WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE FRANCE - news journal UPDATE - (en) France, UCL AL #367 - Culture - Read: Maud and Elsa Lecarpentier, "Always Chipped: The Macro-Damage of Microelectronics" (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 If there's one manufacturing sector that particularly symbolizes industrial water grabbing (especially drinking water), it's the semiconductor industry. Using the specific example of the STMicroelectronics plant in Isère, near Grenoble, this graphic novel, written and illustrated by Maud and Elsa Lecarpentier, confirms, if confirmation were needed, the sheer excess of the capitalist system and its need for infinite growth in the context of a finite planet with limited materials and resources.

Written in an accessible style, using humor and caricature, the graphic novel makes it easy to grasp the issues at stake, despite what may initially seem complex, at the crossroads of technological, scientific, and political challenges. The scenario employs a humorous dialogue between two fish: one naive, asking questions about business and microelectronics like a moderate citizen, but not fully grasping the gravity of the situation; the other possessing the arguments and data necessary to demonstrate the dead end in which microchip production finds itself. It quickly becomes clear that the interests of the company and the people of the Grésivaudan valley are opposed. The illusions of "sovereignty" in terms of industry and defense, promoted by a state that subsidizes French production but is trapped by extraction elsewhere and exports components indiscriminately, are also deconstructed. This is a state that allows ever-increasing extraction and authorizes numerous exemptions to the chemical pollution of the "tech" sector.

Maud and Elsa Lecarpentier, *Toujours Puce: les macrodégâts de la micro-électronique* (Always Chip: The Macro Damage of Microelectronics), Le Monde à l'envers, 2024, 104 pages, 12 euros. The comic strip "Toujours puce" also highlights the approach and actions of the StopMicro collective[1], which has been mobilized on this issue for several years. The collective and the comic strip do not engage in anti-tech arguments[2], but rather in "technocritical" and degrowth arguments, in the sense that the mass production of electronic components to meet the needs of capital necessitates questioning the necessary or unnecessary uses of current digital technologies that are presented to us as inevitable.

These conclusions naturally lead us back to the need for a different kind of society where real needs are determined by the population and based on the amount of available resources.

Marius (UCL Toulouse)

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[1]Available at Stopmicro38.noblogs.org.

[2]"Anti-tech: Against confusion in our movements!", Alternative libertaire no. 362, July-August 2025.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Lire-Maud-et-Elsa-Lecarpentier-Toujours-Puce-les-macrodegats-de-la-micro
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Link: (en) France, UCL AL #367 - Culture - Read: Maud and Elsa Lecarpentier, "Always Chipped: The Macro-Damage of Microelectronics" (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca