David Toews: The Social Occupations of Modernity: Philosophy and Social Theory in Durkheim, Tarde, Bergson and Deleuze (2001)

“This thesis explores the relationship between occupations and the ontology of the social. I begin by drawing a distinction between the messianic and the modern as concentrated in the affective transformation of vocation into occupation. I then, in the Introduction, sketch an ontic-ontological contrast proper to the modern, between modernity, as the collective problematization of social diversity, and the contemporary, as the plural ground of need which provides a source for these problematizations. I argue that this distinction will enable me to shed new light on the occupational as a distinctly modern event.” (from Abstract)

PhD thesis
University of Warwick, Department of Philosophy, August 2001
Supervisors: Peter Wagner, Keith Ansell-Pearson
270 pages

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Bernard Stiegler: For a New Critique of Political Economy (2010)

“The catastrophic economic, social and political crisis of our time calls for a new and original critique of political economy – a rethinking of Marx’s project in the very different conditions of twenty-first century capitalism.

Stiegler argues that today the proletarian must be reconceptualized as the economic agent whose knowledge and memory are confiscated by machines. This new sense of the term ‘proletarian’ is best understood by reference to Plato’s critique of exteriorized memory. By bringing together Plato and Marx, Stiegler can show how a generalized proletarianization now encompasses not only the muscular system, as Marx saw it, but also the nervous system of the so-called creative workers in the information industries. The proletarians of the former are deprived of their practical know-how, whereas the latter are shorn of their theoretical practice, and both suffer from a confiscation of the very possibility of a genuine art of living.

But the mechanisms at work in this new and accentuated form of proletarianization are the very mechanisms that may spur a reversal of the process. Such a reversal would imply a crucial distinction between one’s life work, originating in otium (leisure devoted to the techniques of the self), and the job, consisting in a negotium (the negotiation and calculation, increasingly restricted to short-term expectations), leading to the necessity of a new conception of economic value.

This short text offers an excellent introduction to Stiegler’s work while at the same time representing a political call to arms in the face of a deepening economic and social crisis.”

Publisher Polity, 2010
ISBN 0745648045, 9780745648040
100 pages

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Oliver Ressler: Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies (2005)

The exhibition “Alternative Economics, Alternative Societies” focuses on diverse concepts and models for alternative economies and societies, which all have in common a rejection of the capitalist system of rule. In the specific context of Serbia and Montenegro, which is facing one of the most “painful” processes of transition and “predatory” capitalism implementation in the region, this art exhibition by Oliver Ressler offers solutions and examples of concrete models of political and social organizing realized in different parts of the world and in different historical epochs. In the context of extremely right-wing politics in Serbia and these incredibly fast economic transformation processes, there is a conviction that the exhibitions have the potential to appeal on questioning and rethinking the local system of rule and to create the bases for thinking about social and economic alternatives.

Contributions by kuda.org, Kristian Lukić, Marina Gržinić, Oliver Ressler, Brian Holmes

Editor: New Media Center_kuda.org
Publisher: Revolver – Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany, 2005
ISBN 3-86588-123-8
36 pages
All texts are published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 license unless otherwise indicated.

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