nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

How are our bodies interpellated, identified, subjected – made productive?In a society dominated by the demands of capital accumulation, the bodyis posited primarily as labour power: the body and soul put to work ashuman resource. Childrearing and our own reproduction is first of allthe reproduction of labour power. The demands put on the body in thiscontext place it in a double bind, a contradictory injunction. On the onehand, the body is rendered passive-political in the imperative to becomesubjugated, its ‘normal’ structures formed as normalised effects of lostbattles, subdued or temporarily inactive struggles. The body carries with itmemories of what it wanted but failed to do, desires and possibilities thatare of the body, but point beyond past and present. On the other hand,the body as affirmative of affects and traversed by enthusiasm. The body isactive-political, it moves, pulls other bodies along, it is capable of affectingand being affected. Yet, this is equally a terrain of struggle as the body isrendered hyper-active. Neoliberal capitalism desperately needs ‘liberated’bodies that are ‘creative’, flexible and productive – these are bodies thatare ready to cope with the unforeseeable, with risk, stress, danger. Howthen, to reactivate, politicise and de-traumatise these struggles, and howto de-individualise the defeats and conformism our bodies have suffered?How to free the body from the repression of waged labour? How to openup our vulnerabilities to each other, in ways that can counter both thethreats to the stability of our selves and the pressure of having to be andperform as (working) supermen and wonder-women?How are our bodies engaged and produced in current struggles?How, in our struggles, do we find ourselves being affected, changed,expanded and reprimanded? How can we talk about our politicalpractices with our bodies in mind? How to grasp the ways in which race,class and gender play out through bodily experiences without reducingthe body to a socially constructed object? Our politics against deeplyembodied racisms, sexisms and elitisms will only ever be superficial andunconvincing if it does not alter the ways our bodies relate and movetogether.Can an undoing and reshaping of our bodies have an impact on an undoing andreshaping of our subjectivities and of our institutions?A practice of undoing our bodies does involve some sort of violence: theundoing of a body is the undoing of its traumas as well as the undoing ofwhat our body has become comfortable with. Defensive reactions learnedand absorbed to cope with those traumas, behaviours perceived as nor-28