subtitle: some principles for a gentle polite caring survival in self-administered and floss infrastructures
disclaimer: the title and subtitle might change
reading conditions:
chapter: admin realism
---
*More and more of us looked up one day and realized that the emperor had no clothes. It is in this dilemma that new tools for noticing seem so important*
*Anna Tsing - The mushroom at the end of the world*
That we are living in time of crisis it is no surprise, and it's actually been a while that the emperor has been going around with no clothes. Of course, we can all laugh about it as it happens in the famous folk tale Andersen rewrote, and indeed we kinda got used to it. But the truth is that not only more and more people started noticing that majestic nakedness: more and more people are experiencing the real consequences of this power loosing its meaning, and that's ain't funny at all. Now, while the emperor keeps walking col suo seguito di cretini, it doesn't matter the
Now, it doesn't matter so much if we use this emperor as a metaphor for capitalism, or progress, or market, or crisis itself. What matters is that this shocking view of a structured reality that crumbles down in its ridiculousness
that we are talking about capitalism or progress or market or war
as Anna Tsing writes at the beginning of her book, among others*, the conditions of precarity this generalised crisis
when the reality created by this emperor going around with his booty in the air
Yet there is something something uncanny, if not shocking, about this view
I wonder what would happen in Andersen's fable after that boy screaming that the emperor was naked.
In this little excerpt, Anna Tsing refers to the fact that progress is
a shocking vision of reality.
talking about crisis is obvious, but what is shocking is to really experience and empathize with the struggle
introducing the shift of vision, helped by noticing tools
coupling with the entrance quote by ursula le guin: if the emperor is dead then what? tsing proposes to use the lens of precarity
the precarity and the unsustainable
the project of the thesis is a fieldwork in the crisis of evry day life in a specific context
the irony of doing taxes, it seems the monster that self-employed, free lancers need to confront, a topic for adults, a boring weekend on the spreadsheet. What is actually doing the taxes? can we do taxes otherwise? what is it that we need to pay and for whom?
the contraddiction of paying taxes if we are in a survival mode
taxes and the common
Radical Administration is a term that indicates
coupling relationships with the infrastructure
symbiosis
#### radical admin as point of view where things get real (through bureaucracy).
subtitle: some principles for a gentle polite caring survival in self-administered and floss infrastructures
disclaimer: the title and subtitle might change
reading conditions:
---
donatella from constant : donatella@constantvzw.org
### 0 // introduction:
[] = something to be unpacked / clarified / called otherwise
*the scope of the research*
* the radmin journal
* the radmin journal
In the transition between an educational environment and the establishment of a creative (publishing) practice in the field of [digital (experimental) publishing], a lot of questions arise around how much of the so far carefully constructed values of sustainability, care, collective learning, and autonomy around collaborative work would actually survive, and at which cost.
Back in November 2022, when I was asked to submit the first thesis outline and project proposal I panicked
in parallel I was reading Simone Weil's "Reflections concerning the causes of liberty and social oppression" []. A book that I received when I turned 25. I knew her from her writings on the abolition of all parties, and for her [let's say anarco-mysticism.] I was throwing her name here and there so often that someone thought to take the first italian edition of the first book with her name that was possible to find in the book store and give it to me as a gift.
And I'm extremely grateful to this person.
The book contains an essay in which the French philosopher not only draws an incredibly lucid analisys on the status of her historical present through an unapologetic critique of marxist doctrine, but also sketches a proposition for a more [ gentle] way of living and working rooted into a realistic economy of the present. As soon as I started reading it I discovered Simone Weil was 25 too at the time she wrote the essay,
Now, I admit, this got me thinking alternatively several times "oh my god there's a secret link between me and Simone Weil, destiny has wanted that" and "omg what am I doing of my life and how could she be so smart at 25?". In between, I even started to fantasize about the fact that if she would have lived in the present day, she would have probably been busy writing about computers and other digital means of production. This made me even more excited about this sort of historical warmhole between 2 lifes in their 25, of which I coud be somehow a herald from this side of the temporal segment, to which her knowledge would have been transferred. But the factual reality is that while she was living teh toughest life teaching in high school and universities, and working in the factory, and organizing unions(need to double check on this one), I barely know how to do my taxes.
When I turned 25, I received as a present Simone Weil's "Reflections concerning the causes of liberty and social oppression" [**]. I knew her already from her writings on the abolition of all parties, and for her [**let's say anarco-mysticism.**], but what I didn’t know was her personal story, and that when she wrote that essay, in particular, she was 25 too.
Now, I admit, this got me thinking several times that there must have been a sort of historical wormhole between these two lives in their 25, of which II could be somehow the herald from this side of the temporal segment, and to which the the French philosopher’s knowledge could have been transferred. Eventually, I even started to fantasize about the fact that if she would have lived in the present day, she would have probably been busy writing about computers and other digital means of production. But the factual reality is that while she was writing an incredibly lucid analysis on the status of her historical present through an unapologetic critique of Marxist doctrine, and also sketching a proposition for a more [ gentle] way of living and working rooted into a realistic economy of the present... well I barely know ho to do my taxes.
