Next month will see the latest in a series of vicious budgets entailing almost four billion euro in spending cuts and tax increases. In the days preceding this calamity, Taoiseach Enda Kenny is scheduled to address the nation on television to offer words of comfort and inspiration. The text of his pep talk to the people will of course be depressingly predictable. We will be told that we are all in this together, tough decisions have to be made, a corner has been turned and that those who really run this benighted little Republic are rather impressed with our appetite for needless pain. The usual dreary, meager fare of half truths and lies will be spoon fed once more to the viewing public. The moment that Enda Kenny appears on our screens is surely one that demands a critical and satirical response, even perhaps one that amounts to an alternative state of the nation address. At the heart of this address has to be an account of the appalling realities of the state we’re in.
CrisisJam are planning to mark this moment by hosting an intensive round of critical writing, personal testimony, community responses and any other kind of radical and questioning response that may come to mind. We are hoping to publish a series of critiques and narratives that tell the real story of how this crisis has impacted on individuals, families and communities. We would encourage contributors to use as many different creative forms and media types as possible. Written contributions should ideally be around 500 words, but can of course be shorter.
When our glorious leader gets to his feet to explain patiently to all the children of the nation why community schemes must be abolished, hospitals closed, third level fees increased and all the rest we will begin streaming these alternative narratives online. Should the televised address fail to materialise, we will go ahead and post as many critical commentaries as possible over the days immediately before the budget. If you would like to make a contribution please send it to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . When placed together, these tales of straitened times will, we hope, offer a counterpoint to the iniquitous dominant narrative of the day. Your support and participation would be greatly appreciated.{jathumbnailoff}
Image top: Eadaoin O'Sullivan, from an original by Giandomenico Ricci.
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Darren Scully's sadness and Ian O'Doherty's indignation share a common ancestry - one rooted in a belief that they are reluctantly, courageously, ready to speak aloud what many people think but won’t say. By Gavan Titley.
Of course, it is always possible, and very often the case, that the dominant media claims that a “fiscal crisis” has precipitated mass demonstrations, strikes, and new forms of political mobilisation in Greece. Although it is true that there is fiscal crisis, it should not be understood as a periodic difficulty that a country or a region periodically passes through only then to re-enjoy the economic status quo. What is emerging in fast and furious form is a constellation of neoliberal economic practices that are establishing a new paradigm for thinking about the relation between economic and social forms as well as modes of rationality, morality, and subject formation. And the problem, that which pushes tens of thousands of people onto the street, is not simply the rise of technological modes of labour and new ways of calculating the value of work and life. Rather, neoliberalism works through producing dispensable populations; it exposes populations to precarity; it establishes modes of work that presume that labour will always be temporary; it decimates long-standing institutions of social democracy, withdraws social services from those who are most radically unprotected – the poor, the homeless, the undocumented – because the value of social services or economic rights to basic provisions like shelter and food has been replaced by an economic calculus that values only the entrepreneurial capacities of individuals and moralises against all those who are unable to fend for themselves or make capitalism work for them.
My daughter was nearly born to the sound of Seán Gallagher. No, seriously. It was a few months back and there was nothing on TV in the hospital apart from Dragon’s Den, and Seán Gallagher was talking, and my wife all of a sudden went into labour and our daughter was born roughly two minutes later, safely out of earshot of the TV.
The truth about 'red tape' is that it saves lives and protects rights. To dismiss it as an unnecessary irritation is simply foolish. By Nyder O'Leary.
Seven days, seven nights, that's how long Dame Street has been occupied. I never expected it to last this long, I never expected that I would have lasted this long, and yet here we all are. I'm off to bed now after a long day of heavy lifting, cups of tea (requiring light-to-medium lifting) and an awful lot of standing around in and out of high-vis vests. I may also have done some media stuff and I'm pretty sure I accidentally alienated an American anarchist activist (sadly not for the purposes of alliteration, though the idea of doing so is so irresistible that I may need to find an alternative anarchist activist, possibly Australian or Austrian, tomorrow to practice on).
