Jason Read at the TheoryLAB

Nanopolitics

JASON READ AT THE TheoryLAB

Dear All

Please find details of the next event in the seminar programme: Identity, Alterity, Monstrosity: Figures of the Multitude organised by Caroline Williams, TheoryLAB , SPIR and Filippo del Lucchese, Brunel and CIPH, Paris. We hope you will be able to join us.

Please distribute to interested colleagues.

Full details and eventbrite link via the TheoryLAB page: http://www.politics.qmul.ac.uk/theorylab/

Seminar Two: 14 May 5-7pm

Venue: Queen Mary University of London, Arts Two, 3.16

 

Jason Read

The Affective Composition of the Political: From Negative Solidarity to Collective Indignation
Jason Read is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. He teaches courses in the history of political philosophy, contemporary social theory, the politics of work, philosophy of film, and philosophy of history. He is the author of The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present (SUNY 2003) and Relations of Production: Transindividuality between Economics and Politics (Brill/Haymarket 2014/15) as well as articles on Althusser, Deleuze, Spinoza, Hegel, Negri, and The Wire.

 

Dr Caroline Williams

School of Politics & International Relations Queen Mary, University of London

327 Mile End Road

London E1 4NS

United Kingdom

Email: c.a.williams@qmul.ac.uk

Webpage: http://www.politics.qmul.ac.uk/staff/drcarolinewilliams.html

 

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

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Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academic.edu/GlennRikowski

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The Power of the Monstrous

Monsters

THE POWER OF THE MONSTROUS

The Power of the Monstrous: a Seminar Series and an International Conference

Identity, Alterity, Monstrosity: Figures of the multitude

Seminar Series

Queen Mary, University of London

Mile End Road

London E1 4NS

Arts Two Building, room 3.16

All meetings @ 5 p.m.

MEETINGS: 

26 February

Filippo Del Lucchese (Brunel University, London and Collège international de philosophie) and Caroline Williams (Queen Mary, University of London), The Power of the Monstrous

26 March

Oliver Feltham (American University of Paris), Who is the ruling authority? Spinoza and Hobbes on power and subjectivity

Andrea Bardin (Brunel University, London),  The Early-Modern Metamorphosis of the Body Politic: Hobbes’s Anomaly

14 May

Jason Read (University of Southern Maine), The Affective Composition of the Political: From Negative Solidarity to Collective Indignatio

11 June

Dimitris Vardoulakis (University of Western Sidney), “The main political question is to identify the enemy”: Negri’s Monster.

Info and booking: http://www.politics.qmul.ac.uk/theorylab  

 

The Power of the Monstrous

International Conference

Brunel University, London

School of Social Sciences

Uxbridge UB8 3PH

Gaskell building, room 239

26-27 June 2014 @ 9.30 a.m.

SPEAKERS:

Laurent Bove (Université de Picardie, Emeritus), La monstruosité chez Camus: de l’absurde à l’histoire

Fabio Frosini (Università di Urbino), Absolute and relative perfection of the “monsters”: politics and history in Giacomo Leopardi 

Annie Ibrahim (Former programme director at the Collège international de philosophie, and Groupe d’études du matérialisme rationnel) Les monstres de Diderot, entre physiologie et politique

Arnaud Milanese (ENS, Lyon and CERPHI), The Beast and the Sovereign according to Hobbes

Vittorio Morfino (Università di Milano-Bicocca), Lucretius and Monsters: Between Bergson and Canguilhem

Mark Neocleous (BrunelUniversity, London), The Monster and the Police

Sue Ruddick (University of Toronto), Monstrous Earth

Yannis Stavrakakis (AristotleUniversity of Thessaloniki): Irrational, Extreme, Populist: The New Fear of the Masses in Debt Society

Amy Stefanovic (The School of Humanities and Communication Arts. The University of Western Sydney) The Extralegal Beast: On Hobbes and Sovereignty

