course’, I tell her. And as Fred – who is keeping big gates which are the only way
to get out of the gated community where my apartment is – opens the gates to me,
I ask him to send over 20 shillings to Imma.
I recall I was a bit confused after this conversation, sensing that the simplicity in
which Imma and Fred transferred small sums of money to each other was quite
amazing. How did they do it? What was this?
‘This’ is called M-pesa, by now a world-famous system for small money transfers
by phone, developed by the Kenyan Telecom company Safaricom. Unheard of by
me, and many others in Europe, back then.

1
Corresponds to approximately 10 Eurocents
note | 841
Two years later in Stockholm, Sweden (March 2013):

Sitting in a cosy pub in the center of Stockholm together with some of my closest
friends, we are about to pay the bill. We got to know each other during our studies
at the Stockholm School of Economics many years ago. Some of them work in the
financial sector, others as consultants and the like. Some of us have cash, other
credit cards. One of my friends, Jenny, works in one of the big Swedish banks and
she asks the rest of us: ‘But doesn’t anyone of you have “Swish”, this app in the
mobile? That way we could just use our mobile phones to split the bill?’
Few around the table have heard of this thing called ‘Swish’ and no one has it –
except for Jenny, the banker. So we have to split the bill the usual way, handing
over several credit cards to the waiter and a bunch of crumpled bills. Apparently, a
crowd of middle-aged women-economists in Sweden, one of the richest and most
technologically advanced countries in the world, were in 2013 quite far from using
the mobile banking technologies that have since long been commonplace even
among the relatively poor in Kenya, East Africa.
What a stunning observation – I thought! Sweden versus Kenya, and Kenya is so

much more advanced in the use of a technology called mobile banking. An area
where the banking and telecom sectors in Sweden had been working long to
establish a standard, and make people use it, without much success. From my own
surprise about this fact, and other people to whom I talked, a research study began
to emerge. What were the features that explained the success of mobile banking in
Kenya and the lack thereof in Sweden? The surprise was based on the taken for
granted assumption that when it comes to finance and telecom Sweden ought to
be ‘more advanced’, such is at least the image of the country. For once it was
relatively easy to get a research grant. In the application I basically wrote that I
wanted to spend time in Nairobi to understand this ‘miracle’ and see what we could
learn from it in Sweden. I was about to tell the story that Sweden has to ‘catch up’
with Kenya, surprisingly.
To say that this is surprising (thus worth telling) is in a sense confirming a post-
colonial normality. A normality where a northern European country is more
advanced than an African country, and as soon as we find a proof of the opposite
we are to exclaim: ‘wow, look at that, they transfer money in a more modern way
than we do in Sweden – I would never have expected that’. This is a normality that
I am raised in, which is transferred to me by almost any research paper or course
book within my field (Business Administration). My normality is constructed from
a western point of view. And I continue constructing it as I tell the story of the
Kenyan mobile money miracle.
So I went back to Kenya, and stayed for seven months in Nairobi, studying M-pesa.
But not by doing elite-interviews with people working as managers at Safaricom,
842 | note
Matilda Dahl A chronology of fragments
even though I did meet with one such manager. What I ended up doing was a
participative study in an M-pesa booth in a dusty and busy street in Nairobi.
Together with James, who worked in the booth 12 hours a day at least 6 days a
week, and who told me everything he knew about M-pesa. But we also talked about
many other things. I told him about snow and the Swedish welfare system. He told
me about Kenya. But those things were sort of on the side. My research notes were
mainly about M-pesa, and the customers that came to buy cash or to buy ‘float’
(SMS correspondence to cash).
Research diary, Nairobi (27 January 2015):

I have been sitting in this tiny M-pesa booth for a few hours now, my back is hurting,
the space is really small. It is such a difference to see this from inside the counter, I
am doing the ‘M-pesa’ together with James. James works here 12 hours a day, 6 days
a week. He is employed by Tim who is an M-pesa agent. It is through Tim, who
drives one of the taxis we use here that I got the opportunity to tag along, inside the
M-pesa shop. The shop, which mostly resembles a cupboard – there is room for two
chairs and very small table behind the counter – is situated next to a restaurant. It
has two small hatches, one towards the dusty street, and one towards the inside of
the restaurant. Beside exchange of cash for an SMS and vice versa James sells
scratch cards (units you can call for) and makes photocopies. But the main business
is the ‘M-pesa’. James is teaching me how to do it, he thinks I am pretty smart and
getting a hook of it. Great. All you need is an old cellphone, preferably a Nokia with
a long-lasting battery. James has a smartphone for private use, but the M-pesa shop
uses the old Nokia to make M-pesa transfers. It is much faster when it comes to
sending and receiving SMSs, James explains.
People come to the shop either with cash in their hand that they want to transform
into SMS, or the other way around, they want to withdraw cash from their M-pesa
account (which is not really an account in the proper sense but a sort of SMS-
balance). The whole transaction is wordless and smooth. I feel like a human cash
machine. And if I am to translate the function of M-pesa into something I have
experienced it would be a combination of a cash machine and a bank transfer
system. Except that there is no bank involved. Just a phone company. And a lot of
small M-pesa booths all over town with people like James sitting inside them, with
a small phone in their hand, receiving or handing out cash. All booths are painted
in green, the ‘Safaricom-green’, a special nuance. Safaricom is the Kenyan partly
state-owned telecommunications company that launched M-pesa and is now world
famous within the telecom, mobile money sector. It was the first company that
succeeded in making people use their phones to transfer money to each other on
large scale.
An elderly man comes into the booth crossing the dusty street; he has 3000 shillings
in his hand. James explains that he is a carpenter selling chairs and tables he has
made on the other side of the big Ngong street. He has probably just sold some
furniture and wants to put the cash into his M-pesa rather than carry it in his pocket.
He hands the 3000 shillings to me and I send an M-pesa SMS to him, putting the
bills under the cashier. As soon as he has gotten the confirmation he continues
tapping on his small phone. I ask him what he did with the money? He explains he
note | 843
sent part of the sum to his daughter who lives 600 km from Nairobi and he pays
his electricity bill. 3000 is a big transfer. Many customers come and hand in 50, 100
or 200 shillings.
This is a busy street corner, and most people hand in cash rather than withdrawing.
The bills pile up under the counter. We have to inscribe every transfer in a big
notebook and the customer needs to sign it. According to the rules of Safaricom,
each person making a transfer needs to show ID. This seldom happens in this
corner. I ask why. ‘Well, I know all these people’ – says James – ‘I have been sitting
here for several years and almost all of them I know. They work here close by’. There
comes an SMS to the phone. It says ‘Sebastian, 2500 shillings’. What am I supposed
to do? No one is there in front of the booth? A little while later an older lady shows
up. She is there to get the 2500 for Sebastian. He has a business further up the
corner, explains James, who knows both the lady and Sebastian. She comes every
day, it is explained to me.
So what is it that we do there inside the booth? On the surface, we take or give away
cash, and check that an SMS is being sent and received. I am trying to understand
the system. My interpretation is that what we actually do here is that we sell and buy
what is called ‘e-float’ (James just says ‘float’). Float can be seen as an ‘SMS
currency’. Cash is transformed into float, and float is transformed into cash with M-
pesa as the intermediator. Safaricom takes a share from each transaction. The
business model is thus that of a phone company: the more transfers (SMSs being
sent and received) the better. It builds on the logic of ‘many small transactions’ –
quite contrary to the banking logic. To set up an M-pesa account is free. This has
little to do with what I know as banking. It is not banking and it is not regulated as
such. It is seen as mobile service and thus avoids financial regulation.
The M-pesa booths are run by independent agents. These are entrepreneurs that
invest their own capital to start up an M-pesa booth. Tony has three booths. This
one is really profitable, it yields a profit of 100 000 shillings a month. 30% of that
goes to Safaricom….
I could go on here. I have pages and pages of notes like this. Photos. A Swedish
researcher in business is taught how to M-pesa by a Kenyan agent. Probably not
many have the kind of empirical material I have. Some colleagues might call it ‘low
hanging fruit’. But how am I to frame it beyond the business emergence story,
which I do not want to tell the usual, sort of ‘low hanging fruit’ (and somehow
easy, uninteresting) way: Kenya is considered an ‘emerging’ economy, so
everything that emerges and can be evaluated and appreciated by an eye of global
capital gets written about. I keep thinking about all the alternative stories that are
not told. And the performative role of the ‘success against all odds’ story that is
being re-told to me in the kiosques in Kenya. It keeps on circulating, from the
global to the local. There are so many other stories to be told, but they end up being
too painful, too emotional. So far from any ‘objectiveness’ one could ever have.
How to tell them, is it even to be called ‘research’?
844 | note
One such story is about James and me, and how he saves me from going into
custody. It is about my last day in the field, two days later I was going back to
Sweden. A few times a week James walks alone from his M-pesa booth with four
big piles of cash (one in each pocket in his jeans) a few blocks to the bank in order
to ‘balance’ the cash (change it to ‘e-float’). This day I walk with him to the bank
and ask whether I can take a picture of him with my iPhone. He agrees. But as I
lift my phone and take a photo of him, from behind, a military car comes around
the corner. So I happen to catch the car on my photo.
After that everything happens very fast. An officer yells angrily at me, jumps out
of the car and snatches my phone from my hand. I react with anger and tell him
to give back my phone. It all happens fast. I am surrounded by yelling militaries.
A mob starts gathering on the street. Voices get agitated. The officer says I have
committed a serious crime. My first reaction, anger over my phone and over this
attempt to get a bribe from a westerner is replaced with fear after some time. James
explains that they are saying to the people on the street that if we were in the US I
would have been ‘shot on the spot’ since I look like ‘Al-Qaeda’. James manages to
get me out of the mob and stops the officers from pushing me into their van. James
tells me to go into a small shelter a few meters from the van. The officer says I am
not going back to Sweden on Monday, because then I will be going to trial, and
now I need to get into the van. I ask them to give me my phone so I can call my
lawyer.
My lawyer talks to the officer through my phone. Nothing happens, still agitation.
James tells me we need to bribe the officers before this gets dangerous. We do. Or
I do, with his intermediary help. I am not seen handling the money, nor is the
officer in charge. Suddenly everything calms down. The officer in charge comes
towards me, shakes my hand and wishes me a pleasant stay in Kenya. It is almost
surreal. I go and fetch my son from school and decide to forget about it all. Because
how am I to make sense of it? How can I include this in my field study, how can I
not? It affected me deeply. Suddenly a story about mobile money became a story
about life and death and bribes and many other things. At least from my
perspective. And any research I do will of course be affected by me.
Is this to be seen as the ‘backside’ of the miraculous emergence story we are used
to hear? I’m not convinced at all. However it was not what I was studying really, it
just happened. And I cannot pretend it didn’t happen. Nor would I slide into
concluding that a ‘real’ catching up with the ‘advanced’ West will not happen as
long as incidents like this take place – this again would be an inadequate
interpretation, undermining the importance of this new technology or casting a
shadow on it, which it does not deserve. Maybe it can be a reminder of the fact that
economic or business success stories do not automatically lead to political change.
note | 845
However, I am not taught how to write about it, how to make sense of this at all as
a business scholar, which in itself can be seen as part of the problem. Is my whole
academic discipline so naïve? The answer is most probably yes.
What happened in Kenya is so far from everything I was taught as an

organizational scholar. It interferes with my personal life, my deepest fears, as a
human being. It is also a story about friendship and about sticking up for another
human being. He could just have left me there. My experiences during this stay
‘inside the booth’ are so far from the official picture of the Mobile Money miracle,
as it is usually perceived. Even if I leave out my last day’s experience. It will never
be covered in the stories circulating globally. Such as the viral Facebook update by
Mark Zuckerberg, a few years later:
Just landed in Nairobi! I’m here to meet with entrepreneurs and developers, and to
learn about mobile money – where Kenya is the world leader. I’m starting at a place
called iHub, where entrepreneurs can build and prototype their ideas. Two of the
engineers I met – Fausto and Mark – designed a system to help people use mobile
payments to buy small amounts of cooking gas, which is a lot safer and better for
the environment than charcoal or kerosene. It’s inspiring to see how engineers here
are using mobile money to build businesses and help their community. (1
2
September 2016)
There is of course not one grand narrative, one story to be told. The global economy
is full of success stories that travel fast. Some are told many times and get a life of
their own. Companies have great resources to form grand narratives. Some people
in the global economy, Mark Zuckerberg for instance, will be listened to when
telling a story. And it is difficult not to be drawn into this type of ‘success narrative’
in ‘unexpected places’ – wow look what is just emerging here, I could never have
guessed! But the surprise is in the eye of the beholder. And in the global economy,
some people are looking and writing and ‘analyzing’, while others are under the
gaze, often voice-less. Then there are those stories in between, and beyond, which
don’t fit, which we do not know what to make of, that we might be scared or too
puzzled to write about. Because they are complex and emotional, and as
management scholars we have been told to leave emotions outside, to keep our
sight clear. But our sight might perhaps then risk to get deprived of its humanity.
And maybe, starting with empathy and engagement, even if its Western and not
fully informed, could be a way to put together the fragments in order for new –
perhaps more unexpected – stories to emerge?

2
Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook account, 1 September 2016
[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103073829862111].
846 | note
the author
Matilda Dahl holds a PhD in Business Administration and works at Uppsala University
Campus Gotland in Sweden. Her research interests concern issues of governance,
organization and regulation.
note | 847
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 849-865
Market fundamentalism in the age of ‘haute

finance’: The enclosing of policy space in
‘emerging’ India
Srivatsan Lakshminarayan
abstract
The rise of the Emerging Market is a remarkable exemplar of an idea that originated and
was socialized in Western financial markets during the 1980s. It has since gained rapid,
wider normative status with respect to a particular set of beliefs that motivate policy choices
on macroeconomic management, economic development and financial sector reforms in
developing and less developed countries. I draw on the Polanyian notion of
commodification and recent extensions to his scholarship in the realm of ideas that seek
to explicate processes through which the dominant ideal of the self-regulating market is
justified as fundamental to the organization of society. Against the backdrop of globally
mobile capital, I critique the prevalence of a particular ideology of emergence in which
commodified geography and commodified finance interact to shape policy. In this process,
evaluative talk plays a key role in legitimizing the expectations of global capital and
overcoming inherent contradictions through the rhetoric of non-crises. I thus highlight the
ascendance of a narrow and instrumentally economic understanding of emergence in
contemporary, post reform India as is asserted in conventional policy discourse. I conclude
by remarking on the significant constriction of ideational space for the consideration of
alternative, historically informed approaches to social and economic development. The
legacy of Karl Polanyi serves as a prophetic reminder for the consequences of such
constriction.
[Initially]…There was no foreign portfolio investment in emerging markets. In fact,

the name was designed to give a more uplifting feeling to what we had originally
called the third world fund.
Former Deputy Director, The International Finance Corporation (IFC)
note | 849
Introduction
Karl Polanyi (1944-2001) attributed the early nineteenth century rise of market
society and its integrative economic logic based on the institution of the self-
regulating market to the conjunctive rise of a universal economic motive (personal
gain) and the fictitious commodification of land, labour and money. It is arguable
whether Polanyi could have foreseen the extent of fictitious commodification in
contemporary market society, in particular the commodification of entire
geographies. Kaur (2012) emphasizes the ascendancy of the superficial project of
corporatized nation branding over development-tethered nation building in the
competitive race to emerge as the desired destination for global capital. Against the
backdrop of nation states increasingly seeing themselves primarily as managers of
capital, she identifies:
a defining aspect of neoliberal economic restructuring over the past few decades has
been the re-making of the nation-form in the image of the corporation —
Nationality, Inc — complete with its own trademark and a brand image. The shift
marks the move from the ideas and practices of nation building to those of nation
branding, which is often suggested as the attainment of a higher and more complete
form of nationhood appropriate to the era of globalization. (2012: 605-606)
Notions of emerging, emergence and emerging markets are central to this exercise of
competitive nationalized brand building (Kaur and Hansen, 2016: 269),
particularly in the international market for finance. The term emerging market
represents an idea that originated in the IFC (a leading World Bank member
financial institution focused on private sector initiatives in developing economies)
over three decades ago to elevate a potential but fledgling asset class (investment
category comprising securities with similar characteristics) to a new standard
worthy of attention from international banks, fund managers and capital
providers. Emergence now transcends economic, political and public policy spheres
and is pervasive in the lexicon of economists, academics, analysts, businessmen,
executives, fund managers as well as the print and electronic media in India today.
The notion of an emerging India interacts deeply with collective construction of
national identity. In particular, the idea of emergence increasingly demands
adherence to a set of standardized expectations in the domains of macroeconomic
policy, financial markets and indeed, the political economy, as repeatedly
articulated and enforced by key internal and external actors.
Such expectations are usually enacted through evaluative talk that define red lines
of acceptable behavior. In so doing they seek to establish norms that de-legitimize
alternate notions of development (including the vehement rejection of the policies
of a previous generation) that cannot be accommodated by the immediate needs
of globally mobile capital. In the process of establishing such norms through the
850 | note
Srivatsan Lakshminarayan Market fundamentalism in the age of ‘haute finance’
reproduction and enforcement of evaluative talk, India’s emergence corresponds to

the Polanyian description of a growing, acquisitive and inherently contradictory
market society. The outcome is a remarkably rapid transformation of a civilization
into an appendage to the self-regulating market, on course towards the ‘running
of society as an adjunct to the market’ (Polanyi, 1944/2001: 60).
The great transformation
Particularly in the last three decades, Karl Polanyi’s classic oeuvre, The Great
transformation, 1944 has been the subject of analysis and interpretation across the
disciplines of economic sociology, economic anthropology, historical sociology
and critical political economy. Institutional theories of change describe Polanyi’s
work as a remarkable example of macro-social analysis based on the use of ‘history
as an analytical tool’, consider Polanyi as one of the founding fathers of classical
historical institutionalism (Steinmo, 2008: 122) and acknowledge him as one of
the original contributors to the institutionalist approach of the study of political
economy alongside Thorstein Veblen and Max Weber (Dunlavy, 1998: 114;
Steinmo and Thelen, 1998: 3). Economic and historical sociologists and political
historians have been at the forefront in debating, theoretically extending and
empirically examining Polanyian constructs and methods (Block, 1979, 2001,
2003; Block and Somers 2005, 2014; Dale 2010; Gemici, 2008; Hann and Hart,
2009).
Recent scholarship on Polanyi has sought to re-interpret his profound yet

