Surplus, Struggle, and the Mystery of Political Subjectivation

According to Rancière, the mystery of political subjectivation is the central problem for every emancipatory politics: How can social figures transform into political figures? How does the worker become a proletarian? In Marxism, the answer to this mystery lies in the experience of work itself: It is collective bargaining that can turn the sellers of labor power into politically conscious subjects. This talk starts with the premise that it is no longer possible to ground the process of political subjectivation within the experience of work (alone). Rather, I suggest the concept of struggle as a more encompassing notion to describe contemporary social experiences. This re-conceptialization, I argue, corresponds with an objective increasing production of surplus populations, of groups of people abandoned and rendered superfluous.