Under Construction Journal Issue 6.1 UNDER CONSTRUCTION JOURNAL 6.1 | Page 114

version of madcap communism 94 , including migrants, ravers, ne’er do well drug-dealers 95 and the
prematurely aged ICI driver Alan 96 - both a socialist union member and inveterate racist 97 - who
represents a tragi-comic, ideologically-liminal parody of anti-acid archaic workerism among other things.
As a collective, despite their differences, these mark a ‘common’ assault upon instrumental co-opted
time dominance as well as heterogeneity , in doing so exemplify Fisher’s working-class aristocracy or
quasi-indifference to the hustle of bourgeois culture in the form of peacocking, eccentricity, alternative
dietary habits, and a disconnection from neoliberal imprecations and ‘zombies in suits’ – Bobby’s
friends lounging around to be painted and transformed (or emerging in their innate egalitarian
aristocracy) in the painterly-avid gaze 98 , although (as will be briefly discussed) the dimension of ‘hustle’
is certainly not obviated within the text, whether in official ‘labour’ or the hustle of dealing. The chief
form is painting, along with parties. However we have forms of alternative labour at work here;
technologies of the self are forms of labour where we also have an emphasis upon time, indeed
boredom, as a generator of practice, insisted upon by Bobby. Clearly, there exists rootedness in art but
also an aestheticizing of life as alternative post-Marcusean productivity from existing instruments of
technological production and planned environment.
The [ne’er do well] Johnny later cures his relationship with his girlfriend through an engagement
with a highly libidinal art. Acid’s spread begins to other generations in the form of Johnny’s mother
transforming the debris of videogame exercise culture 99 into something sublime as she exercises her
depression away in (unbeknownst to her) an acid haze: : again, acid in the widest sense of assemblage is
embedded into life as vital if terrifying device, with effects on the threshold of vision, the most
quotidian. In terms of ordinary speech we have low culture mingling in speech and subjectivity; as the
94
Slavoj Zizek. “Slavoj Žizek on The Avengers” Youtube.com. 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP4pcDLI57c [accessed 10.12.2019]
95
After Johnnie got clicked off the dole, five months back, he got self-employed as a full-time thief and
professional letdown
96
Alan Blunt one of the stranger character sin the building and his flat’s the equivalent of the spooky mansion at
the end of your street with the black cars outside and the bars in the attic and dead bodies in the closet (2010,
43)
97
Alan is a member of the socialist workers union on town but he’s also under the impression that n*ggers, p*kis
and ch*nks are all out to get white people’s jobs[..]Alan’s father died years ago after refusing a flu jab from a
Bangladeshi nurse (2010, 91)
98
Bobby awwa […] these beautiful girls straight out of the slop like Demoiselles de’avignon but not so triangular
and shortish (2010, 56)
99
She’s been on new pills for over a week. …she feels like a new woman […] Dance dance evolution on the PS23.
Instead of self-consciously jogging around albert park on rainy afternoons she decided to plump for the dancing
(2010, 186) […] Realizes Jean’s been taking ecstasy all this time, not Prozac (2010, 190)
105