Book Launch for ‘Truth and Revolution’ – by Michael Staudenmaier

Revolution

BOOK LAUNCH FOR ‘TRUTH AND REVOLUTION’ BY MICHAEL STAUDENMAIER

At Encuentro Cinco (33 Harrison Avenue in Boston MA)

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 at 6:00pm

Sponsored by the Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series:

Book launch for ‘Truth and Revolution’ by Michael Staudenmaier

Founded in Chicago in 1969 from the rubble of the recently crumbled SDS, the Sojourner Truth Organization (STO) brought working-class consciousness to the forefront of New Left discourse, sending radicals back into the factories and thinking through the integration of radical politics into everyday realities.

Through the influence of founding members like Noel Ignatiev and Don Hamerquist, STO took a Marxist approach to the question of race and revolution, exploring the notion of “white skin privilege,” and helping to lay the groundwork for the discipline of critical race studies.

Michael Staudenmaier is a twenty year veteran anarchist and student of revoutionary movements and a doctoral candidate in history at the University ofIllinois.

 

**END**

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Interface (Volume Four Issue One, May 2012): The Season of Revolution

Recession

INTERFACE (VOLUME FOUR ISSUE ONE, MAY 2012): THE SEASON OF REVOLUTION

Interface, Volume Four Issue One (May 2012): The season of revolution: the Arab Spring and European mobilizations … is now out (free and open access as always)

Issue editors: Magid Shihade, Cristina Flesher Fominaya, Laurence Cox
http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/

Volume Four, Issue One of Interface, a peer-reviewed e-journal produced and refereed by social movement practitioners and engaged movement researchers, is now out, on the special theme “The season of revolution: the Arab Spring” with a special section ‘A new wave of European mobilizations?’

Interface is open-access (free), global and multilingual. Our overall aim is to “learn from each other’s struggles”: to develop a dialogue between practitioners and researchers, but also between different social movements, intellectual traditions and national or regional contexts. Like all issues of Interface, this issue is free and open-access.
 
This issue of Interface includes 403 pages and 31 pieces in English, Catalan and Spanish, by authors writing from / about Australia, Canada, Catalunya, Dubai, Egypt, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Palestine, Poland, Senegal, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, the UAE, the UK and the US among other countries.

Articles in this issue include:

-  Magid Shihade, Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Laurence Cox, The season of revolution: the Arab Spring and European mobilizations 

 

The Arab Spring:

-  Austin Mackell, Weaving revolution: harassment by the Egyptian regime (action note) and Weaving revolution: speaking with Kamal El-Fayoumi (interview)

-  Samir Amin, The Arab revolutions: a year after

-  Vijay Prashad, Dream history of the global South

-  Jeremy Salt, Containing the ‘Arab Spring’

-  Azadeh Shahshahani and Corinna Mullin, The legacy of US intervention and the Tunisian revolution: promises and challenges one year on

-  Andrea Teti and Gennaro Gervasio, After Mubarak, before transition: the challenges for Egypt’s democratic opposition (interview and event analysis)

-  Bassam Haddad, Syria, the Arab uprisings, and the political economy of authoritarian resilience           

-  Steven Salaita, Corporate American media coverage of Arab revolutions: the contradictory messages of modernity

-  Ahmed Kanna, A politics of non-recognition? Biopolitics of Arab Gulf worker protests in the year of uprisings

-  Aditya Nigam, The Arab upsurge and the ‘viral’ revolutions of our times

-  Cassie Findlay,Witness and trace: January 25 graffiti and public art as archive (practice note)

 

Special section: a new wave of European mobilizations?

-  Eduardo Romanos Fraile,‘Esta revolución es muy copyleft’. Entrevista a Stéphane M. Grueso a propósito del 15M

-  Marianne Maeckelbergh, Horizontal democracy now: from alterglobalization to occupation

-  Fabià Díaz-Cortés i Gemma Ubasart-González, 15M: Trajectòries mobilitzadores iespecificitats territorials. El cas català

-  Puneet Dhaliwal, Public squares and resistance: the politics of space in the Indignados movement

-  Donatella della Porta, Mobilizing against the crisis, mobilizing for ‘another democracy’: comparing two global waves of protest (event analysis)

-  Joan Subirats, Algunas ideas sobre política y políticas en el cambio de época: Retos asociados a la nueva sociedad y a los movimientos sociales emergentes (event analysis)

 

Other articles:

-  Marina Adler, Collective identity formation and collective action framing in a Mexican ‘movement of movements’