Lasse Thomassen (Queen Mary, University of London) Monstrous Masses Beyond Representation: the Spanish Indignados

Andrea Torrano (Universidad Nacional de Cordoba), The Political Monster between Sovereignity and Biopolitics

 

Info and booking: http://goo.gl/vbrX6h

The seminar series and the conference are supported by:

Collège International de Philosophie, Paris

TheoryLAB, London

School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London

School of Social Sciences, BrunelUniversity, London

CERPHI: Institut d’histoire de la pensée classique, Lyon

 

**END**

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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

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

Historical Materialism – Volume 20 Number 1 (2012)

Human Nature

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM – VOLUME 20 NUMBER 1 (2012)

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/hm/2012/00000020/00000001;jsessionid=8btadtun80atn.alice

www.brill.nl/hima

Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory

Volume 20 Issue 1
2012

CONTENTS

Articles

Kim Moody
Contextualising Organised Labour in Expansion and Crisis: The Case of the US

Gail Day
Manfredo Tafuri, Fredric Jameson and the Contestations of Political Memory

Richard Seaford
Monetisation and the Genesis of the Western Subject

Tony Norfield
Derivatives and Capitalist Markets: The Speculative Heart of Capital

Jairus Banaji
Fascism as a Mass Movement: Translator’s Introduction of Arthur Rosenberg’s Fascism as a Mass Movement

Intervention

Mario Vegetti
Editorial Introduction to Plato’s The Republic, Book XI

Review Articles

Jason Read
on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Commonwealth

Ed Rooksby
on Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

Paul Stasi
on Pranav Jani’s Decentering Rushdie: Cosmopolitanism and the Indian Novel in English

Henry Heller
on Jefff Horn’s The Path Not Taken: French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1830

Ingo Schmidt
on Ricardo Bellofiore’s Rosa Luxemburg and the Critique of Political Economy

Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism

Juha Koivisto and Mikko Lahtinen
Conjuncture, politico-historical

 

**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

 

‘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

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

Essex Seminars on Capitalism and the Social

Communisation

ESSEX SEMINARS ON CAPITALISM AND THE SOCIAL

Here  is information on two upcoming seminars at the University of Essex Centre for Work, Organization, and Society.

18/6 Seminar on Revaluing the Social in Contemporary Capitalism
Monday June 18th, 2012 @ 3PM
University of Essex Room 4SB.5.3
Centre for Work, Organization and Society (http://www.essex.ac.uk/ebs/research/emc)

Seminar presentations by: Jason Read (University of Southern Maine) / George Tsogas (Cass, City University) / Stevphen Shukaitis (University of Essex)

Abstracts
General Relations: Transindividuality from Ontology to a Non-Economic Critique of Political Economy
Jason Read (University of Southern Maine)

In the Grundrisse Marx writes “Only in the eighteenth century, in ‘civil society,’ do the various forms of social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his private purposes, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto must developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations.” The contradiction Marx grasped between the increased interconnectedness of economic production and social isolation has only deepened into the twenty-first century: it is the era of commons, of digital connections, but also the era of neoliberal individuation, isolation, and precarious fragmentation. How then to make sense of an era of connection and isolation. I argue that the concept, or rather the problem, of transindividuation, makes possible a conflictual understanding of the genesis of both individuals and social relations. I say problem, or problematic, rather than concept, because transindividuality needs to be grasped in its broadest sense as an ontology of relations (Simondon, Spinoza); a critique of political economy (Marx, Virno, Stiegler); and a constitution of political subjectivity (Balibar, Negri). It is by thinking the interrelation of the ontology, economy, and political that we can think the constitution and transformation of the present.

