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- Convenors:
-
Yang Yang
(Nanjing University)
Catrin Evans (University of Bedfordshire)
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- Discussant:
-
Ana Gutierrez Garza
(University of St Andrews)
- Stream:
- Irresponsibility and Failure
- Sessions:
- Thursday 1 April, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Focusing on the affective labour of marginalised people in diverse contexts, this panel will critically discuss a less explored dimension of hope/aspiration. How are 'who fails' and 'who refuses to fail' contested when struggling persons refuse to perform their labouring role?
Long Abstract:
Various forms of deprivation, from lack of citizenship to economic disempowerment, leave a vacuum of rights and capital in many people's lives. These people are engaged in political, economic and affective struggles. In these moments 'hope' has been argued to provide a method (Miyazaki), a futural momentum (Knight), an intentional ethical action (Zigon), and intersubjective bonds between individuals (Marcel). 'Aspiration' has also been positioned as a site for psychological deliverance and potential empowerment (Appadurai) and contested thereafter. Drawing on these discussions on hope/aspiration and Andrea Muehlebach's notion of 'affective labour' as an exploitable pathway to belonging, this panel will explore how the regimes of hope/aspiration can dismiss marginalised people's affective labour as their means of coping with vulnerability and marginality. Examples might be the empathic labour enacted by individuals within the UK asylum system as part of a performance of integration, or the aspirational labour undertaken by art practitioners against a backdrop of precarious living and economic austerity in the UK. We invite contributions exploring the following questions: 1) How and where do various forms of affective labour manifest themselves, responding to various forms of institutionalised marginalisation? 2) How are 'who fails' and 'who refuses to fail' contested when struggling persons refuse to perform their labouring role? 3) What are the limits of terms such as 'hope' and 'aspiration' in understanding the life-projects and life-struggles of our contemporaries?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 1 April, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This article explores the reasons why young protesters from different Asian countries choose milk tea as a shared experience to protest against authoritarianism and how the current movement relies on the Internet to break through the limitations of language, nationality and ideology.
Paper long abstract:
At the Asia Network in April 2020, the Milk Tea Alliance, a multinational youth network based on Asian youth's desire for democracy and social change, was quickly formed. Young protesters have adopted the simple combination of milk and tea as their movement's logo, echoing a common political demand. The movement has been regarded as one of the cores of the modern globalization process and has assumed the function of an organized response in the relations of labour and capitalist production. Historically, though, the abour involved in such social movements have been limited by national borders. But in the context of globalization, today's labour will rely on the Internet to break national boundaries and establish wider connections with individuals.
Therefore, based on this new form of alliance, this paper discusses how young people in Asia form alliances across political and geographical borders to fight against China's huge influence on the Internet. Due to globalization and the epidemic, a new generation of political movements will use the Internet as a basic battlefield to share their experiences and then translate them into real-world movements. Simultaneously, the revolt of this generation of youth will no longer be confined by language, nationality and ideology, but will form a broader unity and echo based on a common political goal.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how three UK-based artists face up to hidden hierarchies in society. I argue that to deal with challenges hierarchy poses, artists supply a form of aspiration-driven labour and adopt inconsistent social practices. These reveal how the economy hinged on this labour works.
Paper long abstract:
Hierarchy persists when the discussions about it are hidden by egalitarian theoretical imaginations and their promise (Peacock 2015). This paper examines how three contemporary UK-based artists manage the issue of hierarchy in their lives.I argue that to deal with challenges hierarchy poses, artists supply a form of their aspiration-driven labour and adopt inconsistent social practices. These reveal how the economy hinged on this labour (which I term 'the economy of ambition') works. First, artists become aware of their comparative inadequacy when they perceive hierarchy in art worlds. They then embody the idea that 'aspiration is fulfillable' by avoiding certain needs and exaggerating certain eagernesses, thus manifesting 'aspirational labour' (Duffy 2017). This belief also causes problems for their sense of moral integrity and leads them to rationalise their precarious work situations. This sequence of events reveals how 'the economy of ambition' manages to sustain itself through justifying the institutionalised marginalisation and making the promise of 'privileges'.According to Taylor & O'Brien (2017), the belief that 'success is predominately grounded in meritocracy' is primarily held by those who distribute resources in the arts, culture and creative industries. It is in this climate that this paper aims to expose the blind spot of 'aspirational labour' in art worlds and question to what extent its human costs could continue to be dismissed.
Paper short abstract:
Analysing the spatial distribution of affective labour at an undergraduate professional college in India, this paper draws attention to the gendered work undertaken in times of relative precarity to produce and participate in future-oriented spaces.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the spatial dimensions of youth aspiration and affective labour in the context of educational precaritisation in India. Till recently, an undergraduate pharmacy education was perceived as a ticket to secure jobs in the Indian pharma industry or in North American clinical pharmacy. With economic reforms in India restructuring the domestic pharma industry and education reforms in North America reworking the rules of equivalency for foreign graduates, diverse vectors have converged to precaritise pharma education. This paper explores the gendered affective labour undertaken by youth at a pharma college in Western India as they take responsibility for the capitalist depression of professional work into cheap labour. Rather than expecting something to happen, anticipation is a much more active looking forward and enacting of futures that prepares the groundwork for that future to occur (Bryant & Knight, 2019). The geography of anticipation (Gupta & Medappa, 2020) at the college was concentrated around a week-long cultural festival. Unlike in earlier decades, when the festival allowed a few to deliver spectacular performances, students had recently redesigned it to allow for mass participation. Classrooms, foyers, corridors, badminton courts and college grounds were re-worked into banal stages as students rehearsed all kinds of speculative selves (Gooptu, 2013). In the process, masti [fun], which in earlier decades was a transgressive masculine entitlement, was regularised and institutionalised. With the pedagogic space of the college aligned with precarious futures, the social production of new space, here, performative stages, became a crucial method for anticipating capitalist precarity.