-  Nancy Baez and Andreas Hernandez, Participatory budgeting in the city: challenging NYC’s development paradigm from the grassroots (practice note)

-  Magdalena Prusinowska, Piotr Kowzan, Małgorzata Zielińska, Struggling to unite: the rise and fall of one university movement in Poland 

-  Jim Gladwin and Rose Hollins, The Water Pressure Group: lessons learned (action note)

This issue’s REVIEWS include the following titles:

-  Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why civil resistance works: the strategic logic of nonviolent action. Reviewed by Brian Martin

-  Firoze Manji and Sokari Ekine (eds), Africa awakening: the emerging revolutions. Reviewed by Karen Ferreira-Meyers

-  Amory Starr, Luis Fernandez and Christian Scholl, Shutting down the streets: political violence and social control in the global era. Reviewed by Deborah Eade

-  Rebecca Kolins Givan, Kenneth Roberts and Sarah Soule (eds). The diffusion of social movements: actors, mechanisms, and political effects. Reviewed by Cecelia Walsh-Russo

-  Florian Heβdörfer, Andrea Pabst and Peter Ullrich (eds), Prevent and tame: protest under (self) control. Reviewed by Lucinda Thompson

-  Observatorio Metropolitano, Crisis y revolución en Europa: people of Europe rise up!Reviewed by Michael Byrne

-  Mariel Mikaila Arthur Lemonik, Student activism and curricular change in higher education. Reviewed by Christine Neejer

-  Rebecca MacKinnon, Consent of the networked: the worldwide struggle for internet freedom. Reviewed by Piotr Konieczny

 

A call for papers for volume 5 issue 1 of Interface is now open, on the theme of “Struggles, strategies and analysis of anticolonial and postcolonial social movements” (submissions deadline November 1 2012). We can review and publish articles in Afrikaans, Arabic, Catalan, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Zulu. The website has the full CFP and details on how to submit articles for this issue at http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Interface-4-1-CFP-vol-5-no-1.pdf

  
The next issue of Interface (November 2012) will be under the title ‘For the global emancipation of labour: new movements and struggles around work, workers and precarity’.     

Interface is always open to new collaborators. More details can be found on our website: http://interfacejournal.net  
 
Please forward this to anyone you think may be interested

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Design / History / Revolution Conference

Aesthetics

DESIGN / HISTORY / REVOLUTION CONFERENCE

@PARSONS NEW SCHOOL FOR DESIGN AND NEW SCHOOL FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH

APRIL 27th and 28th, 2012
Kellen Auditorium, 66 5th Avenue, New York
http://designhistoryrevolution.wordpress.com/

Whether by providing agitprop for revolutionary movements, an aesthetics of empire, or a language for numerous avant-gardes, design has changed the world. But how? Why? And under what conditions? We propose a consideration of design as an historical agent, a contested category, and a mode of historical analysis. This interdisciplinary conference aims to explore these questions and open up new possibilities for understanding the relationships among design, history and revolution. Casting a wide net, we define our terms broadly.

Papers will examine the roles of design in generating, shaping, remembering or challenging moments of social, political, economic, aesthetic, intellectual, technological, religious, and other upheaval. We consider a range of historical periods (ancient, pre-modern, early modern, modern, post- and post-post-modern) and geographical locations (‘West’, ‘East’, ‘North’, ‘South’, and contact zones between these constructed categories). We examine not only designed objects (e.g., industrial design, decorative arts, graphic design, fashion) but also spaces (e.g., architecture, interiors, landscapes, urban settings) and systems (e.g., communications, services, governments). And we approach design from a diversity of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approaches.

Keynoted by Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, and Professor of Architectural History in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University, this conference brings together scholars from the humanities, sciences, and social sciences with designers. We hope not only to present multiple methodological approaches but also to foster conversations across traditional spatial, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries.

http://designhistoryrevolution.wordpress.com/

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

An Evening on Communisation

Communisation SIC

AN EVENING ON COMMUNISATION

An Evening on Communisation: Presentations and Release of Sic Volume 1: International Journal for Communisation

Friday April 20th – 7pm

16 Beaver Street
4th Floor
New York, NY10004

We invite you to join us for an evening of presentations and discussion on the theme of communisation with the release of Sic: International Journal for Communisation (http://communisation.net). Topics include:

-         The periodization of the capital-labor relation

-         The restructuring and crisis of the 1970s

-         The loss of the worker identity

-         The characterizing tendencies of contemporary struggles

-         The relation of communist theory to practice

-         The Sic project itself

Train: 4, 5 to Bowling Green / R to Whitehall / 1, 2 to Wall Street / J to Broad Street

Wine and beer to be served

From the Editorial:

The present journal aims to be the locus for an unfolding of the problematic of communisation. It comes from the encounter of individuals involved in various projects in different countries: among these are the journals Endnotes, published in the UK and in the US, Blaumachen in Greece, Théorie Communiste inFrance, Riff-Raff inSweden, and certain more or less informal theoretical groups in the US (New York and San Francisco). Each of these projects continues its own existence. Also participating are various individuals in France, Germany, and elsewhere, who are involved in other activities and who locate themselves broadly within the theoretical approach taken here.

