News from the Collective

Growing up, my friend had a Nintendo Entertainment System knock-off called Pegasus. I think it was only sold in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. I spent a few summers in her attic, playing a variety of side-scrolling and vertical-scrolling pixelated games. It was fun to see each other get better at different levels and challenges, but we never took it seriously and would often move on to other ways of filling our lazy summer days. Thinking back, video games were a nice addition to my childhood, but they did not leave a lasting impression.

Then I went to university and met peers who considered video games their passion. I began to understand this fascination; you get attached to certain characters, enjoy impactful art styles and soundscapes, and ride the adrenaline high of in-game combat. Over time, I began to enjoy video games for those reasons too. But I also wondered about an alternative to the narrative-driven, action-packed genre that continues to dominate the industry.

I bought my first console in 2018. I chose the Nintendo Switch; it was compact, versatile, and more approachable than other consoles, which continue to be surrounded by valorising discourse. I wasn’t interested in discussing which console might be the best. I just wanted to have a good time using the one I had picked. Enter Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which turns one year old this week. I got New Horizons in April 2020 as a birthday gift, and haven’t stopped playing it since.

For the uninitiated, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the fifth edition of Nintendo’s Animal Crossing series. It is a real-time simulation game in which players inhabit, customise and maintain a town also populated by a selection of anthropomorphic animal neighbours. The game does not have a clear objective or a skill improvement system. You spend your time collecting fruit and seashells, fishing, catching bugs, gathering fossils, and crafting items from materials you harvest. I understand that this type of gameplay and aesthetic may not be for everyone. I have to admit that when I first saw the promotional materials for New Horizons, I didn’t think it would be the type of game I would enjoy (too cutesy, too mundane, too surface-level?). I was wrong.

New horizons, new perspectives

Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the pinnacle of slow-paced gameplay. There is no way to ‘binge’ it, reach an ending or speed up in-game processes (although hackers did make some useful changes many players wanted to see from Nintendo’s updates). What you see is what you get. When you collect all your fruit, you have to wait a few real-life days to harvest it again. There are only a few items sold in your island’s shop each day, so if you can’t find something, you have to wait until it becomes available (or trade with another ACNH player using the online play feature; more on that later). New Horizons requires you to be patient while you make small improvements to your island, and contemplate the daily flow of your life there.

Thanks to the relaxed pace of the game, and the open-ended interpretation of its goals and purpose, players gain satisfaction from completing mundane tasks. I take great pleasure in cross-pollinating my flowers, picking up weeds and branches, and replanting trees and shrubs to customise the look of my island. There is a rituality in these tasks, a silent significance in the way I pay attention to this virtual space. Game designer Gabby DaRienzo calls it tend-and-befriend mechanics.^[1] Instead of the fight-or-flight response many fast-paced video games trigger in players, this type of game instead operates on maintenance and relationship-building. The island is yours to beautify and customise. You talk to your neighbours, add a nice bench to your park, and craft items for your home. Life is good. At a time of heightened unpredictability, having a virtual space that is both unable and unwilling to catch you off-guard brings a well-deserved sense of safety.

I have to admit I’ve grown quite attached to villagers who live on my island. During the many months of solitary isolation in the spring and summer of 2020, befriending the animals in New Horizons brought me an unparalleled level of tranquility and joy. And now, having somewhat grown used to the unpredictability and brutality of my COVID-19 reality and all of its political, social and cultural complications, I continue to seek a sense of security in New Horizons. Last year, art critic Gabrielle de la Puente shared her experience of the game, identifying it as one of the few sources of joy and repose in lockdown. I wonder if Gabrielle still plays New Horizons, and how her relationship with the game changed.

The idea of safety has been on my mind a lot in recent months. What do I need to feel safe? A few things come to mind: shelter, access to food, water, a support system of family and friends. Then there are needs like access to medical care (made more complicated while living abroad without proper health insurance), financial security, and, unfortunately, physical distance from others. In the tensest moments of the pandemic, playing New Horizons remained one of the very few activities I identified as wholly ‘safe.’ I did not have to ascertain the proportions between risk and reward; I could just log on and feel at ease. My friends and I would visit each other’s islands and find comfort in this unique togetherness.

Our chibi in-game selves were allowed and able to sit close together. While we played, we would talk in a group call via Discord. It was precarious compared to the experience of spending time together in person, but it did produce similar levels of comfort and closeness. The social aspect of the game is one of its best attributes. Online forums swell with requests from players to swap items and ingredients. I participate in a few exchanges, and each time I feel a mixture of nerves and excitement knowing guests are coming to my island. I would play every day, sometimes prioritising in-game errands over my own, entering into a convoluted relationship with this extension of myself on the screen.

Media researcher Brendan Keogh notes that “videogame play is a complex interplay of actual and virtual worlds perceived through a dually embodied player.”^[2] Whenever I interact with my New Horizons island via my in-game avatar, the game reacts, blurring my perceived boundaries of virtual and actual, embodied and outer-bodied. On a particularly draining day sometime in the summer of 2020, I watched my New Horizons character breathe peacefully in bed, and wept in mourning for a sense of tranquillity I thought I’d lost forever. Perhaps I was beginning to envy my avatar for their lack of apocalyptic anxiety over the state of the world. Perhaps this sense of envy was not a positive coping mechanism while under immense stress and in solitude. My circumstances now are different compared to March 2020, but I still find myself returning to New Horizons to seek the comfort of its routine, and to enjoy the temporality of an imagined world without fascism, disease, poverty and conflict. Over the last year, the game encouraged me to reflect on the unattainability of the type of life lived in New Horizons, and consider ways to bring elements of that tranquillity and egalitarianism into offline spaces.

Pixelated presence and absence

I can’t help but think about the future of my Animal Crossing island. Since it is a real-time simulation game, time passes on my island when I am not playing. This is one of the great things about the Nintendo series; the knowledge that your neighbours do not need your presence to go about their daily routines keeps you humble. But what would happen if I abandoned my Animal Crossing island altogether? Say my console falls victim to planned obsolescence, and I am no longer able to access the game. Or I find another way to pass the time and discard my New Horizons SD card.

I like to imagine my anthropomorphic friends would eventually start to pluck weeds and collect fossils without me. Some might even move to other islands, and invite a new cast of characters who collect fruit, change up decorations and customise furniture. Would my villagers start to miss me? Would they send me in-game letters asking if I was alright? I wouldn’t know, too busy spending time somewhere else. The lights in my lavish Animal Crossing home are off. Nobody is home. At the moment, New Horizons is an integral part of my pandemic routine. But circumstances change, as do habits. It won’t last forever.

In a recent privacy panic, I searched through my Facebook settings to see if I could make my account more secure. I stumbled upon a section asking what I want to happen to my account when I die.

It took me by surprise. Death is a bureaucracy nightmare, and it now comes with online consequences. Who will look after my accounts, my passwords, who will have access to all the documents sitting in folders on my laptop? Who will adjust the screen brightness? Does it even matter? If I stop playing New Horizons, will my villagers assume I am dead or are they unable to make such conclusions? They don’t need me, after all. My island will continue to prosper inside the console, unaware of the lived realities around it.

I am a young and healthy person who got lucky enough to reflect on death in the abstract, and from a distance. Its looming threat seemed so far removed it was easy to disregard. This ignorance changed a few years ago when I lost a friend. And then last year, dread-scrolling through pandemic news and statistics, with the poignant words of poet Clint Smith bouncing around my head:

When people say, “we have

made it through worse before”

all I hear is the wind slapping against gravestones

of those who did not make it, those who did not

survive to see the confetti fall the sky […]”^[3] 

Some users reported feeling disturbed when they discovered there is a DIY recipe in New Horizons for a gravestone – or a “Western-style stone.” Others started using it to create compelling and meaningful spaces on their virtual islands to reflect on loss and grief. There are graveyards adorned with flowers, themed rooms, a variety of spaces for remembrance, all located on otherwise lively and wholesome islands with inhabitants who never have to face death and loss.