Cognitive capitalism, organization, and the labour theory of value
George Tsogas (Cass) & Stevphen Shukaitis (Essex)

We address the reasons and methods for renewing a transfusion of ideas between Marxism and organisation and management theorising. We put forward a dialectical approach to the search for O&M theories, by stepping outside disciplinary confines. The Marxian labour theory of value is put forward as the territory for such synthetical exchange to commence. For that task, we make the most of the autonomist Marxist tradition, inasmuch as it offers us a coherent explanation of the social foundations of post-Fordist, contemporary (cognitive) capitalism. We question the contemporary significance and relevance of the Marxian labour theory of value, in an era of deep capitalist crisis, and reach the assertion of the negation of value creation in cognitive capitalism: consumption precedes production and creates – rather than destroys – value. Our aim is to bring to the forefront of O&M theoretical enquiry fundamental questions on the nature of labour, exchange relations and forces of production in contemporary, cognitive capitalism.

26/6 Seminar: Rise of the Flashpublics
Tuesday June 26th, 2012 @ 4PM
University of Essex Room LTB4
Centre for Work, Organization and Society (http://www.essex.ac.uk/ebs/research/emc)

Rise of the Flashpublics: State-friended Social Media, User-Generated Discontent, and the Affective Transfer

This presentation examines recent entanglements of social media and political dissent to explore mutations in network sovereignty. Using a number of recent examples (including the US State Department organized Alliance of Youth Movements, the uprisings in Iran and Egypt, KONY 2012, Occupy Wall Street, and the US police networks), it argues that we are witnessing a convergence of sovereign and network powers, one that expresses new modes of control while setting the conditions for new forms of evaluation and antagonism. Network alliances and coalitions have become key actors in constructing a public (now as “State-friended” movements) and dissuading dissent movements (“State-enemied” ones). More specifically, counter-radicalization can take place via creating what I call flashpublics (quickly mobilized networked alliances that distract and prevent other emergent networks). At the same time, these coalitions depend on social media spectators/participants, which are affective transfer points that exceed network capture.

Bio: Jack Z. Bratich is associate professor and department chair of Journalism and Media Studies atRutgersUniversity. He is author of Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture (2008) and coeditor, along with Jeremy Packer and Cameron McCarthy, Foucault, Cultural Studies, and Governmentality (2003). His work applies autonomist social theory to such topics as audience studies, social media, and the cultural politics of secrecy. He is a zine librarian at ABC No Rio inNew York City.

 

**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

‘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

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

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Communism of Capital?

Bonuses for Some

COMMUNISM OF CAPITAL?

Call for Papers for an ephemera Special Issue on: Communism of Capital?

http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/communismofcapital.pdf

Issue Editors: Armin Beverungen, Anna-Maria Murtola and Gregory Schwartz

Deadline for submissions: 29 February 2012

Today, neoliberal capitalism is increasingly put into question. Whereas two decades ago business school gurus argued that the US was ‘the most “socialist” country around’ (Drucker, 1993: 6), today’s self-appointed business leaders know they cannot do without a certain communism. George Soros, Bill Gates and others refer to themselves – not without irony – as ‘liberal communists’ (Žižek, 2008a). Recognising the evils induced by capitalism these patricians of the market proselytise market philanthropy to deliver many of the ostensible benefits of the communism of yore. Newsweek, reflection on the national bailout of the banks in response to the financial crisis, declared: ‘We are all socialists now’ (Meacham, 2009). Yet, the one thing that seems beyond question in such projections of communism is capital itself.

At the same time, theories of cognitive capitalism, immaterial labour and biopolitical production suggest that some kind of communism is already at work within capitalism. According to Hardt and Negri, immaterial labour ‘seems to provide the potential for a kind of spontaneous and elementary communism’ (2000: 294). Similarly, Virno defines post-Fordism as ‘the communism of capital’, since it ‘puts forth, in its own way, typical demands of communism (abolition of work, dissolution of the State, etc.)’ (2004: 110-111). The contemporary enjoinments to pursue work that is authentic, ethical, spiritual, evoking and invoking the community, friendship and collaboration (Heckscher and Adler, 2006), chime in with invitations for employees in work organisations to ‘just be themselves’ (Fleming, 2009), thus delivering on some of the promises of communism. From a ‘paleo-Marxist’ perspective (Adler, 2007) we can surmise that concrete changes in technology and work organisation assure us some version of communism in substance, if not in form.