Communisation

In the course of the revolutionary struggle, the abolition of the division of labour, of the State, of exchange, of any kind of property; the extension of a situation in which everything is freely available as the unification of human activity, that is to say the abolition of classes, of both public and private spheres – these are all ‘measures’ for the abolition of capital, imposed by the very needs of the struggle against the capitalist class. The revolution is communisation; communism is not its project or result.

One does not abolish capital for communism but by communism, or more specifically, by its production. Indeed communist measures must be differentiated from communism; they are not embryos of communism, rather they are its production. Communisation is not a period of transition, but rather, it is revolution itself which is the communist production of communism. The struggle against capital is what differentiates communist measures and communism. The content of the revolutionary activity is always the mediation of the abolition of capital by the proletariat in its relation to capital: this activity is not one branch of an alternative in competition with the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production, but its internal contradiction and its overcoming.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a whole historical period entered into crisis and came to an end – i.e. the period in which the revolution was conceived in different ways, both theoretically and practically, as the affirmation of the proletariat, its elevation to the position of ruling class, the liberation of labour, and the institution of a period of transition. The concept of communisation appeared in the midst of this crisis.

During the crisis, the critique of all the mediations of the existence of the proletariat within the capitalist mode of production (mass party, union, parliamentarism), of organisational forms such as the party-form or the vanguard, of ideologies such as Leninism, of practices such as militantism along with all its variations – all this appeared irrelevant if revolution was no longer to be affirmation of the class – whether it be the workers’ autonomy or the generalisation of workers’ councils. It is the proletariat’s struggle as a class which has become the problem within itself, i.e. which is its own limit. That is the way the class struggle signals and produces the revolution as communisation in the form of its overcoming.

Since then, within the contradictory course of the capitalist mode of production, the affirmation of the proletariat and the liberation of labour have lost all meaning and content. There is no longer a worker’s identity facing capital and confirmed by it. This is the revolutionary dynamic of the present struggles which display the active denial of the proletarian condition against capital, even within ephemeral, limited bursts of self-management or self-organisation. The proletariat’s struggle against capital contains its contradiction with its own nature as class of capital.

The abolition of capital, i.e. the revolution and the production of communism, is immediately the abolition of all classes and therefore of the proletariat. This occurs through the communisation of society, which is abolished as a community separated from its elements. Proletarians abolish capital by the production of a community immediate to its elements; they transform their relations into immediate relations between individuals. These are relations between singular individuals that are no longer the embodiment of a social category, including the supposedly natural categories of the social sexes of woman and man. Revolutionary practice is the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-transformation.

A Problematic

This minimal approach of communisation constitutes neither a definition, nor a platform, but exposes a problematic:

* The problematic of a theory – here the theory of revolution as communisation – does not limit itself to a list of themes or objects conceived by theory; neither is it the synthesis of all the elements which are thought. It is the content of theory, its way of thinking, with regards to all possible productions of this theory

* The analysis of the current crisis and of the class struggles intrinsic to it

* The historicity of revolution and communism

* The periodisation of the capitalist mode of production and the question of the restructuring of the mode of production after the crisis at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s

* The analysis of the gender relation within the problematic of the present class struggle and communisation

* The definition of communism as goal but also as movement abolishing the present state of things

* A theory of the abolition of capital as a theory of the production of communism

* The reworking of the theory of value-form (to the extent that the revolution is not the affirmation of the proletariat and the liberation of labour)

* The illegitimacy of wage-demands and others in the present class struggle

By definition no list of subjects coming under a problematic can be exhaustive.

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Between Revolution and Democracy

Revolt

BETWEEN REVOLUTION AND DEMOCRACY

PLAS WORKSHOP

Between Revolution and Democracy: Jose Arico, Marxism and Latin America
February 24, 2012
9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m

Princeton University
Organizers: Susana Draper & Jeremy Adelman.

