ephemera "Immaterial and affective labor: explored" issue released

The new issue (7.1) of ephemera: theory & politics in organization, entitled "immaterial and affective labor: explored," has just been published at http://www.ephemeraweb.org

This latest special issue offers a critical engagement with the conceptual and political territory animated by the deployment of such ideas in the work of Hardt, Negri, Lazzarato, Virno and others, and follows previous explorations of class composition and politics in ephemera (for instance in the issues on 'the theory of the multitude' and 'writing: labour'). That it refers to both a conceptual and a political territory means two things: on the one hand, that the critical engagements herein are not aimed at theoretical clarification alone, but seek to address directly the questions and practices of politics and organisation thrown up by debates on immaterial and affective labour; on the other, that the form of the engagement is not reduced to the field of (post-)Operaismo, but aims at bringing together empirical insights into the present forms of organisation of labour, and is open to inflections coming from other disciplines and areas, such as organisation studies and labour process theory. As our guest editors suggest, the space in which these debates take place is defined by a 'double ambivalence' deriving from, on the one hand, the excess that labour always produces and that capital always necessarily needs to recuperate, and, on the other, the particular novelty of contemporary cycles of struggle, that is, their capacity to intercommunicate and the heightened attention to the composition of difference they require. It is this ambivalence that makes questions of flight and capture, 'victory' and 'defeat', impossible to pose and foreclose within a general theoretical framework. This is what necessitates an analysis of resistance and struggle, class composition as well as political organization, as an enquiry placed alongside the actual practices of those who work and struggle today: theory as an element in organisation, rather than as an end in itself.editorialEmma Dowling, Rodrigo Nunes and Ben TrottImmaterial and Affective Labour: Explored articlesAdam ArvidssonCreative Class or Administrative Class? On Advertising and the ‘Underground'George CaffentzisCrystals and Analytical Engines: Historical and Conceptual Preliminaries to a New Theory of MachinesKristin CarlsAffective Labour in Milanese Large Scale Retailing: Labour Control and E mp loyees' Coping StrategiesPatricia Ticineto Clough, Greg Goldberg, Rachel Schiff, Aaron Weeks and Craig WillseNotes Towards a Theory of Affect-ItselfAntonio Conti, Anna Curcio, Alberto De Nicola, Paolo Do, Serena Fredda, Margherita Emiletti, Serena Orazi, Gigi Roggero, Davide Sacco, Giuliana ViscoThe Anamorphosis of Living LabourMark Coté and Jennifer PybusLearning to Immaterial Labour 2.0Mariarosa Dalla CostaRustic and EthicalEmma DowlingProducing the Dining Experience: Measure, Subjectivity and the Affective WorkerExperimental Chair on the Production of SubjectivityCall Center : The Art of Virtual ControlLeopoldina FortunatiImmaterial Labor and Its MachinizationMax HenningerDoing the Math: Reflections on the Alleged Obsolescence of the Law of Value under Post-FordismRodrigo Nunes'Forward How? Forward Where?' I: (Post-) Operaismo Beyond the Immaterial Labour ThesisBen TrottImmaterial Labour and World Order: An Evaluation of a ThesisKathi WeeksLife Within and Against Work: Affective Labor, Feminist Critique, and Post-Fordist PoliticsElizabeth WissingerModelling a Way of Life: Immaterial and Affective Labour in the Fashion Modelling IndustrySteve WrightBack to the Future: Italian Workerists Reflect Upon The Operaista ProjectSee details of how to be regularly informed about new ephemera issues at: http://www.ephemeraweb.org/emailalerts