Everyday Life in the Underbelly of Global Capital(ism)

In their latest stimulating books, Neferti X. M. Tadiar and AbdouMaliq Simone provide new and searing pathways for (re)engaging with the core questions of (everyday) life in the neoliberal moment, while also departing from the conventional ways in which the questions have been posed. Both authors expand the emergent tradition of reflections on the question of life in the context of the dominant, global political economy—what can be described as the paradigm of the politics or political economy of (everyday) life.1 Tadiar and Simone do not merely extend this tradition and the conversation. In fact, in Tadiar's Remaindered Life and Simone's The Surrounds: Urban Life within and beyond Capture, both authors dialectize in similar but also significantly different ways the question of the ascendant neoliberal modes of life in relation to what it means to live well—or to live at all in the contemporary era. They both reach an altitude of remarkable eloquence in not only piercing through the complex ways in which life and living (including their enabling possibilities for a few and excruciating impoverishment for most people) are enacted in the contemporary era, but also in unfurling the minutiae of everyday life in which millions are predisposed to disposability, dispensability, expendability, valuelessness, and/or death—or to use Tadiar's words, “ordained pain and perdition.”2As someone whose research and teaching interests have focused in the last two and a half decades on the core questions raised by these two books,3 I find much to think with there. I come to the question of (the politics/political economy of) everyday life in the context of Africa and beyond—particularly in teaching undergraduate and graduate students—from a liberal-egalitarian (intellectual and practical) tradition. This tradition, in my view, is one that fully embraces the core values of the Enlightenment,4 even while recognizing its historical and contemporary challenges, including its demanding yet almost unending possibilities for expanding human vistas and opening up opportunities for “freedom for all and life more abundant,”5 as well as its limitations and contradictions that led to the violent subversions of the core tenets of the Enlightenment ideals in late modernity. In this piece, I reflect on a few of the dimensions of the deliberations provoked by the two social thinkers by first outlining what I find to be the core arguments of the two and then comparing their perspectives. I then raise a few questions for further reflections on what can be described as a new critical/comparative political economy of life—which the two books elaborate, if not (re)inaugurate.AbdouMalique Simone's project is a daring one. He seeks to explore a phenomenon that can be apprehended and yet remains not totally apprehendable. How do we account for the urban that is “within and beyond capture”? That is, life that, in one sense, is observable and can be analyzed, and in another sense, cannot be fully observed and thus can trespass the grounds between the analyzable and the unanalyzable. In my view this points as much to the inherently ungraspable nature of the social world as to the question of the limitations of the student of society concerning the social conditions which they do not inhabit in the everyday as well as the longue durée. Thus, this book is a critical reflection on “the predominant forms of accumulation and dispossession” that admits of the capacity to provide illumination on the different dimensions of these forms while also recognizing the limitations of the knowing as well as of the knower in the context of extensive and massive suffering, because “there is something[t/here] that eludes coherent narratives of development and prospective future,”6 even though it is necessary to theorize the “range of plural stitching and mutual implication[s]” (ix) of this endeavor. Despite this challenge, Simone renders a powerful and fresh conceptual tool, the surrounds, for understanding emergent forms of life within and beyond “extensive and extended urbanization” (ix). What then is his response to the paradox—and perhaps perplexity of—contemporary urban life, these “disparate forms [that are not just] a matter of space but one of time, of things coming and going, appearing and disappearing and reappearing again” (4)? It is the concept of the surrounds. For him, although the concept is neither an explanatory context nor a relation of interdependency, neither strictly (or exclusively, though sometimes inclusively so) spatial nor temporary, neither entirely solid nor liquid, yet “in all instances the surrounds are infrastructural in that they entail the possibilities within any event, situation, setting, or project for something incomputable and unanticipated to take (its) place” (5; emphasis added).Simone's theorization of the surrounds is very nuanced, even complex, because of its multidimensionality as well as the multiplicity of the social trajectories it seeks to bring into view (without necessarily bringing them together as a unity of vision). However, as he teases out the multidimensionality and multiplicity of his focus and applies this to specific contexts of potential capacities and capacious potentialities in the context of structural constraints, particularly in the global South, the illumination that this perspective constitutes in “the very formation of urban life” becomes evident—even urgent. I can identify three very valuable