Precarious Spaces

'Cultural politics has melted into thin air, or more accurately, this once powerful New Left paradigm has been monetized by finance capital, its dissent thoroughly commodified. But all is not lost. Enter Precarious Spaces. Packed with inventive methodologies and valuable case studies co-editors Katarzyna Kosmala and Miguel Imas have mobilized a remarkable cadre of critically engaged scholars for their project, who do not so much reject their allotted state of precarity, but who instead “flip it” around to their collective advantage. Precarious Spaces is a book, as much as it is a living theoretical framework offering essential lessons about the emerging art of precariousness. Focusing primarily on the Global South, which as we know is not always in The South, Precarious Spaces maps-out a process of “inverse colonialism” whereby those who dwell along the borders of a collapsing society strategically rag-pick and recycle its left-overs in order to assemble a survivable world from whatever is at hand. As precarity itself migrates from the perimeter into the general conditions of contemporary life, Precarious Spaces proves one thing above all else: resistance is not futile.'