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’?

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. As the sensibilities of the Creative Class are sensationalised, courted, and monetised, the creative possibilities of the dehumanised majority narrow.

The new print issue of Mute magazine is out now. Vol2 #9 takes on the UK's services-for-surveillance State, technological utopias, green capitalism and much more!

Mute Vol 2 #8 features Stewart Martin on aesthetic education in post-Fordism, a prizewinning essay on music and code by Simon Yuill (Vilém Flusser theory award, Transmediale 2008), comic-strip satire from Plastique Fantastique, Tom Campbell and Dmitry Vorobyev on carcino-regen in St Petersburg, and by Benedict Seymour on art-sport implosion and the 2012 Olympics.