somewhat ambiguous ideas in a neoliberal context. Intellectual epitaphs to
Polanyian thought arising from his wrong interpretation of history and
emphasizing the historical persistence of market societies in mankind’s
deterministic evolution towards the modern market economy have also been
attempted (Hejeebu and McCloskey, 2004: 137). Others have sought to
problematize the apparent challenge to Polanyian thought presented by the
mutating yet persistent nature of capitalism in seeking re-interpretations that can
lead to ‘progressive possibilities’ (Dale, 2010: 208; Watson, 2014: 622). Amidst
repeated crises, Polanyi’s ideas on the socially disintegrative consequences of the
fictitious commodification of land, labour and money in an industrial society, that
subjects its social sphere to the dominance of free markets and, the reactionary
processes of the double movement, command renewed attention. The ‘ghost of
Karl Polanyi’ (Levitt, 2013:1) continues to stalk debates beyond the confines of the
World Economic Forum.
Polanyi challenges the ahistorical presumption pervasive in significant sections of

mainstream modern economic (and indeed, social) thought that contemporary
note | 851
arrangements and methods of organization are advancements of timeless

practices. Polanyi’s ontological commitment to a holistic view of man, and his
temporal critique of industrialized Western society is therefore, appropriately
suited to a contemporary study of eastern societies such as India, where, arguably,
for most of the twentieth century, the independent sphere of the market economy
did not dominate human society. Polanyi’s analysis refutes economic determinism
that tends to relegate social motives to irrelevance by presuming that all changes
in society are driven by the economic sphere. He also represents a direct challenge
to micro or reductionist theories of institutional change that place economic
rationality over all other forms of rationality and theorize institutions, uncritically,
as the consequence of innovations by powerful actors driven by rational self-
interest.
Market fundamentalism and ideational processes
The notion of market fundamentalism in contemporary Polanyian scholarship owes

its substantive origin through Soros (1998) to Polanyi. Polanyi’s thesis of the rise
of the market economy predicated on the commodification of man, nature and
money, the resultant transition of society into a market society and the central role
of ‘values, motives and policy’ (Polanyi, 1957: 250) in the institution of economic
processes in society, prefigure the rise of market fundamentalism in a market
society. Block and Somers re-define and deploy this notion in a somewhat
deprecatory manner to highlight ‘the quasi-religious certainty expressed by
contemporary advocates of market self-regulation’ (2014: 3) and inductively
theorize within a framework of ideas and narratives that synthesizes ideational
processes of institutional change with Polanyi’s account of the rise of the self-
regulating market (2005, 2014). They extend Polanyi’s conception of
embeddedness in a market society, i.e. the arrangement of institutions of the
market vis-a-vis social institutions, to the ideational sphere. Accordingly, Block and
Somers argue that the notion of market fundamentalism constitutes ‘ideas, public
narratives and explanatory systems by which states, societies, and political cultures
construct, transform, explain, and normalize market processes’ (2014: 155). Their
work represents a singularly significant and operationalizable extension of
Polanyian theory in the domain of ideas, with implications for contexts such as
India.
Just as markets are embedded differently at a functional or structural level within

market societies, i.e. the separation of political and economic institutions is
configured differently in market societies over time and space through regulations
and institutional arrangements, markets are also embedded and re-embedded
differently at an ideational level. A key, inductively derived assumption on which
852 | note
ideational embeddedness is based is the following: ideas exercise an independent

role in catalysing institutional change in certain contexts. Once this assumption is
accepted, Block and Somers posit that ‘many battles over social and economic
policy should be redefined as conflicts not over whether markets should be
embedded but rather which ideational regime will do the embedding’ (ibid.: 155).
Thus, ideas are contested within ideational regimes and, regime changes in a given
society are rare. Ideas that are in tune with the given regime are epistemically
privileged. The broader regime prevalent in the contemporary global context is one
of historically persistent market fundamentalism. Block and Somers (2014: 166-173)
attribute its ascendance and persistence since nineteenth century Western society
to three underlying principles. The first is social naturalism - the claim that the
laws of nature govern society and that the laws of the market represent the natural
order of things. The second is theoretical realism constituting apparently inductive
but substantively deductive causal claims that argue from observable effects to the
true unobserved reality, e.g. that unemployment and low wages are invariably
observed in a welfare society not despite welfare support but because of welfare
support. The third principle is that of the conversion narrative, i.e. conversion of
actors or groups from one ideational regime to another through the neutralization
of the prevailing narrative and the depiction of an alternate story by moving back
and forth between ‘a more harmonious past before the onset of the crisis’ and
‘forward again to the problematic present’ (ibid.: 172). The operationalization of
the current regime is sustained through processes that seize crisis opportunities
by seeking to problematize the crisis, argue counterfactually so as to delegitimize
the original intellectual sponsors as architects of the current crisis and seek to alter
the narrative by promising a utopian alternative for the future through a powerful
counter-narrative. Thus market fundamentalism:
simply imposes a different kind of embeddedness from that of institutional

pragmatism, (social protection) one that tells a different story about the urgency of
liberating markets form the tyranny of policies that violate the autonomy of self-
regulating natural entities. (2014: 184)
Consequently, market fundamentalism provides a crucial entry point through which

a number of Polanyian constructs can be operationalized in the analysis of
narratives relating to prevailing ideas and institutions, without necessarily
subscribing to deterministic outcomes. Specifically, I draw upon the interplay
between commodified geography, commodified money (global finance) and the
notion of market fundamentalism in problematizing the dominant ideological and
policy proclivities in emerging India.
note | 853
Commoditized space, notions of emergence and global capital
The metaphors deployed to describe emerging economies in geographically

prefixed predatory or behemoth-like terms explicit in image conjuring exercises in
the global economic discourse, and particularly, the financial media such as Asian
tigers, African lions, the dragon, the elephant etc. serve dual purposes. They capture
and perpetuate the intensely competitive nature of international capital
mobilization in the new pecking order of emergent nation states engaged in the
race to outperform within the asset class of emerging markets, reminiscent of the
analogous race for survival in the wilderness. Further, they provide lubrication to
the public aspirations amongst the vanguard of emergent nations — to emerge
victorious in this race. The components of this asset class however are not
homogenously constituted. Sidaway (2012: 57) provides an interesting description
in terms of the spatial dimension of emergence through his description of re-
converged enclaves as demarcated zones of development within ‘the third world’
that represent sites of fulfilment and function as nodal representatives of the
globalized world but are ‘partially dis-embedded’ (perhaps, even starkly so) from
their immediate context.
However, there is an additional temporal dimension to this emergence, which

manifests itself in the belief patterns and notions of the emergent nation. These
arise from qualitative connotations associated with emergence and are anchored
in an impression of purposive motion — from the past (undesirable, servile) to the
future (developed, assertive, aggressive). Such an understanding seeks to foreclose
consideration of options since the materialization of any schisms, however deep,
are non-controversially attributed to temporary aberrations encountered in the
progress towards a promised, powerful and redeeming future. Such aberrations
are often perceived as opportunities to incrementally correct technical flaws in
policy instead of substantively challenging direction. Emergence, thus
comprehended, is associated with a set of fiercely guarded emotions and beliefs
appropriated by the elite, enlightened citizenry of the emergent. Particularly in the
case of India, these often include a feeling of purposeful redemption, a belief in a
vague yet shared perception of a relentless pursuit of the economic summit and a
qualification earned by virtue of an unwavering focus on coaxing digits of growth
out of the economy. A demonstrated commitment to global economic integration
that entitles, indeed commands greater attention to a performing India from the
audience of national and international spectators becomes imperative as emergence
increasingly constitutes a tenuous perquisite representing privileged membership
in a global club of the like-minded. Such recognition however is contingent upon
India’s continued inclusion in prestigious financial groupings and indices so as to
justify a persistent premium in investment valuation.
854 | note
Consequently, in the domain of economic policy, advocacy of an emerging India

requires the establishment of an institutional environment that is able to
simultaneously accommodate incompatible components. In particular, these
include the enduring facilitation of powerful private innovators who are able to
contract at minimal transaction cost and continually undertake institutional
innovation in the prospect of private gain. Additionally, a stable polity is sought,
that sees itself primarily as a service provider in the assurance of continuity as a
legislator of low cost contract enforcement and non-interference. Such a polity is
expected to commit itself to an efficient property rights system so that incentives
for frictions arising from subjective perceptions rooted in alternative logics
(tradition, custom and local belief) are minimized. Further, a judiciary geared to
unambiguous and speedy resolution of disputes in its primary role as low cost
third party enforcer and, an amenable citizenry who cultivate necessary opinions
are desired, so that a stable institutional environment can be maintained to
facilitate the operation of other institutional components. These expectations by
the orthodoxy as the essential template for institutional design and change for
emerging India re-centre our attention on Polanyi’s notion of the ‘economistic
fallacy’ (Polanyi, 1953:1). Fundamental to Polanyi’s conception of the economy as
an instituted process are his accompanying emphatic injunctions to avoid equating
the economy with the market in its purely formal, economistic sense instead of its
human counterpart (a presumptive encumbrance of our zeitgeist) thereby
ignoring the place of economy in society. The economistic advocacy of the
orthodoxy however is beholden to haute finance.
In the globally interconnected financial economy, commoditized money has a

special role to play in the commodification of geography i.e. branded emergence, by
interacting with domestic notions of emergence and therefore, enforcing
emergence from without. Lee (2003: 62) highlights the devaluation and
consequent destabilization of locationally fixed capital through spatial mobility of
financial capital across geographies and investments in compressed time,
originating from the process of continuous, comparative evaluations predicated on
increasingly fragile (and often oscillating) financial knowledge. When applied
instantaneously over a range of time horizons (investment holding period
considerations), such knowledge amplifies the liquidity, scale and power of
financial markets and facilitates the construction of geographically uneven
development. The very threat of (re)switching of financial capital consequent on
such mobility exerts policy pressure on emergent states that is reflective of:
the geographical imaginations and experience of those working within financial

markets and the interactive construction and exchange of knowledge – often over
very short time frames – in which they are constantly engaged. (Lee, 2003: 63)
note | 855
The continuous flow of information through broker networks, content providers

and financial media creates perceived and actual instantaneous arbitrage
opportunities across geographies or investments (asset classes), serving as
stimulus for the continual readjustment of views, consummation of value
realization and movement of financial capital to the next transitory destination in
order to unlock value. The notion that such attributes of mobility and instantaneous
re-pricing of risk on a global scale are essential for a perennial, universal reflection
of underlying assets at their fair value appears clearly antithetical to another
mainstream economic assertion (World Bank Report, 2010) that productive
investment requires a stable regime, reliable institutions and a predictable
business environment. Underlining this dialectical opposition is the fact that
globally mobile financial capital constantly juxtaposes the value of real investment
against its fluid, market determined price, fueling volatility, affecting sentiments
and thereby adversely influencing real investment and business decisions. Lee
(2003) highlights this antithesis in the context of global risk aversion and a flight
to quality, resulting in reduced portfolio investment in emerging markets, pro-
cyclicality of capital flows and a consequential penalty that emerging markets bear
for global growth slowdown.
Inherent contradictions of self-regulating finance
Pro-cyclicality of capital flows, especially in the form of foreign portfolio

investment (into domestic equity and bond markets of emergent states such as
India) presents a deepening persistent challenge to one of the fundamental
postulates in finance. The sub-discipline of portfolio theory within modern
international finance espouses asset class diversification as a means of countering
cross-asset class return correlation especially in the face of recurrent and
prolonged contagion in financial markets, often in anticipation of such events.
This assumes significance in the post Global Financial Crisis (GFC) regime. In its
simplest form the exercise involves (re)switching financial capital amongst
combinations of investable assets that bear low positive to zero correlation, for
example, cash and equity. At a more sophisticated level, it involves evaluating
combinations of assets (including geographies) that at the margin yield superior
positive nominal risk adjusted returns per unit of volatility at the level of the
portfolio. Recent trends on the effectiveness of global portfolio diversification
strategies, especially in equity and bond markets around and after the GFC are
instructive.
The process of establishing new destinations for financial capital through the
creation and re-categorization of emerging and frontier territories aids the widening
of portfolio opportunities through the emergence of alternate investable asset
856 | note
classes (geographies) that appear initially heterogeneous. However, increasing

policy isomorphism over time is manifested through shared attributes such as
dependence on unpredictable global capital to mobilize foreign currency reserves
and finance real sector growth and, rising inter-connection with global financial
markets. This diminishes portfolio diversification benefits, especially over the
short to medium term arising from higher financial asset return and volatility
correlation between emerging markets and the US (safe haven) during peak
contagion (e.g. GFC), rising co-movement of returns during bull markets since
GFC and significantly greater interdependence of bond returns in emerging
markets (Bianconi et al., 2013; Dimitriou et al., 2013; Syriopoulos et al., 2015).
Recent calls for replacing asset class diversification with (often) ambiguously
interpreted risk factor based diversification (Ilmanen and Kizer, 2012) require
dynamic portfolio management and entail high transaction costs. Frequent regime
shifts affect underlying risk factors and further mandate taking on leverage in the
portfolio of an order that effectively exposes the portfolio to a different form of risk.
Ironically, in every instance of an (imported) crisis, emergent states like India are
constrained to implement policy measures designed to speedily attract and retain
foreign exchange reserves by incentivizing global capital inflow in its most
transient form — foreign portfolio investment. Thus, we observe two pairs of
incongruous dynamics. One pertains to the emerging contradictions within
portfolio management techniques affecting portfolio investors of foreign capital
and, the other to rising dependability on tenuous foreign currency flows while
seeking to guard exchange rate stability and also financing growth. These
represent classic Polanyian illustrations of the internal contradictions arising from
the sophisticated reproduction of commoditized self-regulating finance in the
global market that emerging countries such as India face.
There is a further dimension, however, to this perennially imminent threat of

capital switching that Lee (2003) addresses partially. Indeed, the mere spectre of a
large scale switching away of financial capital exercises a regulatory impact on local
behaviour and norms, thereby ensuring conformity with global expectations and
limiting discretion in policy and action at the level of the emergent sovereign. Not
only must the emergent be compliant but must also be seen to be compliant at all
times implying that any change in perceptions about intent is reason enough for
the reconstruction of financial knowledge. This has profound implications. Every
potential announcement and action by the sovereign must be carefully analyzed ex-
ante and provision made for compensating factors so that cross spatial and inter-
temporal expectations from global capital are adequately factored into policy
decisions. Dissenting influential voices or opinions in policy corridors must be
ignored or quelled lest financial markets catch on to the whiff of indiscipline and
read rebellion from it. When such balancing is no longer possible, damage control
note | 857
emerges as the last resort. Policies, thus lose connect with the developmental
dimension of stated ideology and are increasingly hostage to the immediate verdict
of financial markets.
Evaluative talk
The process of capital switching does not occur passively but is accompanied and
often determined by a strong sub-text of ‘evaluative talk’ (Lee, 2003: 67). Evaluative
talk aims to continuously (re)create conditions appropriate for (re)switching
through the discursive constitution of fitness for investment purpose. Such
evaluative talk in the context of emerging markets is often comparative,
juxtaposing nation states as lead-lag players so as to project them as examples of
successes or failures on neoliberal parameters of economic reform. This is often
accomplished by establishing expectations of reform implementation (in the
public domain) from the elected head of the sovereign emergent in the process.
Kaur (2012: 605) highlights the reversal from the earlier situation of ‘the
corporation seeking patronage as purveyor to the sovereign’ to the prevailing
regime where the state acts as purveyor to global capital through the display of
abundant ‘raw material, cheap skilled labour and unfettered access to markets’. It
is no surprise, therefore, that the prospective customer is constantly evaluating the
vendor’s wares and publicly setting terms for their merchantability.
Based on analysis of prevailing discourses (popular and financial), I posit that

evaluative talk, especially in the context of emerging markets, constitute three
broad, cognate categories. These include value-laden exhortations for speedy
implementation of neoliberal reforms while making exhortative, critical
comparisons over time and space in order to highlight missed opportunities or to
avoid being perceived as a laggard. Second, warnings of external risks (positive and
negative) for example ‘Fed tapering’, Eurozone crisis and oil price movements,
thereby highlighting needs for resiliency and continued reform commitment
constitute another category. Finally, appeals to seize the opportunity to fulfil
potential and attain one’s destined place in the world order constitute the third.
Evaluative talk typical of these categories can originate from internal or external
actors and usually converges (across actors and categories) at critical moments
when a decisive regime shift is imminent or appears possible. As an illustration,
the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) episodic warnings to ‘emerging’
economies like India of looming external risks and emphasis on speedy reform
implementation as an antidote are typical of diagnostic rhetoric. These are
premised on the expectation that every new wave of imported crisis accentuated by
globally mobile capital must be countered by nimble footed policy implementation
by emerging markets on their onward march to emergence (e.g. IMF, 2016).
858 | note
Highlighting the dialectical nature of the problem, is the irony, that if fulfilled,
these crisis events would constrain options for India’s monetary policy (interest
rate reduction), investment reform process (attracting foreign investment inflows)
and foreign exchange management (stable exchange rate and robust foreign
exchange reserve maintenance) at precisely the moment of the articulated need to
implement these measures, thereby diminishing prospects for reform as judged
by the same neoliberal standards on which these expectations are articulated.
Evaluative talks by internal actors include allusions to the shameful legacy of India’s
economic performance prior to the introduction of liberalization and
commencement of global integration (1991), the externally anchored nature of the
vision of what India must or must not do – the imperative of measuring up to
international expectations, the separation of the social sphere from the economic
and, the articulation of a business case for future financing of the social sector
contingent upon economic growth. In the context of emergence, evaluative talk
thus seeks to further the logic of commodified finance in two very distinct and
related ways. First, it seeks to achieve and sustain the completion of the Polanyian
triad, namely the commodification of land and labour. Second, in the domain of
performance accounting, it demands on-going spatial (across emerging markets)
and temporal (fiscal quarter or year) policy accountability echoing the earlier
reversal of roles between state and corporation.
Opportunistic invocation of non-crises in the service of market

