Lorey I. (2010) Becoming Common; Precarization as Political Constitution

7/26/2019 Lorey I. (2010) Becoming Common; Precarization as Political Constitution

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Isabell Lorey

BecomingCommon:

Precarization asPoliticalConstituting

Political-Cultural QueeringsThe discourse on precarization that has emergedin the past decade, primarily in Europe, rests onan extremely complex understanding of socialinsecurity and its productivity. The variousstrands of this discourse have been broughttogether again and again in the context of theEuropean precarious movement organized underEuroMayDay.1 This transnational movement, in

existence since the early 2000s, thematizesprecarious working and living conditions as thestarting point for political struggles and seekspossibilities for political action in neoliberalconditions. What is unusual about this socialmovement is not only the way in which under itsauspices new forms of political struggles aretested and new perspectives on precarizationdeveloped; rather Ð and this is striking in relationto other social movements Ð it is how it hasqueered the seemingly disparate fields of thecultural and the political again and again. In the

past decade, conversations concerning both the(partly subversive) knowledge of the precarious,and a search for commons (in order to constitutethe political), has conspicuously taken placemore often in art institutions than in social,political, or even academic contexts. In 2004, for example, the research,exhibition, and event project ÒAtelier EuropaÓ inthe Kunstverein Munich brought theorists andartists together to exchange ideas aboutprecarious living and working conditions andpossible resistance to them.2 The projectfocused on the increasing number and variety offorms of precarization not only in the field ofcultural production, but also in social fields,especially the caregiving and reproduction workstill largely assigned to women.3 The feministactivist group from Madrid, ÒPrecarias a laderiva,Ó provided an important contribution inthis respect.4

Another example from 2004: on the daybefore May 1, activists from Indymedia groupsfrom all over Spain met at the invitation of theBarcelona Museum of Contemporary Art(MACBA) to conduct an intensive debate about

their media activism practices. On May 1 they notonly took part in the EuroMayDay demonstrationbut also carried the problematization ofprecarious working conditions back to MACBA. Itbecame possible to articulate a critique of theambivalent role of art institutions: on the onehand, institutions in the art field were the site ofcritical discussions of neoliberal transformationprocesses; on the other, such institutions wereimportant players in the game of cognitivecapitalism and increasing precarizationtendencies.5

As a final example, In January 2005 theinternational conference ÒKlartext!Ó took place

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in Berlin in the KŸnstlerhaus Bethanien and theVolksbŸhne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, devotedto the ÒStatus of the Political in ContemporaryArt and Culture.Ó6 Many of those invited werealso activists in the transnational EuroMayDaynetwork who had met on the day before theconference in Berlin. They brought the currentproblematizations of precarization into theconference (and were able to have their travel

costs reimbursed). Beyond these examples, theoreticalanalyses of precarization linked to activistpractices (such as in the context of theEuroMayDay network) were increasingly carriedout in online journals conjoining art, politicaltheory, and activism, such as Mute magazine ortransversal Ð many years before precaritybecame a major theme in institutionalized socialscience research.7

Normalizing and Steering Differences

Precarization is by no means a phenomenon thatfirst affects social groups imagined to be at themargins before moving into the center to affectthe so-called middle class Ð those who havesecured their position within the capitalistproduction regime, and who are therefore able tofortify and improve their social position. A modelof this kind, based on precarious margins and athreatened center, does not do justice to theremodeling and outright dismantling of socialsecurity systems in Europe. It is a developmentthat reached the so-called center a long timeago, with the massive reduction of permanentemployment contracts and the increase intemporary jobs sometimes calling for a highdegree of mobility, with or without minimal socialsecurity benefits such as health insurance, paidholidays, or pensions. In the context of such changes,precarization can be seen as a neoliberalinstrument of governance. Neoliberal societiesare now governed internally through socialinsecurity, which means providing the minimumpossible social security. Precarization iscurrently in a process of normalization, taking its

cue from administrative strategies that wereproblematic even before Fordism. Just as theFordist social welfare state represents ahistorical exception, so too can precariousworking conditions be understood as an anomalyor deviation.8

While the art of governing currently consistsof introducing a lack of security, normalizing ageneral condition of precariousness also doesnot produce any form of equality in the midst ofinsecurity. For good reason, neoliberal logicwants no reduction, no end to inequality,

because it necessarily toys with hierarchicaldifferences and governs on the basis of them.