ways in which the surrounds helps us have a more critical insight into life in contemporary urban formations.The first is what might be identified as the (nominally) structural. That is, Simone's unique identification of the relationality of location that articulates designated spaces within and beyond their specificity and respective functioning—because they are constantly in flux, subject to multiple, even contradictory uses, not fully captured (or capturable) yet remaining inexhaustible in the range of their potentials. For example, cities have particular “industrial, carceral, administrative, domestic, festive and logistical” spaces (6), yet these spaces comprise elements and uses of these different dimensions in different mixes and at different times, such that, for the denizens on the margins of the city, a domestic space can contain elements of the carceral that occasionally or constantly devastate or devalue their lives. Thus, one distinct circumstance surrounds the other.The second is agential. That is, the articulation of the fact that within and beyond the uncertainty, the indeterminacy of structural contexts, and the forms of agency contingent in them, is also a “left over”—in the operation and logic of structural contexts and contingent agency. This “left over” constitutes “an interstice of momentary possibility” (6). Thus, even for the most dispossessed, disenfranchised, and devalued in the urban context—such as migrant workers, domestic workers, and other low-waged service workers—there is no absolute lack of agency. Life still offers, even if only momentarily, what Simone describes as “a possibility for propositions and the rehearsal of experimental ways of living that circumvent debilitating extraction, surveillance, and capture—for the time being” (6). The form of agency that Simone alerts us to here (this is also true of Tadiar; 330, 331) within the reality of contemporary neoliberalism is not the hackneyed one of (everyday) subtle “resistance” in extant literature. This is so because first, this agency happens in the context of “intensified exposure . . . representing intense precarity of urban lives” (7) in the neoliberal moment, in which, I will add, the existing frameworks of “weapons of the weak”7 and opportunities for “public . . . and hidden transcripts”8 have been superseded; second, (because of the latter) it is no longer possible or sufficient for the radically poor to operate exclusively within specific spaces; they are now forced to embrace “provisional circulations” in different sites, occupations, and households, and with different tools and mentalities in the overall need to—unlike the subjects of Scott's enquiry—“hunt for momentary opportunities” (8) in a context “where life at the moment is staked on the maybe” (14); and third, (as a result of the latter) most of those who live in the underneath of urban areas together now “forge momentary tribes of scavengers, adventurers, mercenaries, and friends in movement” (9). On the basis of these insights, Simone concludes that “the built environment” now “acts as an accompaniment to whatever” people do in the city, given that people, “particularly those on the outskirts of what counts as viable urban life” (18), are now the infrastructures of the city.The third is a combination of the (nominally) structural and the agential—what Simone describes as a “crossing” (18). Here, I take it that Simone encourages us to discern, comprehend (despite the acknowledged obstacles), and explore “everything the resident [of urban areas] must do to a coherent or to in the of and the constantly expanding capacity of neoliberal for the not constantly in my the for his of the social conditions in the global is what he describes as the of accumulation or neoliberal For urban the one up a on the of emphasis I that this is one of the most that the in this book for the reality of life for most people in the global for those who live similar conditions in the global This points neither to nor to with the of and it the critical capacity to identify with the the of the ways in which they have been have in with the of late three points of Simone's of urban social life the means and of and the (everyday) of those who are within and from the of in the contemporary They are in the or in the of the as they a of the infrastructures of accumulation in the the time, they are from the of such accumulation and any to the social an the by and a similar but Tadiar the of contemporary global conditions that to expendability, disposability, and beyond the global out by is not in but in “a perspective and of global of the of the world from “the of the life” In what describes as “an extended logic of late with its Tadiar this moment in the and of (ix). what I as the three of life in the neoliberal moment in its both in the and in the longue and the In my view, all three the and social conditions of the for what it means to be The first is the of life” with the capacity to “the That the conditions that and in all its the most of which is the of human as Thus, people the world are forced to life” or life” life of and and one of the in the two of contemporary global complex is what renders as though life is in the service of life” and is thus as Tadiar's in this book is to radically account and “the and of living that is not in the of the of and forms of living that to the of and even life” us to the of life that, though and/or still that seeks to and the not merely remaining but also of this life that in most of contemporary