fundamentalism
How do prescriptions by the prevailing orthodoxy retain credibility against chronic

and episodic crises of slow-down, recession and jobless growth? I posit that this is
achieved through the evaluative rhetoric of non-crisis. This involves talking down
by juxtaposing relative intensities of episodic indigence, emphasizing the
absoluteness of fundamentals and, the imperative of countering capital flight. Such
manufacture of crisis reconcilement is often accompanied by a pragmatic,
naturalistic emphasis on the inevitable incurrence of globally imported costs for
imminent local development. The discursive construction of concrete visions of
development through persistent appeals to the power of instrumental imagination
involves the constant conjuring of material manifestations of progress and the
consequent shaping of realities that hide the tenuousness of access and ignore the
problematic domestic reproduction of a colonial past, in the relentless and febrile
makings of a new free history of a free society. The capture of ideology, vision and
institutional action by conforming and totalizing imaginations is thus complete.
note | 859
This paves the way for the situational negotiation of morals predicated on the
economic imperatives of substantively non-economistic contexts that is
simultaneously pervasive (by its reproduction throughout the hierarchy of society)
and regressive (by its relentless shaping of individual and collective
consciousness). The dialectical abasement of wholesome collective histories and
geographies, their diversities and inherited human-ness, through the verbalized
elevation of synthetic boundaries formalized in grand narratives of growth is thus
achieved. Simultaneously, the reinforcement of conformity to the instrumental
epistemology underlying such narratives through the continual emphasis on the
precariousness of growth is on display, resulting in the non-reflexive advancement
of performative growth over its subjective and substantial alternatives. The
fierceness of calls for safeguards to growth arising from unavoidable imperatives
to nurture the reified concept persists, in the course of which, the real subjective
constituent is often, collateral damage. The latent negation of human-ness in the
pursuit of metricized outcomes eventually, by its reproduction, constitutes a
conscious abnegation of stated intent. Finally, the anticipatory rhetoric of deep and
impending crisis, simultaneously serves preparatory and cautionary purposes
(highlighting the inevitable consequences of failing to fall in line) in the age of
market fundamentalism.
Burden of proof
The over-riding (though not unchallenged) mainstream assertion dominating

Indian economic policy discourse is the following — not opening markets to
investment and competition, i.e. not establishing ‘One Big Market’ (Polanyi,
1944/2001: 75, 187), and the failure to unleash animal spirits, will accelerate the
decline of India as an emerging super-power and jeopardize development.
Arguments for a more complete commodification of land and labour prescribe a
simpler land acquisition process that would overcome the challenges of adequate
compensation, community consensus and social audit and, a labour market where
separation is easier. Central to this naturalistic, conversion narrative is a mix of
unreflective experiences and notions. Dissatisfaction with decades of insular and
bureaucratic approaches to post-independence economic development acts as a
powerful motivating force. Further, the collapse of communism is putatively
interpreted as representing the permanent demise of non-capitalistic and often by
conflated association, non-libertarian modes of economic and social organization.
These are accompanied by misplaced juxtaposition of advanced capitalistic
economic models with those of the former Soviet bloc to highlight the absence of
viable alternatives and, the conflation of liberal, socialist models with those of
failed communist models by tarring all alternative models of nation building and
860 | note
development with the same brush. These arguments fail to adequately introspect,
in several ways.
First, they over-weight (often unconsciously) a particular phase of Western

development based on the self-regulating market commencing between the late
1960s and early 1970s and in particular the globalized neoliberal version
ascendant since the early 1980s. However, they ignore the period of turbulence
arising out of unregulated market orientation in the run up to the great depression
and the period of relatively stable welfare capitalism after the end of the Second
World War culminating in the early 1970s in which restrictions on international
finance attenuated the commodification of money (Lacher, 1999: 356). They also
discount the strong state-led (sometimes at the expense of democratic rights) and
social infrastructure-intensive nature of development in the case of East Asia, the
experiences of failed transition to capitalistic organization of eastern Europe and
Russia in the 1990s through the foisting of market institutions on unprepared and
incompatible societies (Williamson, 2000) and indeed, the prolonged period of
political and economic turbulence in advanced Western societies since the GFC.
Hence they are ahistorical by being selectively attentive. Further, they shift the
burden of proof onto arguments in favour of alternatives to prove that alternatives
are superior and worthy of consideration. In so doing, they impose their own
market fundamentalist standards on which basis the acceptability of any
alternative must be judged, i.e. they ‘exercise ideological hegemony over the
boundaries of political discourse’ (Block and Somers, 2014: 184). Thus, they suffer
from the fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam – merely because a more effective
alternative cannot be proven immediately, they assume the opposite, in this case,
the financially capitalist proposition must be true, despite obvious inherent
contradictions.
The reference to pre-1991 (pre-reform) India in popular discourse is representative

of a widespread belief in the collective Indian mind, especially amongst wide
sections of contemporary, educated middle and upper class Indians (who also
dominate the bureaucratic, policy making, business and, increasingly, the political
establishments), that India has never broken clear of the burdensome fetters
originating from historic policy choices. 1991 represents a red-line in the past and
notions of speed and flight need to be read in context – that of need for a decisive,
permanent escape from a ‘shameful’ past and a prolonged present. Interacting
with this belief, is the further notion that 25 years of reform, since 1991, have not
produced desired results, putatively because the desired swift focus on wealth
generation has been relegated due to an excessive preoccupation with
redistribution, an argument often bordering on theoretical realism, e.g. that the
poor need purchasing power not welfare support. This was exemplified by the
discourse in the popular and financial media, in the run up to the 2014 general
note | 861
elections that was overwhelmingly critical of and anathematized policy paralysis

and governance deficit. There is now, therefore, more than ever, the widely
articulated need for speed and flight.
Conclusion
In the context of discussing different bases on which theories of ideology can be

organized, Geuss (1981: 7) analyzes rituals as non-discursive elements of religion
(itself a component of ideology) and thereby, draws a distinction between the
beliefs and attitudes most people in society naively associate with (a particular)
ritual, either implicitly or explicitly through participation in the ritual and ‘the
conflicting theological interpretations conceptually sophisticated members of the
society give to the ritual.’ Analogously, I posit that the wider, and to a significant
extent, manufactured discourse on Indian emergence has focused overwhelmingly
on the coveted short-term outcomes (jobs, infrastructure, better standard of
material life, competitive out-performance) of neoliberal policy choices that the
path has thus far involved taking, thereby, shaping public beliefs and expectations
amongst explicit and implicit participants with respect to their own participation
in the ritual of emergence.
Conversely, those having influence, providing inputs into or responsible for policy
choices (‘the conceptually sophisticated’) are far more circumspect with respect to
the structural adjustments and the tariff involved in emergence as a desideratum,
almost dispassionately so. This dispassion is often a function of the
disproportionate effects of such adjustments on the governors and the governed
but more fundamentally reflective of the lack of space for alternative ideas and an
inadequate critical appreciation of the zeitgeist. In either case, however, the
discourse is overwhelmingly about methods, efficiency and narrowly instrumental
aspects. The ideological mooring of India’s emergence at this time is remarkably
reflective of Polanyi’s prescient characterization of the rise of the market economy
in early nineteenth century England in the wake of the Industrial Revolution:
Fired by an emotional faith in spontaneity, the common-sense attitude toward

change was discarded in favour of a mystical readiness to accept the social
consequences of economic improvement, whatever they might be…The elementary
truths of political science and statecraft were first discredited then
forgotten…household truths of traditional statesmanship, often merely reflecting
the teachings of a social philosophy inherited from the ancients…(were)...erased
from the thoughts of the educated by the corrosive of a crude utilitarianism
combined with an uncritical reliance on the alleged self-healing virtues of
unconscious growth. (1944/2001: 35)
862 | note
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the author
Srivatsan Lakshminarayan is a Lecturer in Accounting at the School of Finance and
Management, SOAS University of London. He acknowledges the support provided by SP
Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai, India, in the writing of this
paper. Srivatsan studied accounting in India and holds an MSc in Finance from the
University of London. He previously worked in the financial services industry for over a
decade. His areas of research interest include accounting history and theory, business and
economic history, the political philosophy of Karl Polanyi and the analysis of rhetoric and
discourse.
note | 865
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 867-876
The rise of stagnancy and emergent possibilities

for young radicals: Deleuze and the perils of
idolatry
Andrei Botez and Joel Hietanen
It’s only another fold

You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above
or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or
worship them. (Exodus, 20: 4-5)
What, asked the philosopher Bruce Benson, do the philosophers Nietzsche and
Derrida have in common? They were both concerned about idolatry (Benson,
2002), or the act of creating images, indeed objects of substitution, stand-ins in
place of the one that is to be understood as beyond the realm of humanity;
simulations of the Real beyond reality. With ease, we could add Gilles Deleuze’s
philosophical oeuvre to Benson’s list, for he, in his insistence on the immanent
and the emergent, never attempted to conceal his disdain for idolatry. Indeed, the
idolaters are people of ‘artificial lives’, the ones who make essences, stable
representations to mask the emergent flow of forces and intensities. It is they, not
the artful, who are the true mystics, the fanatics, and the superstitious (Deleuze,
1991b: 74). They who so desperately have faith in their ‘stable representations’ are
the ones who have truly come to privilege hallucinations and fantasies (Deleuze
and Guattari, 2000: 25).
In contrast to what one might have learned to assume, being radical is conceptually
founded on staying close to the roots (Lat: rad-ixes): you shall not make for yourself
an essence, an idol (εἴ δωλον). Do not become a false god. To be radical means
giving up on hallucinations, and fantasies, on mysticism and superstitions. To be
radical means: do not bow down, do not worship. This carves us a fold in academia
note | 867
where the question of what finds stability becomes apparent: what is it that is
worshipped here, that which maintains positions of power and triumphantly
parades the Idols of truthfulness? In the words of Nietzsche, it is the truthful man
who seeks to condemn the expression that is life, s/he who sees life as an evil and
a sin to be atoned for; truth’s terrorizing inclination to judge (Deleuze, 1989).
What has the ability to stay so it can be recognized as a means with which to judge?
As the theologian Richard Neuhaus, the founder and editor of the highly
influential journal First Things, noted, it was André Malraux who said – shortly
before he died in 1976 – ‘The twenty-first century will be religious or it will not be
at all’ (Neuhaus, 1997). A few years earlier, in 1970, Michel Foucault published a
short essay entitled ‘Theatrum Philosophicum’. In it, he declared, perhaps
somewhat flippantly: ‘one day, perhaps, this century will be called Deleuzian’
(Foucault, 1977: 165).
Was Malraux right in his assertion? How could he say such a thing after
Nietzsche’s madman had shouted ‘God is dead!’ a century earlier? Additionally,
how could Foucault say such a thing after he himself declared, in his 1966 book
‘The order of things’, that, by analogy with Nietzsche, man is dead? True, while
st th
Malraux was pointing to the 21 century, Foucault was reimagining the 20 .
However, the temporal distance was only apparent as Deleuze, the man of
emergence himself, became increasingly popular throughout the Anglophone
st
world after the turn of the 21 century, his presence manifesting in fields such as
organization theory (e.g., Linstead and Thanem, 2007; Thanem, 2006, Sørensen,
2005) and, more recently, consumer research as well (e.g., Hietanen et al., 2014;
Kozinets et al., 2016; Hietanen and Andéhn, 2017).
God is dead, man is dead: how then can there be a century of anything?
And yet there is. One of persistent habit and custom. Besides fanaticism and
superstition, there is another element that directly defines the idolaters, the
essence-makers or, worse, the essence-discoverers, and that is dogmatism. As
Hegel (out of all thinkers!) wrote, ‘dogmatism as a way of thinking [...] is nothing
else but the opinion that the true consists in a proposition which is a fixed result’
(as quoted in Deleuze, 1994: 211). Hegel was right, but his claim was also
incomplete. Dogmatism is not related to fixed essences only, but also to everything
that tends to be expressed through absolutes. Therefore, dogmatism can readily
infuse a Deleuzian non-fixed, non-truth / multiple truths within its circuitry.
The main weapon against idolatry, essentialism, and dogmatism is criticism, but
only the kind that can envisage a pure outside that refuses to rebound back to its
origin. As Deleuze noted, Kant is the first philosopher who understood critique as
868 | note
Andrei Botez and Joel Hietanen The rise of stagnancy and emergent possibilities for young radicals
having to be total. Total because ‘nothing must escape it’ (Deleuze, 1983: 89).
Nothing. For theorizing to keep emerging and the thought-machine of academia
to keep humming, the critical vector is the fuel for problematizing. This is where
the young radical in academia finds pure potential, only to then be repeatedly
reeled back in for lack of faith in the iconic register.
A few years ago, Daniel Zamora published a piece in the leftist magazine Jacobin
titled Can we criticize Foucault? (Zamora, 2014). What seemed a rather innocent
question, created a storm of gargantuan proportions (Elden, 2014). When it comes
to Deleuze and most notably his collaborations with Guattari, with the very notable
st
exceptions of, for instance, Badiou’s (1997, so close to the 21 century) book
Deleuze: The clamor of being (see Žižek, 2012), he seems to have largely escaped
criticism. And where there is no criticism, there is idolatry. As his presence
increases within organization theory, consumer research and even marketing, he’s
become something akin to an untouchable figure – the mystic too impenetrable to
touch. Is this surprising? Maybe yes, maybe no. Paraphrasing Zamora (2014),
Deleuze always took pains to inquire into theoretical corpuses of widely differing
horizons and to constantly question his own ideas. Unfortunately, the intellectual
process-oriented Left has often remained trapped in a ‘school’ attitude, i.e. the
‘little Deleuzians’ (Blake, 2016), often keenly refusing to consider or debate ideas
that start to question his premises.
Within this particular journal [ephemera], his name (alone, or together with
Guattari) appears an impressive number of times (e.g., Helle, 2008; Pedersen,
2011; Sørensen, 2003; Yue and Peters, 2015), akin to à la mode, a hype. It is
essential (pun intended). And being so, means it’s uncriticizable: dogmatism is
there, although in a decidedly more elusive way. Truth consisting of fixed, certain
results is replaced by its equally unquestionable negation. There is no truth except
in the fragments of a deception and a disaster; there is no truth except a betrayed
truth; there is no truth, but orders of truth (Deleuze, 2008: 73). There is no truth,
there are only evaluations (Deleuze, 2015: 18). The truth of non-truth, and nothing
beyond.
In this sense being a Deleuzian has never been easier. His name is uttered with
almost sacred reverence at organization theory conferences and now also
increasingly in gatherings of consumer research and marketing scholars. Those
who follow his views are sometimes self-proclaiming themselves ‘heretics’.
Strange, were they not supposed to be radicals? You cannot be both: you’re either
close to the roots (radicals), or away from them (heretics). Business people – what
a sobering thought! – have found in Deleuze a new friend, an ally that can and
should be trusted. In an increasing number of academic circles, Deleuze, the
monstrous and the blasphemer, has become the ‘official philosopher’, the oracle
note | 869
that speaks the non-truth. Hallelujah. As is commonplace with academic surges

of lines of thought, the situation has escalated rapidly. In many gatherings, being
skeptical of all this fanfaronade might earn you, almost immediately, the abhorred
status of a positivist. Accordingly, gathered in the corridors after yet another
presentation, Deleuze and friends adorning the power point’s slides, arousing the
adulation of the worshipers, the researchers are exchanging tales of the latest
mistreatments suffered at the hands of their archenemies: the positivists, those
who ‘do not understand how things really are’. They wear these wounds as badges
of honor: the more you have, the more official you are. And there is plenty of
enjoyment to be had in one’s repression (also Baudrillard, 2007; Lyotard, 2004),
giving away one’s identity and body in a mad dash to be extinguished as a
commodity (also Cederström and Grassman, 2008; Plester, 2015). Here is where
Deleuze has now emerged into something like a becoming-mummy, dipped in
formaldehyde and worshiped by his disciples. If we are to follow Deleuze’s own
definition of the fetish, i.e. a frozen, arrested image (Deleuze, 1991a: 31) – a term
very often used interchangeably with ‘idol’ (Deleuze, 1986, 2004; Deleuze and
Guattari, 2000) – there he is without the movement his image-thought would
seem to necessitate. His non-truths have become unquestionable truths, replacing
the 10 commandments with the n-1 commandments. Through their disappearance
they now reverberate everywhere, vanishing into ubiquity. No young scholar is
allowed to embrace and use any of his concepts until after some mummified
founding father has graciously approves. You’re ready! You’re already there! Death
by means of de-animation.
The irony here is that you don’t need to be a positivist to oppose Deleuze. You only
need to be a Deleuzian. Was he right or correct in his approaches? Of course he was,
and this is exactly the reason we have to destroy him.
Being young in academia: Writing against Deleuze, with Deleuze

