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. The strategy to placate social desires through cheap credit, property acquisition and the decoration of domestic surfaces continues against a muted backdrop of factory occupations, boss-nappings, foreclosures, and the dregs of what looks to be Big Brother’s last season. It is tempting to imagine that the mass tutelage in narcissism which has helped pacify the social body for so long might collapse under the weight of its own vacuity and unsustainable cruelty. As capitalism falters in its corralling of desires, writers in this issue think about how such energies might escape from their official channels.
2009-09, ISSN 1356-7748-213 & ISBN 9781906496340
FURTHER DESCRIPTION
Not Fast Food, Women!
Reviewing Alina Mazzari's We Want Roses Too, Agnese Trocchi surveys the ruins of Italy's sexual revolution
The Return of the Red Bourgeoisie
Stefan Szczelkun interviews artist Nada Prilja on Black Wave cinema and the cultural influences of her Yugoslavian upbringing
Unstable Equilibrium
Howard Slater on Yugoslav film-maker Dušan Makavejev's fragmentary genius
State Capitalism in Britain
Neither creative nor productive, Britain's private sector is the biggest benefits scrounger of all, writes James Heartfield
The Buck Stops Here
Daniel Berchenko on the haphazard rise and potential fall of the dollar's hegemony
Artist's Project: Out of Time
by David Osbladeston
Notes on the Last Days of Jack Sheppard
Benedict Seymour on Anya Kirschner & David Panos' recent film, and the class politics of representation in financial times
When Nothing is Produced
Marcel Stoetzler jolts sexual politics out of its missionary position
In Praise of Usura
Angela Mitropoulos and Melinda Cooper praise subprime 'speculators' who are inverting the exorbitant demands of debt
Be Realistic, Demand the Negative
Marina Vishmidt reviews Negativity & Revolution − an anthology that puts Adorno's negative dialectics back on the menu
Illustrations
Nada Prlja, Anja Kirschner
ISBN 978-1906496340
Dimensions: 22.4 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm
122 pages