and if not and beyond its by in to that it is (as or us not only to but to also this life as “the very basis of I constitutes a to the world by the new global political economy of everyday life with which we are life with social in to account for the global of those describes as “the in the However, as one it becomes that though core focus is on the the is with the and the existing conditions of their in both the global and the global For Tadiar the global is, “an of (ix) two The is provoked and by “the and of a that in of life” (ix) of the other that is, devalued I will that Tadiar's take on the by this of global as is and from that of the and the In my and historical to live and beyond the by an a for the of to be a new global political economy of as an of the Enlightenment given that relation of dispossession” is, in a of the core tenets of the Enlightenment this can be and thus further in another For I will on what with this and with instances from the global the and the global the and what we might now the of global and Tadiar the human project in what as a of with its of the of life” and the of in to a new political economy of life that a between of and of and the emergent that is by of urban in an emergent global uses urban life, with the and means as and means of the by and to contemporary of the and a social of the of Tadiar an in this book is However, I will that I and for my reflections on the question and conditions of the in the neoliberal The first a and critical not merely for understanding the of living and the but also for and and global the of this perspective even In a very and with as well as and from the the of the can as also be by those who have as the very conditions or the of the life” of the that is, those who are in of global This is one of the most of Remaindered Life to understanding of what we are and living For it is not merely the of the that is in the service and those whose are it is also what describes as their that and life [of the . . . are to as of for which neither nor for yet and for its and (ix). Despite the at almost of not only their but also their Tadiar that the a of critical agency “in beyond the designated for them within this through and of which that they are more merely (ix). This is what significantly remains and what it possible for the to the points of from which they us the to “resistance” in the context of contemporary the of “resistance” is or the nature of the world of and the to as one beyond the of and the of by but also as the of the of the those so devalued by the to the that they do not even have the capacity and/or to their or The of is, people who are as for of the and thus are to and life” also up by Thus, in this not only for but also the of millions of a to by that and by the of the that is, their means of and in the of the of global is not only and to by but the for the of In I that Tadiar a more or more view of the human agency of the in the of contemporary global this is only one of the of what which I will Tadiar that and social up the of the of living by people of no account have global forms of and development that they are not to on the will to their and emphasis in Thus, most of the different modes of by the forms of and on the of the people with to no means of life out of means of life times, and means by which the of the few are and are of this for of question it is is “resistance” as to think (despite the first perspective and in relation to the second is, in of the of their and their into the of the life and living of the the still a that a life that renders as It to that while the first of this book is to explore the and of a of of a few and the of a of (the focus of for most of the of the the life of the project something that it possible for that life to to its through that life is fully or even at that most and of For example, the is the means by which who might be conditions in and are to for those in and is a to on in the of these two also are grounds for in their on the of the neoliberal I not space here to fully with most of the illumination that they both I can only to a few that I of particularly those with contemporary everyday life as we to the conditions of life, both and Simone these conditions through a reflection on the question of the Tadiar that to the world of what is at in the global moment, both authors not only to and those in the underneath of global but to also the as well as the that account for their and even while them in the very context (or of their They provide ways of the and provoked by neoliberal that human into infrastructures of the of global life” or things of This Simone points that the surrounds are and thus with “a of appearing different of structural two books in different a of global and a to the political of is more and their including the of human and potentialities within the ascendant political economy of everyday Tadiar uses the concept of the life” to this new political economy of everyday life with its logic that is Simone the concept of the to account for similar (including its in the of late in relation to the and in of a of while both authors have interests in the Tadiar not only on the and of of the urban but also on that is, those whose are by Simone's focus is on the something that is “left over” in the of the structural and of urban For him, this that and and that is not captured by the of contemporary constitutes “an interstice of momentary possibility” for who Simone is with the “the time of human agency for urban