Participants: Carlos Altamirano (Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina), Horacio Crespo (Universidad Nacional de Mexico-UNAM), Hilda Sabato (Universidad de Buenos Aires), Horacio Tarcus (Centro de Documentacion e Investigacion de la Cultura de Izquierdas en Argentina – Universidad de Buenos Aires).

The discussion will be based on a preliminary selection of readings in Spanish. If you are interested in participating, please contact Susana Draper (sdraper@princeton.edu) by February 20 to RSVP and for access to the reading packet. Co-sponsored by the Program in Latin American Studies, Council of Humanities, Department of Comparative Literature, Davis Center and Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures.

Location: Aaron Burr Hall, Room 216, RSVP required
URL: http://www.princeton.edu/plas

**END**

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Historical Materialism and IR Seminar Series – Oxford

Karl Marx

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND IR SEMINAR SERIES – OXFORD

CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES SEMINAR SERIES: HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The Historical Materialism and International Relations seminar series seeks to explore and develop the multiple points of contact between Marxist theory and international relations, most broadly defined. It does so with the double aim of investigating the critical and explanatory potentials of Marxism in the domain of international relations, as well as to probe what an engagement with ‘the international’ might contribute to Marxist theory. The seminar series is associated with the journal of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory and its forthcoming ‘Historical Materialism and International Relations’ book series.

The following seminars will be given at 5 pm on Thursdays at Manor Road Building, Seminar Room C, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. 

For further information please see: http://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/index.php/series/69-historical-materialism-and-international-relations.html

Convener: Alexander Anievas

23 February 2012:

‘Uneven Developments, Combined: Gramsci and Trotsky on Permanent Revolution’

Peter Thomas 

Abstract: This paper will explore the different formulations of the notion of Permanent Revolution in the work of Antonio Gramsci and Leon Trotsky. Although Gramsci himself explicitly rejected Trotsky’s notion of permanent revolution as a reversion to a strategy of ‘war of movement’, he also claimed that his development of the theory of hegemony could be regarded as a contemporary form of Marx and Engels’s notion of the ‘Revolution in Permanence’. The paper will analyse the similarities and differences of the two seemingly divergent claims to inherit a central perspective of the classical Marxist tradition, and will argue that thinking the concepts of permanent and passive revolution together enables us to clarify and to make explicit dimensions that remain underdeveloped in each theorist’s respective work.

Peter Thomas is Lecturer in the History of Political Thought at Brunel University,London. He is the author of The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (Brill, 2009), and (with Juha Koivisto) Mapping Communication and Media Research: Conjunctures, Institutions, Challenges (Tampere University Press, 2010) and co-editor (with Riccardo Bellofiore and Guido Starosta) of In Marx’s Laboratory: Critical Interpretations of the Grundrisse(Brill, 2010). He has published widely on Marxist political theory and philosophy, the history of political thought and the history of philosophy.

 

1 March 2012:

‘Fatal Attraction: a critique of Carl Schmitt’s international political and legal theory’

 Benno Teschke

Abstract: The ongoing Schmitt revival has extended Carl Schmitt’s reach over the fields of international legal and political theory. Neo-Schmittians suggest that his international thought provides a new reading of the history of international law and order, which validates the explanatory power of his theoretical premises – the concept of the political, political decisionism, and concrete-order-thinking. Against this background, this article mounts a systematic reappraisal of Schmitt’s international thought in a historical perspective. The argument is that his work requires re-contextualization as the intellectual product of an ultra-intense moment in Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction. It inscribed Hitler’s ‘spatial revolution’ into a full-scale reinterpretation ofEurope’s geopolitical history, grounded in land appropriations, which legitimized Nazi Germany’s wars of conquest. Consequently, Schmitt’s elevation of the early modern nomos as the model for civilized warfare – the ‘golden age’ of international law – against which American legal universalism can be portrayed as degenerated, is conceptually and empirically flawed. Schmitt devised a politically motivated set of theoretical premises to provide a historical counter-narrative against liberal normativism, which generated defective history. The reconstruction of this history reveals the explanatory limits of his theoretical vocabulary – friend/enemy binary, sovereignty-as-exception, nomos/universalism – for past and present analytical purposes. Schmitt’s defective analytics and problematic history compromise the standing of his work for purposes of international theory.

Benno Teschke completed his doctorate in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Relations at theUniversityofSussexand a Visiting Research Fellow at the European Research Council funded ‘Research Project Europe 1815–1914’ at theUniversityofHelsinki. He is the author of The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations (2003), which was awarded the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize. More recently, he has published in the New Left Review and in International Theory on the international thought of Carl Schmitt and is preparing a monograph on thesubject.

