Scioperi queer. Energia-lavoro dell’attenzione e linee di fuga

Abstract

If the Fordist formula for the social factory of early cognitive capitalism might be “machine + attention = production” (Petri 1971), value extraction exploits not only hybrid forms of reproductive labour – elemental, animal, machinic –, but also their capacity to distract and get distracted. This article questions distractibility as a queer form of attentional work refusal, both accomplice and disruptor of habits’ automatisms. Tracing a line from the echoes of feminist vindications of Wages for Housework/Global Women Strike and Wages Due Lesbian/Queer Strike to their re-enactment in contemporary attention artivism and practice-based research, this ability emerges as an unavoidable yet radically ambiguous set of tendencies that, standing apart from wakeful vigilance, borders on the threshold between states, strategies and tactics, lines of capture and flight.