‘The art of living with ICTs ’ today not only means finding new ways to cope, interact and create new lifestyles on the basis of the new digital technologies individually, as ‘consumer-citizens’. It also means inventing new modes of living, producing and, not in the least place, struggling collectively, as workers and producers. As the so-called digital revolution unfolds in the context of a neoliberal cognitive and consumerist capitalism, its ‘innovations’ are predominantly employed to modulate and control both production processes (...) and consumer behavior in view of the overall goal of extracting surplus value. Today, the digital networks overwhelmingly destroy social autonomy, instead engendering increasing social heteronomy and proletarianization. Yet it is these very networks themselves, as technical pharmaka in the sense of French ‘technophilosopher’ Bernard Stiegler, that can be employed as no other to struggle against this tendency. This paper briefly explores this possibility by reflecting upon current diagnoses of our ‘technological situation’ by some exemplary post-operaist Marxists from a Stieglerian, pharmacological perspective. (shrink)

By most accounts Deleuze's engagement with Marx begins with the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia he co-authored with Félix Guattari. However, Deleuze's Difference and Repetition alludes to a connection between Deleuze's critique of common sense and Marx's theory of fetishism, suggesting a connection between the critique of the image of thought and the critique of capital. By tracing this connection from its emergence in the early texts on noology, or the image of thought, to the development in the critique (...) of state thought in A Thousand Plateaus, it can be argued that what initially appears as an entirely infra-philosophical problem, concerned with the presuppositions of philosophy, is not only a political problem as well, but ultimately bears on the very nature of the conjunction between thought and politics, making possible a re-examination of what is meant by revolutionary thought. It is a transition from noology to noopolitics. In the end it can be argued that revolutionary thought is no longer an eschatology, attempting to discern the signs of the future revolution in the present, but a thought oriented towards everything that exceeds the fetish of society, towards the virtual relations and micropolitical transformations that constitute society but exceed its representation. (shrink)

Adaptive Actions initiated in London in 2007 by Jean-François Prost explores alterations in the workplace, the home, and public spaces in general. Identifying the variety of these personal and found alterations in the city as different forms of adaptation creates a vocabulary for the expression of the collective imagination, through the existing urban structures therein. These ‘actions’ modify and activate the intended use of architecture and enhance the character of urban environments. They create positive tensions that test the limits of (...) tolerated appropriation. Can these simple actions, images, and ideas, such as the hybridization of conventional and unusual urban realities, infiltrate our collective imagination to promote feelings of identity and a sense of cultural belonging? Adaptive Actions points to how urban phenomena impact on residents’ perception of the environment and their relation to it. By offering a space to share experiences, ideas, forms of actions, and specific accomplishments, Adaptive Actions creates an inventory of alterations rarely visible to the public. Printed documents and organized events are being planned to increase visibility of the selected actions to the public eye and build affiliations and communal thinking. (shrink)