Amoral familism, a concept introduced by Edward C. Banfield in his 1958 work *The Moral Basis of a Backward Society*, emerges from his field studies in southern Italy. Banfield’s thesis has since sparked endless debates about the role of family and culture in the socio-economic stagnation of certain communities. He argued that in places like "Montegrano" (the pseudonym for Chiaromonte, where his research was based), a deeply entrenched loyalty to the nuclear family at the expense of the collective good fosters a kind of moral vacuum, blocking any wider civic or economic progress.
The core of Banfield’s idea is this: individuals in these communities act in ways that prioritize only the immediate material gain of their families, under the assumption that everyone else is doing the same. This extreme self-interest creates a culture where broader social cooperation is impossible, and where notions of public good are dismissed or outright ignored. Banfield coined the term *amoral familism* to capture this way of life—*familism* because loyalty is limited to the family, and *amoral* because the concepts of right and wrong are applied only within the family unit, leaving interactions with the broader community morally indifferent.
The consequences of this ethos are pervasive. Public life, politics, and the very fabric of the social order are undermined. No one pursues collective interests unless it brings personal gain. Public officials, seen as corrupt by default, rarely act in the public's interest but instead use their positions for self-enrichment. Citizens view political participation with suspicion, believing it futile or corrupt, further eroding democratic structures. The result is a society stuck in a vicious cycle of mistrust and stagnation, where both economic and civic life remain stunted.
Banfield’s findings in Montegrano reflect not just a failure of collective action but a near-total absence of civic engagement. Public trust is eroded to the point where even charity is rare, and cooperation between families, let alone between individuals and institutions, is virtually nonexistent. The pervasive belief is that one must strike preemptively to protect the family from others, who are always perceived as competitors or threats.
Moreover, Banfield links this way of thinking to several structural factors: high mortality rates, precarious agricultural livelihoods, and small, isolated family units all reinforce a worldview centered on short-term survival rather than long-term collaboration. The fear of death and loss, combined with the isolation of nuclear families, creates a culture of self-preservation that leaves no room for collective solidarity.
The implications extend beyond Italy, as Banfield suggests that this pattern of behavior could apply to other communities across Southern Europe and the Mediterranean. His ideas, however, have drawn criticism, particularly from those who argue that cultural explanations for economic and social backwardness overlook the material conditions that actually drive these behaviors. Critics like Sydel F. Silverman have pointed out that Banfield's argument wrongly attributes cultural values as the root cause of underdevelopment, when in fact these values may be a response to poverty and instability rather than its cause.
Yet, the resonance of amoral familism goes beyond academic critique. As the concept entered popular discourse, it became a shorthand for describing not only the backwardness of rural Italian villages but also a broader Mediterranean tendency toward familial loyalty over collective responsibility. While some have dismissed Banfield’s theory as reductive or even stereotypical, others argue that it captures an essential truth about how individualism, family loyalty, and economic insecurity can entwine to block social cohesion.
Loredana Sciolla, a contemporary sociologist, challenges Banfield’s framing of Italian culture. In her work *Italiani, stereotipi di casa nostra*, Sciolla critiques amoral familism as a narrow stereotype, highlighting instead Italy’s rich tradition of confraternities, local autonomy, and community organizations. For Sciolla, the family is not the enemy of progress but has been historically a source of both solidarity and resistance against oppressive systems.
In *Andare ai resti*, Emilio Quadrelli delves into the transformation of neighborhood gangs into *batterie*—a uniquely Italian configuration of youthful, tightly-knit criminal camaraderie. By the 1970s, these *batterie* had become fixtures of Italy’s urban landscape, embodying what Quadrelli calls “a continuation of defiance under different forms.” These groups weren’t chasing conventional power or profit; rather, as Quadrelli writes, “to make a mockery of power was the true prize, the smirk on the faces of these young rebels a greater treasure than any material spoils.”
Women, too, carved out spaces within this world, moving beyond the limits imposed by both conservative and radical circles. This ethos, driven not by greed but by an irreverent thrill, was central to their way of life. It was about flipping the script on authority, about taking joy in the cracks of the system, and in deriding the so-called guardians of order.
Quadrelli, Emilio. *.* DeriveApprodi, 2024.
Worldwide and across history, poor people have reclaimed land and buildings through squatting. This has consistently been a direct answer to housing needs, a seed for reclaiming space, and for transforming villages and cities. In many contexts, they negotiated for some form of legalization. This has not necessarily led to the neutralization of use value in squatters’ practices. In fact, the specific governance arrangements and articulations of power among dwellers, owners, and the state have been diverse.
Terms such as "flexible institutionalization" and "precarious institutionalization" are used by housing and social movement scholars to describe ways in which squatters negotiate permanence and maintain degrees of autonomy when interacting with the state and the institutions of private property. These terms aim to capture processes where the politics of squatters resist integration into state institutions and capitalist dynamics.
Sociologist Miguel Martínez has argued for a more nuanced understanding of these negotiations and proposed the concept of "anomalous institutions" as a potential reworking of state assimilation. In this formulation, *anomalous institutions* are those where core elements of squatting’s radical transformative politics resist integration and maintain degrees of autonomy. Beyond squatting, the term may apply to other situations where unauthorized practices gain ground and a degree of stability by entering into dialogue with institutions.
Martínez, Miguel A. 2014. “.” *International Journal of Urban and Regional Research*, 38(2): 646–74.
Danilo Montaldi’s *Autobiografie della leggera*, published in 1961, documents the marginalized lives of vagabonds, pickpockets, and smugglers in the Po River valley, who skulked around the edges of postwar Italy’s economic boom. The word *leggera* itself carries layers of meaning, not merely referring to plebeian criminality but suggesting a kind of lightness—a nimbleness of spirit—that captures these figures’ improvisational tactics.
In Milanese slang, *leggera* can denote the deftness of a pickpocket’s hand or the quiet step of a thief at night. Yet it also alludes to the relative “lightness” of poor people’s pockets, a metonymy for their constant material lack. For Montaldi, these individuals embodied a cultural milieu of evasion and survival that characterized those excluded from the state’s industrial ambitions, creating a counter-society where being *leggera* meant thriving in the cracks of the system.
Montaldi, Danilo. **. Einaudi, 1961.
# Automated Landlords
As noted by scholars in the US, where digital housing platforms and intermediaries are more established, companies hold increasing power over and insight into the lives of tenants. Surveillance and monitoring regimes have been consistently extended, making access to shelter and housing contingent on multiple factors that go well beyond simply paying rent. Capillary data collection about tenants in the name of (real estate) risk management involves combining credit rating inputs, registration addresses, criminal records, as well as scraping social media for ‘risky language’ and political opinions.
This can lead to discriminatory, regressive, and oppressive outcomes within an already extractive power dynamic. These issues became painfully clear during the wave of evictions and threats of eviction caused by the global economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Anxious landlords contended with rent strikes and municipal or state-wide eviction moratoriums, often enlisting remote property management and PropTech companies to implement surveillance and data-driven tracking technologies. In some cases, lists of potential rent strikers—or those voicing support for rent strikes—were compiled and shared among ‘automated landlords’ as a form of preventive blacklist, potentially precluding tenants’ ability to rent in the future.
Fields, Desiree (2022). ". *Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space*, 54(1), 160-181.
McElroy, Erin, Whittaker, Meredith, and Fried, Genvieve (2020). "". *Boston Review*, April 30. Available at: [Boston Review](https://bostonreview.net/articles/erin-mcelroy-meredith-whittaker-genevieve-fried-covid-19-and-tech/)
Eric Hobsbawm’s *Bandits* is a classic exploration of social banditry, a concept he developed to describe figures who operate outside the law yet gain popular support for challenging oppressive systems. Set against the backdrop of rural societies, particularly in pre-industrial Europe, the book examines bandits as folk heroes—men and women whose defiance of the authorities embodies community grievances and resistance. Hobsbawm categorizes them as “noble robbers,” such as Robin Hood, who redistributes wealth; “avengers,” who retaliate against injustice; and “heroes of the oppressed,” who provide symbolic hope.
Drawing from historical records, oral traditions, and myths, Hobsbawm argues that social bandits emerge in societies where the state is seen as corrupt or exploitative, and where marginalized communities view crime as a justified response. The book situates banditry within the larger study of social movements, connecting it to modern-day political dissent and guerrilla warfare. *Bandits* reveals how the popular support for these figures reflects broader social dynamics, challenging simplistic distinctions between criminality and political protest.
"Belíndia" is a fictional, ambiguous, and contradictory country that combines characteristics of Belgium and India. It reflects a blend of the affluent, small, and well-regulated environment of Belgium with the vast, socially complex, and impoverished reality of India. The term captures the stark contrast between wealth and poverty, particularly in terms of laws, taxation, living standards, and the application of justice.
This concept was popularized in 1974 by Brazilian economist Edmar Lisboa Bacha in his fable *"El Economista y el Rey de Belíndia: Una Fábula para Tecnócratas."* Through this allegory, Bacha criticized the economic policies of Brazil's military regime at the time, arguing that they were creating a highly unequal society. In his view, the regime fostered a dual reality: one part of the population enjoyed living conditions comparable to those in Belgium, while the rest endured a standard of living similar to India.
The disparity in Belíndia extends beyond wealth, touching on how laws are enforced and who enjoys full citizenship rights. In the "Belgium" part of Belíndia, laws are strictly enforced, citizens benefit from an efficient legal system, and they enjoy social security and civil rights. However, in the "India" part, laws are often poorly enforced or influenced by corruption, leaving the majority with limited access to justice and citizenship rights. People in this segment of society may be marginalized and unable to seek recourse when the law is broken, creating a deep divide between those who are protected by the legal system and those who are not.
Thus, Bacha’s Belíndia metaphor not only captures economic inequality but also highlights the disparities in legal protections, justice, and citizenship, underscoring the deep divisions in society. The term has since entered economic and political discussions as a symbol of this ongoing challenge.
Bacha, Edmar L. “.” Cuadernos de Economía 11, no. 33 (1974): 60–64.
* “Born Guilty: George Jackson and the Return of the Lumpen Hero”, from the book: Hill, Rebecca Nell. **. Duke University Press, 2008.
Excerpt pp. 268-9:
For late-twentieth-century activists and thinkers confronting what some sociologists referred to as a racially “split labor market” and an “aristocracy of labor” produced in the unionized workers of the developed countries, this category of permanently unemployed and underemployed people took on significance as the victims of empire and as an anti-imperialist vanguard. Lenin’s *Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism* had presented the notion of the tendency in imperialism to “create privileged sections among the workers, and to detach them from the broad masses of the proletariat.” Third World Marxists took Lenin’s notion as the starting point. Frantz Fanon argued further that, in the colonized world, trade unionists were trapped in “anachronistic programs” that neglected the revolutionary potential of the peasantry and the lumpen proletariat, who “won’t become reformed characters to please colonial society,” and constituted the “gangrene ever present at the heart of colonial domination.”
The Black Panthers similarly saw the lumpen proletariat as a class formed by defiance to colonial morality and applied Fanon’s vision of the colonized town to the American ghetto, which they defined as an internal colony. They saw the lumpen proletariat as the vanguard also because they saw the class itself, which they defined as Black, as the product of American racism, and they defined the division within the working class as a central contradiction in American capitalism. The Black Panther Party founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale saw the accusation of criminality as fundamental to American racism, and both accused criminals and prisoners were a focal point in the Black Panthers’ Ten Point Program, the eighth point of which demanded the release of all Blacks from America’s jails: “We Want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails. We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.”
Fanon had explained in *The Wretched of the Earth* that the assumption of depravity also dogged colonial subjects who lived behind a veil of distrust and viewed the laws of the society as those imposed on them by conquerors. “Confronted with a world ruled by the settler, the native is always presumed guilty,” he wrote. “But the native’s guilt is never a guilt that he accepts; it is rather a kind of curse, a sword of Damocles, for in his innermost spirit the native admits no accusation.”
George Jackson, who had come into conflict with the law at least once because he slashed his boss’s leather car seats after he had been called a racist name, exemplified the argument that many men in prison had turned to crime because of their unwillingness to humiliate themselves in white-dominated workplaces. Like Cleaver’s theories, these arguments made the lumpen status racial, creating a reverse notion of the “culture of poverty” thesis that would become popular later in the decade by rejecting the rules of work as racially humiliating for Blacks. Sociologists Jay MacLeod and Pierre Bourgois found that the rules of work in the United States disadvantage Black men and require performances of subservience. As MacLeod argues, the new service economy of the post–Second World War era puts young Black men at a special disadvantage, forcing them to “rub elbows” with white supervisors and customers. Unlike the disappearing manufacturing jobs with their culture of the shop floor, the service sector required them to “cultivate a style of interaction that puts employers and customers at ease.” Additionally, even those Black workers in industrial jobs, like the legendary League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit, faced union-supported seniority rules, disproportionate white power in union elections, and other obstacles.
However, Black Panthers did not generally equate crime with revolution. In practical terms, they saw criminals as potential revolutionaries who could transform into political activists through political education classes and survival programs. Black Panthers declared that crimes against other poor people violated solidarity. Above all, the lumpen hero was a symbol of power rather than an actual practical political guide in the 1960s movements. Bobby Seale, inspired by “Black folkloric history,” saw the lumpen figure as a rejection of white “innocence.” He promoted revolutionary action rooted in people’s “basic desires and needs” and worked in the Poverty Program in Oakland, teaching kids about the perils of crime with humor rather than moralizing.
Robin Kelley’s work describes the infrapolitics in rebellions of zoot suiters, Saturday night partiers, and hip-hop artists as critical aspects of Black working-class resistance, emphasizing the rejection of the “labor identity.” The Black Panthers’ glorification of the lumpen hero represented a cultural redemption of eros and Black folk tradition as viable elements for building new heroic images for Black manhood, explicitly rejecting the “honest worker” ideal as the fulcrum of radical identity. Celebrations of the revolutionary as desiring self were rejections of white authority and middle-class expectations of good behavior. For example, “Brother Jimmy” from Oakland argued that contempt for the lumpen came from those emulating the lifestyles of ‘Leave It to Beaver’ in futile attempts to transcend racial and class barriers.
The Black Panthers occasionally suggested that property theft could be an act of justice, echoing earlier anarchists and Italian radicals by describing some street crime as “class justice.” In June 1970, the party’s newspaper praised “three lumpen brothers shot in the process of taking what was rightfully theirs,” affirming that “any act of violence upon you (the rulers) is right on. It’s the people’s duty to attack and destroy any symbol of oppression within the colony. We are POWs and anything we do to break out of what we’re under is right on.” Panthers viewed killing police as victories that shattered the myth of police invincibility.
In *On Bullshit*, moral philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt offers a punchy meditation on a malady of modern society: our world is flooded with bullshit, which isn’t just lies or misinformation but something subtler, perhaps even more corrosive. Frankfurt suggests that bullshit, unlike lies, doesn’t concern itself with truth at all; it sidesteps it altogether. Whereas the liar cares enough about the truth to oppose it, the bullshitter is indifferent—to them, truth isn’t even on the radar. Their concern is solely to persuade or to project an image, regardless of accuracy.
Frankfurt draws a curious distinction between lying, bluffing, and bullshitting: lying is an opposition to truth; bluffing, a performance without genuine intention; but bullshitting is careless, unrooted in fact or falsity. It’s a kind of conceptual waste, divorced from reality, yet hauntingly abundant. Here, Frankfurt channels Wittgenstein, highlighting how philosophical nonsense contaminates truth itself—think of hot air, emptied of content, or shoddy goods manufactured with disregard for quality. In the end, bullshit lacks the sincerity that even lies possess.
In *Bullshit Jobs*, anthropologist David Graeber expands Frankfurt’s interrogation of bullshit from mere words to entire livelihoods. Graeber argues that a silent epidemic of pointless work haunts our modern economy—roles that even those who occupy them recognize as serving no real purpose. While Frankfurt isolates bullshit as a verbal phenomenon, Graeber applies it structurally, exposing a capitalism gone awry, where jobs are filled simply to maintain the façade of productivity and economic growth. These “bullshit jobs,” from middle management positions to redundant clerical work, are not only empty of meaning but demoralizing, contributing to what Graeber sees as a vast social malaise.
For Graeber, bullshit jobs are a perverse side-effect of capitalist ideologies that link self-worth to productivity. In a twisted irony, as technology advances to free us from labor, we invent new jobs that feel like time-sinks, roles whose only real purpose is to convince workers they are doing something important. This is a world, Graeber argues, where people who genuinely contribute to society—teachers, nurses, garbage collectors—are often underpaid and undervalued, while those in seemingly “essential” office roles are quietly aware of their own redundancy. It’s a system that breeds resentment, casting existential doubt over our relationship with work and worth.
* Barbagallo, Francesco. “.” *Studi Storici* 29, no. 2 (1988): 549–55.
Excerpt translated from Italian:
Until a few years ago, the term *camorra* referred to customs, attitudes, rituals, and criminal activities of a 19th-century Naples laid bare by the loss of its role as a capital city. It represented a sense of belonging and organization—more visible and flaunted than mysterious and secret—characterized by the aggregation of subproletarian and plebeian elements for criminal purposes, primarily extortion. Socially, a *camorrista* was synonymous with plebeian, neither bourgeois nor proletarian; politically, they were separated from and used by the dominant classes as clientelistic intermediaries and criminal operators, always in a marginal position, confined within their social boundaries. The camorra attracted the attention of writers, politicians, positivist anthropologists, and discerning officials (M. Monnier, P. Villari, G. Fortunato, A. De Blasio, G. Alongi, A. Labriola) and engaged writers and poets attuned to the marginalized classes and “dangerous classes” (F. Mastriani, F. Russo), along with others (S. Di Giacomo and M. Serao) who focused on the fates of bourgeois classes softened under the Naples sky.