This administrative logic no longer focuses onregulating fixed differences in identity, butregulates the Òabsolute povertyÓ that couldprevent individuals from being competitive.10 Ifwe understand precarization in this sense as thenormalization and steering of differences in themidst of insecurity, then it becomes pointless toconstruct specialized groups with criticalemancipatory intentions around notions of

precarity, as divisions into Òluxury precarityÓ andÒimpoverished precarityÓ ultimately onlyreproduce neoliberal dynamics ofcompetitiveness between different degrees ofprecarization. If precarization has become a governmentalinstrument of normalization surpassing specificgroups and classes, then social and politicalbattles themselves should not assumedifferential separations and hierarchies. Rather,those who wage such battles should lookspecifically for what they have in common in the

midst of normalization: a desire to make use ofthe productivity of precarious living and workingconditions to change these modes of governing,a means of working together to refuse and eludethem.

Debates over New Political PracticesSo as not to further isolate the manifoldprecariat, in the past decade critical discoursesand resistant practices in the context ofprecarization have repeatedly concentrated onwhat the precarious in have in common. This kindof search for commonality begins fromdifferences and does not end in uniformity;rather, it is accompanied by permanent debatesabout what counts as the common. The theoretical reflections arrayed againstprecarization derive a great deal of inspirationfrom poststructuralist and Post-Operaistthinking, indicative of a search for practicesoutside the realm of traditional politics ofrepresentation. These politics, in whichrepresentation is primarily understood as astand-in, are not only evident in parliamentarydemocracies, but also inform leftist political

notions of a collective subject that should beable to articulate demands (representationally)with one voice, as is typical of political practices.Yet when it is a matter of searching for thecommon in the various forms of precarization, forpossibilities of coming together to form alliancesthrough difference, then identitary, subject-oriented politics are obviously not suitable fortheir hindering of what is common indifference.11

In addition, particularly among leftists, onehas to be reminded that expressions of solidarity

with the mostly migrant ÒothersÓ not only leaveoneÕs ÒownÓ position unquestioned, but also

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victimize the Òpoor othersÓ and deny them theirown capacity for political action. Within theframework of EuroMayDay, rather than sealingoff identity categories between precariouscreatives on the one hand and the excludedprecarious workers on the other (the whiteÒlower class,Ó migrants, or illegalized persons),alliances between class and status were forgedto bring together precarious cultural producers,

knowledge workers, migrant organizations,initiatives of the unemployed, organizations ofillegalized persons, and also unions. Thus thesubject of repeated debates concerned howmodes of refiguring the subject Ð and thusidentitary logics Ð could be deconstructed to finda new language of politics capable of wideningthe field of political possibilities.

Productivity that Cannot Be CompletelyEconomicized

There is an important presupposition for both a

political and a theoretical perspective of thecommon: the new figure of work based oncommunication, knowledge, creativity, and affectis by no means productive only for a new phaseof capitalist accumulation.12 The economizationof the social, the confluence of work and life, thedemands to involve the whole person inimmaterial and affective work Ð in other words,the capitalization of modes of subjectification Ðare not total, comprehensive, or whollydetermined. There are always surpluses,possibilities for articulation, and potentialities ofresistance. Modes of subjectification are notcompletely absorbed into the normative state, orinto economic interpellations of flexibility,mobility, and affective and creative labor. Ininsecure, flexibilized, and discontinuous workingand living conditions, subjectifications arise thatdo not wholly correspond to a neoliberal logic ofexploitation, which also resist and refuse.

