Abstract
Our world is unruly, and this unruliness varies in specific relations to neo-fascist and technocratically-informed capitalist violence and climate changes. I have been interested in how cultural objects, globally distributed through logistical and mediatic structures, that participate in the governance of our contemporary world, can otherwise facilitate unruly, bottom-up social relations that sit beside or outside of these methods of formal governance. I wonder about the possibilities embodied in these objects that might, when properly understood, help move this unruliness in expressly progressive directions. So, what follows are several reflections on this topic, framed by a discussion of Spain’s Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (the PAH, or la Plataforma de Afectados Por La Hipoteca in Spanish) and its relation to particular cultural objects that were generated elsewhere but appear meaningful in the context of the PAH. Consciously or not, these objects were utilized by the PAH in transforming their members’ financial, social and psychological situations and their shared world. The discussion focuses on the Barcelona PAH chapter that I observed on-and-off from 2013 to 2015.