As a phenomenon of social marginality and dependent criminality, the camorra lacked long-term continuity, facing periodic repression that reinforced its subaltern status and inability to expand beyond its social boundaries. The camorra was never a well-defined subject of study and research or even the object of preliminary scientific systematization. Its social and political marginality corresponded to a cultural and scientific marginality, appearing as a relic of the past with myths, rituals, attitudes, and behaviors belonging to an ancient class destined to disappear into the shadows of a backwardness that modern rationality would ultimately erase.
Yet, as often occurs in historical processes more complex than any schema, the plebeian *camorrista* evolved—first into a *guappo*, engaging in modern, albeit improper, forms of mercantile intermediation between agricultural production and commercialization. This evolution ultimately led it to overcome social marginalization, positioning itself at the center of the economic and political market. In a region marked by great entrepreneurial spirit but a low inclination for coordinated processes, the *camorrista*—who appeared on the verge of extinction a few decades prior—profoundly renewed itself. Over the past decade, it re-emerged first as an authoritative figure in organized crime with international ties and finally as a distinct figure of the *criminal entrepreneur*, operating in both illegal and legal markets—a simultaneity possible in few places, notably those with advanced capitalism.
Thus ended a century-long history of social marginalization, culminating in the *camorrista*’s achievement of a central role within the social fabric of urban and regional areas where capitalist modernization has overcome the residues of pre-capitalist conditions.
* DeKoven, Bernie. *. MIT Press, 2013.
Excerpt from Chapter 4, *Keeping It Going*:
Along with the idea of fairness comes its necessary complement: cheating. Cheating is what someone does to give themselves a more than even chance to win. At least, that’s what we most often call cheating.
When I notice you trying to draw attention to my little cheat, I recognize that your motivation is less about rule-breaking and more about feeling deprived of your chance to win. At this stage, you aren’t thinking about the play community; the only well-played game, in your view, is the one you win.
It’s clear that your concern with my cheating is biased in your favor. Even if I’m flagrantly violating the game’s rules, as long as you’re winning, you don’t mind. Here, even asking for a hint could feel like cheating, unless it’s understood that my request is a kind of surrender—that if I win with your hint, it isn’t a “real” win.
Sometimes, you might let me cheat a bit if it levels the playing field, so long as you’re still ahead. In these cases, cheating isn’t about fairness—it’s about keeping the game going.
I was playing musical chairs with children aged seven to eleven who had started to build their play community. I adjusted the game’s rules to keep everyone playing: I didn’t remove chairs, ensuring that there was always one child without a seat. This child could experience the thrill of “losing” without being excluded, keeping the fun alive.
After about ten minutes, the game was at its peak, and I planned to switch to a new game soon. But suddenly, one child decided to take his chair with him as he moved, a spontaneous rule-breaking move that could be seen as basic cheating. I braced for confrontation, expecting indignation. Yet, when I stopped the music, everyone just laughed. No one was angry—everyone thought it was funny.
So, if they found this fun, who was I to interfere? They were playing well, in their own way. When the next round began, they all took their chairs along, creating a version of musical chairs where they were still playing the game but also cheating.
This experience revealed a type of cheating that, although technically unfair, was beneficial—it led us to a game we could enjoy together. I call this the *well-timed cheat*: rule-breaking done for the sake of play as much as for a player.
Sometimes, to keep a game alive, we need to change it, which might mean stopping to discuss alternatives or simply cheating. The well-timed cheat is risky and requires a sense of appropriateness, as the cheater must anticipate that breaking the rule will reaffirm everyone’s access to play.
The well-timed cheat works because it restores a sense of play. It allows us to change the game so that we can continue to enjoy it, reclaiming the playfulness that was lost in sticking rigidly to rules.
In recent years, anticorruption has grown into a major industry, with global expenditures reaching an estimated one hundred million dollars per year. Yet, despite this investment, few successes have emerged. We speak more about corruption now and spend more money combating it, but there is little evidence that this increased activity has led to meaningful results. Transparency International’s (TI) handbook cites best practices, such as laws or institutions implemented in various countries, but the actual impact of these practices remains unmeasured. Similarly, the World Bank’s *Anticorruption in Transition* describes ongoing programs rather than demonstrated successes.
Political corruption poses a severe threat to democracy and its consolidation. Just a year after Ukraine’s celebrated Orange Revolution, a seat in the Ukrainian parliament could already be bought—though not cheaply. The failure to curb corruption, combined with an increase in public discussion around it, breeds voter cynicism and undermines public trust in emerging democracies.
Why do so many anticorruption efforts fail? Is a more successful approach possible based on the few successes witnessed in recent years? The argument I propose is that many anticorruption initiatives fail because they are nonpolitical in nature, whereas much of the corruption in developing and postcommunist countries is inherently political. In developed countries, corruption typically refers to individual violations of integrity norms. However, in developing contexts, corruption often signifies *particularism*—a social structure where public goods are distributed on a non-universal basis, reflecting power inequalities within the society. Few anticorruption efforts dare to address these systemic roots of corruption, as these roots are embedded in the power distribution itself. Instead, anticorruption strategies are often designed in cooperation with the very power holders who perpetuate corruption and, at times, even control the anticorruption instruments.
Drawing from my experience as an initiator of a successful anticorruption campaign in Romania, as well as my research on various failed efforts, I contend that electoral revolutions can lead to consolidated democracies only if they are followed by revolutions against particularism. Without such a systemic revolution, attempts to curb corruption in countries where particularism prevails are unlikely to succeed.
* Extract from ** by Oscar Wilde (1891):
We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best among the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious—and rightly so. Charity, to them, is a ridiculously inadequate form of partial restitution or a sentimental dole, often accompanied by an impertinent attempt from the giver to control their private lives. Why should they be grateful for crumbs from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and they are beginning to understand this.
As for being discontented, any man who is not dissatisfied with such surroundings and a low mode of life would be little more than a brute. Disobedience, to anyone who knows history, is humanity’s original virtue. Progress has been made through disobedience and rebellion. Sometimes, the poor are praised for being thrifty, but recommending thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting—like advising a starving man to eat less. For a laborer in the town or countryside to practice thrift would be absolutely immoral. Humanity should not be compelled to live like badly fed animals.
* Bona, Dénètem Touam. ** John Wiley & Sons, 2022.
Hunting stories will usually glorify the hunters, since it is the hunters who write the stories. In this book, Dénètem Touam Bona takes up the perspective of the hunted, using the concept of marronage to highlight the lives and creativity of colonized and subjugated peoples. In a format that blends travel diary, anthropological inquiry, and philosophical and literary reflection, he narrates the hidden history of fugues – those of the runaway slave, the deserting soldier, the clandestine migrant, and all those who challenged norms and forms of control. In the space of the fugue, in the folds and retreats of dense and muggy woods, runaway countercultures appeared and spread out, cultures whose organization and values were diametrically opposed to those of colonial societies.
Marronage, the art of disappearance, has never been a more timely topic: thwarting surveillance, profiling, and tracking by the police and by corporations; disappearing from databases; extending the forest’s shadow by the click of a key. In our cyberconnected world, where control of individuals in real time is increasingly becoming the norm, we need to reinvent marronage and recognize the maroon as a universal figure of resistance.
Beyond its critical dimension, this book calls for a cosmo-poetics of refuge and aims at rehabilitating the power of dreams and poetry to ward off the confinement of minds and bodies.
**Excerpt:**
The cimarrón is a runaway slave, tearing off a servile skin to take on the striated shadow of foliage in his or her mad sprint. His or her liberation comes about from a process of going wild, from an act of immersion in the forest, the sylve (from the Latin noun silva “forest,” which is at the root of our word “savage”) – an act that makes him into a forest creature, a “leaf-being.” The Businenge – a generic name for the maroons of Guiana – are nothing but “men of the forest,” as the etymology of this name indicates. In fact busi nenge comes from an alteration in the English phrase “bush Negroes.” But in Busitongo, which is the maroon language, nenge means “person,” not “slave” (négre). This detour of meaning, which creatively subverts the colonist’s language, constitutes a retort to the fixation of a defamatory identity in the soul and body of the enslaved person. In choosing to call themselves “Nenge,” the Boni threw the stigma, the insult, right back at the ones who spit on them: from this shameful color, el negro, they wove the flag of their liberation and their reconquered humanity.
## Racial & Sexual Performance of Escape
* Brewer Ball, Katherine. **. Duke University Press, 2024.
In *The Only Way Out*, Katherine Brewer Ball explores the American fascination with the escape story. Brewer Ball argues that escape is a key site for exploring American conceptions of freedom and constraint. Stories of escape are never told just once but become mythic in their episodic iterations, revealing the fantasies and desires of society, the storyteller, and the listener. While white escape narratives have typically been laden with Enlightenment fantasies of redemption where freedom is available to any individual willing to seize it, Brewer Ball explores how Black and queer escape offer forms of radical possibility. Drawing on Black studies, queer theory, and performance studies, she examines a range of works, from nineteenth-century American literature to contemporary queer of color art and writing by contemporary American artists including Wilmer Wilson IV, Tourmaline, Tony Kushner, Junot Díaz, Glenn Ligon, Toshi Reagon, and Sharon Hayes. Throughout, escape emerges as a story not of individuality but of collectivity and entanglement.
**Excerpt from the Introduction:**
As I argue in this book, the dominant understanding of escape is organized around white European Enlightenment notions of freedom and subjectivity. I use the phrase generic escape to describe escape narratives which adhere to the conventions of the established genre, a genre that begins in America with captivity and (anti)slave narratives. Such stories sketch freedom as the end point, the aim, and the narrative arrival. Generic escape here is neither a good nor bad object, but it signifies a formal repetition in which redemption and freedom are the universally available telos; this is the philosophical grounding of escape detached from the ethico-juridical-political.
And yet, my understanding of escape beyond its generic constraints contains both the passive and the direct, the silent and the spectacular. I advance an idea of escape as in iterative act not defined by the genre constraints of full redemption, but narrative genre that intervenes into normative temporal and spatial logics to articulate an otherwise strategy. It holds within it a mountainous landscape, valleys in shadow, holding and hiding spots.
* Excerpt from ** by Stephen Wright (2013):
‘Hacking’ is a great old Saxon word. A hack is a kind of beveled cut with an axe. Not a clean slice, but an oblique chop—opening something up in a way that’s not easy to repair. There has been much speculation about when and why the term was adopted by programmers. But the most thought-provoking discussion of what hacking means socially is to be found in A Hacker Manifesto by McKenzie Wark. It is a rare thing, and the measure of genuine intellectual creativity, when a writer is able to develop and deploy a full-fledged, conceptual vocabulary and use it in a sustained way: the writing becomes at once the staging ground and the first application of a new way of talking.
A hacker, in Wark’s lexicon, is very different from the image of the super-specialized anarcho-programmer or criminal subculture, which the term still conjures up for most people; it refers to someone who hacks into knowledge-production networks of any kind, and liberates that knowledge from an economy of scarcity. “While not everyone is a hacker, everyone hacks,” writes Wark, suggesting that hacking is really quite akin to usership of knowledge, information, images, sounds, and other social resources that one might find useful. In a society based on private-property relations, scarcity is always being presented as if it were natural; but in the contemporary context, where intellectual property is the dominant property form, scarcity is artificial, counterproductive—and the bane of hackers—for the simple reason that appropriating knowledge and information deprives no one else from accessing it.
This is a key issue in art-related practice—indeed, Wark talks about hacking as if it were an art-related practice—for the system of value-production in the mainstream artworld is also premised on a regime of scarcity, underpinned by the author’s signature. Wark hacks his rather unorthodox theory out of Marxism: like Marx, Wark believes human history can be conceptualized in terms of class relations and conflict. Today, though, he argues, this conflict is most acute between what he calls the ‘vectoralist’ class (the class that owns the pipelines, the satellites, and the servers, which has come to supplant the hegemony of the capitalist class) and the new productive class that Wark describes as hackers, whose purpose it is to free knowledge from illusions of scarcity. The hacker class, he argues, arises out of the transformation of information into property, in the form of intellectual property.
This is a usefully redescriptive understanding of hacking. And it sheds an interesting light on the Obama Administration’s unwavering reaction to the recent Snowden hack, whose shock waves continue to reverberate through global civil society: “The documents are the private property of the United States Government and must be returned immediately.” As if the hacked documents’ ownership were their salient feature!
In another way, though, it makes sense to see hacking as a way of turning documents against their owners. In political terms, one might argue that leaking documents is the ‘southern’ response to the ‘northern’ privatization of information—southern being understood in an epistemic and political sense. A counterhegemonic gesture, using the information power produced by the adversary—the readymade documents—to tactical advantage. Something that in the hacker milieu is often referred to as “hack value.”
Hack value is difficult to define and ultimately can only be exemplified. But, by and large, it refers to a kind of aesthetics of hacking. For instance, repurposing things in an unexpected way can be said to have hack value; as can contributing anonymously to collectively used configurations, in the spirit of free software. Steven Levy, in his book Hackers, talks at length about what he calls a “hacker ethic.” But as Brian Harvey has argued, that expression may be a misnomer and that what he discovered was in fact a hacker aesthetic. For example, when free-software developer Richard Stallman says that information should be given out freely—an opinion universally held in hacker circles—his opinion is not only based on a notion of property as theft, which would be an ethical position. His argument is that keeping information secret is inefficient; it leads to an absurd, unaesthetic duplication of effort amongst the information’s usership.
* Excerpt from ** by David Whyte (2019)
Hiding is a way of staying alive. It is a means of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light. Hiding is a brilliant and virtuoso practice found in nearly every part of the natural world: the quiet protection of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a summer rose yet to bloom, the snowbound pulse of a hibernating bear.
Hiding is often underestimated. We are hidden in our mother’s womb until we are ready for our first appearance in the world; appearing too early necessitates immediate, intensive care. Proper hiding is a faithful promise for a future emergence—whether as embryos, children, or adults retreating from identities that have too easily named or confined us.
In a time of the dissected soul and instant disclosure, our thoughts and longings are often exposed too soon, squeezed prematurely into a world overwhelmed with ideas that stifle our sense of self and others. What is real usually begins hidden, not easily understood by the part of our mind that presumes it knows what is happening.
The precious within us resists being known in ways that might diminish it. Hiding acts as a freedom from others' misunderstandings, especially in a world increasingly encircled by secretive entities that seek to name, anticipate, and limit us, leaving no space for unmonitored growth. This creeping necessity for absolute naming, tracking, and control encroaches on our independence.
Hiding is a bid for independence—from others, from false ideas about ourselves, and from the oppressive desire to keep us completely safe, managed, and controlled. Hiding is creative, necessary, and a beautiful subversion of outside interference. It allows life to become more of itself. Hiding is the radical independence essential for our emergence into a human future worthy of the light.
* Excerpt from ** by Michel Foucault (1977):
Section: "Illegalisms and Delinquency"
One might reverse the problem of the prison's “failure” and ask instead what purpose this failure serves. The persistence of delinquency, the encouragement of recidivism, and the transformation of occasional offenders into habitual delinquents create a closed milieu of delinquency. The prison continues to pursue offenders through various “brandings,” such as the police record, effectively labeling someone a “delinquent” even after their sentence is served. Perhaps this is not a contradiction but rather a consequence: the prison and, more broadly, punishment may not aim to eliminate offenses but to distinguish, distribute, and utilize them as part of a strategy of subjection.
Penality then becomes a way of managing illegalisms, defining tolerable limits, excluding certain groups while making others useful. It does not simply "check" illegal practices; it “differentiates” them, creating an economy of illegalisms that serves mechanisms of domination. Legal punishments are embedded within a broader strategy of regulating illegalisms.
The “failure” of the prison, seen in this light, supports a penal reform agenda shaped in the eighteenth century in response to illegalisms. This reform envisioned a punitive society where penal mechanisms would operate seamlessly, eliminating illegalism at its source. However, by the late eighteenth century, popular illegalisms began to transform, linking to political struggles and resistance to emerging industrialization and economic crises.
Three processes marked this change: the political dimension of popular illegalisms expanded; illegalisms explicitly connected to social struggles; and different forms of offenses began to interrelate. Rather than isolated incidents, these illegalisms became embedded in broader political and social conflicts, leading to the perception of a criminalized and seditious “dangerous class,” fueling the fears of lawmakers and philanthropists.
Foucault argues that prisons have not failed to eliminate crime but rather succeeded in producing *delinquency*—a form of illegalism that the carceral system can supervise, isolate, and control. Delinquency is thus a product of penal systems, not merely an extension of illegalism. This form of controlled, pathologized delinquency allows authorities to regulate illegal practices while retaining prisons as central institutions, despite their “failures.” The success of the prison, then, is in producing an enclosed, manageable form of illegalism.
Feldman, Alex J. "." *European Journal of Philosophy*, 28(2), 2020, pp. 445-462.
* Excerpt from ** by Abel Polese (Ed.) (2022):
Chapter 1: "The (Im)Moralities of Informality: States, Their Citizens and Conflicting Moral Orders"
*When a childhood friend came to visit me in Kyiv and joined our weekly football gig, he was lucky enough to be hit in his eye at the very beginning of the game. My (former) father-in-law took him to the closest hospital, where he was attended by the local staff and asked to come back and check his eye in the following days. When leaving the department, he put some money in the pocket of a nurse, saying, “That’s for some tea.” The nurse did not check the pocket and tried to conceal her pleasant surprise by timidly saying, “Thank you” as we left.*
To those active in the anti-corruption industry, this transaction might appear as a bribe. The nurse, with a state-paid salary, could have refused the money since she wouldn’t be declaring it as income. Yet, such an exchange has a different significance in a hospital in Kyiv compared to London. In Kyiv, doctors work long hours for a salary that barely covers their monthly expenses. This context led me to provocatively describe hospitals in Ukraine as *de facto* private institutions (Polese 2006a, b).
Some researchers interpret these payments as an acknowledgment of personhood (Patico 2002) or as the basis of mutual dependency (Rivkin-Fish 2005). While exploring the line between corruption and solidarity in a context lacking state support, I was once told, “If I receive it, it is a gift, but if I demand it, then it is a bribe” (Polese 2009a). This distinction might help draw boundaries, though some argue that these payments are so normalized that patients feel a subtle obligation to compensate doctors.
