(or may not) choose to enforce on its employees. People even talk about corporate ethics, which are a tacit ‘agreement’ of sorts that companies and costumers will enter into when transacting. None of these are the ethics that this book will focus on. In fact, these ‘ethics’ are the antithesis of the kind of ethics that will be explored.
This book builds on the idea of ethical thinking as infectiousness, but colours this with the conceptualization of ethics as immanent, and not beholden to any predefined higher power. Essentially, ethics are allowing for the continuation of commoning. Hence, they are not a ‘code of conduct’, but a suite of positionalities that catalyse a planetary commons wherever and however they unfold in real time. If commoning is the realization that an oppressive ideology can be resisted, then ethics are ‘soft articulations’ of how to maintain this resistance. Ethics therefore are ‘immanent’ and always unfolding, rather than some suite of transcendental ideals that are predefined. They take stock of a situation, and are subsequently articulated depending on how the commoning is unfolding. To be ‘ethical’ in this sense is to be guided by the given situation in all its diversity, density and difference, rather than any preconceived or external ‘guide’. Such ethics are fleeting in action, but can become more durable and embedded in the world as they diffuse through the social fabric. This reading of ethics is in the tradition articulated most forcefully by the French radical philosopher Gilles Deleuze, in his sole-authored work but also in the magnum opus he wrote with his co-conspirator Félix Guattari.26 In intricately analysing the notion of ethics within this work, the feminist philosopher Tasmin Loraine has argued that ‘Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualisation of an immanent ethics calls on us to attend to the situations of our lives in all their textured specificity and to open ourselves up to responses that go beyond a repertoire of comfortably familiar, automatic reactions and instead access creative solutions to what are unique problems.’27
The ‘problem’ of capitalism is far from unique – it is global in its imposition – yet an ethics that aims to resist the myriad of injustices and inequalities can follow the same immanence outlined by Deleuze and Guattari. In other words, opening up spaces to allow recognition and indeed a celebration of the different forms of living justly in this world, beyond the totalizing hegemonic force of capitalism, is an ethical act.
As discussed above, thinking the commons as planetary entails thinking them ethically, in that they are always immanent and unfolding; they are always in a state of becoming the commons in conjunction with a community; the act of commoning. Indeed, Gibson-Graham, with their articulation of commoning, invoke a Deleuzo-Guattarian reading of becoming, arguing that it aids in producing a ‘generative ontological centripetal force working against the pull of essence or identity’.28
Therefore, I want to build on this lineage of thinking ethically that refuses totalizing predetermined forces that can restrain difference, and instead embrace the variance that exists in the world in any given situation, in any given time, in any given place. The ethics I want to outline, then, are first and foremost grounded in this ontology; they are ‘soft’ articulations. They are articulations in that they can be communicated (i.e. via this book) and they are soft because they are malleable, porous and transmutable (i.e. they are necessarily ‘open-source’ – they can be used, adapted and transmogrified). They are behavioural and emotional ‘patterns’ that are constantly in flux, rather than rigid templates to adopt.
What is important to factor into this discussion, however, is that the actualization of this reading of ethics is always related to an event. The ethics are not predetermined or imposed; an event always happens first. In other words, for ethics to have a grounding or indeed something to be ethical towards (other than complete nihilism), they are tethered to, and unfold from, a pre-existing ‘event’. As Deleuze has argued, ‘ethics is concerned with the event; it consists of willing the event as such, that is, of willing that which occurs insofar as it does occur’.29 But just want do we mean when we say ‘an event’?
The Covid event
An event is when something happens that is so extraordinary that it changes the entire way everything – society, politics, economics human and nonhuman behaviour – is. More than that, though, an event is creative. It brings into existence entire ways of being in the world that simply did not exist beforehand. Some of these exist only as possibilities, or possible possibilities. An event emerges unexpectedly as the ‘old’ world ruptures, bringing new subjects, new truths and radically different experiences into existence, and shifts how that world works in its entirety. Deleuze would argue that events are ‘eruptions’ within a collective that calls for its complete transformation; in his words, they ‘overthrow worlds’.30
But such ruptures happen often. What makes an event an event is what happens after. How people react to the event maintains its ‘eventfulness’. The radical change that an event brings upon the world happens through the actions of the people, communities, institutions and things that are compelled to advocate and affirm the newness that the rupture has exposed to the world. It becomes a cause to fight for, something to believe in, a truth that must be defended.
There are many revolutionary episodes throughout modern history that have been revered as exemplar events: the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the 1968 uprisings in Paris and, more recently, the Arab Spring.31 Events are indeed revolutionary (rather than evolutionary) precisely because they change the whole makeup – governance, behaviour, attitudes and politics – of society. The ‘new’ things that an event creates, then, are new voices for those whose voices have been silenced, hope for those whose hope has been oppressed, and opportunities for those made destitute. Events therefore are radical acts that bring new forms of justice into what is an unjust world.
Yet there are some ‘ruptures’ in the world that may have equally devastating effects, but are not events. For example, while 9/11 was a catastrophic, unexpected event (at least outside of the small group of terrorists who perpetrated it) and instilled shock and terror on a whole new scale, it served only to shore up existing geopolitical injustices; indeed it catalysed them. It foregrounded a renewed military expansion in the Middle East, and justified invasions that were more about securing oil production than bringing down dictatorial regimes. It ossified American imperialism in both geopolitical and economic terms. Crucially, then, an event cannot be known in advance, and it is only thought of as such retrospectively. And make no mistake; we are potentially living through what we may eventually conceptualize as an event.
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, the relatively smooth functioning of contemporary capitalism has severely ruptured. In the process, many different ‘realities’ are coming to the fore. First and foremost, we have seen the increased prominence of distinctly state-led programmes of emergency response that have gone against the grain of the capitalist policies that characterized governance structures pre-pandemic. Socialist-leaning policies have been imposed, such as universal basic income (which has been implemented to varying degrees in Spain, Germany and the UK), the rapid acceleration of the greening of our urban spaces, the championing of nationalized infrastructure programmes such as broadband internet for all, and, most importantly, the massive swelling and pedestalling of nationalized healthcare. Debt has been cancelled, and reparations to the global south have been forwarded. Also, we have witnessed the swift rebuttal of the unjust characteristics of corporate capitalism; for example, the clamour for the super-rich not only to pay their fair share of their staff’s wages as they all had to go on furlough, but also to pay more tax in general. (This has been a long-standing demand, and has gained substantial traction in mainstream narratives and political discourses.)32 The failure of just-in-time production to cater for emergency food provision in supermarkets across the UK led to food shortages. These shortcomings were then redressed by the explosion of mutual aid programmes, which also occurred across Europe and the US.33 Street homelessness in the UK was reduced to nearly zero in the space of two weeks as those on the streets were hurriedly given shelter in empty hotels
