In this issue of Mute we revisit the question of ‘the human’ in the age of biopolitics. What do philosophers, activists and ‘pro-revolutionaries’ have to say about homo sapiens in a world where monstrous claims on value demand populations be reduced to ‘bare (hardworking) life’? From repression of messy ‘species being’ in revolutionary milieus, to the managerial dream of putting supposed species traits like language and empathy to work, the stakes of determining humanness, or resisting that determination, are high.

Burdened by the Absence of the Billions?
Howard Slater reviews Frére Dupont’s Species Being and Other Stories

He’s Not Beyond Good and Evil
Nina Power asks if there’s a point to Paolo Virno’s unhappy human

Monstrous Plans & Good Habitats
Mark Crinson on suggestions that anti-colonisation struggles were also about architecture

The Political Immunity of Discourse
Erik Empson on Roberto Esposito’s Bios

Wishful Thinkers of the Calamity Bazaar
John Barker says the time to attack the fantasy world of capitalist spin-doctors is now

The Who and Whom of Liberty Taking
Peter Linebaugh asks how it’s possible to discuss liberty in the absence of equality

Duck! You Regeneration Sucker
Neil Gray watches David Panos and Anja Kirschner’s Trail of the Spider and finds history repeating itself

The Sleep of Realism Produces Monsters
Andrew Fisher considers documentary maker Adam Curtis’ claims to ‘realism’ and political neutrality

Quarterly, critical and cheap, Mute is a concrete jumble of all that’s still grunting in the inter-finessing hyper-barrios of culture, politics and technology 2.0. As capitalism yawns towards apocalypse we match it issue by issue with a sustained critique of everything existing, from eco prole-bashing and shanty chic to academic aut-onanist marxistry

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Contents of this cluster

1. Burdened by the Absence of the Billions?
2. Editorial: Empathy for the Devil
3. Monstrous Plans & Good Habitats
4. He’s Not Beyond Good and Evil
5. The Political Immunity of Discourse
6. Wishful Thinkers of the Calamity Bazaar
7. The Who and Whom of Liberty Taking
8. Duck! You Regeneration Sucker
9. The Sleep of Realism Produces Monsters