In the times of COVID-19, players channel grief and anxiety into in-game projects to dull the pain that comes with the inability to gather with loved ones: to grieve, to celebrate, to co-exist. The more I played Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the further I realised how meaningful and transformative its impact has been on me, my friend group, and communities of fans online. We process our trauma with and through our virtual islands, our vibrant shimmering pixels imbued with so much meaning. A way to feel at ease, for a little while, before we resume to negotiate the complexity of our embodied experiences.

I am reminded of Jan Robert Leegte’s exhibition Inside/Outside from a year ago. His hyperreal landscapes were designed to continuously withstand a raging storm. I felt a techno-utopian sense of the sublime watching the work shift and roar. Multiple monitors in the space performed a beautifully crisp scene of devastation and endurance. It is unstoppable, designed to continue performing. Animal Crossing: New Horizons offers a similarly alluring and crisp artificial landscape, one you can manipulate and experience interactively, but one which also shifts and changes outside of your influence. Both pieces of media are entangled in a mess of relations between code, hardware, nature, and embodiment.

Limited by restrictions and concerns, we find ourselves searching for respite in unusual spaces. It might be a little unhealthy to expect it from one source, so I do try to find meaning and connection in a variety of interactions, offline and online. But if something clicks, like the rhythm of life in New Horizons, I will not abandon ship. However, when I am inevitably interrupted by some unpredictable force, I will be comforted knowing that weeds will continue to grow on my island, even if I am not there to pick them.

 

References

^[1] Gabby DaRienzo, Exploring Grief in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, http://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/exploring-grief-in-animal-crossing-new-horizons

^[2] Brendan Keogh, A play of bodies: how we perceive video games (Cambridge: MIT Press), 2018, p. 55

[3] Clint Smith, When people say…, https://readwildness.com/19/smith-people

Part of a series by the Institute for Contemporary Art Research at the Zürich University of the Arts, Aesthetics of the Commons investigates the fruitful intersection between the idea of the commons, and the aesthetics of practices that relate to the concept. Overall, the publication ponders how to enact a shift in academia, arts and humanities away from private ownership and individualism towards collective sharing and care through tangible actions and approaches.

Rather than providing a streamline argument and a neat list of aesthetic characteristics, Aesthetics of the Commons proposes “a series of propositions on how to think about practices that try to respond to some of the crises that make up the present moment.”^[1] Its strength lies in the broad understanding of the commons, as well as the wide spectrum of expertise from ten contributors: Olga Goriunova, Jeremy Gilbert, Judith Siegmund, Daphne Dragona, Magdalena Tyżlik-Carver, Gary Hall, Ines Kleesattel, Sophie Toupin, Rahel Puffert, and Christoph Brunner. Together, they offer different lenses through which we observe initiatives that demonstrate ways of widening access to resources and practices. They all build on ideas of care and collaboration rather than privatisation and commodification, operating somewhat outside of the capitalist market and, inevitably, entering into conversation with its inner logic.

Each essay is self-sufficient in its own right, so readers and/or researchers seeking a specific perspective can engage with just a part of the publication and walk away from it with needed resources. However, considering them together allows for a deeper understanding of the core issue the book addresses: how to recognise and learn a variety of approaches that allow for a more accessible and collectively-shared pool of not only knowledge, but also other resources and meaningful relations. Its structure proves its very point, showing that a variety of perspectives is the most effective way to facilitate discourse and extract meanings.

Third in the sequence, Judith Siegmund’s “Which Aesthetics of the Commons?,” would have made an excellent opening essay. It considers the classical concept of the arts as parallel to the commons, since both are often defined and categorised by their “otherness” to politics and the economy. Siegmund adds nuance to this understanding, proposing that aesthetic independence and freedom do not exactly define the commons. She calls on readers to recognise the interdependency between commons, social structures, and economic hierarchies, as well as the potential the commons possess in shaping future relations:

“[…] It is productive and sustaining in any case to interpret commons as economically organised projects – indeed, as economies of their own – that are able to comment on (if not correct) the leading principles and convictions of today’s (commercially-driven) economy.”^[2] 

“Which Aesthetics of the Commons?” provides an insightful overview of the complex relations between (the creation and upkeep of) commons and contemporary power structures that govern based on a largely different set of priorities. Placing it at the start of the book would have provided a stronger base for readers who are relatively new to this mode of thinking. It certainly gave me much-needed context, which helped me engage with the remainder of the texts.

Aesthetics of the Commons provides an in-depth look at initiatives that demonstrate how the arts, academia and socially-engaged practices can blend to produce much-needed perspectives of futurity and hope. It features topics ranging from the politics of open-source digital libraries (Olga Goriunova’s text) to offline communal agricultural spaces that seek to preserve and activate cultural heritage (Daphne Dragona’s text). Throughout, authors refer to each other’s research and build on it in their own considerations, which constructs a network of mutual interest and, in a way, care. Again, the content of the publication confirms its ethos – to consider context, recognise difference, and construct strong bonds through these acknowledgements.

After reading Aesthetics of the Commons, I felt compelled to reconsider my relationship to ideas of care and solidarity. Even though they are practices that many people (like myself) identify with and valorise, we rarely act on them outside of the realm of what seems feasible and low-effort. Gary Hall and Daphne Dragona both identify the commons as a potentially transformative response to the escalating political, environmental, and social crises. We are under immense stress as we observe the world turning in a threatening direction. We are anxious about our financial situations under an unsupportive system that values wealth above all else. We look for community but struggle to find it due to online distractions, echo-chambers, paywalls, or offline limitations that keep meaningful projects from flourishing. 

This publication shows that utopian world-building can take place, in archives and libraries built with consideration and care, and amongst communities in networks that share much in common, or share very little yet still choose to support one another, envisioning a better future. I am now compelled to consider how these networks of solidarity may look, and whether I came across them recently. Knowing more about how they manifest, I feel informed to join an effort to help them strengthen and persevere, pushing against commodification and privatisation. What is your object of care? What happens when you apply the idea of the commons to it? Aesthetics of the Commons offers a glimpse into how to mediate the relations between your object of care and its complex, changing surroundings, through practices that are open, radical, and hopeful.

Read Aesthetics of the Commons here.

Read more about projects discussed in the publication:

1. Sakiya
2. Pirate Care
3. Tactical Tech
4. Calibre
5. UbuWeb

References

^[1]Felix Stalder, Cornelia Sollfrank, Shusha Niederberger, eds., Aesthetics of the Commons, (Zürich: Diaphanes) p. 32

^[2]Judith Siegmund, “Which Aesthetics of the Commons?” in Aesthetics of the Commons, p. 96

QAnon; The ARG

Remember Alternate Reality Games? As some observers have pointed out, QAnon definitely feels and functions like an ARG. It’s got open and collective storytelling, multiplatform content, puppet masters, die hard players, hidden clues… a blurry boundary between fiction and reality. Conservatives and progressives like to accuse each other of deficient skills when it comes to internet virology. But QAnon proves The Right Can Definitely Meme. It is one of the most addictive and ambitious media project of our times. A Brechtian double whammy, both hammer and mirror.

The aesthetics of the QAnon ARG herald a new (but old) political reality. In 1936, Walter Benjamin wrote “Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves… The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.” QAnon completes the (re)introduction into political life of a popular fascist aesthetic, reaching its apex in the ultimate ARG-cum-Flashmob: Jan 6, 2021 USA.

PlAy It BeFOre YoU LivE It!

I myself was engaged in exploring the pedagogical uses of Fake News. From 2009 to 2013, I ran a number of ARG’s at my college. The games covered everything from budget cuts to public education, to racism on campus, Islamophobia, and US-Mexico relations. The idea was that in order to fix reality, we first had to break it. There’s something very powerful about the idea that the breaking is the fixing, and I think we desperately need to reinvent ways of doing that. But as we found out, everyone can play that game, so we become entangled in a competition to see who can create the best “imagined communities,” as Benedict Anderson would call them.