Is it really the task of the humanities to add deconstruction to destruction? More
iconoclasm to iconoclasm? (Latour, 2004: 225)
Academic viability has always, in its internal consensus-seeking tendencies,

constituted of anxious circuits to young scholars who have entered into recalcitrant
experimentations in their own craft. Focus on the ideas you can sell, theorizations
sellable as humble tokens. Specialize. And this is how tenure track departments
have become mausoleums, false idols’ temples of all but impossible demands for
most. Us, becoming-giraffes with Lamarckian aspirations. Those are spaces
forcing everything backwards (towards the islands that were ‘there’ before, waiting)
and inwards (memory, introspection, identity). Spaces stinking of formaldehyde,
fear, and superstition. No, wait, [insert favorite FT50 journal here] is now ‘ready’
870 | note
for Deleuzian scholarship! Open the floodgates then and breach the palisade. This
is an academic culture moribund, where the image of thought is regimented and
disciplined. Let’s meet in a bar and spend the evening graphically discussing
publishable ‘hot topics’, ‘preferred’ reviewers and sellable ‘insights’. This is
thought that refuses to think itself, and here and now, naïve as ever, we call for
more thinking thinking thinking itself. A Deleuzian should thus be wary of a most
pressing formula:
thinking – (emergence [of thought] + violence [to thought]) = 0
In other words, thought that ceases to endlessly impose violence on itself =

logocentrism. Thinking that refuses to think – hence de-idolatrize – thought itself;
no shocks to thought (Deleuze, 1989), an affective nothing. Being-within constitutes
an existence on the continent, on the idolatrous ‘where’. But some of these young
scholars dream of islands, displaying a longing for oceanography, i.e. for ‘smooth
spaces’ without depth (Deleuze, 1995). In their cravings for difference, they are
assembled into sailors that navigate with maps that close in upon themselves, not
tracings that open up new becomings. Often to bear stigma for such perilous
disobedience, they pledge allegiance to ignorance, instead to the certainty of the
point of arrival. There never was a day of the radicals, simply perennial twilight.
Reaching habitable islands is a history of martyrology.
It would however, be a mistake to think that internal consensus-seeking infects or

defines only the status quo. Not at all. As we noted earlier, given Deleuze’s
celebrated mummification, by the time these young scholars start dreaming, the
islands, the ‘smooth spaces’ are already striated spaces, continents in their own
right. In other words, once Deleuze became a Deleuzian-ism, the -ism morphs
itself into an isthmus: everything becomes linked, patterns emerge, models of
explanation, truth. Abstractions, certainties, the hard dogma of the no-truth truth.
In a fetishistic act of mirrored logic, they are invited to kiss the hammer that
smashes the idols of the positivists, to raise hosannas to the blasphemer, the god
that gave them the n-1 commandments, and as such, landing on their island
equates to raising the flag on yet another Iwo Jima. Desire realized, desire
conquered, desire dead, a nightmare, of course (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987).
The hammer: the tool that smashes the idols becomes an idol in itself. Who has
the courage to crush it? The blasphemer becomes a no-truth teller. Who has the
courage to curse him? Once dreamt, the island should be easily forgotten. Not only
because of the pressure the status quo and the heretics puts on those radicals
‘desiring’ to fly, but because the island should not be remembered long enough to
become covered over by signification – as Adorno wrote (Adorno, 1981: 249). The
idolaters remember too much. An island, a gesture covered by signification
note | 871
becomes a totality, a limit, a horizontal wall. Indeed, only the ‘great Amnesiac’
(Deleuze, 2004: 11) can inhabit an island. However, because ‘sometimes you forget
to forget’, as the Polish painter Stefan Czerkinsky noted in his dialogue with
Deleuze (Deleuze, 2004: 283), that’s where the trouble starts.
More deconstruction to destruction, more iconoclasm to iconoclasm ought to be

added. Stop remembering, stop recognizing. No, that thing wasn’t there before. For
the true radicals, there are no islands, there are no ‘theres’. The radicals do not
bow, they do not worship, and they do not not-worship.
Move!
Thus we, the ‘radical youth’, search for crystals (see Deleuze, 1989: 274), but not
for crystals themselves, but for them as movements: upon their rotation, endless
spectrums of color are created. There are no crystals, don’t bow. The crystalline
regime refuses to explain because it simply flashes with affect and then disappears
before it can explain (ibid.). In its continuous ignorance, its furious momentary
affectivity, it keeps forgetting its point.
Dream (never discover) new places, institutions, for there never were any. There is
nothing that precedes the now. If there is, then don’t listen to its siren’s call.
Destroy it. Do not believe in words, we have learned to trust them too much. They
are convincing, because they come bearing gifts, i.e. nouns, essences: promises of
subjectivity, identity, and memory. A noun attached to an object is terrifying, for it
creates an image of thought that controls the exterior; a mastery of the universe.
But the world does not need delusional heretics. We cannot tolerate them
anymore. Burn them, then burn your ‘self’ with them. Do not wish to be
remembered: why becoming another false idol, a ‘where’? Simply make a fold
where there was none (and there’s never one), be the seed of an origami (see
Deleuze, 1993) that will vanish long before its creation. Emergence has no
tomorrow, but let it too wither before the new.
Deleuze-the-idol, when visiting our dreams, a spectral speaking mummified-

Deleuze, is still alive and kicking, and through him religion and fanaticism.
st
Malraux was right: the 21 century seems indeed to be religious, something
especially evident within the corridors of academia. Foucault, as always, queer and
confused. He was right – the man is dead – while also being wrong: there cannot,
and should not be a Deleuzian century. Ever. As Lyotard noted in an obituary
872 | note
dedicated to Deleuze: ‘Why did I speak of him in the past? He laughed. He is

1
laughing. It’s your sadness, idiot, he’d say’ .
Let us (pseudo-)conclude this essay by paraphrasing Nietzsche’s famous dictum:

Deleuze is dead. Deleuze should remain dead. Forget him! (Galloway, 2015). Stop
being a heretic: be a radical. This would mean: destroy the hammer that smashes
the stagnation, blaspheme the blasphemer, rise against the ‘century of something’.
The twenty-first century will not be at all, and not even that.
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874 | note
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the authors
Joel Hietanen is visiting assistant professor at Aalto University School of Business and an
associate professor (docent) at Stockholm Business School. His interests include
videographic methodologies, philosophies of immanence and emergence and consumer
culture theory.
note | 875
Andrei Botez is post doc at Aalto University School of Business. His research is focused
on uncovering the theological underpinnings of transhumanism.
876 | note
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 877-894
Political art without words: Art’s threat of

emergence, and its capture within signification
and commodification
Autonomous Artists Anonymous
We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present!
(Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 108)
On hearing the phrase ‘political art’ most people nowadays will think of art which
is trying to make a statement or art enlisted for a specific cause. It is seen as art
whose politics is largely overt and explicit. But is this the only way art can be
political? Does art need to be legible and meaningful to be political? Or can art be
political through its affective sensations? As an artist, currently studying fine art
and making untutored forays into philosophy, these questions have dominated my
making and thinking. This note, and the accompanying artworks woven through
it, are attempts to interrogate how art can operate politically beyond meaning,
language and representation. Guided by the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari, I will argue that there is an often-neglected political potency stemming
from art’s affective abilities to engender what I will call ‘emergence’: that is new
forms, sensations and affects which operate outside and beyond signification and
cognition, and which can provoke change, within us, between us and in how we
live together, in and of the world.
note | 877
This emergence does not arise from statements, but

from the creation of sensations and affects that move
the viewer/participant through the affective,
corporeal responses produced in the encounter. It
thus acts outside any regime of codification,
signification, or representation, and operates on an
asignifying register to create new forms, thoughts
and feelings. As Deleuze and Guattari point out, in
this way art can alert us to other potentials within,
beneath or beyond those we are consciously and
intellectually aware of, to a virtual realm of potential
which is present and immanent to the self, and the
world. This capacity to produce the new, and to
instigate change at the level of affect, which in turn
can provoke change at the level of consciousness and
cognition, is key to art’s micropolitical potential,
neglected by the current tendency within artistic
discourse and practice to prioritise signification,
representation and cognition. It requires both an
altered conception of artistic autonomy, and an
understanding of sensations and concepts as
intrinsically connected.
Art’s potential for emergence is however continually

blocked and diverted by the regimes of
commodification and signification operating both
within and outside of us. Both have dire impacts at
the level of subjectivation, inuring us to capitalist
oppression, exploitation and destruction and
ensnaring us to deploy our creativity in its service.
Artistic emergence then is vital in the search for non-
capitalist and non-oppressive ways of being with
ourselves, each other and the world. To paraphrase
Deleuze and Guattari quoted above, through this
emergence art can, when combined with an ethical
dimension, ensure that creativity can help us to resist
the present.
878 | note
Autonomous Artists Anonymous Political art without words
Art’s capture within signification and commodification

Art necessarily produces the unexpected, the unrecognisable and the unacceptable.
(Deleuze, 2006: 288)
Art’s political power is both celebrated and contained under capitalism. While
relying upon our creativity, capitalism actively ensnares and commodifies it. While
this occurs across arenas, it is clearly exemplified in relation to ‘political art’, where
capitalism serves to marginalise and suppress the affective power and politics of
sensation.
Contemporary art today is dominated by linguistic signifiers and coded referents

– images, tropes, narratives, representations, ideas, and situations are used to
construct, demonstrate and/or illustrate legible, discursive meaning. With such
art the elicited response derives primarily from the viewer or participant’s
conscious, cognitive and intellectual powers of interpretation, often requiring
knowledge about the work’s means of production, rationale and the wider socio-
political context, and frequently precipitating copious accompanying notes and
wall texts. These works are more explainable than experiential; they elicit the
question ‘what does it mean?’ over that of ‘what does it do?’ (although of course
the experiential aspect may remain important in doing this). As Stephen Zepke
observes, since the 1960s, ‘all artistic practices have had to involve a minimum of
conceptual reflection in order to be considered in any way contemporary’ (2006:
157).
While linguistic signifiers and coded referents have always been present in art,
their role changed as, in tandem with the expansion of capitalism, art began to be
conceived as the result of autonomous, individual expression, rather than servicing
community rituals, high priests or powerful patrons. Marcel Duchamp famously
note | 879
highlighted and exploited this development

by daring the art world to accept a bottle
rack as an artwork. His success
demonstrated that the market,
characteristically rapacious, was catholic in
its tastes and flexible with its definitions.
The only proviso was that there must be
documentation and authentication to
provide an object to commodify and a
subject to remunerate. For Zepke,
Duchamp’s readymades ‘revealed art’s
conditions as epistemological (i.e.
Conceptual) and institutional’ and in so
doing effected their dematerialisation, and
‘the complete subtraction of the affect from
art’ (2008: 35-36).
Although initially part of a political

technique to resist commercialisation, the
dematerialisation of the artworks could
even enhance their value, and the emphasis
on linguistic meaning as opposed to
affective sensation has done nothing to halt
the process of turning artworks into luxury
trophies, since ‘people really did want to
buy these things they could make
themselves, not least because of their
political ambitions’ (Zepke, 2006: 160).
Such ambitions are depoliticised and
translated into profitability. Art purchases
are made as speculative investments, with
the prices set according to projected future
trends, encouraging homogeneity through
the influence of herd-like dedicated
followers of fashions.
In order to achieve this dematerialisation,

artworks deploy codes and referents that
are most often produced by, and act within,
the current semiotic economy. This results
880 | note
in art which, however critical and

important, is unable to escape or challenge
the mechanisms through which meaning
and sense are formed (Zepke, 2009: 177).
They reflect the world back at us, rather
than create it anew. While of course
signification can be combined with more
affective sensations, I would contend that
the signifying would usually win out over
the asignifying, overcoding the uncoded,
since what can be named, defined, and
argued over is likely to garner more
attention and kudos. This is particularly
true in a discursive environment
dominated by opinion-formers (such as
critics, curators, gallerists) who need to
justify their importance (and salaries), as
well as in the general environment in which
we are encouraged to value reason,
interpretation and intellectual faculties
above perceptual, corporeal and affective
ones.
Through its incorporation and

instrumentalisation within capitalist logic,
signifying art feeds and affirms the logic of
neoliberal capitalism, in which seemingly
nothing, even the immaterial, can escape
commodification, and in which the
production of concepts by a precarious
workforce constitutes another new virgin
territory to colonise and a labour force to
exploit (Zepke, 2006: 16). The designation
of anything as potentially art and the
promotion of art-as-idea does not make art
more autonomous, it makes it more reliant
upon already-existing codes of signification
and market-driven processes of
commodification.
The fetishisation and commodification of

the art object has been resisted, through
note | 881
either refusing to produce artworks or dissolving the artwork into life. Lazzarato
interprets Duchamp’s ready-mades as a refusal to work and a repudiation of the
‘hand and virtuosity of the artist’ (2014a: 13) while the Situationists and more
recently proponents of ‘relational aesthetics’, amongst many others, designate
political and social interventions as art. Both strategies have been inspiring, radical
and powerful, but they also relinquish the production of art as affectively and
sensorily powerful objects. Moreover, designating interventions as art can render
them politically safe: incorporated into the state capitalist machinery they are
reduced to equivalent of their market or social value, occluding at least some of
their political power. In Zepke’s damning critique, ‘art becomes life (but life stays
as it is)’ (2011: 74).
Art and commodification of the self

What mechanisms of our subjectivity lead us to offer our creative force for the
fulfilment of the market?
(Rolnik, 2011: 36)
Art’s subsumption under the logic and mechanisms of late capitalism carries a
wider significance in terms of effecting our subjectification – that is how we are
made as subjects. The putatively autonomous artist is now the archetype for all
post-Fordist workers (Lazzarato, 2011; Lorey, 2011), exemplifying the selling of
one’s self, via one’s creativity and becoming what Lazzarato has called an
‘entrepreneur of her/himself’ (ibid.: 47). While seeming to embody freedom,
autonomy and radicalism – society’s outspoken outsider – today’s artist can only
succeed if they are able and willing to ‘choose’ to be the flexible, precarious,
itinerant ‘creative’ whose income is predicated on never-ending and never-
sufficient game of self-promotion and self-commodification. In order to construct
and express one’s ‘true’ self, one must be prepared to sell one’s creativity: all
workers must be like ‘artists’ who create, commodify and market themselves in
order to be themselves, whose subjectivity becomes based on becoming an
individualistic, neoliberal hustler required to safeguard and express a coherence,
882 | note
unity and sovereignty to be marketed and sold. My

experience is testament to how this filters through to
art schools: currently I am being encouraged to
promote myself, to put myself ‘out there’, and attempts
are being made to teach me how to hustle. I am also
being urged to provide interpretations and meanings
for my work, since this is deemed a requirement of a
‘successful work’ and of ‘making it’ as an artist.
A wider consequence is that artists’ putative radicalism

– which may or may not be evidenced in their artworks
– is harnessed not only to glamourise and normalise
precarity but to neutralise and commodifiy alternative
and resistant subject positions. In so doing, the artist-
as-entrepreneur glorifies, celebrates and normalises
the increasingly widespread neoliberal conditions of
post-Fordist labour: temporary contract-based work,
with fluctuating pay, no job security, sick-pay or
pension, and no clear boundaries between one’s
alienating job and life outside it, producing constant
anxiety, fear and loss of control (Lorey, 2009). Such
insecurity is a key aspect of neoliberalism’s onslaught
of workers’ rights and ties of solidarity and the figure
of the artist is its new model. With the outside brought
inside, the alternative has become the norm, and their
radical critiques are nullified, with grave impacts on
the world we are able to both build and imagine. As
Suely Rolnik writes:
[T]his kind of pimping of the creative force is what has

been transforming the planet into a gigantic
marketplace… This is the world that the imagination
creates in the present. (2011: 29)
note | 883
Left in this desolate landscape are hordes of ‘emerging’ artists toiling away,
accumulating academic qualifications and pop-up exhibitions to adorn their CVs,
often making ends meet in some other job(s), desperate to be discovered and
secure the patronage of the cultural gatekeepers all tied to state or corporate
capitalist institutions. Their ‘emergence’ in the art world is defined as the
profitability of their art, and those who do ‘emerge’ and become ‘established’ are
those whose subsumption within the capitalist logic is complete. This exemplifies
the suppression of emergence that arises through the art itself, that resists the
market-driven means of understanding and valuation, and in particular that which
arise through affective sensations. Of course artworks can still act politically
through the affective responses they engender, but they will be combating forces
of signification and commodification. We need therefore a mode of creativity that
operates, is viewed and is valued outside the constrictions of capitalism, that is free
to be incoherent, arational and unorganised, untethered to linguistic signifiers or
commodity-form, which exceeds representation in order to speak with sensations.
For how can we imagine or build alternative practices and ways of life outside
capitalism and its systems of signification, if our most basic tool – our creativity –
is ensnared within them?
Art and philosophy – twin techniques of creation

We paint, sculpt, compose and write with sensations. We paint, sculpt, compose
and write sensations.
(Deleuze and Guattari, 1994:

166)
884 | note
Art can enact another kind of politics

however. Affective politics can take us
outside of what we know, beyond what we
can consciously, intellectually and
linguistically process. Such a conception of
artistic creation chimes with a philosophy
of creation that seeks to construct new ways
of feeling, thinking and existing. Working
together, both can help us find ways out of
the entangled traps of signification and
commodification. In this section I will
explore how I have tackled this in my own
thinking and artistic practice. Over the past
three years I have made various artworks,
which have intersected with my more
philosophical enquiries, circling around
the writings of Deleuze and Guattari
(writing separately and together). I have
chosen to have these ‘discrepant grid-lines’
intersecting with the text because they
often feature in my work in various
incarnations, and I hope this intersection
to embody the connected-but-different
relationship I conceive for art and
philosophy.
In bringing together art and philosophy as

I am doing here there is a danger of
treating practice as illustrations of
philosophical theories, and of treating
philosophical concepts as metaphors
rather than active, operative and material.
This is not my intention: I have not made
my artworks in order to explain any
concept, nor do I wish them to be explained
by any. This would limit them both. I
intend my works to be sensed and
experienced, freely and openly, not
interpreted. However, this is not to say that
note | 885
my works are conceptually empty and just pretty pictures.

