Nothing Re-Fused: Performing the Neo-Institution

Abstract

In this paper, we outline the shape of a new institutional structure born of neo-liberal precariousness that we call the neo-institution. The neo-institution is immune to refusal, while at the same time an expert in extracting labor, time, knowledge, and attention. Because there is no way out of the aporia that is the neo-institution—no practical way to re-shape or refuse it—we propose to partly subtract ourselves from it by instigating another way to assemble. We advance the theoretical practice of stitching as a form of assembling that does not erase traces of labor and fight and that eludes any totalizing tendency. Understood as a way of assembling and writing, stitching is a practice of repairing, repurposing, and holding together. Finally, while fatigue, exhaustion, burnout, and depression are the inescapable result of neo-liberal precariousness, we praise the entropic ability of the body to refuse to be treated like refuse.