Facebook and the Business of Bullshit

Under this new aesthetic regime, reality is whatever receives the most Likes, Shares, and Re-Tweets. If I tweet that the sky is green, or that global warming is not real, and I can get you to retweet my post more times than the opposition, my reality wins. We have gone from communication as the sharing of meaning, to communication as the gamefication of meaning.

Taking a page from Harry Frankfurt, this looks a lot like bullshit; it’s not just about spreading lies, but about creating the social architectures and spaces where the lies are treated as the Real. Big Tech has found a way to monetize the psychometric targeting of this bullshit and is laughing all the way to the bank.

But the problem is not just Facebook’s shameless opportunism. It is the emergence of a whole new social order that Nick Couldry and I call “data colonialism” (see our book or our article). Data colonialism entails the appropriation of human life so that data can be continuously extracted from it for profit and control. Simply put, whereas historic colonialism grabbed land and bodies, data colonialism grabs our lives, through the abstracting and extracting medium of data. Our point is not that there is a perfect correspondence between historic and data colonialism. We don’t want to trivialize 500 years of brutality. But while there are important differences in terms of the form and the content of both forms of colonialism, the function is the same. And that function is to extract and to dispossess.

The bad news is that data colonialism is a global phenomenon, re-organizing the world along two centers of power: the US and China. But the good news is that, while accounting for local nuances, strategies developed to resist data colonialism can also be global.

Non-alignment as Alternate Reality

In collaboration with others, particularly Juan Ortiz Freuler, I have been engaged in trying to launch a Non-Aligned Technologies Movement, or NATM (see this, and this). It’s very much a work in progress, and we don’t have much to show for it yet. Our inspiration is the original Non-Aligned Movement, a consortium of nations that during the Cold War attempted to forge a path beyond the equally unattractive choices of capitalism and communism. Today, we need options to navigate between the profit-motivated Scylla of Silicon Valley and the control-motivated Charybdis of the Chinese Communist Party.

While the group hasn’t agreed on specific goals, I am proposing that they can be framed in terms of the divestment and boycott strategies that have already been employed to resist other forms of colonialism. But those tactics need to be supplemented by initiatives in education, culture and solidarity.

In short, this is not about opting out of GAFA and BATX (although it’s great if you can!). This is about finding ways of engaging in open and decolonial research to study and articulate the dangers of extractivist technologies, and how to resist them (education). This is about finding ways to participate in a process of re-imagining a world without extractivist technologies by creating a space that incorporates diverse voices and perspectives (culture). And it’s about linking to other people engaged in the same struggle, and using the power of collective action (solidarity).

Maybe we need an ARG for that!

—

Ulises A. Mejias is professor of Communication Studies and director of the Institute for Global Engagement at SUNY Oswego. He is the author of Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World (2013, University of Minnesota Press), and, with Nick Couldry, of The Costs of Connection: How Data is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating it for Capitalism (2019, Stanford University Press).

This posting is based on an earlier contribution to the Empyre list.

Only a few weeks into the first wave of Corona, Zagreb-based artist Ana Kužmanić launched www.artwithoutplace.com to collect testimonies of cultural workers around the world. One year and 45 testimonies later, the contents of the website were bundled and published as a book by Oaza Books. You can order the gem here: http://www.oazabooks.com/?page=books&book=art-without-place.

P.s. readers will encounter a testimony by yours truly, a time capsule dated April 2020. It reads:

‘Critical theorists have been shouting ‘PRECARITY!’ in the faces of anyone who would hear them for years. We know the story by now. Or, so we thought. It is only now, in the Corona-lockdown, that many of us really feel what precarity is, beyond an ever-looming feeling of being on the edge: once crisis sets in, the precarious are the first to be hit. Structures of social security are shaken and dissolve. What follows is economic free-fall.
In the Netherlands, the government provides freelancers, including those in the cultural sector, with something of a basic income during these months. This is, however, not enough for most artists to live off, let alone to pay for studio rent and material costs. And even if it is, the long-term effects are unclear. What happens to the young artists, whose precious exhibitions and other jobs are canceled? What about the freelance teachers, whose lessons at academies have been canceled once of a sudden? What will happen when artists can’t afford their studio rent anymore, and studio complexes go bankrupt? One thing is clear: the infrastructures and social property we will lose now, won’t come back when we go back to ‘normal’.
On top of it all, it’s hardly allowed to ask these questions. According to public discourse, there are only two types of legitimate artistic production in this time: 1. bringing solace, and 2. making face masks. It is, apparently, the task of artists to veil (crises, faces, themselves), rather than to unveil.
I see artists around me struggling with this situation. They are so used to be confronted with their superfluidity in society, that they started to believe in it. How to ‘just’ continue to make work, as if nothing happened? It’s interesting how artists should ask themselves these questions, while banks, airlines, and oil companies receive government bail-outs.’

When it comes to printing a book, Print-On-Demand (POD) is an interesting option. However, there is a lot to consider to get the print right and end up with the book you have in mind. The book Satellite Lifelines: Media, Art, Migration and the Crisis of Hospitality in Divided Cities by Isabel Löfgren is published by Institute of Network Cultures. Comparing how the print turns out when it’s done by the Swedish POD service Publit or the American Lulu Press results in the following reflections.

Printing Local, Shipping Global

In all cases, it’s nicest when you can make use of local companies in the production chain of a book. Isabel lives in Stockholm herself, the Stockholm based Publit makes for a logical print on demand service. The print I’ve received from them was sent by mail from Malmö, where the printer ExaktaPrinting AB is located.

 

 

 

 

 

On the other hand, Lulu’s headquarters is based in Morrisville, USA. Following the DHL tracing information, the books are shipped from Poznán in Poland. (Except for this article that announced Lulu’s new printer in Australia, the company is incredibly secretive about where they get their books printed.)

 

 

 

 

Shipping costs vary greatly between the two different POD’s. Publit’s shipping costs depend on weight and delivery address – the book is 584 gram and would travel approx. 850 kilometers to Rotterdam – running the shipping price at 295 SEK (29,10 euro). A quick search tells that shipping within Sweden is much cheaper; it would cost 71.76 kr (€7,06) to send the book back to Stockholm. Other Northern European countries have similar shipping fees the Netherlands (Denmark €23, United Kingdom €29). Shipping to Brazil, where the writer is from, would cost €63,78. The same print from Lulu ships to Rotterdam for €4,84 (with additional taxes of €1,75).

The production of the Publit print costs 145.56 kr (€14,33) with a listed price of 193 kr (€18,99). The same Lulu print costs €14,61 and is listed for €29,22. So, when you’re ordering from Sweden, the Publit print definitely wins in terms of pricing. The further away from Sweden, the more the Lulu print could be considered.

Customer Support

It’s important to be able to get in contact with the POD customer services – for whatever questions that come up in the process of publishing. Publit has great customer support, responding very quickly and thoughtfully to all my questions, ranging from preparing the files to detailed questions on how the print turned out. Lulu is known for not having great customer support. After a test print cut off 1 cm too many of the book, they did respond rather quickly and sent a new print free of charge (although in black and white instead of color, one step forward, one step backward.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Print Itself

And the most exciting question: which print turned out better?

We’re comparing a softcover/paperback print of Satellite Lifelines, a color book of 309 pages, with dimensions 156.00 mm x 234.00 mm.

The Publit print: yellow-toned paper and a structured paper cover (pictured left).
The Lulu print: color standard on white paper with a matte finish of the cover (pictured right).

Cover:

Publit: The structured cover is very beautiful, the colors of the pattern look great. The paper is a nice thickness and the un-printed inside of the cover works beautifully. One possible downside is that the print wears off on the edges, which could be solved by getting a laminated cover instead. It can also be embraced as part of the type of the paper.

