Sub Focus - Could This Be Real
Guattari on 'Crisis' and 'Recovery'
Among the recurrent themes in these pages, one finds a critique - more relevant now than ever - of the perpetual “crisis” discourse which has become a tremendous instrument of “governance” and “normalization.” Already in the introduction, Guattari reminds us that the “crises” (the multiple crises that capitalist societies unceasingly experience among which the one we are living through today is but the latest) are not inescapable inevitabilities, but the direct consequence of the economic order, supported by capitalist political strategies on a planetary scale. Consequently, we never stop “mistaking the effect for the cause” and justifying political arbitrages by the harsh necessities of an economy that is now escaping all governmental control, by pretending to forget that deregulation of the economy and the financial sector on a global level was made possible only by the prerequisite political choices. In this way, everything is implemented so as to present the crisis to us as an “obvious apodictic Fact:” “Unemployment, poverty rain down on humanity like Biblical plagues. Under these conditions, one can no longer conceive of any but a single - with a few variants - possible economic policy in response to the sole conceivable description of economic policy.” (p. 56)
The specter of the crisis (the power of which is increased tenfold in the biopolitical domain today by the media one-upsmanship over mutant viruses and pandemics that threaten us from all sides) is associated with the myth of “emergence from the tunnel,” of the “great recovery,” the precursors of which are unceasingly detected in order to mask the irreversible character of the situation. That’s how one aims at obscuring and warding off the necessity for a radical change in economic policy, for an in-depth transformation of social subjectivity that would be in a position to confront the continual acceleration of techno-scientific revolution without leading to ever more mutilating and paralyzing effects. For a long time, according to Guattari, the crisis has no longer been a transitory phase destined to lead to a miraculous “recovery,” but the sign of a radical malfunction in the mechanisms managing production and wealth flows: “Even the most narrow-minded economists are discovering with amazement a sort of madness to these systems and feel the urgency of alternative solutions.” (p. 131)
medical malpractice insurance
What sort of business could this possibly be for. Someone tell me.
"India teaches us that chaos, madness can be good juice"
— Headline from a Ugandan opinion column
Brian Wilson looks like Nadim in this picture
I mostly just like how everybody’s looking at Brian. Like “See, Brian? Nothing to be afraid of! Just water, brah!” And he’s like “Let’s get this photoshoot done so i can go back to my sandbox piano.”
Audio of LBJ ordering pants from the Oval Office
“Yeah, now another thing: the crotch, down where your nuts hang, is always a little too tight. So when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there, because they cut me. They’re just like riding a wire fence.”
One of the many reasons williamsburg is “losing its edge”
"There are so few lights on at night in Africa. Its such a dark continent!"
— Overheard on my plane ride into Uganda
