Chapter Published In Dinerstein Ana Cecilia & Michael Neary (2002) The Labour debate. An Investigation into the Theory and Reality of Capitalist Work, Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate (Co-editor: Michael Neary) pp. 203-225 (Spanish translation by Herramienta Editions 2009. 8 Regaining Materiality: Unemployment and the Invisible Subjectivity of Labour ANA C. DINERSTEIN To give unreality to reality one must give reality to the unreal, until the point is reached – inadmissible, unacceptable to the reasoning mind – when the unreal elements speak and move…and the nothingness can be heard, is made concrete (Ionesco, comment on The Chairs in Esslin, 1991: 152). – And where’s the script? – It is in us, sir…the drama is in us. We are the drama and we are impatient to act it – so fiercely does our inner passion urge us on (Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of an Author). It was as if he were being forced to watch his own disappearance, as if, by crossing the threshold of this room, he were entering another dimension, taking up residence inside a black hole (P. Auster, The Invention of Solitude, Faber and Faber, London, 1982: 77). Oh God! What could I do? I foamed – I raved – I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder – louder – louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? (E. A. Poe, The Tell-tale Heart). This chapter explores the constitution of subjectivity of labour through Marx’s method of determinate, by looking at the particular case of unemployment. Since 1993 there has been taking place in Argentina an almost uninterrupted process of social protests against the neo- liberal stabilisation plans and economic reforms initiated by the Menem administration. These social protests take the form of roadblocks organised by workers, the unemployed and entire communities affected by poverty, isolation and unemployment. The emergence and persistence of the roadblocks have inspired some work which has aimed to grasp this new phenomenon; for example, as the site for the emergence of new cultural identities (Favaro et al., 1997); as a demand to get into the capitalist system; as an ‘effect’ of institutional and political weakness (Gauchet in Tenti Fanfani, 1996: 266); as the post-industrial form of conflict where ‘the capital and labour relation is not any longer central to the development of capitalism’ (García Delgado, quoted by Favaro et al., 1997: 22); as ‘popular rebellions’ (Iñigo Carreras and Cotarelo, in Klachko, 2000); as an indicator of the re-emergence of the left in Latin America (Petras, 1997); as social struggles with a revolutionary potential to break down the system in the future (Lizaguirre et al., 1997); as ‘food riots’ (Walton and Seddon, 1994). 1 Whilst in some cases the roadblock is seen as a desperate attempt to fight social exclusion, in others it becomes the site to constitute the new project for social change. My aim is not to classify the roadblock but, rather, to allow it to speak for itself by reconsidering the categories and forms in which the issue is being approached. I will argue that the sociological assumption that unemployment means the lack of work and the ‘exclusion’ of workers from the process of commodity production leading to social exclusion (see Castel, 1991) does not allow an understanding of the constitution of the subjectivity of unemployment This concept is extremely disempowering as it has become a barrier to the appreciation of the significance of the new forms of resistance led by the so-called marginalised sectors of society. I argue that, although it looks as if it were the opposite, unemployment is a form of labour produced by the intensification and expansion of capitalist work in its most abstract forms: money (or abstract labour in motion). The temporary ‘avoidance’ of labour by capital (M – M′) (Capital, III) implies an apparent jump of capital into the