Lulu: The cover overall looks good. It’s a smooth print, the matte finish looks nice. The particular colors of the pattern aren’t as fresh as the Publit print. The paper of the cover is rather thin, and is shiny on the inside. On both prints I’ve received, the back of the cover seems to have ‘bubbles’, the paper isn’t fully flat.

Binding:

Publit: Overall, the binding looks good. If you look up close you can see the glue in between the cover and the first page. The books opens easily and doesn’t seem to damage after opening it.

Lulu: The pages are glued neatly – no glue rests to be found.

Inlay:

Publit: The text is easy on the eye. Especially the black and white pictures of concrete buildings looks beautiful on the yellow toned paper.

Lulu: The print overall looks good, but the paper doesn’t lend itself as beautifully for images.

Other:

Publit prints info such as a barcode and QR code on the final page. Lulu’s final pages are empty.

So the winner is … Publit!

For the most beautiful print, order via Publit. Depending on where you’re located, a Lulu print might be preferred due to shipping costs. (Or hack the system and get a Swedish friend to sent it to you by mail!)

Tips & Tricks

As everyone who has ever got something printed-on-demand knows: there are a few general rules to have a better chance at getting a proper result.

1. Always (!) get a test print.

2. Triple check your files on color profiles (Lulu confusingly uses RGB instead of CMYK. A first print ended up with black and white images in a pink tone, probably as a result of not using the right colour profiles in the files).

3. This also counts for bleeds and margins. If you print with Lulu you can check this in the preview. I kept on getting errors when uploading my files with the correct bleeds, this was solved by starting a new ‘project’.

All in all, nothing is better than reading a book in print, feeling the paper and getting a close look at the images.

Satellite Lifelines: Media, Art, Migration and the Crisis of Hospitality in Divided Cities by Isabel Löfgren is available for ordering:

Welcome to our first newsletter of the year!

We have exciting news about awards,  upcoming events, new and forthcoming publications, an interview with our  Editor Melissa Purkiss and a conversation with our recent volunteer  Marie Palmer. Also, the latest set of MARC records containing all our  new and past titles is now available here.

There’s lots to explore below, so dive in to find out more about our plans for the months ahead...

Announcements

• CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award
• 200 Books
• Ask an OBP Author
• OABN
• COPIM

Books, Readership and Content

• Landing Page Accesses
• New Open Access Publications
• Call for Proposals
• Events
• New Blog Posts
• Call for Reviewers
• Latest Reviews

People

• About us: An Interview with Melissa Purkiss
• Our Volunteers: An Interview with Marie Kate Palmer

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We're delighted to announce that Conservation Biology in Sub-Saharan Africa by John W. Wilson and Richard B. Primack and Lifestyle in Siberia and the Russian North edited by Joachim Otto Habeck have been selected as Choice Reviews' Outstanding Academic Titles for 2020!  
 
These  outstanding works have been selected for their excellence in  scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution to  the field, and their value as an important -often the first- treatment  of their subject. Constituting about fifteen percent of the titles  reviewed by Choice during the past year, and four percent of the more  than 11,600 titles submitted to Choice during this same period, Outstanding Academic titles are truly the 'best of the best'.

                                                                                                   - Mark Cunnings, Choice

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Photography in the Third Reich: Art, Physiognomy and Propaganda edited by Christopher Webster was our 200th book!

OBP  provides permanent and free access to our open access books for readers  with no BPCs (book processing charges) for the author. All our  books are published in hardback, paperback and ebook editions; we also  publish free online editions of every title in PDF, HTML and XML formats  that can be read via our website, downloaded, reused or embedded  anywhere.

We wish to thank all our authors, contributors, editors, volunteers and  readers for your support all these years - it is thanks to you that we  can celebrate milestones like this!

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If you want to find out more about what it’s like to publish with us, email Professor Caroline Warman (caroline.warman@Jesus.ox.ac.uk), author of The Atheist's Bible: Diderot's ‘Éléments de physiologie’ (2020) and translator of Denis Diderot 'Rameau's Nephew' – 'Le Neveu de Rameau': A Multi-Media Bilingual Edition (2nd ed., 2016) and Tolerance: The Beacon of the Enlightenment (2016).

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The Open Access Books Networks has recently released 'Open Access books and [in]discoverability: a library perspective' a blog post by two librarians at Cambridge University Library, Jayne Kelly (Ebooks  Administrator, Collections and Academic Liaison Department) and Clara  Panozzo (Latin American & Iberian Collections, Collections and  Academic Liaison Department) where they discuss the various issues they  have encountered when trying to flag Open Access content in their  institutional catalogues.

You can read this blog post at https://tinyurl.com/e5b4xyi9.

We provide our library members with MARC records on a quarterly basis  but we also understand some institutions don't have the means to deal  with the ingestion of this metadata manually, so if you have any  thoughts or comments on how we can work together to avoid the issues  highlighted in this post, please contact Laura Rodriguez at laura@openbookpublishers.com.

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Access the latest joint OPERAS-P & COPIM report 'Academic Libraries and Open Access Books in Europe: a Landscape Study' written by our own Agata Morka and Rupert Gatti where they explore the role these institutions play in providing and promoting Open Access content and innitiatives in a number of Europan countries.

Other reports:

Prioritizing Metadata Output Formats for Thoth by Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei.

New COPIM WP6 Report Released Today: "Books Contain Multitudes: Exploring Experimental Publishing" by Janneke Adema and Tobias Steiner

COPIM  releases free code for Open Access project sign up system: Making  software freely available for any publisher to adapt and use themselves by WP3 and Tom Grady

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A significant increase in traffic to our website in the year 2020 reflects how  the COVID-19 situation has increased the need for openly licensed, free  educational resources and textbooks, at a time when most institutions,  academics, researchers and users everywhere depended on remote access to academic publications as a consequence of the inability to access their libraries and faculties. Our top five most-visited pages were:

• Models in Microeconomic Theory ('He' Edition) by Martin J. Osborne and Ariel Rubinstein
• Models in Microeconomic Theory ('She' Edition) by Martin J. Osborne and Ariel Rubinstein
• Advanced Problems in Mathematics: Preparing for University by Stephen Siklos
• Ethics for A-Level by Mark Dimmock and Andrew Fisher
• The Essence of Mathematics through Elementary Problems by Alexandre Borovik and Tony Gardiner

For more analysis of the usage of our books in 2020, read this post by our Editor and Outreach Coordinator, Lucy Barnes: 'Open Access book usage in 2020: measurement and value.'

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The Image of Africa in Ghana’s Press: The Influence of Global News Organisations by Michael Serwornoo

Photography in the Third Reich: Art, Physiognomy and Propaganda Christopher Webster (ed.)

Studies in the Grammar and Lexicon of Neo-Aramaic Geoffrey Khan and Paul M. Noorlander (eds)

Acoustemologies in Contact: Sounding Subjects and Modes of Listening in Early Modernity Emily Wilbourne and Suzanne G. Cusick (eds)

'The Philosophes' by Charles Palissot ed. and transl. Jessica Goodman et al.

The Marvels Found in the Great Cities and in the Seas and on the Islands: A Representative of ‘Aǧā’ib Literature in Syriac Sergey Minov

Jane Austen: Reflections of a Reader By Nora Bartlett. Edited by Jane Stabler

Like Nobody's Business: An Insider's Guide to How US University Finances Really Work By Andrew C. Comrie

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We have various Open Access series all of which are open for proposals, so feel free to get in touch if you or someone you know is interested in submitting a proposal!

Global Communications

Global Communications is a new book series that looks beyond national borders to examine  current transformations in public communication, journalism and media. Special focus is given on regions other than Western Europe and North  America, which have received the bulk of scholarly attention until now.

