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us to respond to their plight. Materiality, usually conceived as inert
substance, should be rethought as a plethora of things that form as-
semblages of human and nonhuman actors (actants) - humans are
but one force in a potentially unbounded network of forces.
Such an approach which locates a phenomenon in its ever-chan-
ging assemblage enables us to account for some unexpected cases
of trans-functionalization (a phenomenon all of a sudden begins to
function in a totally different way). Among the unexpected occur-
rences of solidarity, one should mention the gangs in Rio de Janeiro
favelas, usually engaged in brutal struggles for the control of their
territories, who concluded peace for the time of the epidemics and
decided to collaborate in providing help to the old and weak in
their favela. This sudden change was possible because street gangs
were already in themselves an assemblage of different aspects: not
just a form of crime, but also a form of solidarity and resistance to
institutional power by groups of youth.
Another example of trans-functionalization: spending trillions
to help not only companies but also individuals (some of such mea-
sures come close to Universal Basic Income) is justified as an extre-
me measure to keep the economy running and to prevent extreme
poverty and starvation, but there is effectively something much
more radical going on: with such measures, money no longer func-
tions in a classic capitalist way; it becomes a voucher to allocate
available resources so that society can go on functioning, outside
the constraints of the law of value.
Let’s imagine another weird reversal along these lines. It was
widely reported in our media how a collateral effect of the coro-
navirus epidemics was a much better quality of air above central
China and now even above northern Italy – but what if weather
patterns in these regions were already accustomed to polluted air,
so that one of the effects of cleaner air may turn out to be a diffe-
rent and much more destructive pattern of weather in these regions
(more drought, or more flooding…)?

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