nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

The bodies of proletarianreproduction— Bue Rübner HansenCaring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is anact of political warfare.Audre LordeHow to stay alert in the face of politics’ claims to transcendence, if we are tostop it from becoming unsustainable? What is there of life – the real one, whichallows us to connect to others in equality, rather than moral superiority or theabandonment of oneself – in the politics that we make? How to go on encounteringothers, outlining common problems? And above all: what is the point ofa politics today that doesn’t think through these questions?Precarias a la Deriva 1...what do bodies do in the crisis of the social body?In 2008 they told us that the circulation of money and credit was freezing up.They told us that the vital organs of the social body would cease their restlessactivity unless stimulated. ‘We are all in this [body] together’, they said. Andwe all bear the consequences of the crisis now. But is that because their statementwas false, or because it was true?Let’s accept for a minute the idea that we all belong to the same body.To be a member of a body means that one’s activity is necessary for the reproductionof that body. And so our labour, our obedience, even our desiresare part of the reproduction of the body of the capital and the state. There isno real outside: even if we are unemployed or migrants we play a role. Ourprecarious situations come with the compulsion to accept even ridiculouslybad employment, while our condition is a disciplining warning to all who199