Whether seen as the ultimate capitalists, Buddhists or communards, bees elicit fantasies and fears of social productivity and crisis by turns. This issue is not really about bees of course, but the ‘colony collapse disorder' which is currently threatening the global bee population works as a stark metaphor for the crisis of reproduction that is currently afflicting human society as it is currently configured.

In this issue of Mute there is a generalised refusal to have our selves, in the widest sense of the word, put to work. As we start to see the real repercussions of the financial crisis bite, the Bretton Woods ideological state apparatus is looking rather threadbare.

Post-Fordist State planners, developers, and their entrepreneurial service arm have debased the meaning of ‘creativity’ to a shallow pretext for the further looting of cities and public wealth. The cookie-cutter aestheticisation of selective zones of our cities (tourist promenades, waterside public art, creative quarters), is a mere fig leaf covering the acts of enclosure and exclusion that cultural regeneration entails.

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’?

The state is pouring billions into propping up the collapsing financial sector, but who is going to take care of the rest of us? Between Hollywood’s embattled superbats and the gruesome charisma contests of political party leaders, we can be sure of one thing – we don’t need another hero! Mute surveys some popular myths of political-economic salvation (and damnation), and looks for signs of collective agency in the global Gotham

Price UK £6 EUR £6.7 US/ROW £7.8   Featuring; Falling for the Future - Iain Boal brings modernity's futuramas back down to earth. Citizens Banned?

Price UK £6 EUR £6.7 US/ROW £7.8 Mute Vol 2 #8 features a selection of articles and artwork commissioned for our online platform http://metamute.org over this Spring.

Price UK £6 EUR £6.7 US/ROW £7.8 We are living through an intensification of citizens’, and non-citizens’, visibility to capital. Database convergence, states of emergency and points-based immigration systems destroy the legal and informational grey zones in which the poor shelter and organise.