OT27 Preview

April 9, 2015

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The 27th issue of the OT will be released on Monday 13th April. Since we last went to print, just under 6-months ago, two members of our collective became parents, others stepped back into the wage-labour relation following prolonged absence, and a militant housing movement across London has been crystallising into a formation brimming with possibility.

The final shape of the new issue slowly formed around the content we gathered together, working initially under an initial theme of ‘reproduction’, both of our bodies and labour-power, but also of wider configurations; social movements, technologies, states and so on. As the articles started to arrive and we began to get a sense of the overall issue as a whole, it became clear that the more prevalent focus was on the figure of the state. What began as a focus on reproduction is now perhaps better encapsulated in the concept of discipline. The 20-page issue features a number of spreads in which the below are just a few highlights:

From The Empty Cages Collective, we present three articles across two pages, focusing on the Prison-Industrial Complex and its function in contemporary societies – arguing that prisons cannot be reformed, they must be abolished. We’re also honoured to feature a spread on migrant detention, featuring personal testimony from those detained in both the UK and Greece. Leah Cowan has also updated a piece she wrote for us last year about the multiple abuses of the UK border regime.

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The OT collective has used the centre spread of this issue to attempt to map some key elements of the past five years of urban struggle across London. A lead-in article by Rhiannon Firth on the practices of critical cartography is followed by our efforts to draw together numerous aspects of the fight for our city, in the hope of providing clues for a navigation in common and a spatial sense of the recent past. The map is as much an invitation – to conceive, act and challenge – as it is an exposition.

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An article by Sophie Lewis sheds light on the murky terrain of the global surrogacy industry and the complex labour rights of those who go through labour. The article sits nicely alongside a companion piece by Sophie, recently published in Jacobin.

Copies of OT26 will be distributed at events and within communities throughout the coming months. You can also find us on the shelves of various outlets across the capital, including Housmans, Black Gull Books, Banner Repeater, 56a,Freedom Bookshop, Cafe Crema, Black Cat Cafe and the London Review Bookshop. The full list of stockists can be found on the OT Stockists Map on our website.