St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture

St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture,  a successful series published by the Centre for French History and  Culture at the University of St Andrews since 2010 and now in  collaboration with Open Book Publishers, aims to enhance scholarly  understanding of the historical culture of the French-speaking world.  This series covers the full span of historical themes relating to  France: from political history, through military/naval, diplomatic,  religious, social, financial, cultural and intellectual history, art and  architectural history, to literary culture.

Studies on Mathematics Education and Society

This book series publishes  high-quality monographs, edited volumes, handbooks and formally  innovative books which explore the relationships between mathematics education and society. The series advances scholarship in mathematics  education by bringing multiple disciplinary perspectives to the study of  contemporary predicaments of the cultural, social, political, economic  and ethical contexts of mathematics education in a range of different  contexts around the globe.

The Global Qur'an

The Global Qur’an is a new book series that looks at Muslim engagement with the Qur’an in a global perspective. Scholars interested in publishing work in this series and submitting  their monographs and/or edited collections should contact the General  Editor, Johanna Pink. If you wish to submit a contribution, please read and download the submission guidelines here.
 
The Medieval Text Consortium Series

The  Series is created by an association of leading scholars aimed at making  works of medieval philosophy available to a wider audience. The Series'  goal is to publish peer-reviewed texts across all of Western thought  between antiquity and modernity, both in their original languages and in  English translation. Find out more here.
What do we care about? A Cross-Cultural Textbook for Undergraduate Students of Philosophical Ethics

Texts in ethics designed primarily for students should have four main  focal points: exposing students to normative moral theories, the history  of ethics and ethicists, the nature and major contents of applied  ethics, and exposing students to the analysis of moral terms and  questions of moral validation in meta-ethics. However, what is currently  available in this regard are texts that provide a one-sided and narrow  narrative of these focal points: the Western narrative. As it is  becoming more obvious in academic philosophy such hegemony of knowledge  in any area of philosophy is not only a fraud and disservice to humanity  – deliberately or non-deliberately – but also results in the poverty of  knowledge. This book is a bold attempt to remedy this and provide a  comprehensive and broad perspective of ethics to undergraduate students.  The book will indeed provide information on the four focal points  mentioned above, but it will also:

• incorporate  in a non-eurocentric, non-biased way of presenting traditions from  Asia, Africa, North-America, South-America, Australia and Europe.
• have  a recurring section at the end of every chapter that will attempt to  embed the respective ethical traditions into lived experience by asking  (as reflected in the title): 'What, exponent of tradition X, do you care  about? What is an ethical issue dear to you? And what do you do to  address it? What do you do to promote that which you care about?' Find out more here.

Applied Theatre Praxis

This  series publishes works of practitioner-researchers who use their  rehearsal rooms as "labs”; spaces in which theories are generated and  experimented with before being implemented in vulnerable contexts. Find  out more here.

Digital Humanities

Overseen  by an international board of experts, our Digital Humanities Series: Knowledge, Thought and Practice is dedicated to the exploration of these  changes by scholars across disciplines. Books in this Series present  cutting-edge research that investigate the links between the digital and  other disciplines paving the ways for further investigations and  applications that take advantage of new digital media to present  knowledge in new ways.  Proposals  in any area of the Digital Humanities are invited. We welcome proposals  for new books in this series. Please do not hesitate to contact us (a.tosi@openbookpublishers.com) if you would like to discuss a publishing proposal and ways we might work together to best realise it.

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Findable,  accessible, interoperable, reusable: Why open or FAIR data is crucial  to support scientific research in academia and industry.

About the event
This event is FREE.

When
4 March 2021, 3 PM UK Time

SPEAKERS

• Marta Teperek, Head of research data services at TU Delft, Netherlands
• Liz Bal, Director of open research services, Jisc
• Ian Harrow, FAIR Implementation project manager, Pistoia Alliance

Webcast hosted by Tim Gillett, editor, Research Information; and Robert Roe, editor, Scientific Computing World

RSVP: Click here.

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Africa’s Image in Ghana’s Press: The influences of global news organisations by Michael Serwornoo.

Professor Lionel Gossman: In Memoriam by Dr Alessandra Tosi, Managing Director and co-Founder of OBP.

Framing the Third Reich: A new approach to National Socialist Photography by Yinuo Meng.

Jane Austen in Covid by Jane Stabler.

Open Access book usage in 2020: measurement and value by Lucy Barnes.

To check out all of our blogs please visit https://blogs.openbookpublishers.com/.

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Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture is currently looking for a reviewer for one of our latest Open Access title Photography in the Third Reich: Art, Physiognomy and Propaganda edited by Christopher Webster.

Submission Guidelines

Book reviews should be up to 2000 words in length and include the following aspects:

1. A  summary of the book’s information - details of the author(s) and  editor(s), title of the book, year of publication, name of the  publisher, and total page numbers
2. A concise overview of the book’s primary themes
3. Original  and insightful composition, including detailed synopses and critical  evaluations of the book and giving an account of the aims and remits
4. References

Reviewers will be provided with electronic or print copies of the book. Prospective reviewers should get in touch with the Managing Editor, Poonam Devi at poonam.devi@usp.ac.fj.

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Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print by Kathryn M. Rudy

This  book is a history of collections, as well as of nascent hybrid  manuscript production, and also elaborates on Rudy’s own research  methods, offering a case study on the difficulty of conducting and  publishing discipline-melding research on such a grand scale. Her  methodological introduction situates the work within the burgeoning  field of material, or rather, functional print history, and touches on  themes she addressed in her August 2019 Times Higher Education article  on the hidden costs of art history. This serves in part to explain her  striking use of the first person, and the many years of travel and  hundreds of reference photos required to research this book.

 —Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Newberry Library, Speculum 96/1, January 2021, 250–252.

Liminal Spaces: Migration and Women of the Guyanese Diaspora
by Grace Aneiza Ali (ed.)

['Liminal  Spaces: Migration and Women of the Guyanese Diaspora'] is one of the  most comprehensive overviews on the Guyanese diaspora ever published.  Being the only South American nation in which English is the official  language, Guyana is considered part of the Anglophone Caribbean, and  many Guyanese migrate to North America. The majority of the population,  however, speak Guyanese Creole as a first language. The photographs,  letters, installations, video stills and digital collages interspersed  among the narratives allow a glimpse into biographies and artistic  practise, while providing crucial information about the life-courses of  Guyanese women from different generations. Conceived as a visual  exhibition on the page, 'Liminal Spaces' brings incredibly timely  insights on the Guyanese diaspora to the fore. Through artworks, it is able  to cover more ground than a classic scholarly analysis would be able  to, while making it accessible to different audiences. As one of the  only contributions of its kind, its importance cannot be overstressed.

— Eric Otieno, 'How artists from Guyana are thinking through the "Liminal Spaces” of Migration', GRIOT Magazine, December 17, 2020, available online.

Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas: Rethinking Translocality Beyond Central Asia and the Caucasus by Manja Stephan-Emmrich and Philipp Schröder (eds)

It  is precisely how the editors use the idea of translocality when  engaging with the issues of identity, the state, informal economies,  Islam, new technologies, and so on, that allows the reader to appreciate  the volume’s theoretical contribution.

—Elena Borisova, University of Manchester, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 26, 872-918

Vertical Readings in Dante's Comedy: Volume 3 by George Corbett and Heather Webb (eds)

[...]  This is an interesting and well-conceived edited volume that contains  some original conceptual as well as methodological contributions...the  book is recommended to all migration scholars and others wishing to  learn more about translocal (im)mobilities and how these play out in  Central Asia and the Caucasus (and beyond).

—Noel B Salazar, Migration Studies, Volume 8, Issue 2, Pages 275–277, available online

L’inchiesta  miscellanea (frutto finale delle trentatré "public lectures” tenutesi  tra il 2012 ed il 2016 all’università di Cambridge nel Regno Unito)  chiude il cerchio iniziato con la pubblicazione dei precedenti due tomi,  apparsi rispettivamente nel 2015 e nel 2016, e incentrati sulla lettura  "verticale” della Commedia. […] Strumento imprescindibile e prezioso,  Vertical Readings 3, assieme agli altri due volumi, si pone […] come  tappa obbligata, proficua e stimolante per chi voglia addentrarsi, con  efficaci supporti epistemologici, nel complesso e multiforme universo  della poesia escatologica dantesca.