Precarization thus symbolizes a contestedfield: a field in which the attempt to start anew cycle of exploitation also meetsdesires and subjective behaviors which

express the refusal of the old, so-calledfordist regime of labor and the search foranother, better, we can even say flexiblelife.12

The processes of precarization are a contestedsocial terrain on which the struggles of theworkers and wishes for other forms of living andworking are articulated. But these processes arenot only productive in the sense of economicexploitation. In post-Fordist precarious workingconditions, new forms of living and new social

relationships are constantly developed andreinvented, and processes of precarization are

also productive in this sense.13

The value produced by forms of workprimarily based in communication and affect, onexchange with others, cannot be entirelymeasured, as these activities transgress theterms required by Fordist industrial labor.14 Whatis unforeseen, contingent, and also precarious,emerges at many moments in the process ofprecarization, and an inherent aspect of this

precarization is the capacity for refusal, andhence precarization is a process of recomposingwork and life, of sociality, which thus cannot be Ðnot immediately, not so quickly, and perhaps noteven at all Ð economicized. In these re-compositions, interruptions occur in the processof normalizing precarity, that is, in the continuityof exploitability. In this sense, the assemblage ofmeanings associated with precarization in thediscussion during EuroMayDay does not need tohave a negative connotation, because it alsocarries the potential for common refusals, the

potential for exodus and reconstitution.15

The Knowledge of the Precarious and thePractice of Queering

Productive interruptions Ð the folding of theprecarious into the potentiality of constitutingthe common Ð cannot simply be statedtheoretically, of course, but must instead befound and invented in social and politicalconfrontations. What was needed in the early2000s (and is still needed today) was knowledgeabout both different forms of precarization andthe practices of refusal and subversion newlyemerging in them. Many militant investigationswere carried out Ð for instance in cultural andartistic contexts (such as that of kpD16) or invarious social contexts (such as by Precarias a laDeriva) Ð in order to bring together the differentstrands of knowledge amongaamon theprecarious. The practice of militant research,including that pursued as co-research, ties intothe worker (self)surveys as conducted primarilyin the 1970s in conjunction with ItalianOperaismo. Conditions of domination andexploitation were to be investigated by those

most affected (that is, by the expertsthemselves, with their specific knowledge ofsubversive practices), and made articulable.These kinds of mutual surveys by workers are,according to Marta Malo from Precarias a laDeriva, Òthe basis for a political intervention.Ó17

The practice of militant research seeks to initiateinterest, emancipation, debates, socialstruggles, and to amplify movements searchingfor better ways of living and working. ÒTheunderground, and frequently invisible, trajectoryof everyday life uneasiness and

insubordinationsÓ18 is to be explored, so that thecapacity, the potentia of the precarious can

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assemble a constituent power.19

The precarious have no common identity,only common experiences. Precarization,according to kpD, can be understood beyond justthe economic dimension as a manifoldexperience emerging from

a non-functioning identitaryascription/appeal and its associated

disambiguations, which neverthelessmaterialize in subjectification conditions incertain ways. . . . Various professional,status-related, gendered, sexual andethnicizing positions, which are sociallyvery contradictory, frequently have to betaken at the same time or one afteranother.20

Precarization refers to the very laboriouspractice of queering multiple positions andappeals at the same time and one after

another.21

Taken this way, precarization alsoindicates the impossibility of disambiguation,the impossibility of an identitary standstill. Hereprecarization also means the experience ofdealing with simultaneous multiplicities, withthe heterogeneity of ascriptions andinterpellations. Different singularities are notconstituted through individuality, throughinseparability, but rather through that which theyshare with others, what they take part in, to whatextent, and how they become common withothers, how they become a constituent power.

