nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

How to act in this world, how to risk oneself in an action with anuncertain outcome, when one doesn’t know of what the future will bemade? In order to act in conditions of uncertainties one needs trust (a‘belief’) in oneself, a trust in the world and a trust in others. One hasto make a tacit agreement with oneself, the world and others in orderto act in a world where the ‘routinely rules’ won’t serve to guide action.Action thus constitutes a jumping into the unknown which ‘wisdom’and ‘knowledge’ can never help us to go through. Our scepticism andour political impasses aren’t cognitive, because ‘we live forwards and wethink backwards’ as James says in quoting Kierkegaard. Living forwardmeans ‘to believe in the world and in the new possibilities of life’ thatare wrapped up in it, Deleuze adds. 7In the current context of crisis, the need to self-organise structures of survivalbecomes more urgent, giving rise to desires and needs to institute otherpractices of reproduction and cooperation as a way of inventing new forms oflife. Commoning. Our financial-economical crises are indeed symptoms of abroad reproductive crisis of capitalism, wherein not just the capital-e ‘Economy’8 but also the oikos as our house, home and collective ecologies are introuble. A moment where we need to re-imagine the ways in which we organiseand sustain our work as well as life. Across our flat shares, our (home)offices, our political meetings, our local pubs and cafés, our facebook pagesand skype calls, what do we share, how do we pay attention to each other?Relational debris and crisis capitalismThe neoliberal bubble years pushed us into various forms of entrepreneurship,organising our work, lives and relations around ‘new economies’ thathave now turned sour and left us unemployed, precarious, indebted and fedup. Maurizio Lazaratto emphasises the weight of the debt economy on ourmaterial as well as psychic lives, as its logic of guilt infests many aspects of ourexistence: our social rights turn into debts, whether it’s in accessing education,unemployment benefits, healthcare or pensions. The neoliberal projectreaches a new brutality in the way it cuts up and sells off our common safetynets, not least the welfare system. Our trust in each other and society fades.The competitiveness of current job markets burns us out, and the politics ofmeasure and evaluation that protrude into all spheres of life are rendering notjust our work meaningless but also many of our relationships.In this context, many collective engagements leave us with tristesse anddissatisfaction. Our political activity too is configured by neoliberal time,187