 

8 March 2012: 

‘The Bourgeois Revolution as an International Process’

Neil Davidson 

The concept of bourgeois revolution is one of the most controversial in Marxist historiography and in recent years it has been dismissed as irrelevant by several important schools of thought, including World Systems theory (Wallerstein, Gunder Frank) and Political Marxism (Brenner, Wood). In this talk, Neil Davidson will attempt to defend the explanatory power of the concept, but will also argue that it can only be understood as referring, not only to a succession of individual revolutions (England, America, France…) but also to an extended international process, the whole of which was greater than the sum of these parts. Beginning with the Reformation and only concluding with decolonisation after the Second World War, the capitalist world which emerged from it did not inherit the pre-existing absolutist states system, but created an entirely new one in which the component states had been reconfigured as independent centres of capital accumulation.

Neil Davidson is Senior Research Fellow with theSchool ofApplied Social Science at theUniversity ofStrathclyde. He is Author of The Origins of Scottish Nationhood (2000), Discovering the Scottish Revolution (2003), for which he was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize and co-editor and contributor to Alasdair MacIntyre’s Engagement with Marxism: Selected Writings, 1953-1974 (2008) and Neoliberal Scotland (2010). He has two books coming out next year: How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? and Violating all the Laws of History: Combined Development, Nation-states, and Neoliberal Capitalism.

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

London Conference in Critical Thought – Call for Papers

Critique

LONDON CONFERENCE IN CRITICAL THOUGHT – CALL FOR PAPERS

Call for Papers for London Conference in Critical Thought 2012
29th and 30th of June, 2012
Birkbeck College, University of London

Abstracts need to be submitted until 19th of February to londoncriticalconference@gmail.com with the Stream name in the subject line.

Stream/Panel: Thinking Egalitarian Emancipation
Stream Organisers: Matthew Cole, Svenja Bromberg

In light of the current state of the situation—the rapid increase in socio-economic inequalities, the crisis of state sovereignty, the broader crisis of global financial capitalism, and the lack of a radical counter-praxis on the Left—this stream/panel attempts to think political/social/economic emancipation through the ideal of egalitarianism. Given the unipolarity of capitalist realism, there is a desperate need for an intervention that breaks this ruse of the one-all, that forces us to think an other, an outside, or a beyond. The idea of egalitarian emancipation stands opposed to both the state of nature as well as the capitalist state. Contemporary social theory must reassess, rethink and reinvent the problems, solutions, paradoxes and attempted syntheses in order to move past the plateau of late Twentieth century post-structuralism. We aim to think the primacy of egalitarianism as an emancipatory force against the inherent stratification of the capitalist world. We aim to think the possibility of a novel foundation or grounding beyond the ‘post’.

Stream/panel papers could address the following topics and questions:

    • Revival of a dead concept: How to think emancipation in the contemporary conjuncture of late-capitalism?
    • Demos [the commons, common people] and kratos [power]: What does it mean to take power under the guise of ‘the common’?
    • Politics beyond the state, beyond class ‘relations’, beyond capitalism: Revolution or Reformation?Full Communism or …? Dealing with emancipation’s Marxian legacy.
    • The subject after post-structuralism [or, Human all too inhuman]: How may we think a subject for egalitarian emancipation? What are the implications of this for race, sex, gender, etc.?
    • Relation of freedom and emancipation: What are the implications of egalitarian emancipation forthe social contract? [or, must we force [wo]man to be free?]
    • Emancipation in practice: What do we learn from contemporary struggles about the possibility and implications for theorizing this concept today?

Relevant thinkers include Badiou, Rancière, Balibar, Laclau, Fanon, Agamben, Nancy, Frankfurt School, Zizek, De Beauvoir and many others.

**END**

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

A History of Riots Conference

Riot

A HISTORY OF RIOTS CONFERENCE

London Socialist Historians Group conference
A HISTORY OF RIOTS
Saturday 25th February 2012
Midday-5pm, Room 350
Institute of Historical Research
Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1

The British riots of summer 2011 were a powerful reminder that rioting is still on the agenda even in one of the centres of market capitalism. Rioting has a long history and historical context. While authorities have tended to use the language of criminality historians have often taken a different view.