Since thought and feeling can never be fully separated,
sensations are inseparable from concepts. I like to think of
sensations as the raw material for concepts, with the capacity
to engender conceptual and cognitive shifts. The question for
me then is how affective sensations can operate in ways
which enact a philosophical proposition; and obversely, how
a philosophical proposition can enact an aesthetic sensation.
Thus, in what follows I do not wish to describe how I have
consciously planned and constructed my work but how I
think it operates.
My use of geometry, more specifically, the grid (totemic in

the recent history of Western abstraction, and central to other
less imperialising histories of abstraction) operates through
its refusal of resemblance or correspondence to existing
forms. Of course, this can never be entirely successful as any
image will always evoke associations, but the aim was to
create asignifying forms which did not stem from
representation or include legible referents, abstraction rather
than something abstracted. Recognisable forms are easily
found – faces, bodies, animals, landscapes – in non-
geometric forms even if unintended. Further, works that are
truly ‘chaotic’ in appearance evoke order through its absence:
they still activate the binary opposition between order and
chaos, and between representation and abstraction.
Instead, with abstract geometry I try to create without models

or representation, in order to gain a certain independence
and autonomy from the current. In addition, working outside
language and other regimes of representation, signification
and codification permits an autonomy from set agendas or
messages. For some, my abstract geometry resembles a
digital code or a musical score. I am happy with this
correspondence since it recalls language and codes while,
particularly since they have been deliberately pulled, broken
and twisted, they remain impervious to any reading or
deciphering; their resemblance to asignifying codes serves to
emphasise their illegibility.
This abstraction and asignification is a technique to hone the

work down to its sensations, rather than any intended,
886 | note
conscious meaning. It creates a different relationship between subject/object,

form/content and form/matter. Representative or more consciously conceptual
artworks operate through mobilising the distinctions between these states,
applying thought to materials to turn them into a representation, and thereby
instituting clear distinctions between the subject (artist) and object (artwork), and
the artwork (the representer) and the world (the represented). Sensation however
offers no viewpoint or commentary on the world, and speaks from no vantage
point above it, describing it; instead it speaks from within and yet simultaneously,
and paradoxically, outside the world. Such art creates groundless, formless
sensations, produced through the encounter rather than from the form/content or
subject/object relationships.
Art’s affective micropolitics

Abstraction is the attempt to show in thought as in art, in sensation as in concept,
the odd, multiple, unpredictable potential in the midst of things of other new things,
other new mixtures.
(Rajchman, 1998: 76)
Encounters with affective sensations can thus provide a route towards a realm of
perception outside of or beneath language, meaning and interpretation. Affective
responses bypass our intellectual, rational senses as they are not based on what we
know or understand, nor on any system of logic, representation or signification.
Sensations affect us directly, bodily, and singularly – that is differently each time
– in ways which though autonomous of conscious thought and feeling, may still
provoke new and changed conscious thoughts and feelings.
Affect can be understood beyond the phenomenological framework with its focus
on the material, individual and embodied experience, and as a portal into an
note | 887
imperceptible, virtual realm of potentials which

are present and immanent to the self, the event
and the world. As Grosz writes (2008: 3, fn.2),
affects ‘link the lived or phenomenological body
with cosmological forces, forces of the outside,
that the body can never experience directly’. I like
to imagine that this realm hovers within what we
can see and process consciously and
intellectually, since this conveys both its
virtuality and materiality. Through creating
sensations which mobilise affects, art can make
visible these imperceptible forces that, as
Deleuze and Guattari write, ‘populate the world,
affect us and make us become’ (Deleuze and
Guattari, 1994: 181).
I feel that this is enacted within my practice

through a constant disavowal of my hand.
Throughout my work I often find, not entirely
consciously, that there is something in between
my hand or implement and the paper or canvas
– some tape, a printing block, fabric etc. – which
diminishes how much control I can exert,
inserting another agency within the process, and
often making the process feel more like a
conversation, or sometimes an argument,
between myself and my materials, rather than
purely my sovereign volition. The use of the tape
here demonstrates this tendency. I enjoy the fact
that it constructs the forms for me, while I
disrupt the perfection of the grid by painting,
cutting and pulling the tape, producing
unpredictable effects. This leaves the
composition to forces outside of my subjectivity,
and eschews any sense of expressing any
personal narrative, often still present even in
abstract art. My tapeworks include the outside to
co-create the work, to depurify and mix-up the
elements within the work, and decentre the
subjectivity behind it.
888 | note
Affect is then also always wider than our own personal

experience, and always has an apersonal, asubjective
dimension. It allows us to connect to others and to the
world, by reminding us that we do not begin or end as pre-
formed, sovereign individuals, but exist in-relation to and
in-process with the world around us, which is also
constantly in flux. When we respond affectively we are
reminded that we do not know ourselves, that we cannot
know ourselves, that our selves are always in process,
forming out of a myriad of relationships, intensities and
forces beyond what appear as the boundaries of the self.
Affect names the capacities of the body to act and experience
in ways we cannot predict or control, making us feel this in-
relation-ness. In short, they can take us out of ourselves, out
of what we can already imagine, activating un-felt feelings,
and un-thought thoughts. As Erin Manning writes, ‘“I am”
is always, to a large degree, “was that me?”’ (Manning,
2016: 37). This offers a necessary corrective to the
Modernist, sovereign and enclosed sense of artistic
autonomy (usually normalised as belonging to a white,
bourgeois, heterosexual, able-bodied male), in which the art
is conceived as somehow above life, made up of pure and
transcendent universals. Instead, affects are autonomous of
codes, signification and representation, but not
autonomous of the world and others. This kind of
autonomy is not individual and disconnected, but always
both embodied within and connected to others, and the
world.
For me, this is an often neglected and suppressed source of

art’s political potency. This is a special type of politics
however: a micropolitics, which works through
imperceptible forces and impacts upon one’s subjectivity.
This politics is not conscious, literal, or chosen. Through
mobilising affects, sensation activates and challenges our
capacity to move, to experiment, and to change. In contrast
to the explicit, literal politics of most so-called conceptual
art, the politics of affect can be thought of as pre-political,
since its politics is non-verbal and nonconscious.
Sensations then are created and they produce affects, which
are defined not by how they are interpreted, but by the
unpredictable and singular impacts they have upon the
note | 889
viewer/participant. Affects attune us to the world of the virtual, in ways which can
help and inspire us to reconfigure the actual.
This affective political potency unique to art can help us get both deeper within
and out of ourselves, our subjectivation and representation. As Guattari writes, art
can operate politically when it ‘engenders unprecedented, unforeseen and
unthinkable qualities of being’ (Guattari, 1995: 106). It does so through a fidelity
to experiment and to break out of spoken or unspoken diktats or fashions, and to
operate outside regimes of meaning. Indeed, as John Rajchman has written, it is
only via encountering the outside that one can break out of consensus and act and
think creatively: we are forced to think, he writes, ‘by something we cannot
recognise, given through a violent aesthetic element, a sensory or affective contact
with something that doesn’t fit, which shakes up how we are accustomed to think’
(Rajchman, 2008: 87). However, as we have seen, our capacities and desires to
break out of the known are being restricted and dampened through a co-opted and
desensitised conception of art acting within the regimes of commodification and
signification. We need to conceive of art, its politics and its context differently.
The ‘ethico-aesthetic paradigm’

Art and nothing but art! It is the great means of making life possible, the great
seduction to life, the great stimulant of life.
(Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in O’Sullivan and Zepke, 2010: 3)
I have argued that speaking with affective sensations is a neglected but necessary
part of art’s potential politics and can aid our attempts to exit and resist capitalist
norms, modes and behaviours. However, there is an additional way in which this
kind of art can operate politically: it is an instructive model for how we should all
be able to conduct our lives, and create our worlds. Taking a cue from this
conception of art’s power to activate emergence through sensation and affect,
Guattari instructs us to conceive of the world and our selves to be in a permanent
state of creative and experimental flux: for everything to be subject to forces of
890 | note
creative emergence and the production of the new,

without reference to any models, norms or
representations, but aiming to respond to cues
from the immanent, virtual realm. As Guattari
noted, ‘one creates new modalities of subjectivity in
the same way that an artist creates new forms from
the palette’ (Guattari, 1995: 7). Unsurprisingly, this
approach is not inherently liberating – affect is
increasingly used to mobilise reactionary, even
fascist, forces. It requires an ‘ethical commitment’
(O’Sullivan and Zepke, 2008: 4), hence Guattari’s
coinage of the term ‘ethico-aesthetic paradigm’
(Guattari, 1995).
The implications for this ethico-aesthetic

paradigm, the instruction for genuinely creative,
emergent and resistant art, are deep and wide-
ranging. To me they speak most keenly of an
alternative to the current dominant mode of
subjectivity. Instead of trying to understand our
selves and our experiences as individual, rational,
and coherent (which most often will be based on a
model – usually white, male, bourgeois etc.), and
with particular uses (which are usually defined in
relation to the capitalist economy), Guattari’s
paradigm encourages a more generous, sensitive
and open version of subjectivity, placed in a more
ecological relationship with the outside: like
various components (within and without our
‘selves’, human and non-human) existing in a
complex ecosystem rather than individuals stacked
against (and often on top of) each other. This
guards against both a view of individual selves at
the centre of our universe, and of humans at the
centre of the universe, diminishing our sense of
control over the world (which produces, for
example, obscene forms of technophilia such as
genetic modification, and catastrophic
intransigence over climate change) and increasing
our power to effect change within and with the
world.
note | 891
At a more individual level it can lead to a more intensive, attuned and sympathetic
reading of one another – without always expecting logicality or reasonableness,
and attending to how we will always also be in thrall to imperceptible and affective
forces and intensities which are not subject to the laws of rationality, logicality and
legibility. Rolnik characterises this as being vulnerable to the other, arguing that
this is a ‘precondition for the other to cease being a simple object for the projection
of pre-established images, in order to become a living presence, with whom we can
construct the territories of our existence and the changing contours of our
subjectivity’ (Rolnik, 2011: 25). This vulnerability is precisely what is activated by
‘a specific capacity of the sensible’ by which she means the body’s capacities to
respond beyond cognition and consciousness, attuned to imperceptible forces and
intensities, capacities which are exercised by art’s powers of affect and sensation.
This connection with the virtual that hovers within and outside us, the excess that
escapes any system of codification or subjectification and remains ever in flux, is
what enables change and creation.
Evidently it is well-nigh impossible, at least in the supposedly developed ‘West’,

for art to operate outside capitalism, unless it is created, engaged with and spread
through private or underground networks. The Internet, for some an archetypal
rhizome might offer some redress, but most sensations are rather diminished
when pixelated, and one must of course beware the commodifying forces at work
attempting to capture its liberatory potential (see Buchanan, 2007). All the
structures in place to support the larger-scale production, dissemination and
consumption of art are infected with and reproduce capitalist processes and values.
So are our habitual modes of viewing and experiencing art – for instance the
gentrifying pop-up exhibition, the commercial gallery, or the corporate-sponsored
national museum. What is required is a transformed context for art, in which we
can make and experience art beyond personal expression, and without profit-
generating commodification. Only within this resistant and liberatory ethical
paradigm can art’s affective power be fully unleashed, and art can function as a
‘collective reappropriation of the production of subjectivity’ (Guattari, 1995: 133).
While escape is currently impossible for most of us, and it is impossible to avoid
capitalism and its many and insidious, often invisible and internalised,
proscriptions, affectively forming so much of how we think, see and feel, I believe
that art which resists and escapes totalising regimes of codification will, even if
enclosed in the gallery, produce through the sensations and affects they create, an
excess and an emergence. This emergence, operating as it does on the level of
affect, can help give us the power and capacity to create moments, spaces and
routes in which it is possible to think, feel and act differently, to access the outside
that is inside, the radical potential within the present.
892 | note
references
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Deleuze G. and F. Guattari (1994) What is philosophy?, trans. H. Tomlinson and

G. Burchill. New York: Colombia University Press.
Grosz, E. (2008) Chaos, territory, art. Deleuze and the framing of the earth. New York,
Columbia University Press.
Guattari, F. (1995) Chaosmosis: An ethico-aesthetic paradigm, trans P. Bains and J.

Pefanis. Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Lazzarato, M. (2011) ‘The misfortunes of the “artistic critique” and of cultural

employment’, trans. M. O’Neill, in G. Raunig, G. Ray and U. Wuggenig (eds.)
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Lazzarato, M. (2014) Marcel Duchamp and the refusal of work, trans. J.D. Jordan. Los
Angeles: Semiotext(e).
Lorey, I. (2009) ‘Governmentality and self-precarization: On the normalization of

cultural producers’, in G. Raunig and G. Ray (eds.) Art and contemporary critical
practice: Reinventing institutional critique. London: MayFlyBooks.
Lorey, I. (2011) ‘Virtuosos of freedom: On the implosion of political virtuosity and

productive labour’, trans. M. O’Neill, in G. Raunig, G. Ray and U. Wuggenig
(eds.) Critique of creativity: Precarity, subjectivity and resistance in the ‘creative
industries’. London: MayFlyBooks.
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resistance in the ‘creative industries’. London: MayFlyBooks.
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note | 893
Zepke, S. (2006) ‘The concept or art when art is not a concept’, Angelaki, 11(1): 157-
167.
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5(1): 73-83.
the author
This note has been written anonymously in the name of a collective – Autonomous Artists
Anonymous – in an admittedly limited attempt to resist marketing a ‘self’ as an entity to
produce capital (financial or social).
894 | note
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 895-905
Leviathan lives: A short play about hierarchy and

cooperation
Brian Showalter Matlock
abstract
When people work together, who decides how their collective efforts are allocated and who
receives the benefits from their collective product? This short one-person play contrasts
several influential organization theories to explore these central questions of collective
action. As personified mystical characters, theories of Hobbes, Marx, Anarchists, statists,
and neoliberals present themselves in verse as forms of analysis. I have three primary
goals exploring these questions in theatrical form. First, I aim to denaturalize the
mundane systems and theories of organization by anthropomorphizing them into strange
characters to which audiences can freshly react. Secondly, I widen the timescale so the
present systems, which can feel inevitable and unchangeable, can be seen as a mere
moment within a long history of change, poised for new developments. Finally, I aim to
shape current efforts which strive toward cooperation and mutualism; by embracing the
complexity of the task before us and sparking the imagination and creativity needed to
renegotiate the way we organize ourselves to accomplish tasks and share the benefits.
Introduction
Even for those who consider the costs of capitalism and hierarchy to be
unacceptable, a viable alternative remains elusive. Elements of cooperative
ownership and leadership hold promise, but are currently a peripheral microcosm
within the global capitalist system. Aside from formal institutions of ownership
and management, organizational patterns are heavily embedded in culture,
intuition, and habit. The task ahead is a drastic re-negotiation of the personal,
social, and material fabric of our society.
play | 895
To approach this task I use a tool that seldom finds itself in the hands of an
economist – a play. This short one-person play explores several major
organizational theories of the modern era. The theories generally agree that there
are benefits when people work together. They diverge, however, on the questions
of ‘who decides?’ and ‘who benefits?’ What tasks are worth doing, who does them,
and how is the collective product distributed? The play engages with these
questions by using one of the most basic building blocks of change – our
imagination.
This play is inspired by Ben Halm’s work Theatre and ideology (1995), in which he
writes about the Ghana National Theatre Movement. The Movement aimed to
build a new identity for Ghana beyond the self-and-world consciousness which had
been so deeply scarred through the era of colonialism. Similarly, we can create new
stories and images of who we are and what our society can look like. We can engage
in mental rehearsals of how to navigate that world with its problems and
possibilities. In this play, I personify the organizational theories as characters that
interact through a condensed history. These characters are alive and well in
contemporary debates and their personification is intended to give those debates a
fresh perspective.
Finally, a word on how to read this play. You will notice an extensive collection of
footnotes; I advise that you ignore them in your first encounter. The main body of
the play is intended to be read as it would be performed – as a work in and of itself.
The allusions and imagery which the footnotes elaborate are intended to reward
re-reads and further contemplation, and allow further research for those
interested.
I would like to thank my wife, Adrianne Showalter Matlock. I am indebted to you

for your critical feedback, support, and help in turning this play into a publication.
The play – Leviathan lives
Leviathan:
1
I am Leviathan – great dragon of the sea ,
I’m told I’m scheduled for extinction but nothing yet has been able to defeat
me.

1
Leviathan is a sea creature mentioned several places in the Hebrew Scriptures,
described in Isaiah Ch. 27:1 as ‘dragon of the sea’. This image of a great sea monster
was appropriated by Hobbes to represent the commonwealth in his book Leviathan
(Hobbes and MacPherson, 1982/1651).
896 | play
Brian Showalter Matlock Leviathan lives
2
I am the uber-dragon foretold of by my sycophantic prophet Nietzsche;
3
who in his syphillactic madness received a vision concerning me.
My defining characteristic, besides my countenance so dour,
4
is certainly my ever all-consuming will to power .
5
My stature is composed of all the straining, striving people
whose efforts are woven together by control – my knitting needle.
6
Qoheleth :
[giggles, clapping] Well done!
7
I apologize for Leviathan, waiting his turn is not his revealed preference .
I am not his companion, though by now I am accustomed to his presence
and must admit that I admire his delectable irreverence.
Ah yes, how rude of me! Just because we’ve met before doesn’t mean you
recognize me.
8
I am Qoheleth, Wisdom, the One who destroys , the One who dances!