A Process of Constituting Instead of anOntological Constitution of the Common

To be able to imagine this becoming-common aspolitical agency, rather than regard the conceptof the common as a social ontologicalconstitution (as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negrimost recently suggested again inCommonwealth22), I would like to focus onanother concept from Negri that has meanwhiledropped out of sight somewhat, namely theconcept of constituent power .23 In makingdemands for political and social rights, it can

certainly be necessary to (strategically) refer toan ontologically grounded common, the commonthat strives for equality, for equal opportunitiesin the midst of difference. But to be able to acttogether with others at all, this common has tomean something other than a basic ontologicalcategory. Because this ÒcommonÓ is somethingthat must first emerge, that has first to be puttogether, that does not yet exist. There is nocommunity that emerges here, no association oropportunity for disambiguation, but rather aconstituency in the process of fleeing from

notions of community. This kind of constituting is to be understood

like a mosaic, as a joining together of manysingle, already existing pieces, singularities,allowing something new to emerge in the mannerof the arrangement.24 It is not the arrangementitself that is innovative, but rather theconfrontations that arise in the differentcompositions. The development of a constituentpower is not without conflict, and is thereforepolitical in the fundamental sense. The

fundamental aspect is not the common, and thusnot the consensus, but rather the conflict. Conflicts and confrontations, however, arenot the sole basis for the common.Confrontations Ð in the sense of taking apart andtaking sides behind different fronts Ð are anexpression of refusals and resistances, on thebasis of which a constituent power is first able todevelop. Without conflicts, without socialstruggles, constituent power, which is needed toset a process of constituting in motion, remainsa set of merely latent, singular potentialities.

Precariousness and PrecarityWith this background in mind, let us return to thetopic of precarization and link the discussionwith some relevant ideas from Judith Butler. Shehas suggested an ontological concept ofprecariousness, of existential vulnerability,which can be productively considered togetherwith Hardt and NegriÕs ontological concept of thecommon.25 In conclusion, it becomes clear thatthe ontological common of precariousness is notsufficient to develop a political understanding ofprecarity. Butler conceives the generalprecariousness of life, the vulnerability of thebody, not simply as a threat or a danger, fromwhich protection is absolutely needed.Precariousness distinguishes that which makesup life in general Ð human as well as non-human.Butler formulates an ontology that can only beunderstood as embedded in social and politicalconditions. Vulnerability becomes an extensionof birth, because initial survival already dependson social networks, on sociality and labor.26

To say that life is precarious is thus to point

out that it does not exist independently andautonomously, that it cannot be grasped with anyidentities derived from this. Instead, life requiressocial support and political and economicconditions that enable it to continue, in order forthat life to be liveable. An Òontology ofindividualismÓ is not capable of recognizing theprecariousness of life.27 According to Butler, asocial ontology of precariousness calls exactlythis individualism into question. ÒWe are . . .social beings from the start, dependent on whatis outside ourselves, on others, on institutions,

and on sustained and sustainable environments,and so are, in this sense, precarious.Ó28

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The conditions that enable life are, at thesame time, exactly those that make it precarious.For this reason, as Butler argues, there must be afocus on the political decisions and socialpractices under which some lives are protectedand others not. Butler calls the social andmaterial insecurity that arises from these kindsof decisions and practices precarity . This precarity can be understood as a

functional effect of the political and legalregulations that are expected to provideprotection from general precariousness.Precarity arises from certain structures ofdomination that have been legitimized inhegemonic Western political thinking sinceThomas Hobbes as protection fromprecariousness, and are at the same time basedon the precarity of all who are constructed asother and alien. Precarity as a functional effectof specific security systems is not limited to anational political phenomenon, but extends to a

global scale.29

Referencing to Achille Mbembe,Butler states that precarity

is at once a material and a perceptualissue, since those whose lives are notÒregardedÓ as potentially grievable, andhence valuable, are made to bear theburden of starvation, underemployment,legal disenfranchisement, and differentialexposure to violence and death.30

