nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

ways of relating that run counter to long term attentiveness or commitment –whether as juvenile collaborative or professionalised career cultures. We oftendon’t question our network relations because they are so ‘informal’.So the network mode of collectivity is a dispersed one, intense in connectivitybut relatively noncommittal and often inconsistent over time. Networksstructure time and attention in specific ways, and while their innovative andrevolutionary potentials will not be denied it is also important to see that onanother level, the quickness and unsteadiness of networks often amplifies theexistential uncertainties of precarity. Relations of care – which we all dependon in life, for life – require long temporalities, slow and singular rhythms,times of listening, healing and supporting, of growing up and getting old.Networks produce modes of attention that often clash with those of childcareor careful listening, of taking time and tuning into other peoples fragility. Assomeone in the 15M movement points out:One effect of the network is fragmented time. Fragmented time means thatmy time continuum of the 24 hours of the day is fragmented into momentsthat are incompatible with one another. They don’t form a unity. […] yougo jumping from fragment to fragment. And so with fragmented time, youcan’t project a future, because you’re going towards a fragmented future. Afragmented future is not a good future because what you expect from thefuture is security – because if not, it’s like the present. That’s to say: while aperson is young, they have power, health and energy, they can lead a sexuallife that gives them pleasure and all those things – well, you don’t need afuture. With a fragmented present, if you are physically and psychicallywell equipped, you can stand it, and you can live well, but you can’t projecta future. You can’t see yourself where you’ll be in 30 years, because thesefragments don’t take you anywhere, they’d bring you to hundreds of places.But that’s not sustainable, that won’t be able to exist – if it’s the case, it’ll bebecause you’ve died young 6 .To speak of care networks might seem a provocation in the first instance:as if networks were ever spaces of care, and as if care was ever that networked?Indeed the more precarious our world, the more networked our forms of caring:the less welfare state and institutional support, the more webs of self-organisedcare. Unless we wish to bring back the nuclear family to save us fromprecarity, to bring women back into the kitchen and men back into the workplace,as conservative politics proposes in response to the current crises.The challenge in thinking care in a way useful for strengthening ournetworks rather than disengaging with them, is to avoid some moralizing,185