Welcome to Territories, the monthly newsletter from Inhabit. This time around, we’ve got two brand new articles for you. Check them out below.
Hell is Truth Seen Too Late
An Interview with Joel Wainwright about Climate Leviathan and COP26
Everyone knows climate change will radically alter the world, beginning with its ecology. Yet one of the contradictions in today's common sense is to presume that current political and economic forms will continue, largely unaltered, into this new future. Capital will reign, nations will rule, and citizens will obey. Enter Climate Leviathan, a brilliant look at how states and capital will respond to the climate crisis—and what alternatives may emerge to contest their hegemony. In this brand new interview, we speak with co-author Joel Wainwright about COP26, what radical futures may come, and the wager behind the critical concept 'Climate X.'
One of the fundamental paradoxes we face is that the climate crisis presents itself to us as a problem that the Left everywhere needs to tackle immediately so that we can transform the planet. The challenge is that we have to do so on the existing terrain of the political, which is of course defined by capital and state. […] But the one thing we know for sure is that the existing terrain of the political is not conducive to rapid decarbonization. It is totally set against it. That is a justification for an even more radical strategy of exit.
Well, I Quit
Anti-Work Discourse Against the Neoliberal Utopia
Across the country, in sector after sector, workers are dropping out. They call it the Great Resignation—a diffuse revolt against work, a refusal of the capitalist bargain, a rejection of the bosses. Generational sentiment is turning against work and the meaninglessness of its world. In this original essay, Jess Lipka dives into the r/antiwork subreddit to surface insights, contradictions, and hidden potentials among those who quit. Who dares to imagine a world without work? Anyone who wants to truly live.
Capital is flexible. Businesses are already experimenting with solutions that would either allow them to withstand higher unemployment or to persuade the unemployed to give up their breakout attempts. So long as we stay within the paradigm of work, capital will find a solution to the Great Resignation. The task is for the unemployed to avoid becoming “a class of workers who are ‘free’ not only of means of reproduction, but also of work itself.” That is possible only by ceasing to be a worker in any respect, and instead engaging in non-economic experiments rooted in struggles against capital’s world.
Kenosha, I Do Mind Dying
A few weeks ago, Inhabit published an original essay on Kenosha—looking at the experience of the uprising, the Rittenhouse trial, and what it all portends for the future of American revolt. Since the acquittal, the stakes of rebellion have only grown higher.
Rittenhouse foreshadows a future of armed conflict and false narratives, of child soldiers and fatal mistakes. Bloodletting in the hinterland against a backdrop of silicon megacities at the coasts. This horizon promises only catastrophe, which is hiding in the language of law. What’s at stake is neither ‘self-defense’ or ‘murder.’ The true meaning of the Rittenhouse trial lies in the way it frames and redraws identities for future conflicts to come. Citizen or terrorist—it’s a distinction to which every half-thought Tweet contributes.
Read the rest over at Ill Will.
“In our age, a different existence is being sought: other vital structures and other paradigms of the liberation of the living are more than necessary.” Achille Mbembe on the earthly community.
“Radical municipalism galvanizes activists seeking to meet people’s basic needs through a focus on local autonomy and confederation.” Eleanor Finley and Aaron Vansintjan on the constellation of radical municipalist projects in North America.
“What if all the new mutual aid formations developed during the pandemic were not built as a reaction to temporary crises, but for longevity?” Andreas Petrossiants on the art of mutual aid.
“One part of escaping from the world of work is by finding ways to provide for our needs outside of the exchange economy.” An anonymous redditor on the horizons of anti-work.
“Collective care is one of the most important things to understand: how it has happened historically, how it could emerge as part of a different world.” Aren Aizura on covid, disability, and care.
“The project of destitution leads at once to the raising of a spiritual call, or to the calling of a spirit, an ‘experience of the heart’ whose challenge must be faced up to.” Jean-Luc Nancy on the theory of destitution.
“It’s not incidental that the geolocation technology that locates us on a map when we’re looking for that liquor store is the same technology that locates us for the police.” Leijia Hanrahan on maps, algorithms, and surveillance.
“People have been getting pissed off about the incredibly competitive nature of Chinese society, and particularly work.” Listen to It Could Happen Here on involution, lying flat, and anti-work.
“We have paid in the millions of dead, and the millions more that will die as a direct result of not taking dramatic action to wrest global life chances from the hands of pharmaceutical companies.” Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant on covid, capital, and big pharma.
“In the past twenty months many ‘radicals’ gave up criticizing any choice made by the government.” Wu Ming on covid, lockdowns, and the Green Pass.
“Posed against the system are a few necessary pillars of thought: food as a human right, food sovereignty for oppressed communities, immediate return of land to indigenous communities, reparations for slavery and its legacy through land distribution, and the decommodification of food.” C.E. on food, farming, and policy.
"As much as we can remove ourselves from capitalist food production—the dependence on a food system that is not built to nourish people, but to make a small handful of people a lot of money to the detriment of everyone else—as much as we can move away from that, fantastic!” Listen to Partisan Gardens on preserving, fermentation, and food autonomy.
“Death will be something other than the absence of individual being and instead a part of a collective becoming.” M.B. on life, death, and humble communism.
“This is what happens when the left gives up on its core commitment to restructuring society at the economic level.” Freddie deBoer on the eclipse of class consciousness in the post-Occupy era.
We’ll see you again in a couple weeks for our year-end issue and some news about our future plans.
You’re on Path B,
Inhabit