However, such projections of work organisation rely on a commons in production without opening up production to a commons that will tear apart the dominance of capital. For Negri (2008: 157-180), the communism of capital is marked by new forms of capture of the creativity of labour. For Virno (2004: 110), communist demands and objectives have been subject to ‘an insiduous and terrible interpretation’, for example in the way that unemployment and precarity accompany overwork. For Holloway (2010), more fundamentally, it is the communal, communising and communistic doing that, in capitalism, exists in the mode of being denied. For Read, capital operates ‘through the abstractions of money and labour, which are all the more effective in that they are not believed or even grasped’ – ‘the cynicism of the productive powers of the general intellect today, is a cynicism without reserve, in which every aspect of one’s existence, knowledge, communicative abilities and desires become productive’ (2008: 146, 150). The question for Negri, Virno, Holloway and Read, then, is how to overcome this enclosure by capital.

Yet even anti-capitalism seems to return only as communism of capital. As Žižek (2008b) and Fisher (2010) point out, capitalist realism already embraces a certain kind of anti-capitalism – ‘corporate anti-capitalism’ is discernible in the products of Hollywood, such as Wall-E and Avatar, but also in the way that today it is acceptable or encouraged to express anti-capitalist sentiments at work (Fleming, 2009). Anti-capitalism as a signifier thus loses its radical edge, especially as it is contained within a parliamentary democratic politics (Žižek, 2008b: 184). Indeed, the more gushing the moralism against the evils of our age, the more certain the conclusion that capitalism is an eternal, natural system of social organisation.

At this impasse we might be at once more sceptical and more hopeful. We might hedge doubts about the communism of capital in view of Groys’ (2009) argument that language – the basis of a communist politics – will remain silent as long as the commodity form mediates it. We might question the communism of capital by insisting, with Ranciere (2010), on the politics of emancipation and not the logos of history as the purveyor of communism. We might deny its ethical claims by revealing the underlying ‘ontology of profit’ (Badiou, 2008: 47) – that with capitalism as ‘a system that hands the organization of our collective life over to the lowest instincts, to greed, rivalry and unconscious egotism’ (Badiou, 2010: 96) the communism of capital is a simulacra of late capitalism. And if communism is ‘not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself’, then where are we to look for ‘the real movement which abolishes the present state of things’ (Marx and Engels, 1998: 57; emphases in original)?

Contributions

For this special issue of ephemera we invite contributions that address various aspects of what could be conceived as the communism of capital. We are especially interested in papers that try to cover the following interrelated areas of organisational inquiry.

First, we are interested in contributions that seek to locate the attempts by capital to organise society as producers. For example, in what ways are social forms mobilised in the name of a discernible communism, and how do such dispositifs reproduce the dominance of capital? Based on postworkerist/autonomist thought, how or to what extent is production based on the common, and what kinds of political effects does this produce? Alternatively, drawing on the Lacanian/Hegelian tradition, how does anti-capitalist ideology work in practice in the organisation of work, and what negations and contradictions are involved?

Second, papers could explore how capital organises consumption in society via affective, discursive and cognitive means. For example, how do contemporary ideas of corporate social responsibility, business ethics or leadership utilise ideas of communism? In what ways, and to what extent, do efforts to purvey capitalism as, essentially, a creature of communism lead to new ways of constructing (and consuming) the subjects of capital?

Third, we welcome papers that interrogate how capital organises politics and the state. For example, there is a way in which the state, by over-coding existing codes and values, uses the terminology and imagery of ‘community’ to refer to ways of fragmenting and depoliticising its social responsibility in the face of escalating inequality, poverty and precarity generated by capital. How might we understand this apparent harkening to deep-seated, basic communalism in terms of the communism of capital, with the state presiding over the inscription of the social body as a renewed object of appropriation of capital?