—Olimpia Pelosi, Annali d’Italianistica 38 (2020), 470-476).  

Perhaps  the example that best encapsulates this collaborative impulse, which  both invites participation and innovates within the ‘literary’ field of  Dante Studies, and speaks to the general themes adumbrated thus far, is  the three-volume publication of the Cambridge Vertical Readings in  Dante’s "Comedy”. The volumes had their origin in a series of  thirty-three public lectures held at the University of Cambridge between  2012 and 2016. Each speaker was asked to shake off previously held  critical positions and invited to read the Commedia vertically: that is,  to consider the three parts of the poem in parallel with one another  under the umbrella of ‘connumeration’. Many of the authors in the  volumes, somewhat humorously, stated their disapproval with the method,  and yet went on to offer original readings which enhance our  understanding of Dante’s poem. Other pieces are decidedly enriched by  the vertical constraints put upon them – see, for example, Kenneth  Clarke’s reading of the 10s, in which he demonstrates the rich and  allusive intratexuality of the rhyming of ‘arte’ and ‘parte’ across the  three canticles. The result of the vertical readings is a surprising  admixture of novelty, nuance, and critical acumen. Above all, it is the  result of true collaboration.  

—Daragh O’Connell and Beatrice Sica, Italian Studies, 75:2, 129

The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya by Selma K. Sonntag and Mark Turin (eds)

All  the chapters in the edited volume are scholarly and are supported by  proper theoretical frameworks. It is a very valuable addition to the  area of cultural knowledge of the Himalayan region.

—Himadri Lahiri, Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata, India, Asiatic, Vol. 14, No. 1, June 2020

An  essential read and a valuable resource for all those concerned with  matters of linguistic contact and politics, especially within  educational settings.

—Ram Ashish Giri (2020), Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 41:10, 899-900, DOI: 10.1080/01434632.2020.1749770

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Could you give us a glimpse of how you first became involved with open access?

I  first became aware of open access as a university student and got to  know a bit more about it later, during my PhD, when I was lucky to have  an article I wrote published in open access format.

What drew you to work at OBP?

I  was aware of OBP before I ended up working here thanks to some of their  excellent French and Russian literature publications. Having previously  done a combination of academic research and teaching, I was excited to  be involved in their work and learn more.

Could you briefly describe what your role involves?

My  role varies from project to project, but it will often involve a  combination of editorial work with authors and contributors (which  includes proofreading, copy-editing, and sometimes indexing of  manuscripts), and production work (making the manuscript into an actual  book!). This means I get to see some projects through the various stages  of publication, which is fun and makes it exciting to see them being  read and discussed afterwards.

What do you think is the most challenging aspect of your work? And the most exciting?

Although  focussed on Humanities and Social Sciences, OBP publishes titles on a wide range of subjects, so I suppose one challenging aspect of my work  is the need to adapt quickly to different formats or styles of book, and  to the conventions and language of different academic disciplines.  Learning about whole new fields or debates and getting to work closely  with such a wide range of authors as their work takes shape are  undoubtedly two of the more enjoyable and rewarding aspects of the job!

Can you tell us a bit more about yourself?

I  graduated from Cambridge with an MPhil in Film and Screen Studies in  the Autumn of 2019 and prior to that I obtained my undergraduate degree  in English Literature. I have such a love of books and films and the  academic texts and theories surrounding both. As a graduate student I  was interested in considering how memory and landscape can be entwined  in film. This interest influenced much of my research throughout,  whether it was considering representations of the American desert on  film, Italian Cinema of the early 1960’s, or Beyonce’s gothic  ‘southscapes’ in her visual album Lemonade.

Since graduating I began obtaining experience in different creative  fields. I am currently undertaking some freelance work for Modern Films,  which is a London-based film production, distribution and events  company. In this work I coordinate publicity outreach, collaborations  and events for new film releases. I also undertook a journalism  internship with the digital publication, Air Mail, and now do some freelance work for their London editor. Much of what I love in these  roles is connecting audiences to the material we’re working on and  coming up with creative and unique ways to publicise what we’re  promoting. Publicity and marketing within the creative industry has  always been fascinating to me – I was so pleased to join Open Book  Publishers to establish a sense of how these work in the book industry,  particularly for academic texts.

What drew you to volunteer at OBP? Are you interested in Open Access publishing?

I  was so intrigued by your stance on Open Access publishing. I think  OBP’s vision of accessible research and freely available knowledge is  very innovative in the field. Sometimes the academic world exists in its  own bubble, this model enables more readers and more accessibility from  a wider variety of backgrounds. That definitely caught my attention  when applying. I think the democratization of knowledge and educational  resources is so important.

Another thing that drew me to OBP was the opportunity to work with  multiple people in a smaller team to get a sense of how each department  collaborates. It has been so valuable joining the meeting and switching  between marketing and editorial work. Everyone has been extremely lovely  to work with!

How has been working in the various departments?

It  has been really valuable to work with different team members and get a  sense of the many roles and tasks that make up a publishing house. I  have enjoyed the variation of editorial and marketing projects. There’s a  strong sense of how much time and care OBP staff put into looking at  each manuscript and making sure all the details are perfect, it was  wonderful to contribute to that. There’s an intricacy to the process of  those tasks that is really satisfying. I also really enjoyed the  marketing tasks. It was great to research all the relevant academics,  blogs and journals and gather all the information on how to connect the  book to the right audience before publication.

What is, in your opinion, the most challenging or interesting task you have dealt with?

I  think the most interesting piece to work on was creating the contact  list for an upcoming publication. So much thought goes into every aspect  of where the right audience and readers are, and it was so wonderful to  put that together. I often do similar outreach tasks or media lists in  my freelance work but it was so valuable to do this for a book  publication and see what type of contacts are required for an academic  text.

How has your academic experience helped you in your work or vice versa?

I  think my academic background definitely contributed in lots of ways.  Many of the tasks required really adept research skills as well as a  knowledge of academic journals and how to navigate those spaces. I think  having a keen eye for detail when going over manuscripts and papers is  also helpful. A knowledge of referencing styles also came up a few times  but I think the most important experience is being able to research  really thoroughly. Researching key terms, phrases, names and other relevant or related texts was so helpful when working on the marketing  tasks.

If there are any thoughts you would like to share with us, please email laura@openbookpublishers.com or contact us on Twitter or Facebook.

‘Will the post-corona universe be just another future or something new “to come”?’ – Slavoj Žižek

Corona is a reset. A chance to learn. An opportunity to grow. After all: never let a good crisis go to waste. True enough, there’s plenty of injustice in the world to justify a thorough reset. But the question that crossed everyone’s mind at least once in the past year is: what kind of reset will this be? Or, to use the phrase commonly used in the Dutch public debate, what will the ‘new normal’ be like?

During the better part of 2020 and the start of 2021, in-person gatherings have been reduced to a minimum. While understandable in terms of crisis management, these measures deeply affect public life: education stalled, cultural activities were decimated, and the institutions of Dutch democracy have entered into uncharted and wobbly territories.

Funny enough, a part of the public debate moved to the streets in the meanwhile. A wild discussion about the old and the new normal has unfolded – through posters and stickers. The beauty of this debate is its conciseness: a poster or sticker only has to get across its message (whether political, cultural, or nonsensical) in one image. Let’s take a tour.

 

Stay Sane Stay Safe

During the first months of the first lockdown, the international – but predominantly Dutch – campaign Stay Sane Stay Safe was launched. It seemed like every socially aware designer alive was on board. Within a matter of days, hundreds of posters were uploaded, promoting to ‘flatten the curve’, ‘stay in’, ‘keep distance’, and ‘call your grandma’.