Precarity Ð or, in my terms, precarization Ð as aneffect of specific conditions of dominationmeans, on the one hand, that this is not theontological concept of precariousness, butrather a political concept (as Butler makes clear).Yet, on the other, precarity is therefore not to beunderstood as determinate but, on the contrary(although Butler does not make this sufficientlyclear) as decidedly productive: in its productivityas an instrument of governance and a conditionof economic exploitation, and also as aproductive, always incalculable, and potentiallyempowering subjectification.31

Even though she does not imagine the

political agency of singularities in the context ofprecarity, Butler supplies an extremely importantargument with regard to how precariousness andprecarity are interwoven: the fact that precarityis expanding instead of contracting means Ð andthis is ButlerÕs political focus Ð that the generallyshared vulnerability of life Ð precariousness Ð isnot recognized, and cannot therefore function asa starting point for politics. For this reason,Butler calls especially on leftist politics torecognize (common) shared precariousness andto orient normative obligations of equality and

universal rights toward this.32 Unlike ontologicalprecariousness, political precarity crosses all

categories of identity and cannot be containedwithin them. The European movements of the precariousand their associated theoretical discourses havebeen able to identify commonalities throughprecarization Ð unreasonable demands as wellas opportunities Ð and have left identity politicsbehind. Even if it now appears as though at leastthe EuroMayDay movementÕs time has passed, it

is important to remember it not only as contextfrom which new forms of the political emerged,but also in which important mosaic patternswere composed, setting in motion a process ofcommon political empowerment. Even if thesecompositions dissolve again, their experiencesand knowledge will remain. Even if themovement appears to be losing its force today, itis not to be mourned. To me it seems much moreinteresting to find the processes of constitutingcontinue to generate further interruptions andunforeseeable breaks elsewhere.

!

Translated from the German by Aileen Derieg.All images by Marion von Osten.

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Isabell Lorey is guest professor at the HumboldtUniversity, Berlin, and for Gender Studies, Biopolitics,and Postcolonial Studies at the Faculty for SocialScience, Vienna University. From 2001Ð2007 she wasassistant professor of Gender and PostcolonialStudies at the University of the Arts Berlin and lecturerat the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies atthe Humboldt University, Berlin. She is a member ofthe group kleine post-fordistisches Drama (kpD). Shehas written numerous publications on feminist andpolitical theory, biopolitical governmentality, critical

whiteness studies, political immunization, andprecarization.

1Since 2001 EuroMayDay paradeswith up to 150,000 participantshave taken place in over twentyEuropean cities on thetraditional InternationalWorkersÕ Day, May 1, to callattention to the precarization ofliving and working conditions.The activists come from themost diverse social positions.The parades, however, are onlyone activity among manyorganized by the network over

the course of the year, includingsurveys and publications.EuroMayDay involves new formsof organizing andcommunication about differentmodes of precarization andcollective knowledgeproduction. See alsohttp://www.euromayday.org/;issues of transversal, eipcpÕsmultilingual web journal,including ÒPrecariatÓ (July 2004),http://eipcp.net/transversal/0704, and ÒMilitant ResearchÓ(April 2006),http://eipcp.net/transversal/0406; Mute magazineÕsÒPrecarious ReaderÓ (November2005),

http://metamute.org/en/Precarious-Reader; Gerald Raunig, AThousand Machines: A ConcisePhilosophy of the Machine as aSocial Movement, trans. AileenDerieg (Los Angeles and NewYork: Semiotext(e), 2010).

2Initiated by Marion von Ostenand Angela McRobbie; seehttp://www.ateliereuropa.com .

3Particularly influential havebeen the practices anddiscourses of the Intermittentsdu Spectacle in France. SeeGlobal Project / Coordinationdes Intermittents et PrŽcairesdÕële de France, ÒSpectacleInside the State and Out: SocialRights and the Appropriation ofPublic Spaces; The Battles ofthe French IntermittentsÓ(March 2004), trans. AileenDerieg, transversal, ÒPrecariat,Óhttp://eipcp.net/transversal/0704/intermittents/en;Antonella Corsani and MaurizioLazzarato, Intermittents etPrŽcaires (Paris: ƒditionsAmsterdam, 2008).