Finally, we welcome theoretical or empirical contributions that bring together or provide a cross-examination of some or all of the above areas of inquiry. For example, following Guattari and Negri’s (2010) proposition of the pre-eminence of organisation, how might we move from the communism of capital towards the communism discussed by Marx and Engels in 1848? Or, in addition to the post- workerist, autonomist, Lacan- and Hegel-inspired approaches that we have discussed here, in what other ways might communism, beyond capital, today be thought or advanced?

Deadline for submissions: 29th of February 2012

Please send your submissions to the editors. All contributions should follow ephemera guidelines – see http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/submit.htm. In addition to full papers, we also invite notes, reviews, and other kinds of contributions – please get in touch to discuss how you would like to contribute. In anticipation of the special issue, we plan to host an event on the themes, at which we will ask the selected contributors to present their work.

Armin Beverungen, armin.beverungen@googlemail.com 

Anna-Maria Murtola, annamariamurtola@gmail.com 

Gregory Schwartz, g.schwartz01@gmail.com
References
Adler, P. (2007) ‘The future of critical management studies: A paleo-Marxist critique of labour process theory’, Organization Studies, 28(9): 1313-1345.
Badiou, A. (2008) The meaning of Sarkozy, trans. D. Fernbach. London: Verso.
Badiou, A. (2010) The communist hypothesis, trans. D. Macey and S. Corcoran. London: Verso.
Drucker, P. (1993) Post-capitalist society. New York: HarperBusiness.
Fisher, M. (2010) Capitalist realism: Is there no alternative? London: Zero Books.
Fleming, P. (2009) Authenticity and the cultural politics of work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Groys, B. (2009) The communist postscript. London: Verso.
Guattari, F. and A. Negri (2010) New lines of alliance, new spaces of liberty, trans. M. Ryan, J. Becker, A. Bove and N. Le Blanc. London: Minor Compositions / Autonomedia / MayFly.
Hardt, M. and A. Negri (2000) Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Heckscher, C. and P. S. Adler (2006) The firm as collaborative community: Reconstructing trust in
the knowledge economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Holloway, J. (2010) Crack capitalism. London: Pluto Press.
Marx, K. and F. Engels (1992 [1848]) The communist manifesto. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Marx, K. and F. Engels (1998) The German ideology. New York: Prometheus Books.
Meacham, J. (2009) ‘We are all socialists now’, Newsweek, 6 February 2009. [http://www.newsweek.com/2009/02/06/we-are-all-socialists-now.html].
Negri, A. (2008) Goodbye Mr. Socialism: Radical politics in the 21st century. London: Serpent’s Tail.
Ranciere, J. (2010) ‘Communists without communism?’, in C. Douzinas and S. Žižek (eds.) The idea of communism. London: Verso.
Read, J. (2008) ‘The age of cynicism: Deleuze and Guattari on the production of subjectivity in capitalism’, in I. Buchanan and N. Thoburn (eds.) Deleuze and politics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Virno, P. (2004) A grammar of the multitude: For an analysis of contemporary forms of life. New York: Semiotext(e).
Žižek, S. (2008a) Violence. London: Profile Books.

Žižek, S. (2008b) In defense of lost causes. London: Verso.

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

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

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

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Historical Materialism Conference 2010 – Registration on the Door

Crisis Sublime

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM CONFERENCE 2010 – REGISTRATION ON THE DOOR

PREREGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED FOR THE CONFERENCE. HOWEVER YOU CAN COME 
AND REGISTER ON THE DOOR, THURSDAY THROUGH TO SUNDAY

Registration desk is at SOAS, Thornhaugh Square, Russell Square Underground station.

Thursday at 12:00

Friday at 9.00

Saturday at 9.00

Sunday at 9.00

All those who cannot afford the suggested unwaged contribution rate, or who only wish to attend a few sessions, should come to registration to discuss a fair contribution.

