[] = something to be unpacked / clarified / called otherwise
#### 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
* 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.
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]
- ...
###### connecting to the scope of the research and research question
"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...]
@ -18,7 +32,39 @@ The point is, how Earl McCabe puts it in his/their(?) interview to Lauren Berlan
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 ... ]
This need for realism, is translated to me to the call for getting to know the present we live in order to regain agency on it.
* research question:
in the context of self-organized cultural organizations that rely on floss software infrastructures and/or self-hosted technologies, how is administration operated in between maintenance and sustainability? (in between might create poles)
where
the word sustainability demands and creates the context for a bearable environment at a techno-social/political/economical level
and the maintenance responds to instances of such (write) sustainability (read: care/well being, economic/financial stability, etc) with actual hands-on practice, tools, strategies and guidelines...
###### introducing the bigger context
* radmin
* care
* working conditions in foss envs
when I came across the work of Kate Rich and Angela Piccinini, I though it was the perfect angle from which looking at publishing for 3 main reasons:
1- radical admin is wrapped into great values
2- admin is an office job and it's perfect because I'm extremely shy and a bit social anxious
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 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?
#### 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
grgr
1 year ago