Still, there are some takeaway from this incomparable parallel:
- different language, I'm not able to understand some of teh concepts, what do they actually mean
- simone weil draws an analysis of the material [infra-]structure and the more ideological dynamics within a group/society and how they influence each other, and there is something of this way of proceeding that I will use too [well.. marx but we're also sick of him at a certain point]
@ -27,9 +49,18 @@ Still, there are some takeaway from this incomparable parallel:
"realistically depressing" world (Berlant, 2011),
Let's start from this depressive realism?
what is this depressive realism that we have to face when dealing with cultures? and not only with cultures, but with labour within the field of digital cultures (there will be a series of definitiions for what I mean by cultures) and not only within digital cultures, but specifically within the context of self-organized cultural organizations, groups, collectives, small institutions that rely on open source technologies both infrastructurally and [thematically ](how do you say when something is what you study, research, or produce ...). And even more, the ways of organizing and relating to the diffent components, internally, and with the different reality, externally, follow a series of principles rooted within the field of open source software, but also, more broadly within anarco, anticapitalist and feminist tendencies [unpack the connection]. these self organized groups create small but very complex systems which try to thrive and compete against the neoliberal logics of contemporary cultural production, in a process of continuous negotiation of the conditions of autonomy, dependency, sustainability, care, failure [this sentence is a bit populistic, will unpack...]
The point is, how Earl McCabe puts it in his/their(?) interview to Lauren Berlant, "In our moment of economic crisis, austerity, and unemployment, it seems especially important to be realistic about the objective constraints on life in our world". As described by Lauren Berlant, depressive realism is a perception of reality which allows for the accountability of "awkwardness, incoherence, and the difficulty of staying in sync with the world at the heart of what also binds people to the social"(Berlant, 2015). Depressive realism as a sort of coping mechanism that trains and strenghten sensitivity towards those constaints on life, which became invisible, naturalized by neoliberal working standards.
what is this depressive realism that we have to face when dealing with cultures? and not only with cultures, but with labour within the field of digital cultures (there will be a series of definitions for what I mean by cultures) and not only within digital cultures, but specifically within the context of self-organized cultural organizations, groups, collectives, small institutions that rely on open source technologies both infrastructurally and [thematically](how do you say when something is what you study, research, or produce ...).
And even more, the ways of organizing and relating to the diffent components, internally, and with the different reality, externally, follow a series of principles rooted within the field of open source software, but also, more broadly within anarco, anticapitalist and feminist tendencies [unpack the connection].
these self organized groups create small but very complex systems which try to thrive and compete against the neoliberal logics of contemporary cultural production, in a process of continuous negotiation of the conditions of autonomy, dependency, sustainability, care, failure [this sentence is a bit populistic, will unpack...]
The point is, how Earl McCabe puts it in his/their(?) interview to Lauren Berlant, "In our moment of economic crisis, austerity, and unemployment, it seems especially important to be realistic about the objective constraints on life in our world".
As described by Lauren Berlant, depressive realism is a perception of reality which allows for the accountability of "awkwardness, incoherence, and the difficulty of staying in sync with the world at the heart of what also binds people to the social"(Berlant, 2015). Depressive realism as a sort of coping mechanism that trains and strenghten sensitivity towards those constaints on life, which became invisible, naturalized by neoliberal working standards.
In digital realm this translates into... [... ]
In this capitalism realism (Fisher, 2015) where "there's no alternative", those contraints on life are threatening to the core small self-organized cultural realities are one of those places where these contrains on life manifest as [digital discomfort ... ]
@ -53,7 +84,7 @@ when I came across the work of Kate Rich and Angela Piccinini, I though it was t
3- i can finally learn to do my taxes
3 suspicions:
the first one is that radical admin is not really a thing, and that even admin without radical is an invention...
the first one is that radical admin is not really a thing,
the second one is that assuming there is such a thing like radical admin, then it's all about anything else than office job
and the third one, will I actuallly learn to do my taxes after all?
@ -62,6 +93,26 @@ and the third one, will I actuallly learn to do my taxes after all?
#### radical admin as caregiver?
radical admin as a caregiver is the idea that the admin facilitates circulation of resources but is also sensitive to the well-being of the org's people
#### radical admin as point of view where things get real.
A [radical admin as caregiver] is able to identify those area in which care is lacking. and makes these holes become real, by formalizing them in terms resources that assume equal importance as other types of resources and proposes bureaucratic-"plugins" for the existing infrastructure.
for example:
your work at the self-org is your second, or third or forth job, and yet it cannot be taken as serios as your [primary job] because you cannot reach finacial autonomy with that only. Yet this job fully is extremely important for you as individual, it's part of your passion, it's what your satisfyes your ideals... blabla...it's a job that allows you to not feel alienated by labour.
The increasing precarity and [crisis] though, makes you accumulate bullshit jobs and the time you reserve to your ideal occupation become less and less sustainable while also becoming more demanding.
your work at the self-org start to pop up in different moments of your daily routine: your eating breakfast and you imemdiately remember that little expenses that you absolutely need to add to the budget spreasheet. You really need to make your laundry because you finished your underwears, but "oh let's see if X contacted Y for that important issue, I'm gonna quickly check the mailing list". Or even worse you put a small reminder on your phone to stop working till late in the evening, but you keep snoozing it to be able to organize the todo list for the next days, and while you are about to fall asleep in your bed, you suddenly remember 2 or 3 more bullet points that you absolutely need to add to the previous list because you're going to forget for sure the day after.
This is what we could embrace under the name of mental load.
During one of the boiler inspection, this issue emerged as something that has an important weight and influence on well-being at work.
It is also important to consider that in times of crisis, the mental load already exists in form of mental overload
*bureaucratic-plugin example:*
It would be useful to recognize microtasks and microthoughts as part of a job description, and include activities that allow to share this mental load within the group.
@ -125,7 +176,7 @@ bulshit jobs
tba
* Quote from Linton Kwesi Johnson
**Quote from Linton Kwesi Johnson*
### 2 // maintenance of bureaucratic infrastructures
grgr
1 year ago