The understanding of these payments—whether to expect better service or simply to do what feels customary (Gaal et al. 2006)—suggests that even “spontaneous payments” are not always as spontaneous as they seem. One could argue that any transaction bypassing the state ultimately undermines institutional credibility and weakens society.
The causality question is crucial: do these payments undermine the state, or are they a symptom of a weak, distrusted state? This question forms the basis of this book. Some practitioners might argue that people must begin respecting state rules for societal improvements, while others contend that the state must build trust so that citizens are more inclined to follow the rules. Likely, a combination of both approaches is needed. Yet, there remains a tendency to urge citizens toward legality without fully considering whether the state meets their expectations.
* Excerpt from ** by AbdouMaliq Simone (2022). Chapter 3: *Rebellion Without Redemption* (pp. 126-128)
Morehshin Allahyari (2019), an Iranian-American artist, attempts to recuperate the diverse stories of djinn from Islamic cultures in what she calls “a time of women.” Her project, *She Who Sees the Unknown*, features 3D printed female djinn figures that embody contemporary struggles with colonialism, climate change, and social injustice. Djinn, as entities of hybrid force, compel a distinct way of paying attention, inviting responses from everything and everywhere.
Allahyari’s work has presented four djinn in particular:
- *Huma*: With three heads—two facing opposite directions, the third upward—Huma symbolizes a transmission of heat for those forgotten. Technology becomes an instrument of justice in her presence, where well-being is a deserted wasteland. Redemption, if any, must be universal, without hierarchy or eligibility.
- *Aisha Quandisha*: Known for her ability to unlock and expose vulnerabilities, Aisha identifies weaknesses in any system. This opening, or dehiscence, offers no healing cover. Survival here requires embracing exposure and abandoning any notion of completeness.
- *Ya’ooj Majooj*: Traditionally associated with chaos, this djinn, with multiple heads and a reptilian form, embodies *fitna*, the tension within every social structure. She is inseparable from the sovereign order, always present within walls yet defying containment.
- *The Laughing Snake*: This serpent moves randomly through cities, devouring all in her path. She can only be stopped by a mirror held by men, causing her to laugh herself to death. The serpent’s reaction reflects the absurdity of men’s belief that an image could capture her essence, her laughter a paradoxical act of restraint that leaves her without the need to feed.
These djinn are neither curses, prophecies, nor accomplices to harmful human desires; nor are they cures. As the Quran suggests, djinn can obey or defy divine will. They act as technical forces—openers, disruptors, navigators—serving various purposes but remaining uncontrollable. In Muslim popular cultures, djinn extend the “time of women” beyond traditional roles, engaging in industrial actions that ensure endurance even where survival seems impossible.
The Brazilian term *jeitinho brasileiro*, or simply *jeitinho*, captures the ability to bend rules and improvise solutions to life’s challenges, often circumventing formal procedures. In Brazil, *jeitinho* is not merely an approach but a deeply ingrained cultural practice used to navigate rigid institutions and maneuver through a state that often feels disconnected from its citizens. This tactical ingenuity thrives on systemic dysfunction, allowing people to bypass barriers that official channels ignore or cannot address. In many ways, *jeitinho* has been celebrated as a symbol of resourcefulness—a survival mechanism in a country where laws can sometimes feel more like cages than safeguards. However, *jeitinho* is a double-edged sword, sometimes slipping into *malandragem*, or cunning behavior associated with deceit and corruption. Depending on the context, *jeitinho* might carry a positive connotation, associated with creativity and adaptability, or a negative one, tied to disregard for the rule of law and moral shortcuts.
Anthropologist Roberto DaMatta, in his work *O Que Faz o Brasil, Brasil?*, contrasts Brazilian informality with the formality of North American law-abiding behavior. DaMatta suggests that Brazilian laws are often designed to control and constrain the individual, leaving them no choice but to circumvent the state using personal relationships and emotional appeals. In such a society, where official rules appear arbitrary and oppressive, *jeitinho* flourishes as a survival strategy. While the law remains binary, defining what “can” or “cannot” be done, in Brazil, there exists a gray area of *pode-e-não-pode* where cordiality and personal favors frequently override formal restrictions. This cultural elasticity connects to the idea of the *homem cordial*, coined by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, who argued that Brazilian social life is governed more by emotions and feelings than by logic, and that informality often overrides formality. In this context, *jeitinho* blurs the boundaries between public and private, with rules designed to be flexible, especially in the name of personal relationships.
Philosopher Fernanda Carlos Borges extends this idea, relating *jeitinho* to bodily intelligence, with its plasticity and alertness to the unexpected. She argues that *jeitinho* is a unique cultural attitude that prioritizes human needs over institutional inflexibility, embodying improvisation in a top-down world. In this way, *jeitinho* both critiques and responds to an oppressive state apparatus. It offers an intimate, affective way of getting things done but simultaneously traps society in cycles of informality, where bending rules is both a strength and an obstacle to broader progress.
* Excerpt from ** by Amit S. Rai (2019):
A well-performed jugaad (hack) never fails to bring half-admiring, half-disapproving, and half-curious (it doesn’t add up!) smiles to people’s faces. Following what William James once said of fear and running, we smile before we admire. There is a certain intuition of the porosity of connectivity with the world that jugaad practice activates and makes ecological, even joyous.
Today, perhaps uniquely in history, jugaad is a joyous passion. What is the time of that proleptic smile? It is, strictly speaking, the duration of a certain passage from affection to affection: jugaad’s affective passage.
Where are the spaces of and for jugaad practices? They operate within and against the plasticity—both neural and spatial—of India’s “smart cities.” Together, these space-times, plastic and durational, express the variable powers of emergent properties of nonlinear but feedbacked assemblages of affect, matter, policy, culture, biology, perception, value, force, sensibilities, practices, and discourses.
Jugaad, as a practice of postcolonial practical reason and in its very timeliness, forms one way into and out of these assemblages.
…
Mobile ecologies: what workaround repurposes our relation to technology and technique itself?
As a term, jugaad has a wide range of colloquial uses throughout contemporary neoliberal India, and it has been thematized explicitly in South Asian media for decades. In that sense, we can understand it as always already doubled: as the idea of an idea (or what Spinoza called method), the sensory motor circuit of jugaad has an intensive and highly mediatized history.
Moreover, it is precisely this feedbacked and intensive quality of jugaad that allows for a renewed engagement with a heterodox political economy of contemporary digital capitalist control and its parasitical and autonomous pirate kingdoms (Sundaram 2009). This includes situating a transnational capitalist class of South Asians increasingly integrated with the neoliberalizing agenda of the postcolonial state—a state prone to personality cults, family dynasties, trustee capitalism, corrupt bureaucracy, ultranationalisms (and other postcolonial ressentiments)—and one that is increasingly invested in global oligopolies centered around several core logistical integrators (e.g., Coke, Amazon, or Disney).
This political struggle to manage contemporary forms of neoliberal exploitation, capitalist crisis, and social control necessarily produces national, regional, and cultural forms of legitimation and struggle. Indeed, *jugaad* as the figure of the makeshift assemblage of frugal innovation has been unevenly integrated into this multiplicity of processes.
Jugaad Time’s heterodox political economy of digital control affirms the vibrant ecologies of thousands of pirate kingdoms (Larkin 2008; Sundaram 2009), some of which, at certain times, mutate decisively from events that hack through and queer (or unpredictably and immeasurably intensify) the probable distributions of hypermodernity.
Michel Foucault wrote that knowledge was not made for understanding; it was made for cutting. Jugaad Time is written in the spirit of developing pragmatic assemblages that jugaad different ways to exit both capital and the forms of subjectivity within and against it. Through the exploration of the everyday potentialities that haunt the habits, events, time-spaces, encounters, sensations, processes, infrastructures, perceptions, and entrepreneurial capture of digital cultures and their hacking in India today, Jugaad Time elaborates India’s new abstract diagram: What is the force, sense, and value of the habituation of jugaad, and what specifically would effect its actual and potential collective reorganization?
…
* Hoque, Ashraf, and Lucia Michelutti. "." *The Journal of Asian Studies* 77, no. 4 (2018): 991-1011.
This article explores the performances of a particular category of young men often derog- atively referred to as “chamchas” (sycophants) who are using the art of making do (jugaad) by exploiting and bluffing links with powerful political networks and political parties, as well as friendships with strongmen and their criminal crews. Crucially, the comparative ethnography across India (western Uttar Pradesh) and Bangladesh (Sylhet) introduces readers to the “contact zone” where legality, semi-legality, and organized criminal systems meet. In so doing, the article unravels the working of the democratically elected “Mafia Raj.”
* Da Silva, Denise Ferreira. "." *Social Text* 31.1 (2013): 43-62.
In “To Be Announced,” Denise Ferreira da Silva embarks on a philosophical and ethical exploration of justice and its entanglement with violence, through the intersecting forces of colonialism, raciality, and gender. Starting from the "limits of justice," Silva scrutinizes modern analytical tools that render revolts into objectified data, stripping them of transformative potential. Drawing from Hegel, Fanon, Derrida, and others, she critiques how racial and colonial frameworks of knowledge continue to commodify Black and female bodies, whose worth is measured only through a calculus of value and excess.
Silva introduces a powerful theme of refusal—a deliberate act of resistance that denies the reproduction of colonial power structures in both action and representation. Inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s refusal to depict scenes of Black suffering, Silva contends that true justice requires an ethical refusal to replicate the spectacles of violence that uphold systems of racial and gendered subjugation. This refusal is not passive but an active stance that challenges the narratives of suffering and value ascribed to Black and female bodies, resisting the violent reduction of these lives to objects or moral symbols.
Through this refusal, Silva embraces the radical potential of the ‘scream’—an uncontainable force that signifies beyond language and law, representing an untamed space of cosmic potential she terms ‘The Thing.’ Silva’s vision of radical praxis involves acknowledging justice as a form of embodied refusal, a defiant ethical act that unsettles the boundaries of modern knowledge and embraces excess as a liberatory force against colonial structures.
* Certeau, Michel de. 1984. *The Practice of Everyday Life*, Volume 1. University of California Press. Excerpt from pp. 24–30:
The resurgence of "popular" practices within industrial and scientific modernity indicates the paths that might be taken by a transformation of the object of our study and the place from which we study it. The operational models of popular culture cannot be confined to the past, the countryside, or primitive peoples. They exist in the heart of the strongholds of the contemporary economy. Take, for example, what in France is called *la perruque*, "the wig." *La perruque* is the worker's own work disguised as work for his employer. It differs from pilfering in that nothing of material value is stolen. It differs from absenteeism in that the worker is officially on the job. *La perruque* may be as simple a matter as a secretary's writing a love letter on "company time" or as complex as a cabinetmaker's "borrowing" a lathe to make a piece of furniture for his living room. Under different names in different countries, this phenomenon is becoming more and more general, even if managers penalize it or "turn a blind eye" on it in order not to know about it.
Accused of stealing or turning material to his own ends and using the machines for his own profit, the worker who indulges in *la perruque* actually diverts time (not goods, since he uses only scraps) from the factory for work that is free, creative, and precisely not directed toward profit. In the very place where the machine he must serve reigns supreme, he cunningly takes pleasure in finding a way to create gratuitous products whose sole purpose is to signify his own capabilities through his work and to confirm his solidarity with other workers or his family through spending his time in this way. With the complicity of other workers (who thus defeat the competition the factory tries to instill among them), he succeeds in "putting one over" on the established order on its home ground. Far from being a regression toward a mode of production organized around artisans or individuals, *la perruque* reintroduces "popular" techniques of other times and other places into the industrial space (that is, into the present order).
Many other examples would show the constant presence of these practices in the most ordered spheres of modern life. With variations, practices analogous to *la perruque* are proliferating in governmental and commercial offices as well as in factories. No doubt they are just as widespread as formerly (though they ought still to be studied), just as widely suspected, repressed, or ignored. Not only workshops and offices but also museums and learned journals penalize such practices or ignore them. The authority of ethnological or folklore studies permits some of the material or linguistic objects of these practices to be collected, labeled according to place of origin and theme, put in display cases, offered for inspection and interpretation, and thus that authority conceals, as rural "treasures" serving to edify or satisfy the curiosity of city folk, the legitimization of an order supposed by its conservators to be immemorial and "natural." Or else they use the tools and products taken from a language of social operations to set off a display of technical gadgets and thus arrange them, inert, on the margins of a system that itself remains intact.
The actual order of things is precisely what "popular" tactics turn to their own ends, without any illusion that it will change any time soon. Though elsewhere it is exploited by a dominant power or simply denied by an ideological discourse, here order is tricked by an art. Into the institution to be served are thus insinuated styles of social exchange, technical invention, and moral resistance, that is, an economy of the "gift" (generosities for which one expects a return), an aesthetics of "tricks" (artists' operations), and an ethics of tenacity (countless ways of refusing to accord the established order the status of a law, a meaning, or a fatality). "Popular" culture is precisely that; it is not a corpus considered as foreign, fragmented in order to be displayed, studied, and "quoted" by a system that does to objects what it does to living beings.
The progressive partitioning of times and places, the disjunctive logic of specialization through and for work, no longer has an adequate counterpart in the conjunctive rituals of mass communications. This fact cannot become our law. It can be gotten around through departments that, "competing" with the gifts of our benefactors, offer them products at the expense of the institution that divides and pays the workers. This practice of economic diversion is in reality the return of a sociopolitical ethics into an economic system. It is no doubt related to the potlatch described by Mauss, an interplay of voluntary allowances that counts on reciprocity and organizes a social network articulated by the "obligation to give." In our societies, the market economy is no longer determined by such an "emulation": taking the abstract individual as a basic unit, it regulates all exchanges among these units according to the code of generalized equivalence constituted by money. This individualistic axiom is, of course, now surfacing as the question that disturbs the free market system as a whole. The a priori assumption of a historical Western option is becoming its point of implosion. However that may be, the potlatch seems to persist within it as the mark of another type of economy. It survives in our economy, though on its margins or in its interstices. It is even developing, although held to be illegitimate, within modern market economy. Because of this, the politics of the "gift" also becomes a diversionary tactic. In the same way, the loss that was voluntary in a gift economy is transformed into a transgression in a profit economy: it appears as an excess (a waste), a challenge (a rejection of profit), or a crime (an attack on property).
This path, relative to our economy, derives from another; it compensates for the first even though it is illegal and (from this point of view) marginal. The same pathway allows investigations to take up a position that is no longer defined only by an acquired power and an observational knowledge, with the addition of a pinch of nostalgia. Melancholy is not enough. Certainly, with respect to the sort of writing that separates domains in the name of the division of labor and reveals class affiliations, it would be "fabulous" if, as in the stories of miracles, the groups that formerly gave us our masters and that are currently lodged in our corpus were to rise up and themselves mark their comings and goings in the texts that honor and bury them at the same time. This hope has disappeared, along with the beliefs which have long since vanished from our cities. There are no longer any ghosts who can remind the living of reciprocity. But in the order organized by the power of knowledge (ours), as in the order of the countryside or the factories, a diversionary practice remains possible.
Let us try to make a *perruque* in the economic system whose rules and hierarchies are repeated, as always, in scientific institutions. In the area of scientific research (which defines the current order of knowledge), working with its machines and making use of its scraps, we can divert the time owed to the institution; we can make textual objects that signify an art and solidarities; we can play the game of free exchange, even if it is penalized by bosses and colleagues when they are not willing to "turn a blind eye" on it; we can create networks of connivances and sleights of hand; we can exchange gifts; and in these ways we can subvert the law that, in the scientific factory, puts work at the service of the machine and, by a similar logic, progressively destroys the requirement of creation and the "obligation to give." I know of investigators experienced in this art of diversion, which is a return of the ethical, of pleasure, and of invention within the scientific institution. Realizing no profit (profit is produced by work done for the factory), and often at a loss, they take something from the order of knowledge in order to inscribe "artistic achievements" on it and to carve on it the graffiti of their debts of honor. To deal with everyday tactics in this way would be to practice an "ordinary" art, to find oneself in the common situation, and to make a kind of *perruque* of writing itself.
**Chapter III "Making Do": Uses and Tactics**
In spite of measures taken to repress or conceal it, *la perruque* (or its equivalent) is infiltrating itself everywhere and becoming more and more common. It is only one case among all the practices that introduce artistic tricks and competitions of accomplices into a system that reproduces and partitions through work or leisure. Sly as a fox and twice as quick: there are countless ways of "making do."
From this point of view, the dividing line no longer falls between work and leisure. These two areas of activity flow together. They repeat and reinforce each other. Cultural techniques that camouflage economic reproduction with fictions of surprise ("the event"), of truth ("information"), or communication ("promotion") spread through the workplace. Reciprocally, cultural production offers an area of expansion for rational operations that permit work to be managed by dividing it (analysis), tabulating it (synthesis), and aggregating it (generalization). A distinction is required other than the one that distributes behaviors according to their place (of work or leisure) and qualifies them thus by the fact that they are located on one or another square of the social checkerboard—in the office, in the workshop, or at the movies. There are differences of another type. They refer to the modalities of action, to the formalities of practices. They traverse the frontiers dividing time, place, and type of action into one part assigned for work and another for leisure. For example, *la perruque* grafts itself onto the system of the industrial assembly line (its counterpoint, in the same place), as a variant of the activity which, outside the factory (in another place), takes the form of *bricolage*.
Although they remain dependent upon the possibilities offered by circumstances, these transverse tactics do not obey the law of the place, for they are not defined or identified by it. In this respect, they are not any more localizable than the technocratic (and scriptural) strategies that seek to create places in conformity with abstract models. But what distinguishes them at the same time concerns the types of operations and the role of spaces: strategies are able to produce, tabulate, and impose these spaces, when those operations take place, whereas tactics can only use, manipulate, and divert these spaces.
