Operativism: Labor, Automation, Agitation

This special issue of e-flux journal advocates for a return to a materialist genealogy of “operativism”—a concept that spans labor politics and scientific management throughout the twentieth century, from the Soviet avant-gardes to postwar cybernetics to modern warfare and the multiple interpretations of Harun Farocki’s “operational images.” “Operations” have been theorized primarily within the technological register of power, often obscuring other genealogies and readings that see operations as falling within the logic of cooperation in labor and social relations. While debates on the “operative ontologies” of media have foregrounded technical configurations, this issue turns to the “social machine” and the organization of labor that underwrite operations. Elaborating on Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson’s idea of “the operations of capital” and against the mute compulsions of capital today, we propose “operativism” as the other side of its technical and tactical operations.