that them in the of extraction, surveillance, and Tadiar not but an of and that or in the life the and by neoliberal Simone an account of the surrounds that momentary of Tadiar of life that . . . beyond [of forms of . . . and cannot be fully in Thus, both authors provide a of in the context of and structural but from different while both authors have a view of human possibilities in the context of life, Tadiar concludes that the of things is “a and of On the basis of is of a one that will us other in more of mutual and is a new one that and its even while for the of the world are and because they are He is more with this world with all the that its and what this world for is “the of a response or that a an and an is on In the of Simone more of a in to the of the Tadiar more of an the not the by thinkers and such as the Tadiar the of the captured by but it in response to the of the perhaps I that while Simone to a of Tadiar a of of and Thus, both thinkers and contemporary capacities for or of the poor and in their of Simone the of or while Tadiar is on such a Simone can given his to indeterminacy of (including that of and cannot Tadiar can only embrace or a different world that to and with that devalued can be and are in the service of different forms of including representing the of However, Tadiar that the are and the service of and its and that can be for no because can be . . . because they can at any time or place” Simone not these I will that this is a that the of the ascendant What then are the of Simone's take on contemporary for in the project that Tadiar of between the two thinkers that us to further reflection is to two points raised it is what constitutes the most grounds of the that is, the for living the for and for Simone that of momentary of people to use of other any of Thus, for the to in the the the and the surrounds, he are “a more predominant of urban life” in the global For such though a fact of the neoliberal moment, to the very that so much and life for millions of In Tadiar the that Simone For points to for all ways they might in their or them on and However, the life as a of the by neoliberal in the for of life that we might and that a reflection on the cannot be only longue durée. Thus, Tadiar the of these [of and of and the or of social that everyday life in ways yet to be in to more of mutual and different by the two raise For we everyday life only as is and/or as it to or both be with the life, or they such and the what the two is their even in the or the that contemporary global to Tadiar life remains or because it is of cannot be fully or even at the of Simone is this but still for the momentary that the denizens of the even in the of will with a few that I think both books more in Remaindered Life in The because the is more Simone also the of contemporary global in the global it is Tadiar who renders a of the basis of the neoliberal its political For Tadiar points to the of the project within and the and of what describes as while on the of new and new ways of life, the of the might well as a of However, the of this Simone is to a life and politics that of or Tadiar concludes that the neoliberal now and and thus us to the world is for the no this not out what on the or the specificity of an global one that be in and the of the of the and the of the the What might be the of the of this of by these two the of and even though this take is not as “a In the of the ascendant or the world from the and to the and what are the ways of that the of the of by thinkers and not up to the of and the and on the and What might a world of the of that is in if we might beyond the limitations and that life is to that the us and the they on the of possibilities and in these books, what are the of such an world in of interests and the such possibilities and in existing of both global and What to be the interests of powerful who from human and the the of those who from this but the of their and more in (the of the in social that will raise the of their as well as those of What is to be a of the and devalued who that be for their of who will that while Tadiar is more in the of contemporary era, even while to is more in the for possible social by indeterminacy and in of contemporary is that they the of human What do is to human precarity is a of form of or can precarity is the by of exposure to as This is what are to and also find it that both books are very for on the of this neither is strictly within the tradition of what is in the what they (the one as a and of the urban and the other as a in these two books is to the out in to it in and the global of the for the well as in its specific dimensions the of the global they also in the as not only both and by the but also as the reflection of the debilitating with not its but even with its dispossessed, disenfranchised, and in the it can be that the of the two authors is to account for the and of to the of intense and that we are and to the conditions that and the on a so they us beyond the existing forms of of these of cannot be because they ways of the human on an everyday to to an of the of forms of human and Thus, of questions these two books they reflections on the global moment and its means of two social thinkers to and such insight into the conditions of late are critical not only for understanding contemporary but also for the necessary conceptual tools for to the conditions that to more and more people, even as more and more is and and

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