We must therefore specify the operational schemas. Just as in literature one differentiates "styles" or ways of writing, one can distinguish "ways of operating"—ways of walking, reading, producing, speaking, etc. These styles of action intervene in a field that regulates them at a first level (for example, at the level of the factory system), but they introduce into it a way of turning it to their advantage that obeys other rules and constitutes something like a second level interwoven into the first (for instance, *la perruque*). These "ways of operating" are similar to "instructions for use," and they create a certain play in the machine through a stratification of different and interfering kinds of functioning.
Thus, a North African living in Paris or Roubaix (France) insinuates into the system imposed on him by the construction of a low-income housing development or of the French language the ways of "dwelling" (in a house or a language) peculiar to his native Kabylia. He superimposes them and, by that combination, creates for himself a space in which he can find ways of using the constraining order of the place or of the language. Without leaving the place where he has no choice but to live and which lays down its law for him, he establishes within it a degree of plurality and creativity. By an art of being in between, he draws unexpected results from his situation.
These modes of use—or rather reuse—multiply with the extension of acculturation phenomena, that is, with the displacements that substitute manners or "methods" of transiting toward an identification of a person by the place in which he lives or works. That does not prevent them from corresponding to a very ancient art of "making do." I give them the name of uses, even though the word most often designates stereotyped procedures accepted and reproduced by a group, its "ways and customs." The problem lies in the ambiguity of the word, since it is precisely a matter of recognizing in these "uses" "actions" (in the military sense of the word) that have their own formality and inventiveness and that discreetly organize the multiform labor of consumption.
*Lady Swindlers with Lucy Worsley* is a 2024 BBC radio series focused on historical women swindlers, hoaxers, con-women, and scammers. It draws on a range of historical sources to revisit audacious—and surprising—swindles in the UK and North America across the 19th and 20th Century. These include Alice Diamond, the head of the UK's most famous all-female crime syndicate in the early 20th century; Madam Rachel who scammed Victorians by selling them beauty products laced with arsenic that she promised would make them "beautiful forever"; the fake Indonesian Princess Caraboo holding court in Regency England; Ann Mary Provis, an audacious art hoaxer in Georgian London; and the Edwardian heiress Violet Charlesworth who turned into a celebrity fugitive.*
*Most interestingly, sources such as contemporary newspaper coverage and transcriptions of trials show the extent to which the swindlers—many of whom were working-class women passing off in high society—captured people’s imagination and sympathy.*
Osterweil, Vicky. **. Bold Type Books, 2020.
Extract from the Introduction:
Of the many forms of political action in twenty-first-century America, it’s hard to think of any less popular than rioting and looting. Voting and electioneering are widely respected as the baseline of political action; petitioning and lobbying elected representatives are not far behind. Labor action, despite four decades of propaganda and federal action against it, still has strong support in many quarters. Community organizing is at least theoretically the founding principle for thousands of nonprofits across the country. Liberals and conservatives alike grudgingly support demonstrations, at least when they’re nonviolent and their people are doing it.
More extreme political actions also have widespread support. Both liberals and conservatives believe in war, considering it a necessary evil or a fundamental good. Liberals may oppose the death penalty, but they, like conservatives, believe in the efficacy of murder: they had little to say about Obama’s extrajudicial drone executions, his death lists and Terror Tuesdays, and Democrats mostly critiqued Trump’s 2020 assassination of Qasem Soleimani on procedural grounds: “He didn’t consult Congress!”
Torture is celebrated a thousand times a day on television in police procedurals and action flicks, and most people accept imprisonment — years of unrelenting psychic torture — as a necessary fact of social life. Economic coercion on the international stage, through sanctions, trade agreements, and development loans, is a matter of course. At home, the threat of unemployment, homelessness, starvation, and destitution, along with debt, taxes, fines, and fees of all kinds, are so naturalized as to rarely even be recognized as a form of political domination at all.
But rioting and looting have few defenders. Conservatives, of course, oppose it utterly, rooting for the police to put down protesters, with the Far Right claiming riots are just professional troublemaking fomented by George Soros, Jews, and the “global elite.” Liberals oppose rioting, too: because their love for law and order is much greater than their belief in freedom, they claim that rioters are “hurting their own cause” or are led by police provocateurs — agreeing with the fascists that rioters are paid troublemakers, just disagreeing about who signs the checks.
In the face of rioting and looting, even sympathetic self-identifying radicals sometimes balk. They claim that these more extreme actions are mainly the work of outside agitators, “opportunists,” or out-of-step middle-class radicals. They claim that those doing the looting are “not part of the movement,” that they are “apolitical” and ignorant, that their actions reflect “false consciousness,” or even that they are acting as consumers and therefore furthering capitalism.
From within the movement, people tend to claim that what happened wasn’t rioting but an uprising or a rebellion. No one wants to be associated with the idea of riot, and this is doubly true for looting. Even while a riot is going on, people in the streets often work to block looting.
Many of them do so out of care for the struggle, worried about unfair media representation and hoping to advance the politically and ethically advantageous position. I understand that instinct, but it was to critique and push against that thinking, crucially in love and solidarity with those who pursue it and with looters the world over, that I began this project.
Other people, however — including local politicians, middle-class “leaders,” political groups, and reactionary organizations — block looting in order to gain power for themselves. These peacekeepers and de-escalators cooperate with the police to derail and destroy uprisings to show the white power structure that they are responsible parties, that, because they can control and contain the unruly masses, they are the “natural leaders,” the people who should be negotiated with. This book is spit in their eyes.
Looting is so unpopular not because it is an error or bad for the movement but because it is often a movement’s most radical tactic. Looting attacks some of the core beliefs and structures of cisheteropatriarchal racial capitalist society, and so frightens and disturbs nearly everyone, even some of its participants. After all, we have all been raised and trained to hold, follow, and reproduce those beliefs every day. Looting rejects the legitimacy of ownership rights and property, the moral injunction to work for a living, and the “justice” of law and order. Looting reveals all these for what they are: not natural facts, but social constructs benefiting a few at the expense of the many, upheld by ideology, economy, and state violence.
That looting is one of the most racially loaded, morally abhorred, and depoliticized concepts in modern society should come as no surprise. From its very first usages, the word has served to re-enforce the white supremacist juncture of property and race.
* Kant, Immanuel. “.” *Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals.* Hackett Publishing, 1993, 63–68.
* Arendt, Hannah.  In *Crises of the Republic*, 49–102. Harcourt Brace & Company, 1972.
“Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.“
“A characteristic of human action is that it always begins something new, and this does not mean that it is ever permitted to start ab ovo, to create ex nihilo. In order to make room for one’s own action, something that was there before must be removed or destroyed, and things as they were before are changed. Such change would be impossible if we could not mentally remove ourselves from where we physically are located and imagine that things might as well be different from what they actually are. In other words, the deliberate denial of factual truth — the ability to lie — and the capacity to change facts — the ability to act — are interconnected; they owe their existence to the same source: imagination.”
* Koyré, Alexandre. "." *Commentary* 8.3 (1945): 290.
Koyré surely had Plato in mind when he added that early political philosophy was tied to the same principle: since most people (the dēmos) must live in lies because they are incapable of grasping the truth, whose mishandling and bowdlerisation can be dangerous to political order, veracity „must be spooned out, diluted and specially prepared for them‟. “There has never been so much lying as in our time‟, he wrote. The point can easily be misunderstood, for Koyré did not mean to emphasise quantitative trends. The really novel quality of contemporary lying was its omnipotent and all-embracing or total character. The scope of political lying dramatically expands; lying becomes coterminous with life. It becomes not just the canopy but the infrastructure of existence. „The written and spoken word, the press, the radio, all technical progress is put to the service of the lie. Modern man – genus totalitarian – bathes in the lie, breathes the lie, is in thrall to the lie every moment of his existence.‟ (291). Koyré described modern-day lying as „mass output for mass consumption‟.
Goldgel-Carballo, Víctor. "." *The Global South* 8, no. 1 (2014): 112-127.
Through an analysis of two post-crisis films (*Estrellas*, Federico León and Marcos Martínez, 2007; *El nexo*, Sebastián Antico, 2005) shot in the largest slum in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this essay sketches the terms for conceptualizing a cultural dimension of the Global South marked by the aesthetic reappropriation of poverty. Working against what has been called Latin America’s persistent “melodrama of poverty,” and avoiding the type of cinematic representation that depicts the slum in terms of violence and uncertainty, the directors of these films highlight the fact that the reappropriation of poverty is often at the base of alternative forms of social and artistic agency. While the ability to work under conditions of material lack has long been an important dimension of Argentine artistic production, their films flaunt deprivation in order to transform precarity into an ideological and aesthetic weapon, re-staging social inequality in a spectacular fashion and advancing inventive modes of action. In this way, they argue that “making do” can also become the basis for an alternative creative paradigm. In their exploration of this paradigm, which allows slum inhabitants to build a house in two minutes and create a spaceship out of junk, both films pose far-reaching questions: who has a right to perform? What roles are available for the people of the slum? And, what are the conditions for having artistic and social agency in economically deprived areas?
* Roberts, Les. 2018. "" *Humanities* 7, no. 2: 43.
This paper provides an introductory overview to the Humanities special issue on "spatial bricolage." The individual contributions that make up the special issue are outlined and salient themes pulled out that address and respond to some the wider discussion points raised throughout this introduction. These are closely focused around the central concept of bricolage and the idea of the researcher as bricoleur. Some background context on the anthropological underpinnings to bricolage is provided, alongside methodological reflections that relate the concept to ideas of "gleaning" as a creative and performative engagement with everyday spaces as they are "found" and rehearsed in practice. A core focus on questions of method, and of autoethnographic approaches in particular, is presented alongside questions of research ethics and the policing thereof by institutional structures of disciplining and audit in the neoliberal academy. It is argued that bricolage is, among other things, a practical response to a field of practice that at times constrains as much as it allows space to roam, unimpeded, across disciplinary boundaries. From the overarching purview of spatial humanities and spatial anthropology, it is shown that discussions of bricolage and the researcher as bricoleur can help make explicit the poetics and affects of space, as well as the ethical and procedural frameworks that are brought to bear on how space is put into practice.
Planners and urbanists concerned with informality and illegality recently turned to the concept of *nomotropism*. Nomotropism (or “acting in view of the rules”) allows to move away from the idea of rule violation, which all too often suggests malicious damage, deliberate sabotage, and wilful disobedience, and grasp instead a reality that may be far more more complex and less oppositional. The issue is that in many cases the law –*even when violated*– still has a cause-and-effect relation to the actions of the transgressor. In other words, people engaged in unauthorised actions still see themselves as ‘acting within the same legal world of the individuals that operate in the formal sphere’.
As discussed by A.G. Conte in *Sociologia filosofica del diritto* (2011), the term “nomotropism” is formed by combining the two Greek terms *nomos* (law) and *tropos* (turn, direction) in similar manner to the formation of terms denoting a certain “sensibility”, “sensitiveness”, “orientation”, to a given phenomenon, such as *helio-tropism*, *photo-tropism*. Acting in light of rules (i.e. on the basis of rules, in view of rules, with reference to rules) does not necessarily entail acting *in conformity* with rules. This is the case of unauthorised building – or *abusivismo *– which has historically been a key component of urbanization in Southern Europe, where many of the theoretico-political reflections on the ambiguities of these phenomena have been advanced. Applied to subjects made systematically vulnerable, as opposed to the speculators and mafiosi who may also deploy such practices, it is a form of acting that remains in view of, and in many cases in fragile dialogue with, the often unfair constructions of the law.
* Chiodelli, Francesco, and Stefano Moroni. “.” *Geoforum* 51 (2014): 161–68.
* Conte, Amedeo G. *Sociologia filosofica del diritto*. Giappichelli, 2011.
* Rosa, Elisabetta. “.” In *Geography Research Forum*, 36:110–26, 2016.
* Saitta, Pietro. "." *International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy* 37.7/8 (2017): 400-416.
In today's globalized world, the informal economy—those small, off-the-books activities like selling knock-off goods, street food, or even the odd bit of substance here and there—has become more than just a way for the urban poor to scrape by. According to Pietro Saitta, it's also a form of everyday resistance. Not the flashy, revolutionary kind, but a quiet, persistent pushback against a system that forces people into the margins, only to police and criminalize them when they try to survive.
Saitta's work, drawing from thinkers like Gramsci and Foucault, argues that what we often call "illegal" is just a reflection of how unevenly power is distributed. It's not just the elites and politicians who get to bend the rules; the underclasses, too, have developed their own ways to navigate the chaos, dodging regulations and inventing workarounds to make their way through life. And though these small acts—like street vending or unregulated labor—might seem disconnected from broader struggles, Saitta suggests they are actually political practices, deliberate and defiant responses to exclusionary systems.
Sometimes, resistance is simply refusing to play by the rules of a game rigged against you. In that sense, the informal economy can be seen as a site of subaltern rebellion—where those who’ve been pushed aside by capitalism carve out their own space to exist, on their own terms.
Excerpts:
On the basis of mainly ethnographical information, it is possible to say that petty kinds of informal economies – especially, but not only, those small illegal activities related to public space and streets, such as the vending of counterfeited goods, food, and also soft drugs (all of them, ultimately, at the center of periodical campaigns that aim at providing a type of city characterized by the Disneyfied ideals of “security” and “cleanliness”) – are part of a wider struggle between individuals and social classes with different powers and status, within the worlds of life and production. This paper also suggests that these struggles are not only a means for acquiring the necessary resources for subsistence, but that they are essentially a political practice, a form of strategic interaction that often involves real conflict, either between society and state or between classes.
An example of the first case is the conflictual relationship between illegal immigrants and governments, and of the second, the difficult relationship between the workers and employers involved in “dirty jobs” with a high turnover. In short, as suggested by the seminal works of Hobsbawm (1959) and Scott (1985), the view expressed here is that the informal economy should be seen within the framework of “subaltern rebellion” struggles of low intensity and visibility.
…
First, it is worth noting that both these expressions – “informal economy” and “resistance” – present various problems as far as their definition and meaning is concerned. Beyond the many criticisms implicit in the idea, the term “resist,” as it is commonly used in most international literature on sociology and anthropology, is problematic in that its etymology implies the idea of “staying still or standing firm[1]” and therefore, by implication, it underlines the static nature of social processes. Here, however, we intend resistance to mean more specifically “moving forward” rather than “staying still.” A liberation movement does not generally aim to become ensnared by the oppressive regime that generated it in the first place, in the same way as economic migrants do not envisage being sucked into the same conditions of poverty and deprivation that led them to leave their home in the first place. In this sense, it would be better to talk about “evasion” or “escape” from an order rather than resistance to it.
…
But as Bayat (1997) says, even the “resisters,” however disorganized and separate, have the appearance of a “movement,” involved “in the quiet encroachment of the ordinary.” More precisely, they are a movement of practice, a “social non-movement,” in which politics is recognized as being an everyday action not just moved by conscience, but by structure. And again, if disobedience is just one of the political techniques involved in dissidence (Sharp, 2011), how is it possible not to give an implicit political value to non-cooperative actions designed to get around restrictions put in place by regulations that are considered as suffocating and unfair?
The rigid dualism of the original models – for example the early approaches of Lewis (1954), the ILO (1972) and Hart (1973) – that underlines the opposition between legal and illegal, and is embedded in the imaginary and perhaps also in policy, does not represent the reality of the situation. For example, the case of the Italian fight against counterfeiting and street vendors is based on the assumption of a rigid division between the legal production of luxury goods and counterfeiting. This hypothesis deliberately ignores the fact that the number of informal contracts granted to small manufacturing businesses (especially those producing clothing and leather goods) by luxury goods producers is growing, and it therefore ignores the existence of a continuum between undeclared and official work, market and commercialization, that is linked to productivity cycles, and which makes it impossible to talk about counterfeiting (Palidda, 2013). However, we should not be too quick to discard old conceptualizations and logic divisions before noting that – as Hart (1973) and Scott (1998) observe – to the regime of informality belong all those activities that policy makers exclude from their definitions of reality, and are aimed at evading the state’s projects and schemes of territorial legibility pursued through the use of maps, fiscal control, civil registries and the development of biometric technologies. That is, notions and uses of the word informality are interesting descriptors of institutional and societal logics and cultures.
…
Finally, it is important to highlight that much of these reflections have matured within a specific context – the Southern Italian one – and that they implicitly reflect situations, policies, and debates that are located in a specific corner of Europe. Some countries within the same continent and elsewhere might find themselves at a later stage of their governmental process of deviance. However, the possibility of applying notions and concepts developed elsewhere – in the western metropolis as well as in the post-colonial environments that produced much of the literature on which this essay draws – makes me think that, in spite of (self-)representations, there are several communalities between countries, and that different experiences are shaped and characterized by similar drives, pressures, legislative “fashions,” vested interests, and class stratifications that allow a certain degree of generalization. A globalized world as we know it is in fact a polarized model of society, based on modes of production and dependence that, far from making instances and functions homogeneous in each country, produce nevertheless common ways of perceiving security and insecurity, equality and inequality, and also common methods of dealing with such sentiments and material situations due to the circulation of ideas, transnational institutional pressures to conformity, political tools, and people (the elites as well as the lumpenproletariat).
“If you really wanted to make predictions about where a crime was going to occur, well, it would send you to Wall Street,” EFF’s Kit Walsh says on the new episode of “How to Fix the Internet.”
(You can also find this episode on the[ Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/htfti-s5e9-kitjsha-mix-vfinal) and on[ YouTube](https://youtu.be/FmogJ_YsPn0?feature=shared).)
This is the future that Kit Walsh, EFF’s Director of Artificial Intelligence & Access to Knowledge Legal Projects, and EFF Senior Staff Technologist Jacob Hoffman-Andrews, are working to bring about. They join EFF’s Cindy Cohn and Jason Kelley to discuss how AI shouldn’t be a tool to cash in, or to classify people for favor or disfavor, but instead to engage with technology and information in ways that advance us all.