The papers at this conference – the first to look at the history of riots since the events of 2011, and the broader sweep from the Arab Spring to the Occupy movements of that year – are based on original research into a range of aspects of the riot in history.
SPEAKERS INCLUDE

SEAN CREIGHTON:
From Revolution to New Unionism; the impact of Bloody Sunday on the development of John Burns’s politics
NEIL DAVIDSON:
Riots around the Scottish Union negotiations in 1706 and the Global South today
JOHN NEWSINGER:
Memorial Day Massacre, a Chicago Police Riot

Entry is £10 [£5 unwaged] We ask people to donate in advance, if possible, to speed registration on the day.

Cheques, payable to ‘ Keith Flett’, to 38 Mitchley Rd London N17 9HG
Inquiries to: keith1917@btinternet.com or call 07803 167266
http://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com

**END**

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

 

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Fault Lines of Revolution

Revolution

FAULT LINES OF REVOLUTION

CALL FOR PAPERS

Fault Lines of Revolution!
The Fourth Annual Conference in Critical Social Research

Friday, May 4th, 2012
Carleton University
Ottawa, ON

In the last year the world has witnessed many destabilizing movements against neoliberalism, austerity, and authoritarian regimes: Popular movements from Tahrir Square to Zuccotti Park of Occupy Wall Street have revitalized the belief in the organizational capacities of peoples to challenge authority and transform relations of power. Postcolonial struggles from those of the Athivasis to the Tamils have echoed the subaltern voices of the world. Imperial wars from Afghanistan to the Somali territories have stimulated discussions on popular armed struggle and renewed criticisms of imperialism. 

Neoliberal challenges to organized labour, from the continued neglect of precarious working conditions to policies of austerity, have in some instances united workers in defiance and solidarity. These movements are clearly challenging the status quo in different forms and diverse spaces. Yet it remains to be seen how these destabilizing forces will unfold, and whether they will provoke the fault lines of a much broader revolutionary shake-up.

In light of present global political economic context, we intend to re-visit theoretical and practical issues concerning these ‘revolutionary’ moments and spaces by asking critical questions:

    • What can be learned from (un)finished revolutions of the past?
    • How should the revolutionary moments of the present be unpacked theoretically?
    • What are the ideological inspirations (if any) of these revolutionary attempts?
    • What do today’s social movements have to say about relations of race, class, and gender?
    • How do feminist approaches to politics respond to these movements?
    • What are the implications of contemporary revolutionary movements?
    • Where does revolutionary philosophy stand with regard to the present moment of dissent?
    • What does the future hold in store given present environmental and ecological crises?

The Critical Social Research Collaborative (CSRC) is inviting academics, researchers, graduate students and activists to submit proposals for panels and individual presentations that explore the fault lines of revolution’ from diverse theoretical and methodological orientations in historical and/or contemporary contexts.

Please send your proposal, including an abstract of no more than 250 words, title, your name and a brief biography to the conference organizing committee at csrcproject@live.ca by February 20, 2012. 
Decisions on proposals will be communicated in mid-March. Accepted submissions may be solicited for publication.

The CSRC is dedicated to organizing inclusive events; there will be no registration fee.

Keynote Address by Professor Emeritus Michael Lebowitz, Simon Fraser University

The Critical Social Research Collaborative (http://www.csrcproject.ca) is an interdisciplinary research collective consisting of students, faculty, trade union and community activists based atCarletonUniversity. We aim to promote, support and create a platform for the sharing and dissemination of critical perspectives and research conducted on the defining social issues of our time.

**END**

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Revolution

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

The Revolution of Time in a Time of Revolution

Time

THE REVOLUTION OF TIME IN A TIME OF REVOLUTION

Call For Papers
As editors of a book proposal accepted for publication by Cambridge Scholar Publishing, we announce a call for submissions to a collection of essays exploring the connection between concepts of time and social change. The volume will have a strong focus on interdisciplinarity, the fusion of theory with practice, and presenting possibilities for ways in which the consideration of alternative notions of time could bring about social change. Thus it is not only practical philosophy papers that we invite, but also contributions from fields such as literary studies, media studies, cultural studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, sociology and political science.

The Revolution of Time in a Time of Revolution
The year 2011 marked a global turn in acts and ideas about revolution. Western culture and media categorized uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Yemen and other nations as “the Arab Spring.” Yet revolution does not take part only on the national stage: radical social change is constantly being called for globally on the levels of gender, race and class, reflecting a future-oriented view of time that aims to change the thrust of history.

