Passionate Undertakings: New Collectives, Indeterminate Spaces of Mobility, and the Politics of Affect

Abstract

This article examines new forms of collectivity and related forms of political action. It is based on interviews with activists involved in the EuroMayDay movement in Hamburg—a group of precarious freelancers, organized in the initiative Lux & Konsorten to advocate for their right to a decent life in the city. A reflection on the limits of the politics of representation points to the challenges associated with understanding the heterogeneity of subject positions in organizations and rethinking the notions of critique, resistance, and potential autonomous spaces (Freiräume) in the context of post-Fordist everyday life. It uses a neo-materialist perspective to address the question of how the collective can constitute itself such that differences in the field of radical city politics are upheld and the act of writing on protest is not reduced to discursive traces.

Keywords:

• Precarity
• New Social Movements
• Micropolitics
• Politics of Affect

Notes

¹See Marx and Engels (1974, 42).

²Translators' Note: The name Lux & Konsorten could be translated as Lux & Co. As explained further below, “Lux” is a reference to Electrolux, a company producing home appliances. The word “Konsorten” can denote members of a consortium, but in German it is also used (in a derogatory sense) to refer to accomplices. For more information (in German) on the activities of the initiative, see http://lux-net.de/.

³The EuroMayDay movement is a European-wide network that mobilizes around the theme of precarious working and living conditions. Since 2005, a group of friends (individuals and representatives of activist groups) have met together in Hamburg in an effort to claim global rights. They started an “exchange of ideas and alternatives in response to the crisis of the social welfare system, the family, the nation-state, and the traditional work environment” (see http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/arbeit/aktionen/euromayday05hh.pdf). They also organize parades on May Day to bring the invisible stories of precarity onto the streets (see http://www.euromayday.org/).

⁴See below for more on the strategic positioning of the Lux & Konsorten activists who run small businesses.

⁵See Bontrup (2006).

⁶See Massumi (2002, 5).

⁷See http://www.europarl.europa.eu/summits/lis1_en.htm.

⁸See “Planungs-Streit-Tour @ Lux&Consorten: ‘Die Stadt ist unsere,’” 2 April 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERNW7nmEHcc&feature=youtu.be.