[AUT] ephemera 8.2. ?Alternatively? released

["Stevphen Shukaitis" <stevphen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ephemera 8.2. ?Alternatively? released

ephemera 8.2., ?Alternatively.? is now online: http://www.ephemeraweb.org.
In its focus on alternatives, the latest ephemera issue addresses one of
the main tasks that critique has (to) set for itself: to counter political
paralysis of any kind, construed by the right and left, by pointing at the
false logic behind it, indeed, by means of the formulation and practice of
alternative logics.

There are many ways of organizing social life other than on the basis of
and dictated by the kind of free market- or neoliberalism that reigns in
large parts of the world.  In other words, this issue, its editorial
specifically and its contributions in their own way attempt to
delegitimize the notorious post-communist ?There Is No Alternative?-logic
of thinking (TINA). At the same time, this issue also warns against the
defeatist way of thinking represented by the casting of commodification as
a totalizing force that leaves nothing beyond its grasp. While this threat
is real, to portray consumer capitalism thus is a process of abstraction
that is not only politically paralyzing, but can even be construed as
conformist, like any belief in ?this is how things are?, like TINA.

To suggest that things can be otherwise, the shift of perspective might be
an important part of alteration (the act of producing alternatives),
including shifting our perspective on how to appreciate alternatives. That
is, rather than attributing appreciation based on the potential for
realizability, the editorial suggests that alternatives might prove
politically enabling precisely because they seem unrealizable.

Alternatives understood in this way do not function as different solutions
but as different problems; not as alternative answers to the same
questions but as alternative questions opening up for new answers. Whereas
any alternative solution keeps the problem which it solves intact, an
alternative problem breaks with and delegitimizes the existing solution.
It divides, twists and thoroughly subverts established Truths as well as
breaking the ground for new ways of thinking. As such, the moment of
alteration transforms the horizon of the given by way of giving us new
questions to ask.

The issue opens with Adrian Mackenzie?s article on productivity systems
that are put forward in the self-improvement literature. In the second
article of this issue, Simon Lilley addresses the problems that charity
work encounters in times in which philanthropy is pressured to take the
form of business. The issue continues with a note written by Matteo
Mandarini on the Italian political thinker Mario Tronti, in particular his
text Politica e destino, which deals with the relation between politics
and fate. Jason Del Gandio?s note discusses the emphasis on alternatives
in the context of to the proliferation of alternative organizational forms
and the associated plurality of struggles that recast Marxism as the only
alternative to bringing about (a certain kind of) social change.

Alex Callinicos? book The Resources of Critique is reviewed by Michael
Rowlinson. De Angelis? The Beginning of History: Value Struggles and
Global Capital is reviewed by Peter Fleming. In his review of an edited
volume that discusses the thought of Antonio Negri, Erik Empson engages,
among other things, with the challenges in suggesting alternatives to
received wisdom, as embedded in theory as well as practice, in this case
Negri?s dedicated attempt to renew the revolutionary spirit and
imagination.This issue concludes with a double review of the The
Dictionary of Alternatives (Parker et al., 2007). The dictionary offers a
rich list of alternatives to pursue, different paths to opt for in our
search for the other and the better. The first review, written by Daniel
King, focuses on the role that the book could play in the community of
critical management-scholars. The second review is written by Alan W.
Moore and brings to the fore the utopian aspect of alternatives.




-- 
Stevphen Shukaitis
Autonomedia Editorial Collective
http://www.autonomedia.org
http://slash.interactivist.net

"Autonomy is not a fixed, essential state. Like gender, autonomy is
created through its performance, by doing/becoming; it is a political
practice. To become autonomous is to refuse authoritarian and compulsory
cultures of separation and hierarchy through embodied practices of
welcoming difference... Becoming autonomous is a political position for it
thwarts the exclusions of proprietary knowledge and jealous hoarding of
resources, and replaces the social and economic hierarchies on which these
depend with a politics of skill exchange, welcome, and collaboration.
Freely sharing these with others creates a common wealth of knowledge and
power that subverts the domination and hegemony of the master?s rule." -
subRosa Collective
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