In this episode you’ll learn about:
* The dangers in using AI to determine who law enforcement investigates, who gets housing or mortgages, who gets jobs, and other decisions that affect people’s lives and freedoms.
* How "moral crumple zones” in technological systems can divert responsibility and accountability from those deploying the tech.
* Why transparency and openness of AI systems — including training AI on consensually obtained, publicly visible data — is so important to ensure systems are developed without bias and to everyone’s benefit.
* Why “watermarking” probably isn’t a solution to AI-generated disinformation.
[Kit Walsh](https://www.eff.org/about/staff/kit-walsh) is a senior staff attorney at EFF, serving as Director of Artificial Intelligence & Access to Knowledge Legal Projects. She has worked for years on issues of free speech, net neutrality, copyright, coders' rights, and other issues that relate to freedom of expression and access to knowledge, supporting the rights of political protesters, journalists, remix artists, and technologists to agitate for social change and to express themselves through their stories and ideas. Before joining EFF, Kit led the civil liberties and patent practice areas at the[ Cyberlaw Clinic](https://cyber.harvard.edu/teaching/cyberlawclinic), part of Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society; earlier, she worked at the law firm of[ Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks](https://wolfgreenfield.com/), litigating patent, trademark, and copyright cases in courts across the country. Kit holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.S. in neuroscience from MIT, where she studied brain-computer interfaces and designed cyborgs and artificial bacteria.
[Jacob Hoffman-Andrews](https://www.eff.org/about/staff/jacob-hoffman-andrews) is a senior staff technologist at EFF, where he is lead developer on[ Let's Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org/), the free and automated Certificate Authority; he also works on EFF's[ Encrypt the Web](https://www.eff.org/encrypt-the-web) initiative and helps maintain the[ HTTPS Everywhere](https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere) browser extension. Before working at EFF, Jacob was on Twitter's anti-spam and security teams. On the security team, he implemented HTTPS-by-default with forward secrecy, key pinning, HSTS, and CSP; on the anti-spam team, he deployed new machine-learned models to detect and block spam in real-time. Earlier, he worked on Google’s maps, transit, and shopping teams.
* Human Rights Data Analysis Group: “[Predictive Policing Reinforces Police Bias](https://hrdag.org/2016/10/10/predictive-policing-reinforces-police-bias/)” by Kristian Lum (Oct. 10, 2016)
* Engaging Science, Technology, and Society: “[Moral Crumple Zones: Cautionary Tales in Human-Robot Interaction](https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260)” by Madeleine Clare Elish (Mar. 23, 2019)
* EFF: “[How We Think About Copyright and AI Art](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/how-we-think-about-copyright-and-ai-art-0)” by Kit Walsh (April 3, 2023)
* EFF: “[A Broad Federal Publicity Right Is a Risky Answer to Generative AI Problems](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/broad-federal-publicity-right-risky-answer-generative-ai-problems)” by Corynne McSherry (July 18, 2023)
* EFF: “[AI Watermarking Won't Curb Disinformation](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/01/ai-watermarking-wont-curb-disinformation)” by Jacob Hoffman-Andrews (Jan. 5, 2024)
* EFF: “[The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/03/how-avoid-ai-apocalypse-one-easy-step)” by Matthew Guariglia (Mar. 20, 2024)
What do you think of “How to Fix the Internet?”[ Share your feedback here](https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=qalRy_Njp0iTdV3Gz61yuZZXWhXf9ZdMjzPzrVjvr6VUNUlHSUtLM1lLMUNLWE42QzBWWDhXU1ZEQy4u&web=1&wdLOR=c90ABD667-F98F-9748-BAA4-CA50122F0423).
**KIT WALSH:** Contrary to some marketing claims, AI is not the solution to all of our problems. So I'm just going to talk about how AI exists in Kitopia. And in particular, the technology is available for everyone to understand. It is available for everyone to use in ways that advance their own values rather than hard coded to advance the values of the people who are providing it to you and trying to extract something from you and as opposed to embodying the values of a powerful organization, public or private, that wants to exert more power over you by virtue of automating its decisions. \
So it can make more decisions classifying people, figuring out whom to favor, whom to disfavor. I'm defining Kitopia a little bit in terms of what it's not, but to get back to the positive vision, you have this intellectual commons of research development of data that we haven't really touched on privacy yet, but but data that is sourced in a consensual way and when it's, essentially, one of the things that I would love to have is a little AI muse that actually does embody my values and amplifies my ability to engage with technology and information on the Internet in a way that doesn't feel icky or oppressive and I don't have that in the world yet.
**CINDY COHN:** That’s Kit Walsh, describing an ideal world she calls “Kitopia”. Kit is a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She works on free speech, net neutrality and copyright and many other issues related to freedom of expression and access to knowledge. In fact, her full title is EFF’s Director of Artificial Intelligence & Access to Knowledge Legal Projects. So, where is Kitopia, you might ask? Well we can’t get there from here - yet. Because it doesn’t exist. Yet. But here at EFF we like to imagine what a better online world would look like, and how we will get there and today we’re joined by Kit and by EFF’s Senior Staff Technologist Jacob Hoffman-Andrews. In addition to working on AI with us, Jacob is a lead developer on Let's Encrypt, and his work on that project has been instrumental in helping us encrypt the entire web. I’m Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
**JASON KELLEY:** And I’m Jason Kelley, EFF’s Activism Director. This is our podcast series How to Fix the Internet.
**JACOB HOFFMAN-ANDREWS:** I think in my ideal world people are more able to communicate with each other across language barriers, you know, automatic translation, transcription of the world for people who are blind or for deaf people to be able to communicate more clearly with hearing people. I think there's a lot of ways in which AI can augment our weak human bodies in ways that are beneficial for people and not simply increasing the control that their governments and their employers have over their lives and their bodies.
**JASON KELLEY:** We’re talking to Kit and Jacob both, because this is such a big topic that we really need to come at it from multiple angles to make sense of it and to figure out the answer to the really important question which is, How can AI actually make the world we live in, a better place? \
**CINDY COHN:** So while many other people have been trying to figure out how to cash in on AI, Kit and Jacob have been looking at AI from a public interest and civil liberties perspective on behalf of EFF. And they’ve also been giving a lot of thought to what an ideal AI world looks like.
**JASON KELLEY:** AI can be more than just another tool that’s controlled by big tech. It really does have the potential to improve lives in a tangible way. And that’s what this discussion is all about. So we’ll start by trying to wade through the hype, and really nail down what AI actually is and how it can and is affecting our daily lives.
**KIT WALSH:** The confusion is understandable because AI is being used as a marketing term quite a bit, rather than as an abstract concept, rather than as a scientific concept.
And the ways that I think about AI, particularly in the decision-making context, which is one of our top priorities in terms of where we think that AI is impacting people's rights, is first I think about what kind of technology are we really talking about because sometimes you have a tool that actually no one is calling AI, but it is nonetheless an example of algorithmic decision-making.
That also sounds very fancy. This can be a fancy computer program to make decisions, or it can be a buggy Excel spreadsheet that litigators discover is actually just omitting important factors when it's used to decide whether people get health care or not in a state health care system.
**CINDY COHN:** You're not making those up, Kit. These are real examples.
**KIT WALSH:** That’s not a hypothetical. Unfortunately, it’s not a hypothetical, and the people who litigated that case lost some clients because when you're talking about not getting health care that can be life or death. And machine learning can either be a system where you – you, humans, code a reinforcement mechanism. So you have sort of random changes happening to an algorithm, and it gets rewarded when it succeeds according to your measure of success, and rejected otherwise.
It can be training on vast amounts of data, and that's really what we've seen a huge surge in over the past few years, and that training can either be what's called unsupervised, where you just ask your system that you've created to identify what the patterns are in a bunch of raw data, maybe raw images, or it can be supervised in the sense that humans, usually low paid humans, are coding their views on what's reflected in the data.
So I think that this is a picture of a cow, or I think that this picture is adult and racy. So some of these are more objective than others, and then you train your computer system to reproduce those kinds of classifications when it makes new things that people ask for with those keywords, or when it's asked to classify a new thing that it hasn't seen before in its training data.
So that's really a very high level oversimplification of the technological distinctions. And then because we're talking about decision-making, it's really important who is using this tool.
Is this the government which has all of the power of the state behind it and which administers a whole lot of necessary public benefits - that is using decisions to decide who is worthy and who is not to obtain those benefits? Or, who should be investigated? What neighborhoods should be investigated?
We'll talk a little bit more about the use in law enforcement later on, but it's also being used quite a bit in the private sector to determine who's allowed to get housing, whether to employ someone, whether to give people mortgages, and that's something that impacts people's freedoms as well.
**CINDY COHN:** So Jacob, two questions I used to distill down on AI decision-making are, who is the decision-making supposed to be serving and who bears the consequences if it gets it wrong? And if we think of those two framing questions, I think we get at a lot of the issues from a civil liberties perspective. That sound right to you?
**JACOB HOFFMAN-ANDREWS:** Yeah, and, you know, talking about who bears the consequences when an AI or technological system gets it wrong, sometimes it's the person that system is acting upon, the person who's being decided whether they get healthcare or not and sometimes it can be the operator.
You know, it's, uh, popular to have kind of human in the loop, like, oh, we have this AI decision-making system that's maybe not fully baked. So there's a human who makes the final call. The AI just advises the human and, uh, there's a great paper by Madeleine Clare Elish describing this as a form of moral crumple zones. Uh, so, you may be familiar in a car, modern cars are designed so that in a collision, certain parts of the car will collapse to absorb the force of the impact.
So the car is destroyed but the human is preserved. And, in some human in the loop decision making systems often involving AI, it's kind of the reverse. The human becomes the crumple zone for when the machine screws up. You know, you were supposed to catch the machine screwup. It didn't screw up in over a thousand iterations and then the one time it did, well, that was your job to catch it.
And, you know, these are obviously, you know, a crumple zone in a car is great. A moral crumple zone in a technological system is a really bad idea. And it takes away responsibility from the deployers of that system who ultimately need to bear the responsibility when their system harms people.
**CINDY COHN:** So I wanna ask you, what would it look like if we got it right? I mean, I think we do want to have some of these technologies available to help people make decisions.
They can find patterns in giant data probably better than humans can most of the time. And we'd like to be able to do that. So since we're fixing the internet now, I want to stop you for a second and ask you how would we fix the moral crumple zone problem or what were the things we think about to do that?
**JACOB HOFFMAN-ANDREWS:** You know, I think for the specific problem of, you know, holding say a safety driver or like a human decision-maker responsible for when the AI system they're supervising screws up, I think ultimately what we want is that the responsibility can be applied all the way up the chain to the folks who decided that that system should be in use. They need to be responsible for making sure it's actually a safe, fair system that is reliable and suited for purpose.
And you know, when a system is shown to bring harm, for instance, you know, a self-driving car that crashes into pedestrians and kills them, you know, that needs to be pulled out of operation and either fixed or discontinued.
**CINDY COHN:** Yeah, it made me think a little bit about, you know, kind of a change that was made, I think, by Toyota years ago, where they let the people on the front line stop the line, right? Um, I think one thing that comes out of that is you need to let the people who are in the loop have the power to stop the system, and I think all too often we don't.
We devolve the responsibility down to that person who's kind of the last fair chance for something but we don't give them any responsibility to raise concerns when they see problems, much less the people impacted by the decisions.
**KIT WALSH:** And that’s also not an accident of the appeal of these AI systems. It's true that you can't hold a machine accountable really, but that doesn't deter all of the potential markets for the AI. In fact, it's appealing for some regulators, some private entities, to be able to point to the supposed wisdom and impartiality of an algorithm, which if you understand where it comes from, the fact that it's just repeating the patterns or biases that are reflected in how you trained it, you see it's actually, it's just sort of automated discrimination in many cases and that can work in several ways.
In one instance, it's intentionally adopted in order to avoid the possibility of being held liable. We've heard from a lot of labor rights lawyers that when discriminatory decisions are made, they're having a lot more trouble proving it now because people can point to an algorithm as the source of the decision.
And if you were able to get insight in how that algorithm were developed, then maybe you could make your case. But it's a black box. A lot of these things that are being used are not publicly vetted or understood.
And it's especially pernicious in the context of the government making decisions about you, because we have centuries of law protecting your due process rights to understand and challenge the ways that the government makes determinations about policy and about your specific instance.
And when those decisions and when those decision-making processes are hidden inside an algorithm then the old tools aren't always effective at protecting your due process and protecting the public participation in how rules are made.
**JASON KELLEY:** It sounds like in your better future, Kit, there's a lot more transparency into these algorithms, into this black box that's sort of hiding them from us. Is that part of what you see as something we need to improve to get things right?
**KIT WALSH:** Absolutely. Transparency and openness of AI systems is really important to make sure that as it develops, it develops to the benefit of everyone. It's developed in plain sight. It's developed in collaboration with communities and a wider range of people who are interested and affected by the outcomes, particularly in the government context though I'll speak to the private context as well. When the government passes a new law, that's not done in secret. When a regulator adopts a new rule, that's also not done in secret. There's either, sure, that's, there are exceptions.
**KIT WALSH:** Yeah, if we can live in Kitopia for a moment where, where these things are, are done more justly, within the framework of government rulemaking, if that's occurring in a way that affects people, then there is participation. There's meaningful participation. There's meaningful accountability. And in order to meaningfully have public participation, you have to have transparency.
People have to understand what the new rule is that's going to come into force. And because of a lot of the hype and mystification around these technologies, they're being adopted under what's called a procurement process, which is the process you use to buy a printer.
It's the process you use to buy an appliance, not the process you use to make policy. But these things embody policy. They are the rule. Sometimes when the legislature changes the law, the tool doesn't get updated and it just keeps implementing the old version. And that means that the legislature's will is being overridden by the designers of the tool.
**JASON KELLEY:** You mentioned predictive policing, I think, earlier, and I wonder if we could talk about that for just a second because it's one way where I think we at EFF have been thinking a lot about how this kind of algorithmic decision-making can just obviously go wrong, and maybe even should never be used in the first place.
What we've seen is that it's sort of, you know, very clearly reproduces the problems with policing, right? But how does AI or this sort of predictive nature of the algorithmic decision-making for policing exacerbate these problems? Why is it so dangerous I guess is the real question.
**KIT WALSH:** So one of the fundamental features of AI is that it looks at what you tell it to look at. It looks at what data you offer it, and then it tries to reproduce the patterns that are in it. Um, in the case of policing, as well as related issues around decisions for pretrial release and parole determinations, you are feeding it data about how the police have treated people, because that's what you have data about.
And the police treat people in harmful, racist, biased, discriminatory, and deadly ways that it's really important for us to change, not to reify into a machine that is going to seem impartial and seem like it creates a veneer of justification for those same practices to continue. And sometimes this happens because the machine is making an ultimate decision, but that's not usually what's happening.
Usually the machine is making a recommendation. And one of the reasons we don't think that having a human in the loop is really a cure for the discriminatory harms is that humans are more likely to follow the AI if it gives them cover for a biased decision that they're going to make. And relatedly, some humans, a lot of people, develop trust in the machine and wind up following it quite a bit.
So in these contexts, if you really wanted to make predictions about where a crime was going to occur, well it would send you to Wall Street. And that's not, that's not the result that law enforcement wants.
But, first of all, you would actually need data about where crimes occur, and generally people who don't get caught by the police are not filling out surveys to say, here are the crimes I got away with so that you can program a tool that's going to do better at sort of reflecting some kind of reality that you're trying to capture. You only know how the system has treated people so far and all that you can do with AI technology is reinforce that. So it's really not an appropriate problem to try to solve with this technology.
**CINDY COHN:** Yeah, our friends at Human Rights Data Analysis Group who did some of this work said, you know, we call it predictive policing, but it's really predicting the police because we're using what the police already do to train up a model, and of course it's not going to fix the problems with how police have been acting in the past. Sorry to interrupt. Go on.
**KIT WALSH:** No, to build on that, by definition, it thinks that the past behavior is ideal, and that's what it should aim for. So, it's not a solution to any kind of problem where you're trying to change a broken system.
**CINDY COHN:** And in fact, what they found in the research was that the AI system will not only replicate what the police do, it will double down on the bias because it's seeing a small trend and it will increase the trend. And I don't remember the numbers, but it's pretty significant. So it's not just that the AI system will replicate what the police do. What they found in looking at these systems is that the AI systems increase the bias in the underlying data. \
It's really important that we continue to emphasize the ways in which AI and machine learning are already being used and already being used in ways that people may not see, but dramatically impact them. But right now, what's front of mind for a lot of people is generative AI. And I think many, many more people have started playing around with that. And so I want to start with how we think about generative AI and the issues it brings. And Jacob, I know you have some thoughts about that.
**JACOB HOFFMAN-ANDREWS:** Yeah. To call back to, at the beginning you asked about, how do we define AI? I think one of the really interesting things in the field is that it's changed so much over time. And, you know, when computers first became broadly available, you know, people have been thinking for a very long time, what would it mean for a computer to be intelligent? And for a while we thought, wow, you know, if a computer could play chess and beat a human, we would say that's an intelligent computer.
Um, if a computer could recognize, uh, what's in an image, is this an image of a cat or a cow - that would be intelligence. And of course now they can, and we don't consider it intelligence anymore. And you know, now we might say if a computer could write a term paper, that's intelligence and I don't think we're there yet, but the development of chatbots does make a lot of people feel like we're closer to intelligence because you can have a back and forth and you can ask questions and receive answers.
And some of those answers will be confabulations and, but some percentage of the time they'll be right. And it starts to feel like something you're interacting with. And I think, rightly so, people are worried that this will destroy jobs for writers and for artists. And to an earlier question about, you know, what does it look like if we get it right, I think, you know, the future we want is one where people can write beautiful things and create beautiful things and, you know, still make a great living at it and be fulfilled and safe in their daily needs and be recognized for that. And I think that's one of the big challenges we're facing with generative AI.