Merely looking into the future is itself a limited way of evaluating approaches through which we can create a more just society. Philosophers have long critiqued the patriarchal, linear notion of time reflected in national narratives and teleological worldviews, which often function only to reinforce the status quo. Marx himself calls for an end to temporal limitations, while Negri considers the possibilities of kairos time, and Deleuze and Guattari the importance of becoming, expanding into Agamben’s and Benjamin’s notions of messianic time.

Time is thus not simply socially constructed notions of linear clock time and teleological conceptions of history, but rather time is an encounter that differs according to human experience. Julia Kristeva’s work on women’s time, for example, outlines the cyclical temporalities and specific subjectivities unique to women, while Robert Levine suggests that climate can have an effect on the pace of life in  various countries, although postcolonial writers have critiqued this perspective as at least uninformed if not racist. Literary, postcolonial and media studies conceive time as something that can be reversed or stopped altogether, portraying history as plural and emphasising the subversive and oppressive facets of time ideologies. 

Nations are held together by popular conceptions of shared times which often function to exclude minorities and repress their actual histories, while class antagonisms are partly characterised through ideas of productive time and leisure time.

The breaking and rupture of such a standardized conception of time which remains that of Western Modernity is the task of the essays being collected in this work, seeking “to brush history against the grain” as Benjamin would have it. Non-Western belief systems have also put forward alternative conceptions of time. Indigenous cosmologies, for instance, portray time as cyclical, while Buddhism separates time into tiny moments or even offers possibilities of transcending time. Literary, postcolonial and media studies conceive time as something that can be reversed or stopped altogether, portraying history as plural and emphasising the subversive and oppressive facets of time ideologies.

The Revolution of Time in a Time of Revolution is interested in the intersection between theory and practice, including case studies that consider ways in which ideologies of time and alternative temporalities can be useful for solving conflicts and overcoming stereotypes created around questions of gender, race, ethnicity and socio-economic inequality. Time-perception is often used as a tool for marginalisation, but the alternative temporalities of the subaltern may also provide a way out of current restrictive policies around the world. The focus of the collection will be on time as an element of radical activism: how can visions of the future and the past, embodied time, untimely time, protest time and political time be implemented both theoretically and practically in order to change the way in which time functions as a vital element of social, political and cultural revolution?

As a thread that connects human life on so many levels, time is at once both subtle and dominating, reminding us that the moment of change must be seized before time itself, our creation, escapes us, or that to enact change we must escape or recreate time, or do something totally new with time. There has never been a better time to consider how both ancient and modern, philosophical and aboriginal conceptions of time and temporality might be employed in a quest to reconcile alternative  histories, and to bring about radical social change.

Please email expressions of interest in the form of an abstract (up to 500 words) with “Time and Revolution book proposal” in the subject line, as an attachment to Cecile Lawrence at (clawren1@binghamton.edu) by the 8th of January 2012, with a c.c. to Natalie Churn at messiahy@hotmail.comand, Christian Garland atchristiangarland@hotmail.com

Please send your completed submission as a Microsoft Word document by Sunday, the 31st of January 2012.

Contributions should be written in Times New Roman and follow the Chicago referencing style or we won’t consider them. Authors of accepted papers will receive a short guide to the specific Chicago method to be used for references. If your article includes images, please let us know in advance. Papers should be no more than 3,000  words in English or approximately 20 double spaced pages, inclusive of notes and bibliography, prepared for anonymous review, must be the original work of the author, and previously unpublished. Please also include a brief biographical statement of no more than 50 words.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Co-editors Cecile Lawrence, Natalie Churn and Christian Garland.
https://sites.google.com/site/timeandrevolutionbookproject/

**END**

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Moderation and Revolution – by Andrea Micocci

The Metaphysics of Capital

MODERATION AND REVOLUTION – BY ANDREA MICOCCI

Andrea Micocci
Moderation and Revolution
Lexington Books
1-800-462-6420
http://www.LexingtonBooks.com
978-0-7391-6718-2
324 pages

Endorsements:
Alex Callinicos:
“In this remorseless critique of modern ideologies Andrea Micocci targets what he calls the metaphysics of capitalism informing them. Up-ending our normal assumptions, he argues that it is the true revolutionaries who champion individuality and toleration against the homogeneizing tendencies of capitalism. This is a powerful challenge to the common sense of both the status quo and its conventional critics”.

