#caffentzis

[ourcomicsourselves]

The Struggle for Nairobi

The Struggle for Nairobi was donated to Interference Archive by George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici. The artist, Terry Hirst, is a friend of theirs, and this might be one of the first full-length graphic novels produced in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s a history of Kenya (and in broader strokes the history of colonialism in Africa) told in text-heavy panels and through a Marxist lens. It’s a tough read, doesn’t exactly work as a “novel,” but the almost 200 dense pages mixing text, art, and photo collage are a pretty impressive piece of work. Published in 1994 by the Mazingira Institute, it’s sadly out of print, and very difficult to find. You can always read it at Interference Archive!

- Josh MacPhee

[bustakay]

As the history of class struggle demonstrates, privileging one sector of the working class over the others is the surest road to defeat. Undoubtedly, certain types of workers have played a crucial role in certain historical phases of capitalist development. But the working class has paid a very high price to a revolutionary logic that established hierarchies of revolutionary subjects, patterned on the hierarchies of the capitalist organization of work.

Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis - 'Notes on the Edu-Factory and Cognitive Capitalism'.

[bustakay]

The struggle in the edu-factory is especially important today because of the strategic role of knowledge in the production system in a context in which the 'enclosure' of knowledge (its privatisation, commodification, expropriation through the intellectual property regimes) is a pillar of economic restructuring.

Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis - 'Notes on the Edu-Factory and Cognitive Capitalism'.

[bustakay]

As was the factory, so now is the university. Where once the factory was a paradigmatic site of struggle between workers and capitalists, so now the university is a key space of conflict, where the ownership of knowledge, the reproduction of the labour force, and the creation of social and cultural stratifications are all at stake. This is to say the university is not just another institution subject to sovereign and governmental controls, but a crucial site in which wider social struggles are won and lost.

Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis - 'Notes on the Edu-Factory and Cognitive Capitalism'.

[bustakay]

Capitalist accumulation has thrived precisely through its capacity to simultaneously organise development and underdevelopment, waged and unwaged labour, production at the highest levels of technological know-how and production at the lowest levels.

Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis - 'Notes on the Edu-Factory and Cognitive Capitalism'.

[chemicalelements]