**JASON KELLEY:** Let’s pause for just a moment to say thank you to our sponsor. How to Fix the Internet is supported by The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology. Enriching people’s lives through a keener appreciation of our increasingly technological world and portraying the complex humanity of scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. And now back to our discussion with Kit and Jacob about AI: the good, the bad, and what could be better.
**CINDY COHN:** There’s been a lot of focus on the dark side of generative AI and the idea of using copyright to address those problems has emerged. We have worries about that as a way to sort out between good and bad uses of AI, right Kit?
**KIT WALSH:** Absolutely. We have had a lot of experience with copyright being used as a tool of censorship, not only against individual journalists and artists and researchers, but also against entire mediums for expression, against libraries, against the existence of online platforms where people are able to connect and copyright not only lasts essentially forever, it comes with draconian penalties that are essentially a financial death sentence for the typical person in the United States. So in the context of generative AI, there is a real issue with the potential to displace creative labor. And it's a lot like the issues of other forms of automation that displace other forms of labor.
And it's not always the case that an equal number of new jobs are created, or that those new jobs are available to the people who have been displaced. And that's a pretty big social problem that we have. In Kitopia, we have AI and it's used so that there's less necessary labor to achieve a higher standard of living for people, and we should be able to be excited about automation of labor tasks that aren't intrinsically rewarding.
One of the reasons that we're not is because the fruits of that increased production flow to the people who own the AI, not to the people who were doing that labor, who now have to find another way to trade their labor for money or else become homeless and starve and die, and that's cruel.
It is the world that we're living in so it's really understandable to me that an artist is going to want to reach for copyright, which has the potential of big financial damages against someone who infringes, and is the way that we've thought about monetization of artistic works. I think that way of thinking about it is detrimental, but I also think it's really understandable.
One of the reasons why the particular legal theories in the lawsuits against generative AI technologies are concerning is because they wind up stretching existing doctrines of copyright law. So in particular, the very first case against Stable Diffusion argued that you were creating an infringing derivative work when you trained your model to recognize the patterns in five billion images.
It's a derivative work of each and every one of them. And that can only succeed as a legal theory if you throw out the existing understanding of what a derivative work is, that it has to be substantially similar to a thing that it's infringing and that limitation is incredibly important for human creativity. \
The elements of my work that you might recognize from my artistic influences in the ordinary course of artistic borrowing and inspiration are protected. I'm able to make my art without people coming after me because I like to draw eyes the same way as my inspiration or so on, because ultimately the work is not substantially similar.
And if we got rid of that protection, it would be really bad for everybody.
But at the same time, you can see how someone might say, why should I pay a commission to an artist if I can get something in the same style? To which I would say, try it. It's not going to be what you want because art is not about replicating patterns that are found in a bunch of training data.
It can be a substitute for stock photography or other forms of art that are on the lower end of how much creativity is going into the expression, but for the higher end, I think that part of the market is safe. So I think all artists are potentially impacted by this. I'm not saying only bad artists have to care, but there is this real impact.
Their financial situation is precarious already, and they deserve to make a living, and this is a bandaid because we don't have a better solution in place to support people and let them create in a way that is in accord with their values and their goals. We really don't have that either in the situation where people are primarily making their income doing art that a corporation wants them to make to maximize its products.
No artist wants to create assets for content. Artists want to express and create new beauty and new meaning and the system that we have doesn't achieve that. We can certainly envision better ones but in the meantime, the best tool that artists have is banding together to negotiate with collective power, and it's really not a good enough tool at this point.
But I also think there's a lot of room to ethically use generative AI if you're working with an artist and you're trying to communicate your vision for something visual, maybe you're going to use an AI tool in order to make something that has some of the elements you're looking for and then say this, this is what I want to pay you to, to draw. I want this kind of pose, right? But, but, more unicorns.
**JASON KELLEY:** And I think while we're talking about these sort of seemingly good, but ultimately dangerous solutions for the different sort of problems that we're thinking about now more than ever because of generative AI, I wanted to talk with Jacob a little bit about watermarking. And this is meant to solve a sort of problem of knowing what is and is not generated by AI.
And people are very excited about this idea that through some sort of, well, actually you just explain Jacob, cause you are the technologist. What is watermarking? Is this a good idea? Will this work to help us understand and distinguish between AI-generated things and things that are just made by people?
**JACOB HOFFMAN-ANDREWS:** Sure. So a very real and closely related risk of generative AI is that it is - it will, and already is - flooding the internet with bullshit. Uh, you know, many of the articles you might read on any given topic, these days the ones that are most findable are often generated by AI.
And so an obvious next step is, well, what if we could recognize the stuff that's written by AI or the images that are generated by AI, because then we could just skip that. You know, I wouldn't read this article cause I know it's written by AI or you can go even a step further, you could say, well, maybe search engines should downrank things that were written by AI or social networks should label it or allow you to opt out of it.
You know, there's a lot of question about, if we could immediately recognize all the AI stuff, what would we do about it? There's a lot of options, but the first question is, can we even recognize it? So right off the bat, you know, when ChatGPT became available to the public, there were people offering ChatGPT detectors. You know, you could look at this content and, you know, you can kind of say, oh, it tends to look like this.
And you can try to write something that detects its output, and the short answer is it doesn't work and it's actually pretty harmful. A number of students have been harmed because their instructors have run their work through a ChatGPT detector, an AI detector that has incorrectly labeled it.
There's not a reliable pattern in the output that you can always see. Well, what if the makers of the AI put that pattern there? And, you know, for a minute, let's switch from text based to image based stuff. Jason, have you ever gone to a stock photo site to download a picture of something?
**JACOB HOFFMAN-ANDREWS:** Yeah. So you might recognize the images they have there, they want to make sure you pay for the image before they use it. So there's some text written across it in a kind of ghostly white diagonal. It says, this is from say shutterstock.com. So that's a form of watermark. If you just went and downloaded that image rather than paying for the cleaned up version, there's a watermark on it. \
So the concept of watermarking for AI provenance is that It would be invisible. It would be kind of mixed into the pixels at such a subtle level that you as a human can't detect it, but you know, a computer program designed to detect that watermark could so you could imagine the AI might generate a picture and then in the top left pixel, increase its shade by the smallest amount, and then the next one, decrease it by the smallest amount and so on throughout the whole image. \
And you can encode a decent amount of data that way, like what system produced it, when, all that information. And actually the EFF has published some interesting research in the past on a similar system in laser printers where little yellow dots are embedded by certain laser printers, by most laser printers that you can get as an anti counterfeiting measure.
**JASON KELLEY:** This is one of our most popular discoveries that comes back every few years, if I remember right, because people are just gobsmacked that they can't see them, but they're there, and that they have this information. It's a really good example of how this works.
**CINDY COHN:** Yeah, and it's used to make sure that they can trace back to the printer that printed anything on the off chance that what you're printing is fake money.
The other thing people really worry about is that AI will make it a lot easier to generate disinformation and then spread it and of course if you're generating disinformation it's useful to strip out the watermark. You would maybe prefer that people don't know it's AI. And so you're not limited to resizing or cropping an image. You can actually, you know, run it through a program. You can see what the shades of all the different pixels are. And you, in theory probably know what the watermarking system in use is. And given that degree of flexibility, it seems very, very likely - and I think past technology has proven this out - that it's not going to be hard to strip out the watermark. And in fact, it's not even going to be hard to develop a program to automatically strip out the watermark.
**CINDY COHN:** Yep. And you, you end up in a cat and mouse game where the people who you most want to catch, who are doing sophisticated disinformation, say to try to upset elections, are going to be able to either strip out the watermark or fake it and so you end up where the things that you most want to identify are probably going to trick people. Is that, is that the way you're thinking about it?
**JACOB HOFFMAN-ANDREWS:** Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm getting at. I wanted to say one more thing on, um, watermarking. I'd like to talk about chainsaw dogs. There's this popular genre of image on Facebook right now of a man and his chainsaw carved wooden dog and, often accompanied by a caption like, look how great my dad is, he carved this beautiful thing.
And these are mostly AI generated and they receive, you know, thousands of likes and clicks and go wildly viral. And you can imagine a weaker form of the disinformation claim of say, ‘Well, okay, maybe state actors will strip out watermarks so they can conduct their disinformation campaigns, but at least adding watermarks to AI images will prevent this proliferation of garbage on the internet.’
People will be able to see, oh, that's a fake. I'm not going to click on it. And I think the problem with that is even people who are just surfing for likes on social media actually love to strip out credits from artists already. You know, cartoonists get their signatures stripped out and in the examples of these chainsaw dogs, you know, there is actually an original. \
There's somebody who made a real carving of a dog. It was very skillfully executed. And these are generated using kind of image to image AI, where you take an image and you generate an image that has a lot of the same concepts. A guy, a dog, made of wood and so they're already trying to strip attribution in one way.
**CINDY COHN:** So Jacob, we heard earlier about Kit's ideal world. I'd love to hear about the future world that Jacob wants us to live in.
**JACOB HOFFMAN-ANDREWS:** Yeah. I think the key thing is, you know, that people are safer in their daily lives than they are today. They're not worried about their livelihoods going away. I think this is a recurring theme when most new technology is invented that, you know, if it replaces somebody's job, and that person's job doesn't get easier, they don't get to keep collecting a paycheck. They just lose their job.
So I think in the ideal future, people have a means to live and to be fulfilled in their lives to do meaningful work still. And also in general, human agency is expanded rather than restricted. The promise of a lot of technologies that, you know, you can do more in the world, you can achieve the conditions you want in your life.
**CINDY COHN:** Oh that sounds great. I want to come back to you Kit. We've talked a little about Kitopia, including at the top of the show. Let's talk a little bit more. What else are we missing?
**KIT WALSH:** So in Kitopia, people are able to use AI if it's a useful part of their artistic expression, they're able to use AI if they need to communicate something visual when I'm hiring a concept artist, when I am getting a corrective surgery, and I want to communicate to the surgeon what I want things to look like.
There are a lot of ways in which words don't communicate as well as images. And not everyone has the skill or the time or interest to go and learn a bunch of photoshop to communicate with their surgeon. I think it would be great if more people were interested and had the leisure and freedom to do visual art. \
But in Kitopia, that's something that you have because your basic needs are met. And in part, automation is something that should help us do that more. The ability to automate aspects of, of labor should wind up benefiting everybody. That's the vision of AI in Kitopia.
**CINDY COHN** Nice. Well that's a wonderful place to end. We're all gonna pack our bags and move to Kitopia. And hopefully by the time we get there, it’ll be waiting for us.
**JASON KELLEY** Yeah, you know, that sounds good. I'll take it from here. Thanks for joining us for this episode of How to Fix the Internet. If you have feedback or suggestions, we would love to hear from you. You can visit EFF.org slash podcasts to click on listener feedback and let us know what you think of this or any other episode.
You can also get a transcript or information about this episode and the guests. And while you're there of course, you can become an EFF member, pick up some merch, or just see what's happening in digital rights this or any other week. This podcast is licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4. 0 International and includes music licensed Creative Commons Unported by their creators.
In this episode, you heard Kalte Ohren by Alex featuring starfrosch & Jerry Spoon; lost Track by Airtone; Come Inside by Zep Hume; Xena's Kiss/Medea's Kiss by MWIC; Homesick By Siobhan D and Drops of H2O ( The Filtered Water Treatment ) by J.Lang. Our theme music is by Nat Keefe of BeatMower with Reed Mathis. And How to Fix the Internet is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's program in public understanding of science and technology. We’ll see you next time. I’m Jason Kelley.
* Bouteldja, Houria. **. La Fabrique éditions, 2023.
> The path to optimism can only be rediscovered if, as activists, we are able to identify what, beyond their whiteness, defines the dignity of the French and, by extension, of Europeans and Westerners. In other words, what can divert them from their whiteness and allow them access to a new political imaginary. If it turns out that this dignity forms a sufficiently powerful foundation, then we could envision the contours of a global strategy to break with the racial pact, an indispensable condition for an alliance between 'beaufs' and 'barbarians' and for a new political act unifying the popular classes, which could also be called a "historical bloc" or a "decolonial majority." (translated from *Beaufs et barbares. Le pari du nous*)"
*Beaufs et barbares: Le pari du nous* (*Rednecks and Barbarians: The Gamble of "Us"*) is a provocative manifesto that dives into the heart of racialized capitalism, colonial legacies, and fractured solidarity. Houria Bouteldja challenges readers to reconsider what “we” means in a world defined by lines of exploitation and exclusion. In this groundbreaking text, she calls on us to imagine, perhaps radically, a coalition of those whom society has pitted against each other: the “beaufs” (marginalized white working-class people) and the “barbares” (those of postcolonial backgrounds). Bouteldja’s goal is not to provoke for provocation’s sake but to crack open the oppressive core of the “integral racial state”—a structure whose very foundation rests on sustaining racial hierarchies and erasing opportunities for a unified front against elite interests.
The book’s first part draws from Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and traces the origins of the nation-state as a tool of conquest, enslavement, and domination. Bouteldja brings readers through the violence of colonial history, its global reach, and its capitalist logic of plunder. Her analysis is razor-sharp as she revisits colonial violence, capitalist expansion, and the subsequent formation of an “integral” racial state that, even today, clings to the fiction of a homogenous nation. Here, Bouteldja contends, lies the brutal genius of the system: it doesn’t just exploit; it fractures. The racialized proletariat and the white proletariat, so often poised to join forces, are kept in check by a system that offers whiteness as a kind of consolation prize to those white working-class citizens left out of wealth’s distribution.
The book’s second half moves from the historical to the daringly hopeful. Here, Bouteldja probes the potential for a subversive unity—a way to imagine that “we” could include both the “beaufs” and the “barbares,” transcending the boundaries forged by the ruling classes. She argues that, despite all the machinery of division, the dignity of both groups could form a new decolonial majority, a bloc of shared struggle that might finally shake the state to its core. This proposal is neither naive nor detached from the complexities involved; it demands we confront how our systems of supremacy and privilege must be dismantled if any real solidarity is to emerge.
*Beaufs et barbares* doesn’t flinch from asking difficult questions about moral “innocence” and historical responsibility. Bouteldja’s tone is raw yet lyrical, urging readers to recognize that revolutionary love requires sacrifice and reckoning with complicity. In the end, Bouteldja’s call is clear: to hold out hope for a solidarity built not on blindness to race but on its deliberate refusal as a dividing line—a coalition strong enough to upend centuries of exclusion, extraction, and betrayal.
**An interview with Houria Bouteldja and Louisa Yousfi from September 2023**
[Translation of the interview originally published on Machina](https://www.machina-deriveapprodi.com/post/lo-stato-razziale-e-l-autonomia-dei-movimenti-decolonialiun-intervista-a-houria-bouteldja-e-louisa):
*Once the fires that blazed in the French banlieues this summer had died down, we met with Houria Bouteldja and Louisa Yousfi—who will also be guests at the Kritik 00 festival in Bologna on September 22—for an overview of those events. These militant scholars, authors of two recent books that tackle the racial question in Europe in original and compelling ways*—Beaufs et barbares *(soon to be translated by DeriveApprodi) by Bouteldja, and* Restare barbari (DeriveApprodi 2023) *by Yousfi—have been engaged for years in building a political, indigenous, and decolonial anti-racism movement in France. Their books have sparked widespread discussion. While critiques have surfaced, numerous public events across the country have provided forums to discuss their work, drawing significant audiences, and both volumes have been translated into English and Spanish. Though we don’t always agree with their political proposals, we find Bouteldja and Yousfi’s decolonial anti-racism essential for thinking about the racial question in Europe today. Their work invites us to envision both the potential and the challenges and ambiguities of a cross-racial, anti-racist alliance—the only one that, in our view, matches the intensity of structural racism’s violence. In this interview, we revisited some of the central themes of their books, starting with Bouteldja’s concept of the “racial integral state.” To begin, we asked her to explain its origins and her proposed political use of it.*
**Houria Bouteldja:** I take from Gramsci the idea of the "integral state" and enrich it with the concept of race. Gramsci provided a definition of the state that is not limited to the institutional apparatus but explains how the bourgeoisie, which dominates the state, manages to maintain its position of power over time and space. With this concept, Gramsci tells us that the state is not just its institutions, its army, its police, and its administration, but also includes its political organizations, even those that oppose the bourgeoisie, and civil society. I find this concept very useful for defining racism. It allows us to say that racism is not just an institutional issue, not just a product of the state and its institutions, but also finds collaboration in political society and civil society: every actor finds their own benefit in the production of racism and thus contributes to producing it. For me, the "racial integral state" is a way to explain why racism is perennial, why it works, and why it is structural—and thus difficult to combat. In the societies we live in, everything, including the way the police are present and repress uprisings in the *banlieues* (suburbs), is related to the "racial integral state" or, at the very least, to a phase of its social history, a specific phase in the development and mutation of capital in France.
Unlike others, like Badiou for example, I believe that Western capitalism is in crisis. It is an ultra-liberal capitalism that can only express itself as a crisis. It cannot avoid being ultra-liberal and is therefore forced to sacrifice the white working classes, who lose purchasing power, are downgraded, and withdraw their support for the elites in power. The result is a crisis of democracy, with strong outbursts of anger and mobilizations. The *Gilets Jaunes* (Yellow Vests) and other social movements in recent years are expressions of this. But the white working classes are not the only ones being sacrificed; there are also the indigenous people, the non-whites, who experience downgrading in a way that, I would say, feels almost natural. These are the classes that suffer most from the lack of political power and institutional representation. And as racism intensifies—because power needs a very high level of racism among the *petits blancs* (poor whites)—discrimination increases, and the state is driven to repress the indigenous classes more and more harshly. At a certain point, the situation explodes. The "racial integral state" demonizes and represses any form of politicization among the indigenous and non-white classes, leaving an explosion of rage as the only possibility.
Since 2005, we haven’t seen such powerful and strong uprisings. There have been others, but not as intense, and over these eighteen years, the power structure has never stopped repressing non-whites, in one way or another. During the period of terrorist attacks (ed. note: attacks by extremists), the repression of non-whites, particularly Muslims, doubled. All of this creates a situation of intense tension that must eventually explode. We knew this. We expected it because there were no other channels through which this anger could be expressed.
