A New Grammar of Organization
Who draws the boundaries of the “self” in self-organization? Isn’t a spontaneous event organized? From where does the suspicion of being organized spring? How can organizations combine the resources and move beyond competition in political processes? Why is translating specific organizational forms from one context to another so difficult? In this episode, Spadework talks with Rodrigo Nunes about the new grammar of organization he’s developed in his just released book, Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization. While typically Spadework focuses on highlighting organizational practices, this episode draws our attention to the conceptual realm of organization. This is because organization is always mediated through ideas, concepts, and discourses about organization. The ways we think and talk about organization frames our actions and conditions our practices, which can either be conducive to greater organizational capacities, or inhibitive. This is an important terrain of struggle precisely because of the incredible organizational task facing humanity today: the less than 10 years we have to bring carbon emissions down 45% according to 2010 levels in order to stay the hand of existential catastrophe. Rodrigo draws on two decades of political experience spanning back to the alter-globalization movement and across continents and political projects in order to provide us with a renewed vocabulary to help us break through the conceptual barriers that have restrained social movements for so long. What is proposed here is a framework that at onces deprives us of the certainties we once enjoyed but provides us with a sobriety capable of meeting the task at hand. For an excerpt of Rodrigo’s work and the climate conundrum, please see this article available at Viewpoint Magazine. Rodrigo provides further focus on the organizational problem posed by climate catastrophe here with Camille Barbagallo, Paolo Gerbaudo, and Richard Seymour here. Here, Rodrigo highlights the untenable binary between spontaneity and organization, in order to propose spontaneity as the emergence of organization. And here, Rodrigo provides an analysis of the emergence of parties within the context of the emergent 15M social movement in Spain.