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Talking
Heads 2.005
Processed World is back (again). The last time we were back
(again) was in 2001, September to be precise, with our 20th anniversary
special issue. Maybe you saw it, but probably not. It got a little lost
in the hubbub of “everything changing”… go figure.
We always called this introductory column
“Talking Heads,” following the 1970s band and our own proclivity
to stand around hawking magazines in San Francisco’s financial district
wearing papier maché terminal heads, a habit we gave up more than
fifteen years ago. But the incessant chatter of the anti-journalistic
talking heads of U.S. media have come to saturate our environment in ways
we could have never imagined when we started publishing back in 1981.
A few of us longtime PWers have joined with
some newcomers to start publishing regularly again. We are planning to
appear annually for now, given the painful realities of publishing costs,
distribution headaches, rent, etc. It is a hostile environment for small,
subversive projects, especially publishing ones.
Nevertheless, in spite of the heartening
appearance of other journals we greet fraternally (The Baffler, LiP, Other, Mute, The Sarai
Reader, to name but a few), Processed World still has a unique role to play. This issue
began with a call to describe “what the hell is going on out there?”
and then morphed into an examination of life in a dying empire (“USSA”).
As often happened in the past, neither suggested theme captured what finally
appeared. Actually, no theme really unites the contents of this issue
beyond our consistent interest in the condition of working and living.
As we go to press we are surrounded by the
quadrennial madness that passes for politics in the U.S., the presidential
election. This time around we get to choose between a wooden caricature
of conservative corporatism and the palpable madness of a mental midget
Christian zealot bent on maintaining a “Mcfriendly” global
empire based on bombs and oil. Many will sit it out in disgust while others
will hold their nose to repudiate the latter. In either case, the basic
trajectory of global pillage, meteorological catastrophes, and rising
barbarism seems tragically safe from derailment.
One of our pals recently commented, “sure
the world is falling apart, but not fast enough to avoid being boring.”
Perhaps tedious is a better way to characterize the larger dynamics we
are forced to watch in slow motion, but meanwhile, in our daily lives
there is still much to note.
Ramor Ryan takes us inside a banana boat in “High
Seas Adventure.” The globe-straddling delivery systems on which
our tenuous standards of living hang are themselves caught up in curious
contradictions of exploitation, migration, desire, and coexistence. Sandwiched
between an old-style German captain and a largely Filipino crew, he accompanies
a boatload of bananas from sleepy, exotic Caribbean islands to the gaping
maw of European consumerism at the port of Rotterdam. Along the way he
searches the seas longingly for pirates, only to be stuck in the oblivious
tedium of a humdrum shipment of tropical fruit to the gray Old World.
Ramor’s is certainly a tale, but we
have several more in this issue too. In “Trauma
Tango,” Tom Messmer, who works the Emergency Room at San Francisco
General Hospital, dissects the horrifying consequences of our dysfunctional
medical system with surgical precision. “Starring
Mr. Green, in the laundry room, with the knife” is our first
second-generation contribution to Processed World. Our unnamed
contributor gives us an insider’s view of who is deciding our fate
and how they go about it when we submit ourselves to the California Workman’s
Compensation system. If you are “lucky” enough to get hurt
on the job, depending on the attitude of the underpaid clerk at the other
end of the process, you may be able to extend your time away from work
or you may find yourself being followed by rent-a-cops trying to prove
you’re committing fraud. But the fraudulent structure of work that
systematically injures most workers, mentally or physically, and then
denies adequate time to heal is what she really reveals. On a lighter
note, long-time contributor Zoe Noe updates us on his never-ending saga
of lost jobs with “Fucked by the Dildo
Shop,” a tale of toil that painfully illustrates the hypocrisy
of workers’ self-management in a feminist sex toy emporium.
Since the early 1980s Processed World
has focused on the condition of white-collar wage-slaves, a category that
has recently come to be called the “Cognitariat.” Similarly,
the magazine has always paid special attention to the observable fact
that most of us are temporary workers, whether our jobs are so designated
or not. This latter truth has recently set in across Europe where a more
sophisticated political milieu has dubbed the workers newly made insecure
as the “Precariat.” This issue features two articles that
take different looks at our precarious, temporary existence. First Primitivo
Morales returns with an examination of his “good job” as a
highly skilled, relatively well-paid programmer in “On
The Bleeding Edge.” He tries to unpack the curious conundrum
facing thousands of workers across the planet. They are engaged in profoundly
collaborative work processes and yet are part of an extremely atomized
and fragmented workforce which has no conceptual sense of solidarity nor
jargon-free language to describe it, let alone a practice of mutual aid.
He describes some specific ways he has run aground in his workplace trying
to address this predicament.
Taking a more broad look at the general insecurity that the new precariousness
has imposed on the working class in America, Adam Cornford details the
many facets of anxiety imposed in “Everyday
Terror: The Insecurity State.” The noisy reinforcement of fear
and loathing by the powers-that-be are the tip of a systematic iceberg
of isolation, leaving many easily manipulated by fear-mongering campaigns
and less likely to seek the solidarity that is the natural and powerful
antidote.
Of course there is still opposition, and
the plans of corporations and governments do not go forward uncontested.
Though strikes and worker resistance are at historic lows, there are still
the remnants of the once revered Union Movement. In “A
Strike By Any Other Name” Natasha Moss-Dedrick shows how the
United Food and Commercial Workers Union was as much to blame for the
disastrous defeat in the 2003 southern California grocery workers strike
as the powerful grocery chains like Safeway they were up against. The
UFCW’s well-documented role in de-unionizing most meatpacking in
the Midwest during the 1980s (covered in Barbara Kopple’s documentary
“American Dream,” reviewed in Processed World #30)
helps to contextualize their otherwise puzzling behavior during this recent
strike.
Recent actions contesting corporate globalization
have “reclaimed the Commons” as a viable concept denoting
our shared dependence on water, air and land, and as a way of extending
a claim to a new sense of Commons encompassing shelter, food, and more.
Ztangi thinks the feudalistic category of the Commons needs some critical
analysis and provides it in “Reclaim
the Commons?” Resistance these days often takes the form of
“Technopranks,” as Jesse Drew
outlines in his piece of the same name. Homeless families and their supporters
successfully contest the San Francisco Housing Authority in “A
World of Possibilities at 45 West Point,” showing that those
with the least are sometimes the best at challenging the limits of political
action.
We welcome back to these pages p.m. with his short story “No
Nonsense,” a piece that challenges all of us to think through
our vision of the world we’re fighting for. And in “Burning
Man: A Working-Class DIY World’s Fair” Chris Carlsson
recasts the famously hedonistic art festival in the surprising terms of
working class recomposition.
We have book
reviews to round out the issue, along with returning poets klipschutz,
Raven, William Talcott, and Summer Brenner, plus our usual collection
of art, photography and satirical images.
We will be moving to a new home in San Francisco
next year and look forward to new projects in coming years. You are invited
to participate and contribute. It’s time for a new generation to
take Processed World’s subversive current to places we cannot
anticipate. Please get in touch!
Processed
World
1310 Mission Street / San Francisco, CA 94103
415.626.2060
www.processedworld.com / processedworld@yahoo.com
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