*In the relationship between the "racial integral state" and the indigenous, Bouteldja identifies two tendencies: the explicit racism of the right and the paternalistic humanism of the left, which seeks to integrate the indigenous in order to "humanize" them. Yousfi, for her part, has strongly highlighted how integrationism is the problem, not the solution. In her book, "remaining barbaric" is a "magic formula," a "breath of fresh air!" We asked her what this means in the context of the recent uprisings in the banlieues.*
**Louisa Yousfi**: In the suburbs, the theme of "barbarism" becomes even more significant because the young rioters—mostly men from working-class neighborhoods with immigrant backgrounds—are seen as the true barbarians by the entire French state apparatus. When I say state apparatus, I include all political forces, even those on the left. This segment of the population is simultaneously stigmatized by overt racists and subjected to the left’s civilizing mission, which argues that some ways of fighting are more legitimate than others.
In this civilizing mission, the left views these young men as behaving in ways that are ultimately counterproductive. According to them, "destroying everything" isn’t the right way to do politics. While there could be valid demands, the choice of violence doesn’t help, and the only solution they offer is repression. What we must say, however, is that this violence is inevitable because it is a form of resistance. It is violence that resists another form of violence, which is systemic and rooted in real power. If anything, the violence of the rioters is the expression of powerlessness, as all other channels for resistance are blocked. In France, all political parties are absolutely aligned in sabotaging the political autonomy of the indigenous neighborhoods or placing it under guardianship. At the same time, the degradation of working-class neighborhoods has increased, both due to the notorious presence of the police and to social issues that we interpret as racial issues: social discriminations that are, in every respect, forms of racism. The state hounds these "barbarians," who have no way to organize politically in response to its violence.
In 2005, going back to what Houria was saying about the "racial pact," the left largely supported the repression of the uprisings, siding with the violence of the state, the racist discourse, and the civilizing mission. This year, the civilizing mission of the left’s discourse has taken on a new perspective, following the #MeToo movement. Feminists from the left, like Sandrine Rousseau from the reformist and ecological left, have seen the uprisings as an expression of male violence, as if what we are dealing with is a gender issue, since it was men—rioters—clashing with other men—the police officers. For these political figures, as well as some social science researchers, this was a cycle of violence linked to gender. It is indecent to make such claims in a situation like the one we are living in every day, where a young boy has died, adding to the list of deaths at the hands of the police: thirteen in one year, 99% of them Black or Arab men. Faced with this, the only thing these feminists can say is that there is a problem of masculinity and that these young men need to be educated in other ways of expressing their anger. This is a way to erase the racial issue and assimilate the problem of the uprisings into a progressive and feminist agenda. Moreover, it denies something new that is happening now, which is the result of anti-racist struggles over the years: an army of women from immigrant backgrounds, activists, and public figures who have unreservedly supported the rioters.
*Barbarians and beaufs is the evocative title of Bouteldja’s book, alluding to the political composition of white and indigenous working classes against the "racial integral state." It is a subject yet to be built, "a chimera," as she writes in the introduction to the book. In light of the social conflicts of recent years in France, the downgrading of the middle classes, and the loss of political consensus, we asked the two decolonial scholars if Beaufs et barbares could become more than a suggestive allusion and under what conditions it might happen.*
**L. Y.:** Houria should mainly answer this question because the issue of alliance is at the core of her latest book. I want to say that we must first consider the general phase in which these uprisings are taking place. For a few years now, we have been in the midst of significant social unrest, with large social movements that have become radicalized. The entire French civil society has been involved and radicalized, and the government's discredit has reached its peak. During these movements, especially with the *Gilets Jaunes (*Yellow Vests), the question that kept coming up was: why aren’t the working-class neighborhoods present? Why don’t they join the protests? It would be the long-awaited opportunity to form an alliance, to achieve a convergence of struggles. At that time, we used to say that in France, there are time-spaces that do not intersect. The mobilizations and resistance experiences in the working-class neighborhoods, especially among Muslims, hit a wall—they can’t break through the glass ceiling, mainly due to the left, which does not recognize issues related to race or Islamophobia. The left is riddled with internal conflicts and ambiguities that refer back to the racial pact.
What we see today, compared to 2005, when the entire political spectrum united against the rioters, is that the reformist left—I'm talking about *France Insoumise*, with deputies in the National Assembly—has shown unambiguous solidarity with the uprisings and has condemned, in a way we could never have imagined, the police violence. They have even taken on a political agenda somewhat aligned with what decolonial anti-racist activists like us are advocating, in a context where decolonial anti-racism has often been the target of political attacks, even from this same left.
What explains this shift is the radicalization of social movements that, in recent years, have experienced the authoritarianism of the state—something we, the indigenous of the Republic, have long been familiar with. The repression suffered by the *Gilets Jaunes *and the movement against pension reform created points of contact between the white working classes and the indigenous. On the other hand, we must say that this new situation is also one of our victories because it is the result of a new balance of power that decolonial activists have been able to impose. Today in France, issues related to race or police violence are unavoidable and can no longer be swept under the rug as they were ten or twenty years ago. Therefore, an opening has emerged that allows us to imagine the construction of a "we," but it is not something that will build itself naturally. We know very well that there are moments, like this one, when a political force might be interested in positioning itself favorably on an issue to distinguish itself from the fascist bloc that is forming—for them, it’s a strategic choice. Therefore, it’s not guaranteed that they will continue down this path tomorrow. It is up to us, decolonial activists and the immigrant movements, to continue doing autonomous political work capable of building power dynamics that force the left into such a position and alliances. We can certainly recognize progress, but we must not consider it as something permanently achieved. We must continue working to secure it, and, above all, we must never abandon our autonomy—the autonomy of anti-racist struggles and of the working-class neighborhoods—because it is the only way to have an equal relationship with the left and to build an anti-racist bloc capable of breaking the racial pact.
**H. B.:** As Louisa said, in 2005, the left wasn’t on the side of the uprisings, but today, a significant part of the reformist and radical left supports the rioters. This is a small shift towards building a "we." In 2005, the *petits blancs *were explicitly against the rioters and on the side of the police; today, they "tend" to side with the police. There has been positive evolution because of the *Gilets Jaunes* and because, at first, the uprisings gained solidarity and favorable opinions. However, the situation quickly changed. To put it briefly, there is a left that is positively evolving, but the popular sentiment is moving much more slowly. We are not surprised by this at all. What does surprise us is seeing a fraction of the left address a series of issues with clarity, which is not bad, but we are not at all surprised by how slowly white public opinion shifts. We are not surprised because if you understand what the racial integral state is, you understand that the white working classes and non-white working classes are built within an antagonistic relationship—they are constructed to not meet. The result is a white populace that remains hostile to the non-white world. This is the product of centuries of racializing social relations and, above all, the product of a state and its bourgeoisie—here, I’m not talking about the racial integral state, but the state itself and the bourgeoisie that dominates it—that have an interest in maintaining the highest level of racism among the *petits blancs* to prevent any form of convergence of struggles.
Building the "we" is very problematic and complex because, if I’m white and think about my immediate interests, I have no objective reason to want to build a "we" with the indigenous. What we need to realize is that white people, the *petits blancs*, the "rednecks" of the working classes, don’t fully understand who their main enemies are: is it the capitalist power bloc that oppresses and exploits them, or is it the inhabitants of the suburban neighborhoods who are poorer than them? This question has yet to be resolved. So, the problem of constructing the "we," in my view, will not be solved by waiting for a spontaneous evolution of white consciousness. On the contrary, it can only be resolved under the pressure of a higher constraint. What that constraint could be, I don’t know, but it will only happen when the white populace is convinced that the power bloc’s goal is not only to exploit them but also to betray them. This conviction is necessary. The problem is that the far-right’s political offer is often more appealing than that of the far-left, which offers everything except security. We decolonial activists propose anti-imperialism, the end of the North-South exploitation relationship, but this could also be understood as the end of the domination of the white proletariat. What white person would be so crazy as to adopt such a perspective? It’s impossible. For example, the end of the nation-state, the opening of borders—this would generate fear among a populace demanding security. What I’m saying is that a decolonial left-wing program cannot guarantee what the *petits blancs* want the most: security, the maintenance or improvement of their standard of living, and dignity.
**H. B.:** It is evident that if the social needs of the *petits blancs* are these, the far-right seems, at least in public discourse, more suited to satisfy them. I say "seems" because I don't believe in the far-right’s ability to offer a better quality of life to the *petits blancs*, as white power is diminishing on a global scale. On the contrary, I believe in its ultra-demagogic ability to respond to the fears and anxieties of the poor. It seems to me that we are at an impasse because we would need to offer the *petits blancs* something that addresses their existential anxiety while also guaranteeing that they can continue to live with dignity in an increasingly uncertain world—a world where we see immigrants arriving in waves in Europe, where there are ecological issues, and where there is a profound crisis. Today, it is very difficult to imagine a political project that is both desirable and capable of competing with that of the far-right. For me, who prefers to address things indirectly, Europe represents a source of anxiety, social decline, and political disaffection for whites. Therefore, it seems necessary to me that we move towards a project that questions Europe. Even if we don’t like the nation-state, we must consider that Europe is like a super nation-state—ultra-liberal and anti-democratic. We need to reclaim a popular force that centers on the question of power: what can we do to ensure that the people regain their ability to act? It seems to me that Europe represents an obstacle to the people’s ability to act and make decisions. For me, reconstructing popular convergence based on a critique of Europe is an indirect way to address the existential anxieties of whites.
**L. Y.:** I’d like to return to the topic of alliances to add something. Recently, some major French media outlets published a list of names of the arrested rioters. While the initiative was clearly intended to show the public that Arabs—people who supposedly have a problem with France and aren’t fully French—participated in the uprisings, this time, unlike in other instances, they didn’t hide that, in addition to Arab names, there were also French names on the list. Many of these French names had strong social connotations, indicating they belonged to the *petits blancs*. I’m not sure what Houria thinks, but even though it may have been a move to respond to far-right accusations, this list seems to offer us a glimpse of a possible alliance between "rednecks" and "barbarians." It’s something we can’t verify, but it could be a sign that a process in that direction is underway.
**H. B.:** Yes, but we need to be cautious because many French names could also belong to Black people. It’s difficult to determine the extent of white participation in these uprisings, but we can say with certainty that their presence was more substantial than in previous instances because, over the past fifteen years—starting with the 2008 crisis—there has been a gradual decline in the white population’s socioeconomic status, and they are becoming increasingly poor. Additionally, not all poor white people are racist. Even Darmanin had to acknowledge the presence of white people in the uprisings, although he did so in a racist way to defend himself from attacks by the far-right, which accused him of being too lenient towards the rioters. Nonetheless, all of this shows us that a process of convergence is possible.
*The final remarks go to Louisa Yousfi, who defines the decolonial framework of possibilities for this anti-racist convergence.*
**L. Y.:** The only anti-racism we need is one that emerges from the struggles, especially one driven by those who are racialized—namely Black people and Arabs. We were political objects serving the left, an inert force for the left. We were voices available for the left's opportunism. Now we are political subjects, protagonists of our own struggles. It’s true that when strong social movements occur, power dynamics impose themselves, and things accelerate suddenly.
“To refuse is to say no. But, no, it is not just that. To refuse can be generative and strategic, a deliberate move toward one thing, belief, practice, or community and away from another.”
“In *The Gift,* Marcel Mauss (1967) discusses refusal as the cutting of social relations, or in some instances as the raising anew of obligations and rituals.”
“We approach refusal as ethnographic subject and mode, recognizing each as making its own set of moral claims.”
“We might also consider creative refusal on the scale of world history in rethinking cultures as ‘not just ways of being and acting in the world, but [as] active political projects which often operate by the explicit rejection of other ones’” (Graeber 2013, 1).
“Refusal marks the point of a limit having been reached: we refuse to continue on this way.”
“We can also find refusal in refutations of theoretical models, decisions to withhold rather than share certain data by anthropologists and subjects alike, refusals of certain types of funding, and, of course, the realities of being refused, denied, and rejected as an expected part of academia.”
“In her article ‘Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal,’ Sherry Ortner (1995, 187–88) posed ethnography as the solution to what she saw as thinness in interdisciplinary resistance studies. Specifically, she argued against ‘a kind of bizarre refusal to know and speak and write of the lived worlds inhabited by those who resist.’ An ethnographic approach, she argued, would enable an understanding of ‘the internal politics of dominated groups . . . the cultural richness of those groups . . . [and] the subjectivity—the intentions, desires, fears, projects—of the actors engaged in these dramas’ (Ortner 1995, 190). This was to write against a sort of 1990s academic politics in calling for attention to practice and contradiction as opposed to a privileging of discourse or text.”
“A different sort of ethnographic refusal, a time in which interpretive refusal might actually illuminate ethnography rather than flatten it” (Simpson 2007, 2014; see also TallBear 2013). Predecessors to the current moment were earlier ethnographic writings on violence, including refusals to write, narrate, or interpret pain (e.g., Daniel 1996; Das 1995, 2006; Visweswaran 1994).
“Refusal produces or reproduces community.”
“Refusal is insistence on the possible over the probable, and thus in Isabelle Stengers’s terms, is aligned with hope.”
* Simpson, Audra. 2014. **. Durham: Duke University Press.
**Excerpts:**
“Like ‘race’ in other contexts, ‘culture’ was (and still is in some quarters) the conceptual and necessarily essentialized space standing in for complicated bodily and exchange-based relationships that enabled and marked colonial situations in Empire: warfare, commerce, sex, trade, missionization.”
“If we take this historical form of ethnological representation into account, we might then be able to come up with techniques of representation that move away from ‘difference’ and its containment, from the ethnological formalism and fetishism that I mapped out in the previous chapter. I am interested in the way that cultural analysis may look when difference is not the unit of analysis.”
“I asked questions about the questions that mattered to the community and I had to write in certain ways, as these matters belonged to Kahnawà:ke and yet were being used to vilify the community and to vilify sovereignty in the mainstream press.”
“I consider what analysis will look like, or sound like, when the goals and aspirations of those we talk to inform the methods and the shape of our theorizing and analysis.”
“The political project of dispossession and containment, as it actually works to contain, to fetishize and entrap and distill Indigenous discourses into memorizable, repeatable rituals for preservation against a social and political death that was foretold but did not happen.”
“Accounting for Empire and colonialism and doing so in the context of ‘settler societies’ (code for proximal-to, or once ‘Indigenous’) is now a sturdy subfield within anthropology and informs most if not all contemporary analysis within those geopolitical spaces.”
“No situation is ‘innocent’ of a violence of form, if not content, in narrating a history or a present for ourselves. But like the law and its political formations that took things from Indigenous peoples, academic disciplinary forms had to be contended with too. Anthropology and the ‘law’ (both, necessarily, reified here) mark two such spaces of knowledge and contention that have serious implications for Indigenous peoples in the present” (L. Baker 1998, 2010).
“The Mabo decision, and it offers stark testimony to the distinct power of one account over another in defining not only difference but establishing presence, by establishing the terms of even being seen: a historical perceptibility that empowered possibilities of self- and territorial possession in the present” (Russell 2005).
“Political theorists such as John Locke, who argued in *Of Property* ([1797] 2003) that the origins of property reside in that which is mixed with labor. Thus, that which does not appear to have been mixed with labor is alienable. But only certain forms of labor, those which are perceptible to certain viewers, matter.”
“Labor in a manner that moved these spaces out of ‘the commons’ and into the realm of the private.”
* Ferreira Da Silva, Denise. "." *Social Text* 31.1 (2013): 43-62.
**Excerpt:**
Let me restate the thesis with a description of racial violence:
black body = value + excess.
In *Scenes of Subjection*, Saidiya Hartman refuses to recount the violent scenes—in particular the beating of Frederick Douglass’s Aunt Hester—that mark the lives of slaves in the colonial and postcolonial United States, and elsewhere in the Americas, for that matter. Refusal is Hartman’s response to the implications of the “=”: “I have chosen not to reproduce Douglass’s account of the beating of Aunt Hester,” Hartman states, “in order to call attention to the ease with which such scenes are usually reiterated, the casualness with which they are circulated and the consequences of this routine display of the slave’s ravaged body.”
This refusal to rehearse what she calls the “spectacle of black suffering” is a political-intellectual gesture that, rather than disavowal, urges a consideration of how accounts of suffering do the work of racial subjugation.
Here, however, I am interested in other aspects around and about this decision not to retell. I am interested in racial violence as a figuring of excess—which is what justifies otherwise unacceptable occurrences, such as police shooting unarmed persons.
* Mattei, Ugo, and Laura Nader. **. Blackwell Publishing, 2008.
*Plunder: When the Rule of Law is Illegal* by Ugo Mattei and Laura Nader flips the traditional understanding of the "rule of law" on its head, presenting it not as a force for order but as a deeply entrenched tool for systemic exploitation. Rather than framing law as an impartial institution, the authors reveal it as complicit in perpetuating economic inequalities and safeguarding elite interests. They argue that what is often celebrated as the "rule of law" is, in reality, an insidious means of plundering resources, undermining sovereignty, and enforcing neoliberal ideology across borders.
Mattei and Nader dismantle the notion that law serves as a moral backbone of society, showing instead how it selectively upholds the interests of powerful states and corporations while masking itself in the language of rights and development. They illustrate how international bodies like the IMF, World Bank, and WTO enact policies in developing nations that devastate local economies under the pretense of "structural adjustment." These policies, they argue, are nothing short of legalized robbery, erasing any line between legitimate legal frameworks and exploitative, neo-colonial practices.
One of their most pointed critiques addresses the U.S. claim to global legal authority, arguing that American courts have become arbiters of international grievances, reinforcing a single, dominant legal logic. This move extends the rule of law beyond its national borders, giving rise to what they describe as a "plunder-friendly" system where legality bends to serve imperial ambitions and corporate interests.
