Tuesday 24 February 2009

Vogliamo tutto?

Trade unions and precarity.


A nice example both of how unions fail to deal adequately with issues of outsourcing, agency work and precarity and of how unions, like parties, are frequently part of the problem. This is union convenor Bernard Moss at the Cowley plant speaking to the Oxford Mail for 17 February and putting his position as BMW's talking poodle quite succinctly:

'The problem we had was that we were under clear instruction we could not give out any information until the company said so. That caused a lot of concern from the workforce over the last couple of weeks. Although we are a trade union we are employed by the company.'

Two-handed Conversations

Communication is asymptotic.


On the one hand:

The subject begins the analysis by talking about himself without talking to you or talking to you without talking about himself. When he can talk to you about himself the analysis is over.
(Lacan: Introduction to Jean Hyppolite's commentary on Freud's Verneinung. Cf Écrits, 1966, p373)

And on the other:

We have to be patient with each other, and rejoice whenever we manage (both us and other people) to move forward. We can't just stay where we are.
(Károly Kerényi, letter to Furio Jesi, 5 October 1964, as quoted by Wu Ming I)