2
Related to Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch (overman/superman) from Thus
spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche, 2012/1883). After the death of god, who was the source
of otherworldly values and meaning, the Übermensch creates new meaning and values
based on the present, and imposes these created values on others who passively accept
the world and values as given.
3
There was a popular rumor that Nietzsche had syphilis, and this brought about his
madness and death. This is contested, and other theories of his apparent dementia are
given by those such as Schain in The legend of Nietzsche’s syphilis (Schain, 2001).
4
‘The will to power’, or Wille zur Macht is something Nietzsche dealt with as a basic part
of life – beings have the impulse to use their power and potential, and to expand it even
at risk of death (Nietzsche, 2014/1886).
5
Hobbes uses the metaphor of Leviathan’s body to describe the commonwealth – the
various parts of the body are unified in action by the direction of a single head,
representing the power of the state. The state maintains unity by imposing the will of
the ruler(s) to direct, punish, and protect the rest of society (Hobbes and MacPherson,
1982/1651).
6
Qoheleth is the original Hebrew name of the book/author of the Greek ‘Ecclesiastes’.
The word means ‘assembler’, or ‘gatherer’. In the book of Ecclesiastes, the author
famously tries to find meaning and satisfaction in various activities, both virtuous and
illicit, and one by one concludes that these pursuits are ‘meaningless, a chasing after
the wind’ (Ecclesiastes 1:14, New International Version).
7
A reference to Paul Samuelson’s (1938) theory of revealed preference in his consumer
choice theory whereby the consumers ‘reveal’ their preferences for goods by their
purchase.
8
This is imagery of the God Shiva, who is an amalgam of various traditions. Shiva is
widely regarded in Hinduism as one of the three primary aspects of the divine – the
one who destroys or ends all things. In the process of Samsara (the reincarnation life
cycle of birth, life, and death) there is Brahma who created the world and begins life,
Vishnu who sustains life, and Shiva, who ends life. Life is then begun again. Shiva is
play | 897
9
I am gifted with many hands; my most famous one invisible .
I am your narrator and promethean guide throughout this dragon’s tale.
‘Everything is meaningless!’ is the moral of this story as I expect it to be;
[giggles]
but the authors are not yet finished, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
Our subject is this pernicious drake who emerged prehistorically

and henceforth has directed serfs and proles with his authority.
10
The dragon and his devotees contend his reign inevitable ad infinitum,
although some suspect the doing can be done devoid of his dominion.
I myself have dealt him a thousand deaths but each time he is reborn,
11
and this last time he emerged from the sea with seven horns!
12
A thoroughly religious man, he is adept at juggling both God and Mammon .
He managed to only drop one of them! Poor God. [giggles]
Let us go now to an academic conference to hear what the wise, (well,

intelligent) have to say about our serpentine subject.
Hobbes:
I am Sir Thomas Hobbes, the foremost Leviathanologist.
Look merely at his handiwork – who doesn’t stand in awe at all he hath
accomplished?
Who can complain? Who suffers injustice?
13
Does not a runner beat her own body to cross the finish line first ?
Does anyone care of the aches and pain suffered by the ankles and lungs
That they should take the victor’s glory when the race is won?

depicted as dancing in many traditional renderings, and is sometimes known as
Nataraja, ‘Lord of dance’.
9
‘Invisible hand’ is taken from Adam Smith specifically in his Theory of moral sentiments.
Smith attempts to show how people seeking only their personal betterment are fooled
into hard work, the fruits of which are primarily distributed through society, not
attained by the self-interested (Smith et al., 1987/1759).
10
The ‘neo-Hobbesian view’ described by Sam Bowles (1985) includes those who see
hierarchy as the necessary and natural organizational form. An important example of
this is Alchian and Demsetz’s Hobbesian-style explanation for the persistence of
hierarchy in capitalist firms. They argue that workers willingly agree to be monitored
and cede profits to the capitalist in order to keep everyone from shirking (Alchian and
Demsetz, 1972).
11
An allusion to the apocalyptic imagery from book of Revelation, the last book of the
Bible.
12
‘You cannot serve both God and Mammon [the god of money]’ (Mathew 6:24, King
James Version).
13
Imagery drawn from 1 Corinthians Ch.9 and Ch.11.
898 | play
Wouldn’t we all love to wear the crown, to be the achiever of sublimity…

and that is the problem which Leviathan has vanquished providentially!
We are all bound into his body and he decides to what end we are directed.
In his absence ‘twould be war declared and the body detonated!
14
This would be far worse than the dragon who… devours a few.
15
And takes the cream for himself and lets the milk trickle down through.
16
For it is fear that binds us to him , of one another’s actions.
In his auspices alone we can work under the safety of his lashes.
Qoheleth:
As with all academic conferences, during the question and answer session
there was one who acted on the Oedipal urge to unfound and upend the
expert’s mastery
with eloquent condescension and self-righteous blow-hardery! [giggles]
Karl Marx everyone! [golf-clapping]
Marx:
Pardon me dear Hobbes,
whose handiwork did you say? Leviathan’s only ‘work’ is to take out credit.
The feats are accomplished by the many, to whom he is indebted.
He is the heir to the product of their duty,
17
along with all the other sharers in the stolen booty .
18
Great feats have been accomplished by virtue of our synthesis -

14
Hobbes argued that the injustices and indulgences of the leader(s) of the
commonwealth do not compare to the problems that would exist without the
commonwealth. Hobbes concludes that people thus have no grounds to question the
sovereign even in the face of injustice or malfeasance (Hobbes and MacPherson,
1982/1651: ch.17-18).
15
This is a reference to supply-side or ‘trickle-down’ economics. This theory puts policy
focus on increasing profitability for the capitalist class in order to entice them to invest.
The logic is that this investment would then provide jobs and growth which would
benefit the rest of society.
16
In chapter 18 of Leviathan, Hobbes argues that whether people cede power to a
democratic government or submit to a foreign conqueror, they do so out of fear of the
alternative.
17
In Capital: Vol. 1 ch. 24, Marx refers to classes that receive a distribution of the surplus
from the capitalists (such as land lords, politicians, managers, etc.) as the ‘sharers in
the booty’.
18
Capital: Vol. 1 ch. 13: Co-operation (Marx and Mandel, 1992/1867)
play | 899
not based on the innovation or hard work of our protagonist.

The verdict comes swift in this invective -
it is plainly stated that the nature of production is collective.
The extractionary rule of the dragon fiend must be overturned -
value is created by labor and to the laborers must it return.
Qoheleth:
And as with all academic conferences, their words were immediately put into
action!
The people appear to be gathering at the Red Square,
Let us see what it is they are up to there!
19
Leviathanovna :
I am Leviathanovna, and I serve only as the head of this collective of equals
the true Marxian vision of surplus shared with all the working people.
20
But as one more equal than others , to question or defy me is henceforth
illegal.
Do as I say, your surplus I’ll take, but don’t worry, I represent you!
The Anarchist: [In the style of Rage Against the Machine]

Who are you to represent the will of the masses?
21
So diverse the individuals, so varied their passions .
I am an anarchist, one among the many
who find this coerced cooperation to be deadly.
You boast of the division of labor – facilitating expertise and artistry;
2223
but do you not seek to turn us into silent and stupid machinery ? [grunt]

19
Leviathanovna: Russian patronymic meaning ‘daughter of Leviathan’.
20
‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’ (Orwell and
Hitchens, 2003/1945: 134).
21
From Bakunin’s letter about his excommunication from the First International: ‘Who
would dare flatter themselves that they could even encompass and comprehend the
infinite multitude of diverse interests, tendencies, and actions in every country, every
province, every locality, every trade, the vast array of which, united, but not made
uniform, by a great shared aspiration and by a few fundamental principles which have
already penetrated the consciousness of the masses, will constitute the coming social
revolution’ (Bakunin, 2001/1872: 193-194)?
22
Braverman (1998/1974) argued that increased technology does not result in increased
skill and pay of workers, but a separation of those who conceive of work and those who
execute work. The result would be a deskilled and poorly paid production labor force.
23
The other influence to this line was Adam Smith’s famous use of a pin factory as a
praiseworthy example of the division of labor, but later in The wealth of nations he writes
that those who spend their lives in factories doing a few simple and mindless tasks,
900 | play
Is this the orthodoxy of your royal priesthood -

for there to be a commonwealth, we must descend into beasthood?
Mutualism presses bricks while federation mixes mortar;
24
for freedom is the mother, not the daughter of order [x5]
25
If I can’t dance it’s not my revolution!
Leviathanovna:
How cute, you are a unique little snowflake.
Well, welcome to the snowstorm, you want my crown? Come and take it!
I have accomplished already with force what you hope to do by magic.
Your faith in human nature so naïve and stupidly tragic.
While your spirit is admirable and your dancing so ‘effective’,
please accept my apologies on behalf of the collective.
For the people!
[Pantomimes dangling the anarchist above her mouth, dropping him in, and
swallows him whole]
Qoheleth:
Meanwhile, in the Fordist factories of Yankeedom,
picketing Marxies poised to storm the Dragon’s inner sanctum.
Leviathan:
Though oft accused of being dense and hard of hearing,
I have taken notice of the crowds of peasants, torches in hand, approaching.
[picks up list of demands]
Um… on an unrelated note out of my own goodness and patent generosity
I grant, uh, potty breaks for all and [looks more closely at list of demands] a
40-hour work week!?
[quickly regains composure and a smile]
This of course applies only to the sovereign state;
the colonies remain with their current fate.
26
After all, we must allow them to be free to choose ,
for all we know they may prefer lose!

‘become as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become’
(Smith, 1994/1776: 302).
24
A quote-turned slogan from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s Solution of the social problem
(Proudhon, 1927/1849).
25
This anarchist slogan is a paraphrase of the response Emma Goldman gave to a
young boy who told her that ‘it did not behoove an agitator to dance… with such
reckless abandon’ (Goldman, 2006/1931: 42).
26
Free to choose (Friedman, 1979)
play | 901
Besides, their lower standard of living justly doth ensue

because obviously… er… markets or what have you.
Qoheleth: [enters, joyfully dancing]

Let me interrupt this story, with yet another story.
27
It is about a poor man’s son .
He felt his father’s lot unbearable; such toil to produce so much yet left with
none.
He thirsted for the lot of the wealthy and powerful authorities;
you see, castles need no apologists, but neither do they give apologies.
The son spent his life in stress as he labored and agonized
in pathetic obsequiecence to superior strata – just to be recognized! [giggles]
Now, I will not tell you how the story ended, for its dénouement is not what’s
fundamental.
He experienced more headaches in a month of ambition than in a life of
poverty, transcendental.
[brief pause]
So what then is the moral?
The virtue of contentment?
The injustice inherent in the system?
The social beneficence of self-delusion?
Yes! Yes! Yes!
[giggles]
Oh, look who beheld my story!

Here comes Leviathan, who has no ears to hear for himself,
but knows how to turn all things to his advantage. [grins]
Leviathan:
28
Yes, my human capital ! Listen to Qoheleth, listen to Wisdom!
As her story plainly showed, the pursuit of wealth is a prison.
Be content to labor under my paternalism so fatherly.
Submit to my direction and I will ensure you blissful poverty!
Let us return to the former glory before the socialistic lies,
we will be neo-liberated when you tax incentivize!

27
This story is from Adam Smith’s Theory of moral sentiments (Smith et al., 1987/1759).
28
Human capital (Becker, 1994/1964)
902 | play
Regardless of your wage, you can only buy what I supply.

Deregulate and privatize; else ALL of us shall surely die!
Qoheleth:
And so it was in those days that the length of the workweek increased;
productivity rose while wage growth appeared to decease.
There is yet a final character in this epic saga of Leviathan:

Why, it is you my ever hospitalatious audience!
For Leviathan lives, and you must decide what sort of role you’ll play.
Will you attempt to take his crown and name or be content to produce his
hay?
What do I ask of you?

That you work 90-hour weeks fighting for the 30-hour workweek? [giggles]
That you read 100 books a day so that you can convince Leviathan how wrong
he is? [giggles]
Perhaps if you work hard enough you will spread the word in a journal no one
reads in a language no one speaks! [giggles]
Perhaps when you are Leviathan you will be the most generous Leviathan ever!
[giggles]
I’ve heard that one before! [giggles]
Ah, please don’t lose hope, for I’m an equal opportunity destroyer.
You see; threads of aspiration and absurdity make up the same embroider.
Consider that we lend each other our imaginations;

to sit within and without ourselves with all these complications.
For we may not see it all but can expand our intuitions,
though even I may never see its full form come to fruition.
Can there be a future without the dragon lumbering o’er it?

Can we work together without descending into warring?
The answers don’t exist until they live in minds and practice.
Our daily experiments and vision-seeing are our only tactics.
play | 903
For is it not a revolution to choose people over greed?

29
Is not love the greatest propaganda of the deed ?
So learn we must and share we shall our progresses and failures, as we

embrace and co-define cooperative human behavior.
references
Alchian, A.A. and H. Demsetz (1972) ‘Production, information costs, and

economic organization’, American Economic Review, 62(5): 777-795.
Bakunin, M. (2001/1872) ‘Letter to La Liberté’, in D. Guerin (ed.) No Gods no

masters: An anthology of anarchism. Book 1, 1st Edition. Edinburgh, Scotland /
San Francisco, CA: AK Press.
Becker, G.S. (1994/1964) Human capital: A theoretical and empirical analysis, with
special reference to education, 3rd Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bowles, S. (1985) ‘The production process in a competitive economy: Walrasian,

neo-Hobbesian, and Marxian models’, American Economic Review, 75(1): 16-36.
Braverman, H. (1998/1974) Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in

the twentieth century, Anv edition. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Friedman, M. and R. Friedman (1979) Free to choose. New York: Harcourt Brace
and Company.
Goldman, E. (2006/1931) Living my life. London: Penguin Classics.
Halm, B.B. (1995) Theatre and ideology. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University
Press.
Hobbes, T. and C.B. MacPherson (1982/1651) Leviathan. Harmondsworth:

Penguin Classics.
Marx, K. and E. Mandel (1992/1867) Capital: Volume 1: A critique of political

economy, Reprint edition. London / New York, NY: Penguin Classics.
Nietzsche, F. (2014/1886) Beyond good and evil. CreateSpace Independent

Publishing Platform.
Nietzsche, F. (2012/1883) Thus spoke Zarathustra. Hollywood: Simon & Brown.

29
‘Propaganda of the deed’ is the practice of certain anarchist groups who use bombings,
assassinations, or destruction of property to inspire further insurrection and expose
the weakness of dominant power structures.
904 | play
Orwell, G. and C. Hitchens (2003/1945) Animal farm. Orlando: Houghton Mifflin

Harcourt.
Proudhon, P.J. (1927/1849) Proudhon’s solution of the social problem. New York:
Vanguard.
Samuelson, P.A. (1938) ‘A note on the pure theory of consumer’s behaviour’,

Economica, New Series, 5(17): 61-71.
Schain, R. (2001) The legend of Nietzsche’s syphilis, 1st edition. Oxford, UK / New
York, NY: BIOS Scientific Publishers.
Smith, A. (1994/1776) The wealth of nations, 6th Printing edition. New York:
Modern Library.
Smith, A., R.L. Heilbroner and L.J. Malone (1987/1759) ‘Theory of moral
sentiments’ from The essential Adam Smith. New York: W.W. Norton.
the author
Brian Showalter Matlock is an I.PhD student in economics and social sciences at
University of Missouri-Kansas City. His research is focused on Marxian and Institutionalist
Political Economy, the theory and practice of community development, and the
relationship between performing arts and science. He participates in the EconAvenue
economic development initiative in his hometown of Kansas City, KS.
play | 905
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 907-918
Killer jellyfish rock Rio

Eileen Laurie
Why I draw comics in general and comics on Pelagia noctiluca in particular
I draw comics, also known as graphic storytelling, also known as sequential art,
1
also known as the ninth art, also known as low culture. The English-speaking
world came a fair bit later to the party than the Francophones, but today this genre
2
is being taken seriously as never before.
3
Killer jellyfish rock Rio is the second in my Killer jellyfish series, which humbly
follows in the satirical tradition of Jonathan Swift and Rake’s progress by Hogarth,
viewed by some as ‘the father of the modern cartoon – and the modern comic,
4
too’.
Before I drew comics, I made other kinds of art. In 2007, I made an installation of
a two-metre-long whale and was reading a lot about the oceans. This article caught
my eye:

1
Seago, K. (2014) ‘The ninth art: A review of comics in French. The European bande
dessinée in context’, The Comics Grid, 4(1): 1-2. [http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/cg.a]
2
Barnicoat, B. (2012) ‘The graphic novel’s spectacular rise: From kids’ comics to the
Costa prize’, The Guardian, 23 November.
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/nov/23/graphic-novel-spectacular-rise-
costa-prize]
3
www.eileenlaurie.se
4
Mount, H. (2014) ‘Hogarth, the father of the modern cartoon’, The Telegraph, 1
November. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-
view/11202643/Hogarth-the-father-of-the-modern-cartoon.html]
comic | 907
A second pack comprising millions of juvenile mauve stinger jellyfish has been
spotted off the coast of Scotland, less than a week after an overwhelming attack by
5
Pelagia noctiluca killed 100,000 salmon at a Northern Ireland fish farm.
The more I read, the more surreal it became: headlines like ‘Jellyfish take on US
6 7
warship’ , ‘Spineless attacks on nuclear power plants could increase’ or
8
‘Jellymageddon: Can we stop the rise of the jellyfish?’ were classic ‘low art’ comic
tales. This was truth being a whole lot weirder than fiction. So when I started
drawing comics, the jellyfish were a perfect subject.
Rock Rio was created for this ephemera special issue. I couldn’t resist the temptation
of drawing the jellyfish visiting (and trashing) an academic conference. Yet the
9
state of the oceans is no laughing matter: it is a state of emergency. The jellyfish
10
family members of the subphylum Medusozoa have been around a long time
and may well outlive us all, flourishing as they do in places where vertebrates and
shellfish cannot. Dr Lisa-Ann Gershwin, renowned jellyfish expert and author of
11
Stung! On jellyfish blooms and the future of the ocean does not mince her words:
Our impacts are creating tipping points, and once ecosystems have passed those
tipping points, they become really stable in their new normal. Once jellyfish take
over an ecosystem – or any pest for that matter – it’s hard to undo that. Pest
controlled ecosystems are some of the most incredibly resilient ecosystems around:
think of cockroaches in your kitchen or dandelions in your garden, pests are

5
Haines, L. (2007) ‘Second jellyfish pack moves on UK 27 November’, The Register, 26
November. [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/26/second_jellyfish_pack]
6
Flannery, T. (2013) ‘They’re taking over!’, The New York Review of Books, 26 September.
[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/09/26/jellyfish-theyre-taking-over]
7
Kopytko, N. (2015) ‘Spineless attacks on nuclear power plants could Increase’, Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, 19 February. [http://thebulletin.org/spineless-attacks-nuclear-
power-plants-could-increase8001]
8
Stelling, T. (2013) ‘Jellymageddon: Can we stop the rise of the jellyfish?’, The New
Scientist, 13 July. [https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23130821-500-march-of-
the-jellies]
9
UN (2013) ‘United Nations world ocean assessment. Regular process for global
reporting and assessment of the state of the marine environment including
socioeconomic aspects’. [http://www.worldoceanassessment.org]
10
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (2016) ‘Jellyfish and comb jellies’.
[http://ocean.si.edu/jellyfish-and-comb-jellies]
11
Gershwin, L.-A. (2013) Stung! On jellyfish blooms and the future of the ocean. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press.
908 | comic
Eileen Laurie Killer jellyfish rock Rio
tenacious by their very nature. The best way to fix this is to not let it happen in the
12
first place.
As jellyfish come ever more into prominence, can they help the hominid
13
subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, understand anything other than our own
hubris?