The authors push readers to reimagine the rule of law as a means not for maintaining order but for preserving a global hierarchy. They call for a radical rethinking of legality—one rooted in collective justice, not imperial control—urging a version of law that genuinely addresses the needs and rights of disenfranchised populations rather than perpetuating cycles of dispossession. By critiquing the rule of law itself, *Plunder* invites a confrontation with the legal structures that shape global power, urging us to see beyond the rhetoric to the extraction and subjugation it so often legitimizes.
---
* Miéville, China. **. Haymarket Books, 2005.
This book critically examines existing theories of international law and makes the case for an alternative Marxist approach. China Miéville draws on the pioneering jurisprudence of Evgeny Pashukanis linking law to commodity exchange, and in turn uses international law to make better sense of Pashukanis. Miéville argues that despite its advances, the recent ‘New Stream’ of radical international legal scholarship, like the mainstream it opposes, fails to make sense of the legal form itself. Drawing on Marxist theory and a critical history of international law from the sixteenth century to the present day, Miéville seeks to address that failure, and argues that international law is fundamentally constituted by the violence of imperialism.
**Extract from Introduction:**
At the core of this book is an attempt to open a black box in the jurisprudence of international law – that of the legal form itself. It is only in grasping the specifics of that form that we can address the field’s most recurring conundrum: what is the nature of a law between bodies without a superordinate authority? This question lies at the heart of many other classic debates: on the nature of obligation; monism versus dualism; the binding force of custom; and others. And yet mainstream international-law theory circles the fundamental question endlessly, never successfully engaging with it, because without a theory of legal form, the specificity of law itself is impenetrable.
…
I envisage two core audiences for this book. One is made up of international lawyers and jurists with an interest in theory, especially critical theories of the field: among them there may be some without much background in Marxism. The other consists of Marxists, who may not have much knowledge of key debates in the theory of international law. This lack of common ground means there is a risk that some sections of the book will read either as opaque or excessively introductory for one or other group. I have tried to avoid this, while keeping both readerships in mind.
After the 1970s, welfare state restructuring has occurred, to various degrees, across the majority of global north countries. In most cases, care supports and services available to people living in poverty have dramatically dwindled. In these shifting ‘post-welfare’ landscapes, it is obvious to those close to the ground that surviving poverty requires working across multiple, sometimes conflicting, incoherent and fractured systems and sets of resources that collectively organise care. Some components of such infrastructures are formal and official, such as (reduced) state welfare institutions and the vast ‘shadow infrastructure’ of the voluntary and philanthropic sectors. But these are only one part of a much broader, intersecting, social and technical networks of interdependence and responsibility through which people assemble resources, and achieve survival, disrupting formal/informal, legal/illegal boundaries, against the looming threat of deprivation. Geographer Emma Power and colleagues have named this ‘shadow care infrastructures’ to recognise the simple fact that “dark gaps in the welfare system are often not left empty.”
Power, Emma R, Ilan Wiesel, Emma Mitchell, and Kathleen J Mee. “.” *Progress in Human Geography* 46, no. 5 (October 2022): 1165–84.
Binik, Oriana. "." *Studi culturali* 14.1 (2017): 47-72.
This article delves into the powerful role of music in shaping how crime and deviance were understood and romanticized during a particular era in Milan's history. Focusing on the *canzoni della mala milanese*, or the "songs of the Milanese underworld," it explores how these songs, emerging between the 1950s and 1970s, transformed gritty realities of crime and rebellion into something more lyrical and symbolic.
At the heart of these songs is the portrayal of *ligera*, a type of small-scale criminality that was often tied to poverty. The article traces how these songs simultaneously presented crime as a form of resistance to the rapid industrialization that swept Italy post-WWII, while also steeping these criminal acts in a sense of authenticity and romance. In this way, these songs provided a soundtrack to a Milan that was both dangerous and alluring, deeply embedded in the city's evolving identity.
Two songs, *La Povera Rosetta *and *Ma mì*, serve as key examples in the analysis. *La Povera Rosetta* represents a modernist take on authenticity, grounding its narrative in a tragic tale of police brutality against a poor woman named Rosetta, who is caught up in the violence of the state. The song is raw, a reflection of the injustices that working-class communities faced. On the other hand, *Ma mì*, written by Giorgio Strehler, showcases a constructivist approach to authenticity, where the story of a jailed young man is less about factual accuracy and more about invoking a sense of collective memory and emotional truth.
These songs, while varied in style and approach, ultimately contributed to a larger cultural conversation about what it meant to be "authentic" in a rapidly changing Italy. They romanticized the figures of the underworld, turning them into tragic heroes and martyrs of a society that was being transformed by capitalism and modernity. Yet, this romanticization wasn’t without controversy. Intellectuals and criminologists of the time debated whether this portrayal of crime was an accurate reflection of the social struggles or merely a commodified version for mass consumption.
The article also touches on the artistic collaborations that brought these songs to life. Singers like Ornella Vanoni, known for her sultry, intellectual performances, helped popularize the genre, albeit with some critics accusing these productions of being overly stylized or detached from the gritty realities they were supposed to represent.
The *canzoni della mala* laid the groundwork for the later emergence of the Italian singer-songwriter movement (*canzone d’autore*). Through their evocative storytelling, these songs provided a space for both mourning and defiance, connecting the struggles of Milan’s urban poor with a broader, more romantic vision of rebellion and resistance.
In her 2021 article ‘Beyond repair: Staying with breakdown at the interstices’, urban ethnographer Tatiana Thieme develops the notion of *staying with breakdown*. Engaging with Donna Haraway’s invitation to ‘stay with the trouble’ she starts from the observation that breakdown is the widespread condition through which life is lived and thought through for most dwellers in global north and south cities. “When mainstream systems do not work for the urban majority,” – she writes – “the alternative logics that emerge inhabit liminal spaces, and assume particular dispositions that are neither just troublesome nor hopeful, but rather a fragile oscillation between the two. This liminal zone simultaneously rejects prescriptive aspirational futures and pessimistic outlooks”. It is anchored, instead, in a precarious state that is both beyond repair and yet filled with the labour of making the uninhabitable inhabitable across as diverse settings as Zaria, Nairobi, Paris, or Berlin.
Thieme, Tatiana A. “.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 39, no. 6 (December 2021): 1092–1110.
Beirut-based artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan has been excavating the practice of *taqiyya*, a term belonging to Shia Islamic jurisprudence that connotes a legal dispensation for those who must dissimulate their faith when at risk of persecution. For Hamdan *taqiyya* is “an admission that free speech is not about speaking freely, but reclaiming control over the very conditions under which one is being heard” (Hamdan 2015).
You, Mi. “.” Performance Research 21, no. 4 (July 3, 2016): 113–21.
* Marchi, Valerio. *.* Red Star Press, 2014.
The term *Teppa* originates from the Italian word for "hooligan" or "ruffian," and historically, it refers to rebellious, often young, subcultural groups that reject conventional norms. In the context of the book, *Teppa* is used to explore the history and evolution of youth conflict and resistance against established authority from the Renaissance to contemporary times. It signifies a sort of defiant, countercultural spirit that often expresses itself through alternative lifestyles, symbolic resistance, or outright opposition to dominant societal forces.
**Translation of the Introduction, by Wu Ming 5**
A work of art—a book, a film, or music—doesn't need to be "beautiful" to embody a certain mood or to cast light on the shaded details within the scenic interplay of the present times that succeed one another, accumulating to form the past and thereby our ideological notion of it, namely, History. Thus, it happens that a self-indulgent and harmless film conveys a narrative about Italy in an exemplary way, encapsulating all the apparent impotence pervading Italian life in 2014, whatever that may mean. Yes. Despite the irritation one might feel when watching it, we must admit that *The Great Beauty *(La Grande Bellezza) captures many things quite well.
For example, in one scene, the protagonist, Gambardella—a writer who, after his acclaimed debut novel, never wrote again—silences an "engaged" female author, who had built her career under the Party’s aegis, in a Roman salon. An organic intellectual, in short. Gambardella's attack is ruthless. He claims that the woman’s only merit is her servitude, that everything she has written lacks value. She belongs to a class of annoying "conscience" figures who, in reality, are just as inclined toward compromise or outright prostitution as the classes or people they morally criticize for a living. Privileged, insincere, and unbearable, and additionally incapable of enjoying life and plagued by guilt. Sorrentino's protagonist embodies the sentiments many opinion-makers, the bourgeois ideologues, have towards a segment of Italian intellectuals—those who, by definition, play a part. He expresses this with brutal machismo and a resentment reserved for a woman who "doesn't know her place."
The film won an Oscar, capable as it is of delivering an exotic, decadent, aestheticized vision, suited for complacent, ecstatic enjoyment, like after indulging in cheese, wine, and maybe a joint. It is a film befitting a country that has buried its head in the sand for decades and paradoxically embodies a global avant-garde for doing so. Moreover, the film reinforces the classic stereotype of Italy-as-Babylon, and it’s no surprise that the Anglo-Saxon world found it so gratifying.
It’s evident that most who make public use of reason—intellectuals in the real world—live lives far removed from the stereotype Sorrentino’s film peddles once again. A vast class that doesn’t necessarily appear in the national papers to deliver enlightened, philosophical opinions on the Ukrainian crisis, Inter Milan’s crisis, elections, or some ethical issue—often with a priest or a cop for company.
One example of public, critical use of reason is the life and work of Valerio Marchi. It’s hard to imagine an intellectual further from the stereotype conjured by Sorrentino/Gambardella. Who knows what Valerio would have thought and said about such a film. A historian of conflict, with sharp intelligence able to navigate street-level spaces where conflict unfolds, entangles, dissolves, and re-emerges in the daily lives of everyone. It would be naïve to expect academia to recognize the significance of his work, and, in the end, it hardly matters. No Oscars of any kind, no official accolades for books like this. In hindsight, it’s a blessing. What truly matters is that Valerio's words, ideas, and vision continue to circulate, to be engaged with and reinterpreted, contributing to reflection and perhaps even the education of those who, in the face of pervasive conflict, do not shy away but are ready to play a role on the side of the many—that is, the right side.
Yes, things get interesting if Lenin, Gramsci, the Birmingham School, and Dick Hebdige make it out of history or sociology courses or the offices of small parties and really reach the street level, the stage where Valerio Marchi’s intellectual and political work largely unfolded in recent years—as a street intellectual. Everything becomes interesting if books like *Teppa*, which Red Star has fittingly reprinted, become small historical primers supporting our capacity to reflect, analyze, and thus resist and push back.
Although *Teppa* emerged in a different context, it still has much to offer contemporary readers with its accessible and openly narrative style. It deserves new readers, and should reach a younger generation to ensure that a red thread of resistance and rebellion is not lost—that the beauty of bodies in revolt is not swallowed up by the empty blather of power or the mechanical voice of its deathly gadgets.
During the 1990s, when *Teppa* was published, an interesting phenomenon was taking shape. Members of stylistic subcultures (or “cults,” as they say in English) that the book discusses began to produce discourse in the first person. Subcultures, especially the skinhead subculture, were reaching a Hegelian self-consciousness. With this, on one hand, the notion of "purity" (essentially a bourgeois preoccupation) was lost, but on the other, new possibilities were opening up, explored in subsequent years. By the mid-1990s, it was possible to think in terms beyond mere resistance. Soon after (the book dates to 1998), the alter-globalization movement would explode.
*Teppa: Stories of Youth Conflict from the Renaissance to the Present* is a series of styles, a narrative of bodies subjecting themselves to alternative disciplines, sometimes in open antagonism to those of power, creating symbolic and concrete livable spaces in the interstices of the law—biotopes where alternative life forms proliferate, spread, contract, expand, mutate, crossing affiliations and rediscoveries. Indeed, all the subcultural styles discussed in the book, from the Merveilleux to the Zazous to the Skinheads, and finally, in a more self-conscious way, to Punk, embody the precarious balance that symbolizes/resolves the conflict. This conflict can escalate, and often does, into open confrontation, but it fundamentally resides in the relationship between self and identity—both individual and social. This relationship is marked by class belonging, if it’s true—as it is—that in a class-divided society, every thought bears a class mark.
These styles are fleeting, expressing all they have to say within a single season, yet they take root, becoming meaningful options for many generations, evolving into stories that span decades. Styles which, as someone once said in a Roman summer years ago, still embody a problematic, unadorned beauty within the global metropolis. This continues to be significant in times of self-absolving, so-called Great Beauties.
* Hyde, Lewis. 1998. ** 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
In a world built on boundaries, the trickster slips through, embodying the grit and creativity of life lived in the margins. With insatiable hunger and a knack for mischief, tricksters like Coyote in North America, Eshu in West Africa, and Hermes in ancient Greece, are mythical figures who embody the art of breaking and remaking. Trickster figures are both infuriating and crucial, creating paths through chaos that reveal unseen realities and forge unexpected connections.
In *Trickster Makes This World*, Hyde reanimates these archetypes, pairing ancient tales with modern creators like Picasso, Duchamp, and Ginsberg. While gods pursue perfection, the trickster revels in the messiness, complexity, and unresolved tensions of reality.
Each chapter delves into a specific trait of the trickster—hunger, deception, the crossing of thresholds—and examines its cultural resonance. The trickster embodies a “disruptive imagination,” flipping societal values on their heads and introducing radical new ways of seeing.
“Viveza criolla” is a phrase deeply embedded in the Argentine cultural lexicon, embodying a peculiar approach to life marked by opportunism and self-interest. It represents a mindset where the goal is always to gain some advantage, to follow the path of least resistance, often at the expense of ethics and morality. Rooted in the Río de la Plata region, this philosophy has extended its reach into Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, and Venezuela, becoming a cultural staple across socioeconomic classes.
At the heart of *viveza criolla* is a philosophy of minimal effort and maximum gain. Whether it's manipulating laws, sidestepping ethical standards, or relying on personal charm and cunning, the *vivo*—the person who embodies this mindset—prioritizes personal benefit over the common good. As Marcos Aguinis articulates in *El Atroz Encanto de Ser Argentinos*, *viveza criolla* is not merely a social behavior but a national pathology that undermines Argentina’s ability to thrive. It is a corrosive charm that enthralls many but also erodes the moral and social fabric of the country.
Aguinis argues that *viveza criolla* fosters an illusion of superiority and cleverness, but in reality, it leads to long-term social and economic dysfunction. He critiques this way of life for perpetuating corruption, mistrust, and inequality, preventing collective progress. It fuels a cycle of individualism where personal success is celebrated at the expense of the community, turning mutual respect into resentment.
An interesting dimension of this phenomenon is how it often manifests in everyday gestures and social habits. As observed in "El Tabaquismo en la Cultura de la Viveza Criolla," smoking is not just a habit but an aesthetic of *viveza*. The smoker, with a cigarette in hand, becomes a symbol of worldly knowledge, projecting an image of someone who has seen it all and mastered the art of deception. Lighting a cigarette with flair or taking a drag while carefully choosing one's words becomes part of a performance—a way to craft lies and manipulate conversations without being caught. It is this subtle, performative aspect of *viveza* that often enhances its appeal.
The card game *Truco* is another cultural reflection of *viveza criolla*, where deception is the key to victory. Winning in *Truco* is not just about having the best hand but outsmarting opponents through bluffs and tricks. This mirrors Argentina's political and social reality, where power often goes to those who can manipulate the system most effectively, sidelining honesty in favor of cunning.
Jorge Luis Borges captured the essence of *viveza* when he wrote that in Argentina, people care less about being seen as immoral than as foolish. This distinction highlights the Argentine’s deep fear of appearing naïve or gullible—the true mark of failure in a society where trickery is venerated. The Argentine *vivo* rejects the notion of hard work, preferring to live off the efforts of others, as expressed in the popular saying, *“El vivo vive del zonzo, y el zonzo de su trabajo”* (The clever one lives off the fool, and the fool off his work).
Popular culture further reinforces this archetype through characters like *Isidoro Cañones* and *Avivato*, who exemplify the *viveza criolla* lifestyle. Isidoro, a playboy figure, celebrates life without labor, thriving off parties, gambling, and charm while avoiding honest work. His addiction to alcohol and cigarettes symbolizes the decadence of *viveza*, where indulgence and deception are glorified. Similarly, *Avivato*, a middle-class con artist, embodies the everyday opportunism of the *vivo*, always finding ways to exploit others for his gain.
Premilla Nadasen's* Welfare Warriors *is an in-depth exploration of the welfare rights movement that brings to life the often overlooked political battles around welfare and dignity from 1960 to 1975. This movement mobilized tens of thousands in protest, expanded welfare access to countless individuals, advocated for and secured special allowances for essentials like clothing and household goods, and even pushed—albeit with limited success—for credit access for welfare recipients. It established due process rights for those on welfare and aimed to shift the system from casework management toward a guaranteed annual income.
Beginning with a concise background on the evolution of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), Nadasen dives into the racialized welfare politics of the 1950s and 1960s, where welfare became stigmatized, especially in relation to Black women and so-called "illegitimacy." She captures the grassroots nature of the welfare movement, predominantly organized by Black women across cities like Cleveland, Boston, Virginia, and Los Angeles. With the founding of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in 1966—led by George Wiley, a CORE organizer, and chaired by Los Angeles welfare recipient Johnnie Tillmon—the movement grew to over 30,000 members, reaching well beyond 100,000 supporters through local campaigns.
One of the most compelling sections of *Welfare Warriors* examines the NWRO’s internal conflicts between its predominantly middle-class male staff, who prioritized expansion, and the recipient membership, primarily women, who focused on sustained organizing and reframing welfare in the public eye. These tensions came to a head over issues of work and single motherhood. In a transformative reexamination of Nixon-era politics, Nadasen reveals that rising activism created a "seldom acknowledged level of consensus" in the late 1960s (p. 189) around the idea of a guaranteed annual income—or what conservative voices framed as a negative income tax.
Nadasen, Premilla. **. Psychology Press, 2005.
