Neoliberalism out of joint: Activists and inactivists in London’s social centres

The article examines neoliberalism’s impact on forms of subjectivity by looking at social centres (squatted activist community centres) in London from 2007 to 2009. With a focus on issues related to temporality, it explores the concept of outmodedness understood as a temporal misalignment away from the pacings required by neoliberalism. This is examined not only in terms of objects and spaces proper to social centres, but most importantly through a possible recomposition of the subject in this setting. Resistance to neoliberal norms through a particular experience of outmodedness is seen as ambivalent, leading to a possible immobilization of the subject and yet also towards non-capitalist modes of experience