‘Crisis and Critique’: Historical Materialism Annual London Conference 2010

Central London, Thursday 11th to Sunday 14th November

Provisional Programme Now Available online: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual7

Notwithstanding repeated invocations of the ‘green shoots of recovery’, the effects of the economic crisis that began in 2008 continue to be felt around the world. While some central tenets of the neoliberal project have been called into question, bank bailouts, cuts to public services and attacks on working people’s lives demonstrate that the ruling order remains capable of imposing its agenda. Many significant Marxist analyses have already been produced of the origins, forms and prospects of the crisis, and we look forward to furthering these debates at HM London 2010. We also aim to encourage dialogue between the critique of political economy and other modes of criticism – ideological, political, aesthetic, philosophical – central to the Marxist tradition.

In the 1930s, Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht projected a journal to be called ‘Crisis and Critique’. In very different times, but in a similar spirit, HM London 2010 aims to serve as a forum for dialogue, interaction and debate between different strands of critical-Marxist theory. Whether their focus is the study of the capitalist mode of production’s theoretical and practical foundations, the unmasking of its ideological forms of legitimation or its political negation, we are convinced that a renewed and politically effective Marxism will need to rely on all the resources of critique in the years ahead.

Crises produce periods of ideological and political uncertainty. They are moments that put into question established cognitive and disciplinary compartmentalisations, and require a recomposition at the level of both theory and practice. HM London 2010 hopes to contribute to a broader dialogue on the Left aimed at such a recomposition, one of whose prerequisites remains the young Marx’s call for the ‘ruthless criticism of all that exists’.

Themes discussed by the Conference include: Activism * Adorno: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Politics * Aesthetics of Crisis * Art and Activism * Althusser and the Aleatory Encounter I: Conceptual Aspects * Althusser and the Aleatory Encounter II: Philosophical Contrasts * Applying Value Theory * Approaching Passive Revolutions * Art in Neoliberalism * The Arts and Capitalist Triumphant: American Culture in the 1940s * Between Political Economy and Political Struggles *  Beyond What Is and Isn’t to Be Done: The Question of Organisation Today * Biocapitalism * Bolshevik History * Book Launch: Jairus Banaji’s Theory as History * Capital and the Crisis of Nature * Capitalism, Labour, Photography * Centenary of Hilferding’s Finance Capital * China: Internal Struggles and External Perceptions * Class, Gender, Crisis: The Attack on Public Services and Welfare * Class and Nation in the Middle East * Climate Change and Ecological Crisis: Law, Gender, Technology * Commodities, Labour and Space * Conjuncture, Contingency and Overdetermination * The Contemporary Global Economy (Marx and the ‘Global South’ 1) * Crisis and Accumulation in Asia * Crisis of Representation: Philosophy, Politics, Aesthetics * Crisis in Greece, Crisis in the Eurozone * The Crisis this Time * Commons and Commonwealths * Commons and Communism, Past and Present * Confronting the Right * Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism * Death and Utopia: Bloch and Benjamin * Dependency and Exploitation in Latin America * Dimensions of the Crisis: History, Finance, and the Labour Process * Energy and Crisis * The End of Old and New Labour: What’s Left? * Eurozone Crisis: Causes and Ways Out * Feminism and the Critique of Political Economy * Financial Capital Before and After the Crisis * Financialisation: Theory and Practice * Forgotten Space: Capitalism and the Sea * Forms of Working-Class Resistance * From Crisis To Crises: Marxist Perspectives On Latin America In The Global Economy * From Crisis of Capitalism to Crisis of the Public Sector * Gender, Labour and the Future of Feminism * Geographies of Crisis and Critique I * Geographies of Crisis and Critique II * German Crises * Georg Lukács and the Aspiration Towards Totality * Gramsci * Historical Materialism, Universal History, and East Asia * Histories of Workers’ Struggles * The Ideology of the ‘Big Society’ * Imperialism: History and Theory * Intellectuals, Public Discourse and Education * International Relations, Militarism and Modes of Foreign Relations * Japanese and Western Marxism * Korsch, Lefebvre and Hegelian Marxism * Labour and Migration * Labour Power and the Marxian Analytics of Crisis * Latin America, Resistance and Political Economy * Legacies of Bolshevism * Lenin, Luxemburg and the Russian Revolution * Limits of Citizenship and Democracy * Managing Crisis: Fair Trade, Cooperatives,  Degrowth * Marx Against Eurocentrism (Marx and the ‘Global South’ 2) * Marx and Critique * Marxian Investigations * Marxism and Geopolitics * Marxism and International Law * Marxism and Politics Today * Marxism and Theories of Politics * Marxist Theories of Finance and Risk * Marxist Theory and Cultural Politics * Marx for Our Times * Marx, Normativity, Justice * Marx’s Capital and the Development of Capitalism Today * Music and Resistance * Neoliberalism and World Cinema: A Double Take * Palestine and Global Justice: Current and Historic Challenges for the Left * Poetics, Painting, Politics * Political Ecology in a Time of Crisis * Political Economy and Value Theory * The Politics and Political Economy of the Media * The Politics of Housing * Profit and the Crisis * Radicalism in Contemporary Art and Literature * Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia * Rethinking the State * Rosa Luxemburg  and the Critique of Political Economy * Screening: Comuna Under Construction * Servicing the Crisis * Sex in Crisis * Slavery and American Capitalism * Stasis, Contradiction, Hostility * Strategies for Art Today I * Strategies for Art Today II * Theorising the Crisis I * Theorising the Crisis II * Theorising the Crisis III * The Transformation of Chinese Marxism * Ultra-Leftism, Insurrection, and the City * Useless But True: Economic Crisis and the Peculiarities of Economic Science * Value and Struggles in China * Varieties of Capitalism I * Varieties of Capitalism II * Violence and Non-Violence * Walter Benjamin and Anthropological Materialism * Walter Benjamin and the Critique of Violence * Whither Feminism? * Who Rules the World? Contemporary Views on Ruling and Capitalist Classes * Workers, the Union Movement and the Crisis * Workers’ Self-Management and Alternative Work Organisation I * Workers’ Self-Management and Alternative Work Organization II * The Working Class after Neoliberalism: From the World to the East End of Glasgow * The Work of Daniel Bensaid *