Mino Vianello:
“This is a daring book that one may like or not like, but represents in the clearest way capitalism’s convoluted nature while explaining with extreme clarity the perverse mechanisms of its resilience. The author brilliantly holds the reader’s attention through a journey in the history of ideas to come to the conclusion that moderation is the bond that keeps us socially and culturally tied, whereas revolution means individual emancipation. “Revolution” is the non-violent quest for individual freedom in a materialistic sense and in Micocci’s view has nothing to do with the bureaucratic and totalitarian organization propaganized at the time of the Soviet Union. This book dispels many misconceptions and popularly held beliefs and is recommended to unprejudiced readers”.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Moderation and Revolution asks how we can resolve conflict from the capitalist worldview. It exposes the intellectual basis of contemporary capitalism as a logically flawed dialectic that prevents both revolutionary options in theory and also, in practice, the evolution of capitalism itself towards the revolutionary outcomes outlined by Smith and Marx. As a consequence, it practices intolerance – disguised as tolerance – towards radical thinking, which explains its propensity to war and the fascistic features of its economics and politics. True revolution, on the other hand, is radically tolerant of the presence of the other and therefore non-violent at the core.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrea Micocci teaches at the Jean Monnet Faculty of Seconda Università di Napoli (SUN), San Leucio (CE), and Link Campus University of Malta,Rome.

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales)  

 

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a new song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

How to End a Revolution?

Progress

HOW TO END A REVOLUTION?

CALL FOR PAPERS (DEADLINE: JANUARY 31st, 2012)
The Annual Interdisciplinary Humanities Graduate Student Conference
Harvard University, Cambridge MA, United States
April 13-14, 2012

How to begin a revolution is a question that has received much attention from many great thinkers. The goal of the 2012 Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference at the Mahindra Humanities Center is to reverse that perspective and ask: How to end a revolution?

The end of a revolution is not something inherently given, but a process in the making that serves different perspectives and interests. At the same time, the phase of transition characterized by chaos and instability very often opposes and challenges the attempts of making an end – from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. Is an end of a revolution even possible if history is understood as a constant process based on a linear definition of time and temporality? What challenges does the idea of a leaderless movement pose towards traditional views of political authority and authorship? What happens when unity and cohesion break apart and many different individual interests and powers evolve? What comes after the revolution?

The ongoing revolutions and uprisings in the Arab world highlight both the challenges of making a (constructive and collective) end, as well as the significance and timeliness of these questions to be addressed at the conference. Drawing upon contemporary and historical examples like the Arab Spring and the French Revolution, we invite you to examine the complex, multifaceted and mutable discourse that is shaped by historians who define, politicians who declare, writers who narrate and lawyers who legitimate the end of a revolution. In what violent and non-violent ways have people tried to stop, use or influence a revolution? Which strategies, tools and techniques are employed to end a revolution and how are they determined by underlying concepts of time, history and change? Through our collective
inquiry – by analysing how people deal and dealt with moments of transition and by comparing their strategies, interests and narratives – our goal is to better understand the phenomenon of social and political change. With this approach we hope not only to expand the knowledge of revolutions but also to develop new ideas and strategies that will potentially prove to be practically important and relevant.

We seek rich, rigorous graduate student contributions from the humanities, social and political sciences (in particular from the following disciplines: law, literature, history, philosophy, political sciences, sociology), and even natural sciences if relevant.

Discussion themes may include, but are not restricted to:
* What is an End? Thinking About and Representing the End
* The End Versus Ending – Revolution as Process or Given?
* Controlling the End – Controlling the Power. Attempts of Overtaking the Protest
* Temporality, Change – and Order? How to Transform Chaos into Stability
* New Beginnings. Manifestos and Literary Narratives
* The People, the Media or the Military? Authorship of Revolution
* Continuity of Power. How to Deal with the Old Structures?
* Circular Revolution, Linear Progress and Permanent Evolution?
* Arts, Religion and Empathy. Lessons to Unite the People
* Trials, Constitutions and Elections. The Role of Law in Transitional Periods

We ask prospective participants to submit a short curriculum vitae and a 500 word abstract that outlines the paper’s topic, methodology and argument, as well as how the prospective participant’s research interests relate to the theme of the conference more generally. Participants will be notified by mid-February whether their paper has been accepted into the conference. Please note that participants can apply for a limited number of travel grants.

DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION: TUESDAY, JANUARY 31st, 2012

For more information and submission details, please visit: http://isites.harvard.edu/revolution2012

For further questions, please contact the coordinators by e-mail: hcconfer@fas.harvard.edu

Conference coordinators:
Eike Hosemann, Harvard Law School
Scott Liddle, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Matthias Meyer, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Ani Nguyen, Chemical Biology Graduate Program, Department of Systems Biology

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com