4See Precarias a la Deriva, ÒAdriftThrough the Circuits of

Feminized Precarious WorkÓ(April 2004), transversal,ÒPrecariat,Óhttp://eipcp.net/transversal/0704/precarias1/en.

5See Raunig, A ThousandMachines.

6Organized by Marina Sorbelloand Antje Weitzel, seehttp://klartext.uqbar-ev.de. Seealso ÒAnother Relationality(second part): On a Cure in TimesDivest of Poetry/ On Poetry inIncurable Times,Ó organized byMarcelo Exp—sito and Jorge

Ribalta in cooperation with theeipcp at MACBA in Barcelona

(March 17Ð18, 2006),http://marceloexposito.net/pdf/exposito_otrarelacionalidad_en.pdf; ÒWORK TO DO! Self-organisation in PrecariousWorking Conditions: AnExhibition Project in 3 Chapters,Óorganized by S¿nke Gau andKatharina Schlieben, ShedhalleZŸrich (2007/2008). In thecontext of education see forexample Universidad N—mada inSpain,http://www.universidadnomada

.net/; Radical EducationCollective in Ljubljana,http://radical.temp.si/; ChtoDelat, http://www.chtodelat.org,and Street University,http://www.streetuniver.narod.ru/index_e.htm, in SaintPetersburg; Free/Slow Universityof Warsaw,http://www.wuw2009.pl/wuw.php?lang=eng; Edu-Factory,http://www.edu-factory.org/edu15/.

7See note 1.

8See Mitropoulos, Angela,

ÒPrecari-Us?Ó (March 2005),transversal, ÒPrecariat,Óhttp://eipcp.net/transversal/0704/mitropoulos/en; BrettNeilson and Ned Rossiter,ÒPrecarity as a Political Concept,or, Fordism as Exception, Theory,Culture & Society 25, no. 7Ð8(2008): 51Ð72.

9Maurizio Lazzarato, Le

gouvernement des inŽgalitŽs:Critique de lÕinsŽcuritŽnŽolibŽrale (Paris: ƒditionsAmsterdam, 2008).

10See also Antonio Negri, ÒLogicand Theory of Inquiry: MilitantPraxis as Subject and asEpistemeÓ (April 2003), trans.Nate Holdren and Arianna Bove,transversal, ÒMilitant Research,Óhttp://eipcp.net/transversal/0406/negri/en.

11See Maurizio Lazzarato,ÒImmaterial Labor,Ó in RadicalThought in Italy: A PotentialPolitics, ed. Michael Hardt andPaolo Virno (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press,1996), 133Ð147; Michael Hardtand Antonio Negri, Empire(Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2000). Theterms ÒimmaterialÓ or ÒaffectiveÓlabor have been repeatedlycriticized especially from thefeminist side, because theydescribe labor once again fromthe perspective of capitalistaccumulation and insufficientlyreflect on non-work, care-work,the production of the social, andso forth. (See the dossier on theexhibition ÒAtelier Europa,Ó asupplement to DrucksacheKunstvereins MŸnchen, no. 4(2004); see alsohttp://www.ateliereuropa.com /;Precarias a la Deriva, ÒAdriftThrough the Circuits ofFeminized Precarious WorkÓ;

George Caffentzis and SilviaFederici, ÒNotes on the Edu-

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factory and CognitiveCapitalismÓ (May 2007),transversal, ÒKnowledgeProduction and Its Discontents,Óhttp://eipcp.net/transversal/0809/caffentzisfederici/en.

12Frassanito-Network,ÒPrecarious, Precarization,Precariat? Impacts, Traps andChallenges of a Complex Termand its Relationship toMigration,Ó January 5, 2007,

http://precariousunderstanding.blogsome.com/2007/01/05/precarious-precarization-precariat/#more-44.

13See Michael Hardt and AntonioNegri, Commonwealth(Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 2009).

14Ibid.