This was nice. Harmless. Sane and safe. It was March, and the weather outside was beautiful. You would almost think that corona was nothing more than a reason to make sleek posters and act woke.

 

The New Normal

Not much later, Dutch graphic designer Rob Simon made a series of posters around the ‘new normal’ (signed with ‘Georgies’). Rather than promoting social distancing and mask-wearing, he raised questions. Simon stated in an interview with a local newspaper that he wanted to ‘trigger people to think’.

While these posters show a degree of discomfort about temperature checks at supermarkets and bonuses in the banking sector, they’re not necessarily critical. They refrain from any overt political statement and remain purposely vague. But there is a shift when compared to Stay Sane Stay Safe: from happy obeying to active thinking.

 

What Do You Really Really Feel?

Well into the summer (August-September), a group of Amsterdam-based community artists also started raising questions under the hashtag #HoeGaatHetEchtMetJe? Going back to the local basics, and realizing that those hit hardest by the crisis are often least visible in public space, these artists went into the different neighborhoods of Amsterdam and asked people intimate questions to find out how they were ‘really’ doing. From the conversations, a selection of quotes was printed on posters, distributed through the city, and launched at Framer Framed. The more political (although by no means party-political) reasoning behind the project is not hard to guess: it is the task of artists and art institutions to challenge the aesthetic regimes of the sensible, that determine what is visible and what is not.

 

Corona and Solidarity

There were skeptics from the start, mainly among the ranks of anthroposophists and conspiracy theorists. Vague critiques of the child-rape by the ‘deep state’ or collective poisoning by ‘big pharma’. Sentiments and fantasies that represented a materially valid dissatisfaction, a good Marxist would say. I don’t want to be the Big Psychologist here (or the Big Material Dialectician, for that matter). However, I think it’s fair to say that they hardly presented any serious threat to the dominant political narrative of crisis management.

 

But in November 2020, while the measures were loosening, the first real cracks started appearing in the narrative of common cause and uniform solidarity. It started becoming obvious how the corona measures impacted certain parts of the population more heavily than others. The education gap was demonstrably widened. Reports of domestic violence rose. Some people fled to their holiday destinations while others stayed home because of financial troubles. As the sociologist Justus Uitermarkt put it: the common trust and conformism started to wear off. No-brainer solidarity once of a sudden turned into a political question.

In fact, already since July 2020, a poster was circulating in Amsterdam (as well as on Reddit), which read: ‘We cannot go back to normal. Because “normal” was exactly the problem.’

 

The Great Reset

From something that we all just had to do and accept, it slowly became clear how corona measures – and the political decisions behind them – impacted some people harder than others, materially as well as psychologically. Now the end is in sight, the question is no longer so much if we will get there, but how. Which companies and organizations will make it through? Who will lose their job (or sanity) before it’s all over? Do we let students go to university, or do we rather open nail and hair salons first?

In a recent Jacobin Magazine article, Slavoj Žižek joined the discussion. We should reject, he asserts, the false dilemma of choosing between things that we can imagine. The left-leaning and liberal world sighed with relief as Biden was elected president of the US. But we know that Biden’s centrist and bipartisan politics of reconciliation and ‘healing’ in fact signal a return to pre-Trump normality. Alternatively, the great reset might lead to a tech bro utopia – a corporate Great Reset.

We can imagine both of these post-reset normalities, either as a return to 2019 or as an extrapolation of the ever-increasing power of Big Tech. But do we have to choose between a return to the old, exploitative normality and a post-Covid corporate Great Reset that promises to be even worse? What we really need, Žižek states, is ‘a socialist reset that can win justice for all and save the planet from climate apocalypse’.

This is where the public discussion is at in The Netherlands as well. We’re close to a reset, but what kind of reset? Do we stick with the lazy and unpolitical narrative of unavoidable crisis management, or will we manage to stretch and expand our imaginations?

Who remembers the first time they heard the term ‘Girl Boss?’ For most, it was around the time founder of the fashion brand Nasty Gal, Sophia Amoruso, published her autobiography ‘#GirlBoss’ in 2014. Since then, the term has grown in popularity to the extreme, creating its own aspirational ‘category’ of woman, archetypal image, and countless spin-off self-help guides, websites, YouTube channels, podcasts, ‘influencers,’ a Netflix series, merchandise, seminars and courses – to name but a handful of #GirlBoss lifestyle commodities.

Amoruso’s #GirlBoss book covers her path growing a multi-million-dollar company, Nasty Gal, out of an eBay vintage-resell store. It tells/sells an authenticity story of a woman going against the grain (including shoplifting, which “saved her life”) in the face of changing media, technologies, and social circumstances. Amoruso’s mantra is “Life is short. Don’t be lazy.” It captures the zeitgeist of millennial women ‘thinking divergent,’ ‘being fearless,’ and ‘staying game strong,’ to pursue and monetise their passions. Shortly after the book’s release, marketeers caught onto the sellability of the Girl Boss ideal, which quickly spread into visual culture. Seven years later, the Girl Boss continues to linger on social media platforms, but who is she now? What does she indicate about real contemporary setbacks? And how does she fit into today’s discourses? First, let’s begin with an explanation of what exactly is a ‘Girl Boss.’

How to Construct a Girl Boss

The Girl Boss is a boss, but not in the traditional sense. The Girl Boss does not perpetuate the image of a middle-aged CEO dressed in a suit. After all, that image is unattainable, being reserved to only one gender identity. The Girl Boss might wear a suit, but she will make it playful and pop-coloured. It will be a statement. For a magazine feature, she will pose with her arms crossed, camera aimed from below, and shot against a skyscraper backdrop. Then, she will gush over her children in the interview and reveal her favourite beauty products and fitness routines. She may be the owner of a fast fashion brand that mistreats garment workers in Bangladesh, but she will sell you a banging t-shirt with ‘The Future is Female” printed across it.

Since the Girl Boss has had to pave her way, having been overlooked or underappreciated by fellow (male) entrepreneurs, her story hinges on self-determination and unparalleled work ethic (what Amoruso calls “sweat equity.”) Having ‘made it’ despite no end of obstacles, the Girl Boss now has it all; a successful business, incredible discipline, an army of assistants and interns, a loyal squad of girlfriends, and a wardrobe of effortlessly chic fashion to go with it.

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The enduring appeal of the Girl Boss lies in her ability to succeed as a business owner whilst retaining traditionally ‘feminine’ characteristics. She’s a killer in the boardroom, and never has bags under her eyes. The Girl Boss elevates herself beyond the need to act like ‘one of the boys.’ She is 100% herself, and unapologetically so. A girl’s girl in a world of businessmen with all the accessories to prove her success: an It bag, red-soled stilettos, and a bad-ass sports car to zoom away in.

Not only has the Girl Boss achieved financial independence; she hasn’t given anything up to achieve it. The Girl Boss promise is that great monetary success is possible and can be attained without compromise. In ‘having it all’, the Girl Boss embodies a post-feminist dream of equal-opportunity access to educational resources, mentoring, start-up capital, and financial security. Not just security – abundance. In this dream, no patriarchal structures are holding her back. Her life, imagined collectively on social media platforms through pastel images and energetic videos, is not a humble brag. In this rendering, her life also does not include dealing with workplace misogyny, harassment, and she does not have to experience ongoing derogatory treatment. There are no pay gaps, no sexism or racism in the workplace. There are no gatekeepers. Only a free market, which any woman can circumnavigate via hard work. “Life is short. Don’t be lazy.” The Girl Boss is a queen of her kingdom, and nothing can snatch her crown.