12
Nexus Media (2016) ‘Are jellyfish going to take over the ocean? An interview with
jellyfish expert Lisa-Ann Gershwin’, Popsci.com, 8 December.
[http://www.popsci.com/built-for-survival-jellyfish-are-quickly-becoming-pests]
13
Encyclopædia Britannica (2017) ‘Homo sapiens sapiens, hominid subspecies’.
[https://www.britannica.com/topic/Homo-sapiens-sapiens]
comic | 909
910 | comic
comic | 911
912 | comic
comic | 913
914 | comic
comic | 915
916 | comic
comic | 917
the author
Eileen Laurie was born in Scotland and studied fine art in Northern Ireland. She has lived
in several countries and is now based in Malmö: the ‘comicville’ of Sweden. A voracious
14
reader from a young age, she also read comics, from 2000 AD to various Scottish
15
classics . A French friend gave her Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi around 2004, a work of
graphic storytelling that makes very clear that we can use comics to tell any kind of story,
not just about guns and men in tights.

14
https://2000ad.com
15
McCall, C. (2016) ‘Five classic Scottish cartoon characters’, The Scotsman, 23 March.
[http://www.scotsman.com/heritage/five-classic-scottish-cartoon-characters-1-
4080587]

918 | comic
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 919-924
Art at the margins of contemporary democracies

Beata Sirowy
review of
Zabala, S. (2017) Why only art can save us: Aesthetics and the absence of emergency.
New York: Columbia University Press. (HB, pp. 216, £49.95, ISBN
9780231183482)
In his recent book, Why only art can save us, Santiago Zabala makes an important
contribution to the socially engaged art discourse, building upon phenomenology
and critical theory. It is a text about demands by art, to use Michael Kelly’s
formulation [9], i.e. art’s call for action on behalf of the weak, discarded and
forgotten – the remains of Being on the margins of contemporary democracies.
The title of the book is a paraphrase of Heidegger’s famous statement ‘only a God
can still save us’, indicating a path beyond the world overpowered by technology,
where everything is calculable, nature is treated as a standing reserve, and we aim
to exploit and control the world. As Zabala argues, Heidegger’s declaration should
not be read in a literal sense, but rather as alluding to a forgotten realm of Being
in our technological reality. Aiming to dominate and categorize the world, we
replaced Being (existence) with enumerable beings (objects), bringing about ‘the
endlessly self-expanding emptiness and devastation’ [2], related to the primacy of
things over human relationships and nature.
In which sense the realm of Being offers us a salvation? A return to Being is a

return to a non-reductionist perception of the world and human existence, a leap
beyond instrumental rationality. Art can assist us in this process, awakening the
review | 919
sense of emergency – an awareness that our dominating way of framing the world
is not the only option.
Modern aesthetics and the dominant worldview
The book is divided into three chapters. The first chapter, ‘The emergency of
aesthetic’, situates the problem of art in a wider context and discusses how
contemporary aesthetics contributes to the concealment of Being, framing it
within the parameters of the dominating worldview. Here the author aims to
confront and overcome the metaphysical framework of modern aesthetics, and
demonstrate that problem of art extends far beyond this domain.
Following Heidegger, who is the major reference for this chapter, Zabala sees the
loss of a sense of emergency as the main problem of our times. There are of course
emergencies, like military conflicts, terrorism, or refugee crisis. However, they are
framed in terms of our globalized system and its dominant paradigms that include
democracy (political), neoliberalism (financial), and NATO (military). Within this
system we are offered readily applicable solutions preserving the status quo. There
is little space for questioning the established ways of addressing the crises we face,
and our role in them. Furthermore, the dominant impression of citizens in the
developed countries is that reality is stable and fixed. We believe that everything is
functioning correctly, and the current order will bring about the solution of our
problems and provide conditions for a meaningful life.
The major problem of this framework is not only its objectifying character, but also
how it reduces the world to a predictable ‘picture’, which is constantly being
justified politically, ethically, and also aesthetically. Everything that does not fit into
this picture is ignored and marginalized. Emergency, on the other hand, suggests
openness, undecidedness, and a variety of options. It is an interruption of the
reality we are accustomed to. We have to suspend our ordinary ways of perceiving
the world – to use Heidegger’s terms, ‘the lucidity through which we constantly
see’ [17] – in order to experience it.
The absence of emergency reflects our epoch’s metaphysical condition. Social and
political crises we face are, according to Zabala, derivative of this condition. Art
can help us to disclose this absence of emergency by turning our attention to the
remains of Being – people and ideas forced to the margins of the dominant
discourses and striving for change. As the author argues, we need not only political
and ethical discourses, but also aesthetic forces to shake us out of the tendency to
ignore paradoxes and injustices generated by the dominant paradigms and their
instrumental rationality.
920 | review
Beata Sirowy Art at the margins of contemporary democracies
Art speaks to us more directly than rational discourses – it has an ability to address
us on the existential level, to transform our way of looking at the world, and to
mobilize us to action. In this perspective, works of art are far more than objects of
contemplation, providing us with sensuous enjoyment – as viewed by modern
aesthetics. Following Heidegger, Zabala claims that what makes art is not the
quality of what is created, but its ontological appeal [19]. Accordingly, he responds
to Heidegger’s call for the overcoming of aesthetics, which similarly to technology
frames and organizes beings, in this case to make them conform to the ideal of an
indifferent beauty. In doing so, modern aesthetics preserves the lack of sense of
emergency and becomes a means of preserving status quo. In order to overcome
this condition we need to restore the critical, discursive potential of art.
Art as a subversive strategy
The marginalized challenges of our times are specifically addressed in Chapter 2,

‘Emergency through art’. Here Zabala discusses four categories of problems
staying at the margins of contemporary democracies: ‘social paradoxes’ generated
by the dominating paradigms; ‘urban discharges’ of slums, plastic and electronic
waste; ‘environmental calls’ related to global warming and degradation of nature;
and ‘historical accounts’ of ignored or denied events.
Three artists are selected for each of these categories. The works of
kennardphillipps, Jota Castro and Filippo Minelli thrust us into the political,
financial, and technological paradoxes that shape our social lives. Hema Upadhyay,
Wang Zhiyuan, and Peter McFarlane deal with the problem of surplus products
emerging on the verge of capitalism and urbanization. Nele Azvedo, Mandy
Barker, and Michael Sailstorfer direct our attention to environmental calls caused
by global warming, ocean pollution and deforestation. The artworks of Jennifer
Kardy, Alfredo Jaar, and Jane Frere offer alternative readings of history and draw
our attention to overlooked events.
This part of the book gives a solid insight into how arts existential and ontological
alterations work in specific contexts, revealing fundamental problems of our times
and mobilizing for action. Their creators, as Zabala argues, have retreated from
culture’s indifferent beauty in order to disclose the lack of emergencies in
contemporary world, and to draw attention to the remains of Being. This type of
art calls for action on behalf of the weak and excluded – art appears here as
transformative, critical practice.
review | 921
Towards an ontological theory of art
The final chapter of the book, ‘Emergency aesthetics’, delineates a theory of art
focused on art’s ontological appeal. Zabala’s aim is neither to criticize previous
aesthetic theories, nor to propose a new one, but to outline a philosophical stance
capable of interpreting existential disclosures of contemporary art. Hence, the art
theory outlined in the book is clearly not aesthetic (i.e. focused on a non-cognitive
experience of art, as emerging from the perspective of Baumgarten and Kant), but
ontological – it addresses art against the background of human existence and the
world. Zabala follows here pre-Enlightenment understanding of art, in which the
cognitive dimension was central – art’s role was to reveal truth about the reality.
This understanding can be dated back at least to the ancient Greeks, for whom
th
beauty and truth were two sides of the same coin, and was in the 20 century
revived by phenomenological and hermeneutic thinkers. It stands in a stark
contrast to the mainstream aesthetic discourse, inclined to exclude art’s claim to
truth, and accordingly to dismiss its theoretical and practical dimensions. As
Heidegger points out, modern aesthetics presupposes a particular conception of
beings – as objects of representation framed within the dominant worldview.
Within this horizon art loses its relation to culture and follows the path of
technology. In this context he speaks about ‘the absence of art’ (Heidegger in
Zabala, 2017: 6), a state of being corresponding to the lack of a sense of emergency.
In order to overcome this condition, we need not only to put aside aesthetic
representationalism, but also to disclose and interpret the forgotten, existential
appeal of Being. Following Gadamer, Zabala considers art not an object on which
we look and contemplate, but an event that appropriates us into itself and reveals
the world. It invites us into a conversation that does not aim for a disengaged
exchange of different interpretations, but addresses us in a direct way and changes
our ways of perceiving the world. Further, building upon Danto, Ranciere, and
Vattimo, Zabala claims that the truth of art no longer rests in representation of
reality, but rather in an existential project of transformation. Today, artists and
their audiences are called to intervene on behalf of humanity.
Art can respond to the absence of the sense of emergency in different ways. For
Heidegger artworks disclose truth about the world by expressing it in its fullness
and uniqueness in a non-reductive manner. As he demonstrates on the famous
example of peasant’s shoes depicted by Van Gogh, art can offer an in-depth
glimpse into human reality. Critical thinkers on the other hand adapt a more
subversive strategy, altering the reality we are accustomed to rather than
representing it. In this perspective art confronts us with unexpected, strange,
surprising, and provokes us to search reasons for that oddness. This in turn
motivates us to take an ethical stance – to become existentially involved for the
922 | review
Beata Sirowy Art at the margins of contemporary democracies
sake of the weak and marginalized. Zabala follows the latter perspective, arguing
that the lack of a sense of emergency in our contemporary realities demands a new
aesthetic shock. What produces shock in art are not its formal qualities, but its
refusal to situate itself within established perspectives.
As we can see in the examples from Chapter 2, alterations of reality created by

artworks disrupt our fixed ways of seeing the world and require response and
intervention instead of contemplation. To confront the alterations revealed in
critical artworks, emergency aesthetics must depend on hermeneutics – an effort
of interpretation is necessary to retrieve the existential appeal of art. Zabala follows
Gadamer’s view of interpretation as a fusion of horizons, governed by the
existential situation of the interpreter. However, he sees the keystone of
hermeneutics in the disclosure of the essential emergency – the absence of
emergencies in our contemporary world, while for Gadamer it was the experience
of truth revealed in art. Accordingly, in Zabala’s emergency aesthetics
interpretation has a militant, anarchic character. As he points out, anarchic
interpretations do not strive for truth or completeness, but rather seek to preserve
the disclosure of emergency and invite us to a resolute action in favour of the weak
[120].
The final chapter is followed by an afterword, engaging in a direct dialogue with

critical theory – such a dialogue is very much implicit throughout the book. The
afterword also situates Zabala’s effort in a wider context of contemporary, socially
engaged art theory.
Final reflections
Zabala’s emergency aesthetics represents an original attempt to bridge

phenomenology and critical theory, and offers a well-thought perspective on the
challenges of contemporary democracies and the role and potentials of art in
addressing them. Importantly, the book is more than a valuable contribution to art
discourse. It offers as much aesthetic as ethical theory, providing a critical glimpse
on the current way of framing the world and human life, and asking for action on
behalf of the weak, marginalized, and forgotten.
Having said that, it must be noted that Zabala’s work is not an easy lecture.
Although Chapter 2, presenting selected artists and their responses to the lack of
the sense of emergency, is generally accessible, philosophical discussions in
Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 may be difficult to follow for readers completely
unfamiliar with Heidegger’s phenomenology.
review | 923
One of the strengths of the text is a breadth of phenomenological references, also

including less commonly quoted works of Heidegger, such as Mindfulness
1
(2006/1938-1939) . The book would however benefit from a more explicit
conversation with critical theory, to which indebtedness is mentioned mostly in
the afterword. Heidegger appears as the principal reference throughout the text,
but the view that art creates emergencies through alterations and disruptions of
reality goes somehow beyond his perspective, alluding among others to Adorno.
The book can be recommended to philosophically inclined audiences interested in

socially engaged art theory, and art’s response to contemporary crises. The readers
interested specifically in Heidegger’s view of art will find this book very relevant
throughout.
the author
Beata Sirowy (PhD 2010, The Oslo School of Architecture) is Senior Research Fellow at
the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the Norwegian University of Life
Sciences. Her educational background consists of both philosophy and architecture, and
her research interests lie at the intersection of these disciplines. She is particularly
interested in phenomenology and hermenutics and their implications for architecture and
spatial planning, and in broadly understood ethical aspects of urban development. Her
publications deal also with phenomenological theory of art. She is a section editor of the
Nordic research journal Formakademisk.

1
Heidegger, M. (2006/1938-1939) Mindfulness (Besinnung), trans. E. Parvis and T.
Kalary. London and New York: Continuum.
924 | review
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 925-931
Resistance in vulnerability with an eye to the

vulnerability of power
Marco Checchi
review of
Butler J., Z. Gambetti and L. Sabsay (eds.) (2016) Vulnerability in resistance.

Durham: Duke University Press. (PB, pp x + 336, £21.99, ISBN 978-0-8223-6290-
6).
The general aim of this volume is to rethink vulnerability both at the ontological
and political level and in its multifaceted relations with resistance. It features a
series of essays that engage with the topic from a variety of geopolitical contexts
and theoretical perspectives. This variety is also reflected in the different polemical
targets that range from the patriarchical coupling of vulnerability and passivity to
the neoliberal understanding of resilience and the humanitarian discourse. This is
definitely a brilliant experiment that brings together a variety of heterogenous
reflections, ‘a polyphonic mode of making sense of the shifting problematic before
us’ (7). Yet, it is a polyphony of reflections and conceptual explorations, rather than
a polyphony of authors. Because among the contributors, Judith Butler is clearly
the cornerstone of the volume. In the general polyphony, her voice is absolutely
dominant. But, far from being a defect, this constitutes the actual strength of the
volume. Butler’s thought on vulnerability, gender, public appearance and
resistance is deployed, explored and applied from a variety of angles and
perspectives. In this book, we see the results of what Butler’s concept of
vulnerability can do or how it can be used. In this sense, the volume is not only an
interesting nomadic exploration of the potentialities of a concept (hence it draws
review | 925
its philosophical relevance), but it is also an inspirational and thought provoking

tool for further explorations.
Butler’s concept opposes traditional understandings of vulnerability that link it to

passivity, inactivity. Resistance is obviously excluded from this account of
vulnerability. In its passivity, the vulnerable is the disposable victim that can only
be helped or rescued. By the same token, vulnerability is traditionally gendered
resulting from the patriarchical binary code that poses activity as a masculine
attribute, while ‘[v]ulnerability appears as the ultimate truth about women; it
almost becomes the general defining character of being a woman’ (Ahiska, 221).
The conceptualisation of vulnerability becomes terrain for political contestation.

As traditional understandings of vulnerability are produced by and reproduce
dominant forms of political subjectivation, the rethinking of vulnerability in
relation to agency and, by extension, resistance shows its political urgency and the
prefiguration of an alternative politics of solidarity from below: ‘Once we
understand the way that vulnerability enters into agency, then our understanding
of both terms can change, and the binary opposition between them can become
undone. I consider the undoing of this binary a feminist task’ (Butler, 25).
The starting point for Butler’s reconceptualization is the idea of human body as
relational and interdependent. The body is exposed to and depends on
‘infrastructure, understood complexly as environment, social relations, and
networks of support and sustenance’ (ibid., 21). But the idea of interdependence
does not imply the lack of acting. This radical interdependency constitutes the
ground to affirm vulnerability as ontological and existential condition.
Vulnerability affirms both the capacity of the body to act and to be acted upon, to
affect and to be affected. However, vulnerability is also a socially induced
condition. Vulnerable populations or vulnerable subjects are indeed the result and
effect of a history of power relations and systems of domination. There is a
differential distribution of vulnerability and this, in turn, can be and is politically
mobilised.
The political mobilisation of vulnerability constitutes the focus of Butler’s essay.

