gender
‘If truth was a woman’: Leaky infrastructures and the gender politics of truth-telling
Introduction: Supposing that truth is a woman…
‘Supposing that Truth is a woman – what then?’ So begins Nietzsche’s (2009) preface to Beyond good and evil, where the philosopher equates the elusiveness of truth with that of women. While Nietzsche’s disdain for (and awe at) both truth and women has been consistently noted (see for instance Oliver, 1984), contemporary practices of truth-telling surprisingly suggest that he might have been on to something.
Coding gender in academic capitalism
Introduction*
We love the Internet, digital media and all the options that techno-social life makes available to us. Our collaboration as academic workers, for instance, has been made possible for decades by email and collective writing platforms. Digital connections are, after all, an important affordance for intellectual work for all who have a job far away from the village centres of international academia.
The one and the many: How threshold phenomena breach subject boundaries
Introduction
‘Immaterial bodies’ explores how affect can change the way we understand ourselves as boundaried individual subjects. Affect can be thought of as the pre-conscious instinct or the intensity prior to conscious perception or representation. Blackman looks at liminal practices, i.e. those which challenge the threshold between the conscious and unconscious, arguing that we are not isolated individuals but both ‘one and many’.
The shame of servers: Inquiry and agency in a Manhattan cocktail lounge
Introduction: Shame in The Den
This article explores the function of shame in the affective service economy, specifically in the lives of 12 women working in one New York City bar – The Den. The Den is an upscale bar and lounge located in the lobby of a trendy hotel in Manhattan. Its customers are generally wealthy and sophisticated consumers of affective labour. Den servers can look forward to generous tips, provided they comply with the specific performance of affectivity this customer base requires.
