nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

mean you know how a village gets together because it’s so.. [gesturesrubbing fingers against each other] – it’s density, and I think that [it’s]this strong joy for people made this density. 10Capitalism can make the village, family and network impossible as sites ofrespectful collectivity, turning them into privatised, hierarchical, competitiveplaces. It’s in this moment, and with a sensitivity to the revulsions with whichour bodies, minds and hearts respond, that some of us felt a need to come togetherand share a space: to investigate what is going on with us and the worldaround us. Starting from vulnerability. And also realising that ‘we’re strong,we’re joyful, we’re friends and we’re fucking capable of doing things!’ as someonefrom the group insists. How to draw strength from our movements, beyondthe momentary power of doing actions and beyond the anatomy of our20s? I remember someone from the micropolitics group saying: ‘if you’re nota commie before you’re 20, you have no heart; if you’re not a capitalist afteryou’re 20, you have no brain’.The challenges that ‘growing up’ poses to activism are hardly unknown.A beautiful personal account of struggle by Maria Rosa dalla Costa echos inmy head, where she recalls the effects that feminist struggle in 70s Italy hadon womens bodies:Towards the end of the decade we were exhausted by that [totalisingand exasperated] kind of life and activism. All our margins of reproductionhad been eroded, notoriously narrower than those which men,comrades included, enjoyed. After about ten years, the body of women– even militants have a body, much as it is often denied – felt that thebiological clock was marking other deadlines. For instance those womenwho wanted to have a child, and it was already late, had to decide withwhom and in which life environment […]. As social transformationwas not at the same level of the new feminine individuality, the processof surrendering began. Many had to give up. 11In order not to give up, we need to invent continuities and sustainabilities.What experimentations need to become possible? And what experienceand tools-resources do we already have? It takes some work to recognise andstrengthen networks as spaces where we meet eachother in our difficulties,blockages, illnesses and darknesses as much as in our lucid, glorious, productiveand performative moments. It’s tough to relate across distances andkeep close. Nanopolitics has been a space for reflecting on what isn’t possible,as limits, blockages and borders. Being able to determine and act upon190