She looks at the politically and socially induced vulnerability that affects those
whose infrastructure have been decimated by the neoliberal wave of austerity. On
the one hand, the state enforces the destruction of basic material conditions for a
livable life. On the other hand, it enacts its paternalistic humanitarian discourse
reproducing the coupling of vulnerability and passivity. Yet, resistance emerges
nevertheless, not only despite vulnerability, but precisely because of it. When this
condition of precarity makes its public appearance through assemblies and
demonstrations, vulnerability is not only exposed politically in the sense of Arendt,
926 | review
Marco Checchi Resistance in vulnerability
but also vulnerability manifests itself in the face of police violence. ‘Vulnerability,
understood as a deliberate exposure to power, is part of the very meaning of
political resistance as an embodied enactment’ (ibid., 22).
The other essays in the collection experiment with Butler’s concept through
original and often not reciprocally aligned trajectories. It is very refreshing to find
attempts to engage with philosophy from unorthodox perspectives that are often
disqualified from academic and scientific discourse. Elena Loizidou starts with her
grandmother’s dream to fly back to her village in Cyprus in a call for including
dreams and their recounting into Arendt’s conception of the political subject.
Marianne Hirsch offers her personal recollections as a German Jew girl migrating
to US and reflects on postmemorial aesthetic strategies to practice vulnerability as
a form of attunement and responsibility. Elsa Dorlin gives a critical reading of
masking from the veil wars in France to Wonder woman and then discusses ‘Hey
Baby!’ a first-person-shooter video game where a woman indefinitely kills her
harassers that questions, although problematically, the coupling of vulnerability
and passivity. Other authors privilege art and aesthetics as a way of problematising
vulnerability. The work of Palestinian artist and activist Mona Hatoum is
presented by Elena Tzelepis as a political representation and enactment of
vulnerable corporalities at the intersection of struggles over citizenship and
gender. Başak Ertür proposes a brilliant analysis of barricades at Gezi Park, which
he frames through Lefebvre as artefacts of counter-monumentalisation of
resistance.
Another important contribution of the volume is the creation of a geopolitically

diverse, although obviously not exhaustive, archive of vulnerability at stake in
recent examples of resistance. Athena Athanasiou presents the idea of
nonsovereign agonism through the experience of Women in Black, a group of
women standing in the public streets of Belgrade in 1991 mourning the victims of
their alleged enemies. Palestine features not only in Tzelepis’s essay on Hatoum’s
art, but also in the interesting contribution by Rema Hammami that reports on
the activism of Western volunteers from the perspective of the community of
Masafer Yatta, in the South Hebron Hills. Kurdish feminism is the focus of the
essay by Nükhet Sirman, where transgression becomes an existential and political
condition, but also prefiguration of an alternative politics. Meltem Ahiska looks at
the representation of violence on women in Turkey with a critical reading of those
campaigns that depict the victimisation of women as complicit in reinforcing the
coupling of women and passivity. Two essays engage with protests at Gezi Park in
2013. The volume largely depends on the discussions at the workshop ‘Rethinking
vulnerability and resistance: Feminism and social change’ that took place at
Columbia’s University Global Center in Istanbul only one month after the Gezi
Park protests. It is particularly interesting to see how the two essays converge to
review | 927
provide a vivid account of the social and material fabric of the practices of
resistance that took place during those weeks. On the one hand, the materiality of
the barricades in the continuous process of dismantling and rebuilding recounted
by Ertür. On the other hand, the internal agonism and transformations among the
protesters representing the transversal composition of resistance, as described by
the essay by Zeynep Gambetti.
Yet, despite this polyphonic way of thinking of vulnerability, there is an inevitable

tendency for/towards repetition that transforms Butler’s concept into a refrain or,
at times, into a sterile litany. But this repetition does not solve some of the issues
that necessarily emerge when a new concept is created. Beyond the richness of the
operation of introducing a new concept accompanied by a series of critical
reflections that put that concept at work following its potential lines of
experimentation, there is still room from an ultimate question: why vulnerability?
There is a persistent feeling that we could have thought along the same conceptual
trajectories without ever mentioning vulnerability: relationality, interdependence,
permeability (as Leticia Sabsay proposes in her essay), even Butler’s own couple
precarity-precariousness. These notions appear almost interchangeably in the
volume, while little or no effort is made to provide a solid way of distinguishing
vulnerability from them. The reason for this is possibly that such a conceptual
distinction cannot be operated. Once vulnerability is presented both as existential
and socially induced condition it depicts an ontology and a social dynamic that do
not add much, for instance, to a Foucauldian conception of the body and of the
social as traversed and constituted by power relations. It is absolutely relevant and
urgent from a politico-philosophical perspective to affirm this radical relationality
of being against liberal and neoliberal attempts to efface interdependence through
the ideology of the self-mastery sovereign individual. But, this does not answer our
initial interrogative: why vulnerability? Perhaps the only way to answer this
question is by pointing at the current and traditional uses of the notion of
vulnerability, those which foster a paternalistic attitude towards those victimised
and defenceless bodies. In this sense, Butler’s operation would consist of
reclaiming the term by queering its meaning against these dominant views and
the politics they reproduce and strengthen. It is through this genealogical function
that we can fully appreciate the necessity of conceptualising vulnerability in this
way. We are already beyond the question of ‘why vulnerability?’. The volume
engages directly with the question of how to think vulnerability differently.
Differently from what? There is very little attention to those mainstream

understandings of vulnerability that this volume opposes. No author or theory is
explicitly mentioned as a polemical target. If the reader is not familiar (as I am not)
with contemporary debates on vulnerability it is quite hard to assess the scope and
the success of this polemical attack. Most of the contributors to the volume tend to
928 | review
refer more to a general patriarchical binary code and to a generic humanitarian

discourse largely relying upon the liberal and neoliberal discourse of human
rights. Sarah Bracke’s essay is the only one that tries to decipher the material
coordinates of this hegemonic understanding. She traces a brilliant genealogy of
the concept of resilience showing the neoliberal framework that supports the
contemporary popularity of this idea. She surveys popular self-help books as a way
of portraying resilience as a positive asset to enhance one’s human capital; also,
she looks at policies on resilience developed by IMF and World Bank to normalise
and regulate the capacity of vulnerable population to respond to austerity measures
and processes of material exploitation. For Bracke, thinking vulnerability against
resilience helps to trace the lines of resistance ‘for a world beyond neoliberalism’
(Bracke, 70).
Nevertheless, this relation with resistance, not only in Bracke’s essay but
throughout the volume, remains quite problematic. Whereas vulnerability is
treated through a thorough conceptual analysis, resistance is discussed through its
manifestations: public squares, barricades, demonstrations, but also resistant
existences as in the example of Palestinians [Hammani] and Kurdish [Sirman].
The lack of a conceptual understanding of resistance leave several potential
avenues implicit and unexplored. Howard Caygill’s On resistance, Costas Douzinas’
Philosophy and resistance in the crisis or Foucault’s first volume of the History of
sexuality might have been valuable theoretical frameworks to problematise
resistance also from a theoretical perspective. This absence determines the
emergence of a series of interrogatives that remain unfortunately unanswered. For
instance, while several contributions depict resistance as the sudden outburst of
the event, others rightly sustain an idea of resistance as continuous and
uninterrupted process. Hammani eloquently summarises this perspective in
reference to Palestinian resistance in the community of Masafer Yatta: ‘to exist is
to resist. […] The everyday constant work of just “being” is made up of the
multitude of acts of making life possible in and through the everyday’ (Hammani,
172). This implicit tension in the understanding of the concept of resistance
certainly reflects the polyphony, but in a sense the volume somehow misses the
opportunity to offer a more radical intervention in the debate on the concept of
resistance.
In fact, we might dare to ask what eventually this conception of vulnerability adds
either to our understanding of resistance or to contemporary struggles in general.
There are definitely some successful operations in this sense. For instance, it
unmasks top-down hegemonic political mobilisation of vulnerability as in the case
of those discourses that use the threat of terrorism or of an invasion of migrants
to assert the right of the ‘vulnerable’ white man of the global North to fight back
(or, indeed, to strike first). The volume also helps to oppose a certain masculine
review | 929
ideal of heroism in resistance, in which vulnerability is effaced through the ideal

of a self-sufficient and sovereign individual subject that mirrors and mobilises the
same very discourse resistance is against to. This definitely constitutes an
interesting and urgent task. Yet, I would like to use Hammani’s essay to reflect on
the efficacy of this attempt of locating vulnerability (or interdependency?) in
resistance: ‘For situated communities of hyperprecarity, this awareness that one’s
survival depends on so many others is an everyday doxa’ (172). If hyperprecarious
communities have always already known this radical dependency and
vulnerability, whom is this volume for? Probably, it is for those populations who
have been nourished by the liberal and neoliberal mantra of the sovereign
masculine individual. But, this, in a way, is another ‘everyday doxa’ as academic
books are generally meant for this kind of audience only. Is the volume then
arguing for a romanticised celebration of dispossessed populations from which we
should learn? That would definitely be an exaggeration, but this still remains as a
potential line of enquiry to continue with the rethinking of the concepts at stake.
Perhaps the idea of rethinking vulnerability in power, rather than in resistance,

might have been the key to really liberate an affirmative conception of resistance
that remains somehow implicit throughout the volume. That resistance occurs
both despite and for the sake of vulnerability is somehow an everyday doxa as well.
Traditional understandings of resistance have often remarked the vulnerability,
the impotency or even the futility of resistance. In resistance, we have always
known that we might not be defenceless, but we are most probably bound to defeat.
And from this everyday doxa, we conclude that power, on the other hand, is
monolithic and eternal. Our imagination is thwarted to the extent that, as Bracke
puts it following Jameson, it is easier to imagine the end of the world (from an
environmentalist perspective) than the end of capitalism. But if vulnerability is an
ontological and existential condition from which power cannot escape either, we
could have definitely redefined the potential of resistance. This could promote an
affirmative conception of resistance. In no way vulnerability needs to be excluded
from resistance, but perhaps it would have been interesting to explore this other
trajectory that is still present in the volume: power is vulnerable too. We still do
not know what we can do (against a vulnerable power – despite our vulnerability).
references
Caygill, H. (2013) On resistance: A philosophy of defiance. London: Bloomsbury.
Douzinas, C. (2013) Philosophy and resistance in the crisis: Greece and the future of
Europe. Cambridge: Polity.
930 | review
Foucault, M. (1978) The history of sexuality: An introduction. New York: Pantheon

Books.
the author
Marco Checchi is a Lecturer in Business and Management at the Department of Strategic
Management & Marketing, De Montfort University. Marco’s research interests focus upon
a postmodern conceptualisation of the primacy of resistance. He is also interested in
alternative forms of organisation and social and community based entrepreneurship.
review | 931
the author(s) 2017
volume 17(4): 933-936
No future. Utopia now!

Martin Parker
review of
Bell, D.M. (2017) Rethinking utopia: Place, power, affect. New York: Routledge.
(HB, pp. 188, £88, ISBN 9781138891333)
Introduction
Towards the end of this intriguing book (157), David Bell tells us how he fell in love
with free jazz, of the improvised and generally impenetrable kind, when he was
17. It took him a while, but when he got it, it was music that opened up onto a
world in which form was always being made at every moment, and the players slid
and bopped off each other, making something new each time that they played. The
musicians augmented each other’s capacities and creativities when they played
attentively and sympathetically together. Together, because this was not a question
of one solo diva elevating themselves on everyone else’s back, one boss with one
vision, or one set of dutifully repeated clichés. This was music as collective making,
and (in this book) an opening to utopianism, to the making of utopias.
It’s a lovely metaphor, and I wish he had told me that at the start of the book. I
wish that the practice of music making that holds so much promise for what he
wanted to say was a theme introduced strongly at the beginning, and that then was
used as a counter-point to the incessant beat of theory and academic reference. The
hammering of not-this, and obviously not-that, of corrections to certain readings
of Deleuze, or Bloch, or Negri, or Mouffe. There was a lightness and flexibility to
the central argument here that I felt was largely trammelled by the genre
conventions of writing ‘politically engaged social theory for academic publishers’.
review | 933
For myself, I wanted more jazz, more of David Bell’s evident care and wit, and less
academic bell ringing.
So what is the central argument? It’s a smart one, that most radical understandings
of utopianism throw away ‘place’ far too quickly. (I’m going to leave the right wing
and market utopians out of this review, though he does have some nice things to
say about their microfascist ‘sad joys’ too.) Using a range of writings from utopian
studies (Moylan, Levitas, Kumar and so on), as well as extended readings of two
novels – Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1921) and Ursula le Guin’s The dispossessed
(1974) – Bell suggests that the dominant radical narrative is of the other place and
other time, utopia as a kind of longing for that which is not now. Utopia is often
framed as a desire, an impulse or method to expose the insufficiency of the present
and the possibility of elsewhere and elsewhen. Utopia is exodus, escape, hope.
His problem, summarising very quickly, is that this defers and depoliticises so
much, pushing utopianism into fiction, dream, desire, rather than thinking and
doing it as a noisy and improvised prefigurative present. Utopia is instead co-opted
as a ‘nice idea’.
Half an hour on the radio. Forty-five minutes in an art gallery. An article in the
weekend supplement. A lifestyle book. A quirky module at an elite university. (136)
The anger and joy stripped out, all that is left is a postcard from somewhere we
might want to visit but not live, and also the endlessly repeated warning against
the dangers of blueprints, means that become ends in themselves. (Yes, yes – we
know. And as Bell shows, such cautions can so easily become a dully pragmatic
post-utopianism, or even a strident principled anti-utopianism.) Instead, he says,
let’s make utopia a co-produced place here and now.
Now I might quite possibly be simplifying far too much here, but I think that Bell’s
argument works best when he (nodding to Spinoza) frames utopianism as a
practice which enhances the powers of acting of bodies, self, other and collective
(38). We play together and produce joy, individuals only possible because of others,
their affect a function of how they are themselves affected, our freedoms made
collectively, our collective being the precondition for our freedom. This means an
insistence that utopianism can be here and now, not just there and then. This is
what Valerie Fournier (2002), quoted approvingly by Bell, has called ‘utopianism’,
the practical cultivation of contemporary possibilities. Bell’s utopianism is not a
nostalgia for the future, but a practice that aims at producing new forms of affect
in the present. Never mind the future, as a Novara media slogan has it, let’s have
utopia now!
934 | review
Martin Parker No future. Utopia now!
I like the way that Bell tilts at some of the comfortable reading lists of ‘utopian
studies’, particularly when it becomes no more than a variety of literary studies,
and I very much like his suggestions that this version of utopianism is about
making a place together, with anger and joy, against capitalism and the pale, male
and stale (always acknowledging that he is part of the problem too). What saddened
me was the way that this book, which could have been a carnival, an explosion, a
joyful improvisation with a reader, felt too much like a text for a quirky module at
an elite university. (Around a quarter of it is endnotes and references.) There are
moments in which kittens dance across keyboards, the author lets his ideas and
words spin and sway, and Ornette Coleman says mysterious things, but the
backbeat is the sound of academic posts being staked.
Showing readers what this practice of utopianism might do is a really timely task,
and one that chimes well with writing on prefiguration, Occupy, organizing
without organizations, immediatist organizing, anarchist, green and feminist
organization theory and so on. I want to know how Bell’s version of utopianism
might feel, sound, smell – not as blueprints (yes, yes – we know) but as an
invitation to a different way of being. It seems to me, as a reader concerned with
alternative organizing (Parker et al., 2014) that we now have a lot of thinkers
converging on a different sort of organization theory. How can we do things
together without trapping each other? How can we organize without building
institutions that do our thinking for us? How can we continually remind ourselves
that organizing is politics? These are questions that don’t throw away organizing
but rather, as Bell does, try to take it much more seriously than the business school
ever does.
I’m very happy to call this utopianism, but I’m sure that very well referenced
hardback Routledge books written with this kind of density aren’t going to help
that much. Instead, rather than annotating the score, I want David Bell to be
showing me what sort of collective improvisations might help make a future that
I would like to play in. He is clearly capable of such a task, and clearly recognises
that it needs to be done. I want to join him there, in this place, though he can keep
the free jazz.
references
Fournier, V. (2002) ‘Utopianism and the cultivation of possibilities’, in M. Parker

(ed.) Utopia and organization. London: Blackwell.
Parker, M., G. Cheney, V. Fournier and C. Land (eds.) (2014) The companion to
alternative organization. New York: Routledge.
review| 935
the author
Martin Parker is at the Business School, University of Leicester. His next book is called
Shut down the business school (Pluto Press, 2018).
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What is ephemera: theory & politics in organization?

ephemera is an independent journal, founded in 2001. ephemera provides its

ISSN (Online) 1473-2866

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative

Hosting emergence with hospitality 733-749

Becoming a commoner: The commons as sites for affective socio-nature

A pre-individual perspective to organizational action 777-799

Street level tinkering in the times of ‘Make in India’ 801-817

Perverse particles, entangled monsters and psychedelic pilgrimages:

A chronology of fragments: Struggling to write a story alternative to the

Market fundamentalism in the age of ‘haute finance’: The enclosing of

Leviathan lives: A short play about hierarchy and cooperation 895-905

Killer jellyfish rock Rio 907-918

Art at the margins of contemporary democracies 919-924

No future. Utopia now! 933-936

Hosting emergence with hospitality

First, it creates divisions by maintaining a hierarchy of ‘developed’ and ‘emerging’

Second, ‘emergence’ entails a capitalist teleology. However, as they face entangled

Emergence without politics?

is what we invited this issue’s contributors to do. We did so without suggesting a

In the conceptual discussion of synchronic emergence, a key question is whether

Emergence has also been connected to questions of organisation (e.g. Lissack,

Rethinking emergence with hospitality

With the intention of moving organisation studies toward a new location, we

No one is more aware of this ‘aporia’ or ‘self-engendered paradox’ (Norris, 2002:

In other words, it is only on the basis of a fundamental impossibility that

This paradox is embedded in the academic discourse in which we partake.

In academic discourse, we always have certain expectations of what serves as a

On the possibility of being a good host

In the case of apolitical deployment of the concept of ‘emergence’, we witness a

Fundamentally, we refrained from adopting an expert position suggesting that ‘we’

A final consideration relates to making decisions, which cannot be avoided. Merely

Overview of the contributions

Now that we have declared our epistemological and political commitments, it is

Srivatsan Lakshminarayan picks up on those zoological obsessions of

If emergence is to be taken outside the existing system, as we invited our

Without undermining affect’s potential to bring social transformation of the kind

Marco Checchi reviews Vulnerability in resistance – an edited volume that is

In Martin Parker’s review of David Bell’s thoroughly scholarly monograph

wholeheartedly willing to solidarise with, is that utopia is a collective practice of

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