Various Joyful Encounters with the Dystopias of Affective Capitalism

This article contends that what appear to be the dystopic conditions of affective capitalism are just as likely to be felt in various joyful encounters as they are in atmospheres of fear associated with post 9/11 securitization. Moreover, rather than grasping these joyful encounters with capitalism as an ideological trick working directly on cognitive systems of belief, they are approached here by way of a repressive affective relation a population establishes between politicized sensory environments and what Deleuze and Guattari (1994) call a brain-becoming-subject. This is a radical relationality (Protevi, 2010) understood in this context as a mostly nonconscious brain-somatic process of subjectification occurring in contagious sensory environments populations become politically situated in. The joyful encounter is not therefore merely an ideological manipulation of belief, but following Gabriel Tarde (as developed in Sampson, 2012), belief is always the object of desire. The discussion starts by comparing recent efforts by Facebook to manipulate mass emotional contagion to a Huxleyesque control through appeals to joy. Attention is then turned toward further manifestations of affective capitalism; beginning with the so-called emotional turn in the neurosciences, which has greatly influenced marketing strategies intended to unconsciously influence consumer mood (and choice), and ending with a further comparison between encounters with Nazi joy in the 1930s (Protevi, 2010) and the recent spreading of right wing populism similarly loaded with political affect. Indeed, the dystopian presence of a repressive political affect in all of these examples prompts an initial question concerning what can be done to a brain so that it involuntarily conforms to the joyful encounter. That is to say, what can affect theory say about an apparent brain-somatic vulnerability to affective suggestibility and a tendency toward mass repression? However, the paper goes on to frame a second (and perhaps more significant) question concerning what can a brain do. Through the work of John Protevi (in Hauptmann and Neidich (eds.), 2010: 168-183), Catherine Malabou (2009) and Christian Borch (2005), the article discusses how affect theory can conceive of a brain-somatic relation to sensory environments that might be freed from its coincidence with capitalism. This second question not only leads to a different kind of illusion to that understood as a product of an ideological trick, but also abnegates a model of the brain which limits subjectivity in the making to a phenomenological inner self or Being in the world.

Neoliberal and Neoconservative Immiseration Capitalism in England: Policies and Impacts on Society and on Education

In this article we firstly set out the facts about the current stage of capitalism, the Immiseration stage of neoliberal capitalism in England. We note its relationship with conservatism and neo-conservatism. We identify increased societal inequalities, the assault by the capitalist state on its opponents, and proceed to describe and analyse what neoliberalism and neo-conservatism have done and are doing to education in England- in the schools, further education, and university sectors. We present two testimonies about the impacts of neoliberalism/ neo-conservatism, one from the school sector, one from the further / vocational education sector, as a means of describing, analysing, and then theorising the parameters of the neoliberal/ neoconservative restructuring education and its impacts. We conclude by further theorising this. With the election of a Conservative majority in the 7 May 2015 general election in the UK, the policies and processes of neoliberalisation and neoconservatisation are being intensified.

Fighting Talk: The Statements of 'The IRA/New IRA'

With the advent of the new violent dissident merger, ‘The IRA/New IRA’, the group and its affiliates have had to legitimise their new existence. They have utilised the maintenance of paramilitary activity to achieve this. However, they have also produced a number of organisational statements, justifying their position, tactics and strategies. This article analyses the evolution of these statements, both pre and post-merger from 2007 to 2015. 126 individual statements and 4 magazines are analysed using grounded theory. This analysis found that the statements have a dual strategy, aiming to foster trust in the movement and distrust in their perceived enemies. One of the dominant ways in which the group aims to foster trust, is by proposing their possession of an historical mandate from the republican forefathers of 1916, as well as the internally lauded paramilitaries from the Troubles era PIRA. The focus of the distrust narrative has been on the ‘constitutional nationalism’ of Sinn Féin. However, it also pours scorn on the PSNI, and capitalism, across the island of Ireland. The analysis of these statements can provide us with an understanding of the future direction of the group, as well as giving us insight, which can inform the development of any counter-narrative.