15On exodus and constituting, seePaolo Virno, ÒVirtuosity andRevolutionÓ (1994), trans. EdEmory (2003),

http://www.makeworlds.org/node/34; Isabell Lorey, ÒAttempt toThink the Plebeian: Exodus andConstituting as Critique,Ó trans.Aileen Derieg, in Art andContemporary Critical Practice:Reinventing InstitutionalCritique, ed. Gerald Raunig andGene Ray (London: BPRPublishers, 2009), 131Ð140 (alsoavailable athttp://eipcp.net/transversal/0808/lorey/en); Isabell Lorey,ÒCritique and Category: On theRestriction of Political Practicethrough Recent Theorems ofIntersectionality,Interdependence and CriticalWhiteness StudiesÓ (October2008) trans. Mary OÕNeill,tranversal, ÒCritique,Óhttp://eipcp.net/transversal/0806/lorey/en.

16ÒkpDÓ is the abbreviation for thefeminist research and activistgroup Òsmall postfordist dramaÓ(kleines postfordistischesDrama) based in Berlin. kpD areBrigitta Kuster, Katja Reichard,Marion von Osten, and theauthor.

17Marta Malo de Molina, ÒCommonNotions, Part 1: Workers-inquiry,

Co-research, Consciousness-raisingÓ (April 2004), transversal,ÒMilitant Research,Óhttp://eipcp.net/transversal/0406/malo/en.

18Malo de Molina, ÒCommonNotions.Ó

19See Antonio Negri and MichaelHardt, The Labor of Dionysus: ACritique of the State-Form(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1994); AntonioNegri, Insurgencies: ConstituentPower and the Modern State,trans. Maurizia Boscagli

(Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1999).

20kpD, ÒPrecarization of CulturalProducers and the Missing ÔGoodLifeÕ Ó (June 2005), trans. AileenDerieg, transversal, ÒMilitantResearch,Óhttp://eipcp.net/transversal/0406/kpd/en.

21See also Renate Lorenz andBrigitta Kuster, Sexuell arbeiten:Eine queere Perspektive auf

Arbeit und prekŠres Leben(Berlin: B_books, 2007).

22See Hardt and Negri,Commonwealth; see also Negri,ÒLogic and Theory of Inquiry.Ò

23See note 19.

24From the Latin word constituo;see also Gerald Raunig,ÒInstituent Practices, No. 2:Institutional Critique,Constituent Power, and thePersistence of Instituting,Ótrans. Aileen Derieg, in Art and

Contemporary Critical Practice:Reinventing InstitutionalCritique, ed. Gerald Raunig andGene Ray (London: BPRPublishers, 2009), 173Ð186, 176.

25Judith Butler, Precarious Life:The Powers of Mourning andViolence (London and New York:Verso, 2004); see also IsabellLorey, ÒPrekarisierung alsVerunsicherung und Entsetzen:Immunisierung, Normalisierungund neue Furcht erregendeSubjektivierungsweisen,Ó inPrekarisierung zwischen Anomieund Normalisierung?Geschlechtertheoretische

Bestimmungsversuche , ed.Alexandra Manske andKatharina PŸhl (MŸnster:Westfaelisches Dampfboot,2010), 48Ð81.

26Judith Butler, Frames of War:When is Life Grievable? (Londonand New York: Verso, 2009),1Ð32. ButlerÕs ideas refer notonly to the existentialsignificance of reproductivework; precariousness alsounderlines the radicalreplaceability of every life.

27

Butler, Frames of War , 19. 28Ibid., 23.

29See Isabell Lorey, Figuren desImmunen: Elemente einer

politischen Theorie (ZŸrich andBerlin, 2010).

30Butler, Frames of War , 25.

31Elsewhere I have called thismanifold productivityÒgovernmental precarizationÓ(Lorey, ÒPrekarisierung als

Verunsicherung und EntsetzenÓ).

32See Butler, Frames of War ,28Ð29.

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Lorey I. (2010) Becoming Common; Precarization as Political Constitution

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