In this issue of Mute we look at the systemic requirement to appear, to have an identity, to become intelligible - as an individual, a face, a body, a set of affects, a data-set within biopolitical capitalism. This recurrent demand to appear is both extracted and seduced out of us by the apparatuses of state and spectacle, the system of property and images, the simultaneous need to harness labour and manage the unemployed. In this issue we also look at the deeper shifts in capitalism which trigger the intensifying management of life; a crisis of abundance is brought on by industrial and technological developments converting the majority of the earth's inhabitants into a ‘surplus' population to be managed and ‘warehoused' in jails, workfare schemes or that open prison known as Web 2.0.

Table of contents:

Editorial

On Edge

Stefan Szczelkun talks to artist Alexa Wright about how her work breaks down the self

Rumours of War

Paul Helliwell rhythmanalyses Steve Goodman’s Sonic Warfare and the group work Noise & Capitalism

Artificial Scarcity in a World of Overproduction: An Escape that Isn’t

The ‘production of innovation’, writes Sander, is no replacement for the production of value

Eliminating Labour: Aesthetic Economy in Harun Farocki

Benedict Seymour on devalorisation in a high-tech cinematic oeuvre

The Wealth of Negations

Artist’s project by CVA Group

Clandestinity and Appearance

John Cunningham takes up the case of clandestinity and resistance in the age of biopolitics

Is the Brickburner Still the Same?

Neinsager opens and shuts dissident writer and migrant labourer B. Traven’s identity file

Casa Pound and the New Radical Right in Italy

The Moyote Project discusses the strange case of fascists imitating anarchists to popular effect

University Struggles at the End of the Edu-Deal

George Caffentzis pieces together an emerging plane of struggle

Contents of this cluster

1. Editorial
2. On Edge
3. Rumours of War
4. Artificial Scarcity in a World of Overproduction: An Escape that Isn't
5. Eliminating Labour: Aesthetic Economy in Harun Farocki
6. The Wealth of Negations
7. Clandestinity and Appearance
8. Is the Brickburner Still the Same?
9. Casa Pound and the New Radical Right in Italy
10. University Struggles at the End of the Edu-Deal