The Girl Boss makes no apologies for her femininity because her femininity is an asset. It is a crucial ingredient in the recipe of how to make a Girl Boss; the construction of a business owner who refuses to change herself to blend into a male-dominated field. In this sense, the Girl Boss challenges the preconceived notions of what success looks like. Emerging into the world of money and power, the Girl Boss brings the promise of change with her. Her mere presence in this space represents all women everywhere, paving the way for others to follow, and displaying that it is possible to reach such levels of success as a woman. The Girl Boss is the poster child for equal opportunity. However, behind her dazzling facade still lies a reinforcement of patriarchal archetypes that restrict women more than they empower them. It calls to question: Who actually benefits from the presence and prominence of the Girl Boss? Scholar Mary Beard offers some food for thought, suggesting that “We have to be more reflective about what power is, what it is for, and how it is measured.”^[1]

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TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest overflow with Girl Boss content. Here, you will find luxurious shoes and bags, important-looking paperwork, beautiful pens, extravagant sunglasses, fun on rooftops, glamorous cars, champagne flutes, and flawless manicures, all sewn together with inspirational quotes about perseverance. Girl Boss social media grids are sleek, colour-coded, and establish an alluring image of independence and wealth. These images of playful expensive nail art and impractical-but-‘boss’ heels run counter to the content of the male ‘hustler’ entrepreneur – equally ubiquitous on social media platforms. Despite the now household-ness of the Girl Boss ideal, the majority of the entrepreneurial lifestyles promoted and venerated across social media still minorly cater to women. The aforementioned self-identifying ‘hustlers’ mainly identify as male and are generally ignorant towards misogyny in the world of business – which it doesn’t take long to notice when perusing their sub-Reddit homes such as /r/entrepreneur, /r/investing, /r/CareerSuccess, /r/startups, or /r/growmybusiness. Hustlers are not interested in addressing the inequalities that affect access to education, funding, and mentorship. They’re interested in making money. What lingers, no matter the sub, is a pervasive association between positions of power and masculinity. One that endures as a signifier to the past when the subjugation of women made it impossible for them to pursue independent careers or make self-governing decisions.

The Construct Crumbles

It comes as no surprise that many journalists and theorists link the term ‘Girl Boss’ with the infantilisation of women. The ‘Girl Boss’ label categorises the successes of women as separate from, and inferior to, the achievements of their male counterparts. Since the glory days of Sophia Amoruso’s brand (circa 2010-2015), the popularisation of Girl Boss wavered, and critical engagements with the concept weakened its persuasive powers. The year 2020 saw many Girl Bosses resign over allegations of toxic workplace cultures. Still, #GirlBoss tags persist on social media and millions of users interact with Girl Boss content every day, seeking to personify the (unattainable) ideal of the Girl Boss that presents itself as something within reach. After all, being perceived as a success is just as important as success itself; and perhaps the aesthetics of life in big business alone are more compelling than the reality of pursuing such a career. More on this in the next section.

The Girl Boss imaginary romanticises the idea of wealth but does not take into account the methods by which it may be acquired. In this sense, the Girl Boss is a neoliberal pawn; an affluent individual whose inspiring story supposedly proves the accessibility of success and demonstrates that opportunities wait for anyone willing to work hard enough. Don’t spend too much time thinking about what business the Girl Boss owns, how it operates, or who may be affected by it.

 

“Simply incorporating women into positions of power does not guarantee equality or justice in the larger sense. We always seem prime to celebrate individual advancements of black people, people of colour, women, without taking into consideration it might simply mean that previously marginalised individuals have been recruited to guarantee a more efficient operation of oppressive systems.” – Angela Davis

 

Reflecting Angela Davis’ expanded contemplation; would it be sensible when examining the Girl Boss figure to consider a more communal approach instead of accepting another archetype representative of individual success? How else might we reach a collective redefinition of ideas of power and influence? This is not a proposal that seeing women in business is a setback for women everywhere. On the contrary, it is necessary to elevate women’s voices and provide increased access to positions of power. However, that in itself does not guarantee structural changes in the workplace, or the conduct of influential bodies of power. Ruby Staley writes: “When female CEOs and managers mimic the behaviour of the archetypal male boss, the patriarchal barriers placed in front of women in the world of work remain the same – they aren’t deconstructed, instead, they’re reinforced.”^[2] The Girl Boss facade of glamour and empowerment might be exciting and motivating to some aspiring women in business, but the prominence of this figure does not automatically challenge expectations, nor does it change the fabric of economic inequalities. Here, we also encounter the danger of tokenism; women and marginalised people are regularly exploited as tokens of diversity in conglomerates that could not care less about truthful representation, nor more equal access to opportunities and professional development. Women deserve more than a pity promotion motivated by pressure to meet a diversity quota.

What Comes Next?

Girl Boss and hustle cultures share many characteristics. For one, they refuse to acknowledge wider contexts of individual success stories. They both thrive on social media platforms where inspiring imagery and self-help tips taken out of context convey a message of an unhealthy dependence on work and quantifiable achievement. Both versions love easily digestible images and use short videos that entice users with promises of financial independence and lives of luxury. The more one encounters this kind of content, the more likely they are to start seeing their employment status as a definer of self-worth and identity. I fell victim to this trap when diving into online Girl Boss culture. Even though I lack the aspiration to be a business owner or a millionaire, I did catch myself feeling envious of the status enjoyed by these figures. Like many people, I too long for a life free from financial worries, unrestricted by the high prices of some comforts. It did provoke me to think… If I bit the bullet and went corporate, maybe it would be worth it? If I started to seek out a highly paid job, maybe I would be happier?

What Girl Boss culture has never really acknowledged is that the very incident of becoming a CEO might not automatically lead to satisfaction. Juliette O’Brien states: “It’s not just that hustle culture and productivity obsessions are exhausting, incurious, and self-aggrandizing. It’s that, on their own, they can offer an anemic, superficial, and tedious experience of life.”^[3] In an ironic turn of events, O’Brien’s critique was published by none other than GirlBoss.com, a networking platform Amoruso founded in 2017, and abandoned two years later. It seems as though through its evolution over the past few years, GirlBoss.com’s online content – created by Amoruso and others – has gradually increased its nuance around issues like toxic productivity, whilst its male-counterpart ‘hustle culture’ continues to hold strong with the workaholic mantra of doing “whatever it takes.”

The destabilising ripple effect of the COVID-19 pandemic marks a seismic shift in relationship to work. For one, it makes start-ups, side hustles and passive income more desirable and marketable. Anything to stop feeling threatened and endangered by an unpredictable economy and unstable employment. Some Girl Bosses claim a pandemic is a prime time to set up a business. These calls only multiply existing pressures to perform productivity, monetise interests, and invest whatever time and money you might have left into new sources of stress and anxiety. Instead, let’s follow Davis’ lead and focus on how oppressive systems dictate and demand these unattainable standards.

Plenty of work remains to be done about improving the societal positions of women within self-employment, labour, business, kinship and family. It might not be the kind of work the Girl Boss undertakes. Today’s online activity needs to shift in a new direction, away from the mythologisation of an egocentric figure and their individual successes in a “man’s world.” In recent years, there is a tendency to provide platforms to marginalised voices and to consider the bigger picture of intersections between labour, gender, race and class. Mobilisation via the online is another way to shift away from the hustle narrative, instead offering mutual support and resources to those interested in business and ethics. These gatherings can and should include users who resonate(d) with the Girl Boss narrative. Pink typography is not all bad; it might encourage users to dream and speculate about a future where gender does not dictate access to wealth and power. However, it is not sufficient, and the aesthetics of the online Girl Boss are much more likely to mask the impossibilities of standards they propose, instead of debunking them.

References

^[1] Mary Beard, Women in Power, https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n06/mary-beard/women-in-power [Accessed Feb 2021]

^[2] Ruby Staley, Thank God We’re Finally Moving Past Girl Boss Culture, https://fashionjournal.com.au/life/thank-god-were-finally-moving-past-girl-boss-culture/ [Accessed Feb 2021]

^[3] Juliette O’Brien, Is Hustle Culture Actually Hurting Us?, https://www.girlboss.com/read/productivity-culture [Accessed Feb 2021]