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Why do people work for other people? This seemingly naïve question is at the heart of Lordon's argument. To complement Marx's partial answers, especially in the face of the disconcerting spectacle of the engaged, enthusiastic employee, Lordon brings to bear a "Spinozist anthropology" that reveals the fundamental role of affects and passions in the employment relationship, reconceptualizing capitalist exploitation as the capture and remolding of desire. A thoroughly materialist reading of Spinoza's Ethics allows Lordon to debunk all notions of individual autonomy and self-determination while simultaneously saving the ideas of political freedom and liberation from capitalist exploitation. Willing Slaves of Capital is a bold proposal to rethink capitalism and its transcendence on the basis of the contemporary experience of work.
Why centrist politics in France is bound to fail This book analyses the French political crisis, which has entered its most acute phase in more than thirty years with the break-up of traditional left and right social blocs. Governing parties have distanced themselves from the working classes, leaving behind on the one hand, craftsmen, shop owners and small entrepreneurs disappointed by the timidity of the reforms of the neoliberal right and, on the other hand, workers and employees hostile to the neoliberal and pro-European integration orientation of the Socialist Party. The Presidency of François Hollande was less an anomaly than the definitive failure of attempts to reconcile the social base of the left with the so-called "modernisation" of the French model. The project, based on the pursuit of neoliberal reforms, did not die with Hollande's failure; it was taken up and radicalised by his successor, Emmanuel Macron. This project needs a social base, the 'bourgeois bloc", designed to overcome the right/left divide by a new alliance between the middle and upper classes. But this, as we have seen recently on the streets of Paris and elsewhere, is a precarious process.
A passionate account of how the gulf between France’s metropolitan elites and its working classes are tearing the country apart Christophe Guilluy, a French geographer, makes the case that France has become an “American society”—one that is both increasingly multicultural and increasingly unequal. The divide between the global economy’s winners and losers in today’s France has replaced the old left‑right split, leaving many on “the periphery.” As Guilluy shows, there is no unified French economy, and those cut off from the country’s new economic citadels suffer disproportionately on both economic and social fronts. In Guilluy’s analysis, the lip service paid to the idea of an “open society” in France is a smoke screen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes. The ruling classes in France are reaching a dangerous stage, he argues; without the stability of a growing economy, the hope for those excluded from growth is extinguished, undermining the legitimacy of a multicultural nation.
The changing look and feel of metropolitan France has been a notable preoccupation of French culture since the 1980s. This collection of essays explores concern with space across a range of media, from recent cinema, documentary filmmaking and photographic projects to television drama and contemporary fiction, and examines what it reveals about the fluctuating state of the nation in a post-colonial and post-industrial age.
This book guides the reader through the many complications and contradictions that characterize popular contestation today, focusing on its socio-political, cultural, and aesthetic dimensions. The volume recognizes that the same media and creative strategies can be used to pursue very different causes, as the anti-gay marriage Manif Pour Tous movement in France makes clear. The contributors are scholars from the humanities and social sciences, who analyze protests in particular regions, including Egypt, Iran, Australia, France, Spain, Greece, and Hong Kong, and transnational protests such as the NSA-leaks and the mobilization of migrants and refugees. Not only the specificity of these protest movements is examined, but also their tendency to connect and influence each other, as well as the central, often ambiguous role global digital platforms play in this.
This book examines Emmanuel Macron’s political career from his rise as a public figure to his time as a president. By offering a close study of his actions and ideological commitment, this book argues that, despite claims of being ideologically neutral, Macron actually represents a new form of right-wing politics in France.
A Left-wing populist insurgency exploded across the West in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis After decades of retreat, the last decade saw a left resurgence from the US to Western Europe and the Mediterranean. This revival of anti-establishment left-wing candidates was not only left but also populist. Though in most cases these movements ran out of steam before effectively being in a position wield state power, many of the parties and figures associated with this wave of left populism have entered government and others are still contesting high office. Providing a blow-by-blow history of the rise and defeat of left electoral movements in the West, Boriello and Jaeger guide us through the conditions that shaped this wave of insurgencies. These include extreme and rising inequality, the collapse of civic life, and a lack of trust in traditional institutions. In this context, Boriello and Jaeger argue that some or another form of populism was all but inevitable. And, despite defeats, left offensives of present and future will be populist in nature. This is because the conditions that shaped the first left populist wave are still very much with us.
A refreshing contribution to existing scholarship in English on contemporary French documentary cinema. Combines textured film analyses with rich contextual and conceptual readings. Makes a strong case for long-form documentary cinema’s critical and political force as a "praxis of precarious sociality". Connects debates on documentary and film ethics with sociological, philosophical and political conceptions of precarity, precariousness and vulnerability.
Scholars have long viewed intelligence as the preserve of nation states. Where the term 'private sector intelligence' is used, the focus has been overwhelmingly on government contractors. As such, a crucial aspect of intelligence power has been overlooked: the use of intelligence by corporations to navigate and influence the world. Where there has been academic scrutiny of the field, it is seen as a post-9/11 phenomenon, and that a state monopoly of intelligence has been eroded. Beyond States and Spies demonstrates - through original research - that such a monopoly never existed. Private sector intelligence is at least as old as the organised intelligence activities of the nation state. The book offers a comparative examination of private and public intelligence, and makes a compelling case for understanding the dangers posed by unregulated intelligence in private hands. Overall, this casts new light on a hitherto under investigated academic space.