nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

The importance of the debt economy lies in the fact that it appropriatesand exploits both chronological labor time and action, nonchronologicaltime, time as choice, decision, a wager on what willhappen and on the forces (confidence, desire, courage, etc.) that makechoice, decision, and action possible.. 9It is because of this double capture of time that collective organisationsand imaginaries need to deal with care as much as organising around workand resources. The neoliberal phase of accumulation has taken hold not justof our capacities to work but also of our capacities to decide, imagine and acttogether: it makes us into those weak pitiable beings that it can then take andput on the medical-therapuetic-consumerist drip. We internalize the specialcapture of neoliberal care: diagnosing ever new problems while producingever more symptoms, while inventing ever more formulas for self-enslavingself-improvement.How do different collectivities conceive of this capture of vital time andenergies and how do they resist and transcend it? Those problems clearly concernour sociality and not just our individual bodies. Beyond the multiplicationof competing and individualizing scenarios, how to engage with thepossibilities of the present in a collective way? Whilst crisis and austerity domake new collective organisations, solidarities and resistances emerge, theirconsistency and sustainability hinge on the building of collective trust, desire,invention and care. This requires a politics of resisting finance, debt and accumulationas much as a new micropolitics of trust and associational bonds.Aside from inventing other forms of common production and reproduction,that’s also a matter of how our political work relates to our lives, of findingsingular ways of enjoying that. If nanopolitics has so far served as a space tofreshen us up in our shared collective struggles, its challenge lies in reachingfurther towards the very organisations of our networks.In a 2011 interview, a nanopolitics facilitator/participant describes attemptsat building a micropolitics of belonging and trust that enables collectiveaction, in referring to the models of the family and the village:I think it was... because we all decided to shape our time as passionatelyas we wanted, as we felt it – so most of our activities and interactionswere led by our desires to spend time with each other, to make sense ofeach other’s skills, potentials, thoughts... in quite clear political responseto a completely over-systematized empty tick-boxing world around us.Yeah, and we really liked what people were... we really liked people Ithink, we really liked people, all of us. I think that’s why it felt so... I189