Speakers include: Greg Albo * Bueno Aldo * Görkem Akgöz * Idris Akkuzu * Donatella Alessandrini * Anne Alexander * Jamie Allinson * Elmar Altvater * Marko Ampuja * James Anderson * Kevin Anderson * Alex Anievas * Caroline Arscott * Sam Ashman * John Ashworth * Tara Atluri * Maurizio Atzeni * Antonio Azevedo * Dario Azzellini * Abigail Bakan * Jeff Bale * Jairus Banaji * Laurent Baronian * Luca Basso * Amita Baviskar * Wesley Baxter * Dave Beech * Riccardo Bellofiore * Aaron Benanav * Marc Berdet * Janis Berzins * Beverley Best * Brenna Bhandar * Alain Bihr * Cyrus Bina * Robin Blackburn * Paul Blackledge * Joost de Bloois * Iain Boal * Roland Boer * Armando Boito * Patrick Bond * Bill Bowring * Chris Boyd * Umut Bozkurt * Honor Brabazon * Craig Brandist * Pepijn Brandon * Lutz Brangsch * Colm Breathnach * Peter Brogan * Heather Brown * Sebastian Budgen * Jonah Butovsky * Alex Callinicos * Liam Campling * Bob Cannon * Thomas Carmichael * The Carrot Workers Collective * Warren Carter * Noel Castree * Aude de Caunes * Maria Elisa Cevasco * Giorgio Cesarale * Sharad Chari * Matthew Charles * François Chesnais * Danielle Child * Christopher Chitty * Joseph Choonara * John Clegg * Perci Coelho * Sheila Cohen * Alejandro Colás * Nathan Coombs * John Cooper * Luke Cooper * Gareth Dale * Neil Davidson * Chuck Davis * Tim Dayton * Shane Deckard * Radhika Desai * Li Dianlai * Katja Diefenbach * Angela Dimitrakaki * James Dunkerley * Bill Dunn * Cedric Durand * Nick Dyer-Witheford * Caroline Edwards * Steve Edwards * Evie Embrechts * Katsuhiko Endo * Theresa Enright * Adam Fabry * Mauro Farnesi Camellone * Sara Farris * David Featherstone * Romain Felli * Oliver Feltham * David Fernbach * Michele Filippini * Ben Fine * Eoin Flaherty * Paul Flenley * Keith Flett * Kirsten Forkert * Des Freedman * Alan Freeman * James Furner * Nicola Fusaro * Jin Gao * Lindsey German * M.A. Gonzalez * Sara Gonzalez * James Goodman * Jamie Gough * Nicolas Grinberg * Agon Hamza  * Adam Hanieh * Bue Rübner Hansen * Jane Hardy * Lea Haro * Barnaby Harran * Barbara Harriss-White * Johan Hartle * Dan Hartley * Mike Haynes * Amrit Heer * Paul Heideman * Christoph Hermann * Chris Hesketh * Andy Higginbottom * Jan Hoff * John Holloway * Charlie Hore * Nik Howard * Peter Hudis * Ian Hussey * Ursula Huws * Anthony Iles * Ozlem Ingun * Robert Jackson * Dhruv Jain * Sang-Hwan Jang * Anselm Jappe * Olivier Jelinski * Heesang Jeon * Seongjin Jeong * Jonny Jones * Jyotsna Kapur * Marina Kaneti * Ioannis Kaplanis * Elif Karacimen * Rebecca Karl * Ken Kawashima * Alexander Keller Hirsch * Mark Kelly * Anneleen Kenis * Paul Kellogg * Christiane Ketteler * Sami Khatib * Jim Kincaid * Don Kingsbury * Stathis Kouvelakis * Sam Knafo * Juha Koivisto * Stathis Kouvelakis * Michael R. Krätke * Clarice Kuhling * Alexi Kukuljevic * Anne E. Lacsamana * Mikko Lahtinen * Ishay Landa * Costas Lapavitsas * Amanda Latimer * Nick Lawrence * Philippe Lege * Emanuele Leonardi * Esther Leslie * Alex Levant * Les Levidow * Iren Levina * Norman Levine * Ben Lewis * Aiyun Liang * Lars Lih * Jacob Carlos Lima * Por-Yee Lin * Duncan Lindo * Nicola Livingstone * Alex Loftus * Domenico Losurdo * Nikos Lountos * David Mabb * Denis Mäder * Yahya Madra * F.T.C. Manning * Paula Marcelino * Fábio Marvulle *  Pierre Matari * Paul Mattick * Patricia McCafferty * Daniel McCarthy * Andrew McGettigan * David McNally * James Meadway * Eileen Meehan * Antigoni Memou * Zhang Meng * David Michalski * China Miéville * Owen Miller * Seamus Milne * Andrew Milner * Dimitris Milonakis * Gautam Mody * Simon Mohun * Kim Moody * Colin Mooers * Michael Moran * Vittorio Morfino * Adam David Morton * Avigail Moss * Sara Motta * Tadzio Mueller * Sara Murawski * Douglas Murphy * Mary Jo Nadeau * Yutaka Nagahara * Immanuel Ness * Susan Newman * Michael Niblett *  Stephen Norrie * Benjamin Noys * Sebnem Oguz * Francisco Ojeda * Chris O’Kane * Kosuke Oki * Ken Olende * Ozlem Onaran * Ahmet Öncü * Ozgur Orhangazi * Judith Orr * Reecia Orzeck * Ceren Ozselcuk * Leo Panitch * Giorgos Papafragkou * Rose Parfitt * Mark Paschal * Jody Patterson * Laurie Penny * He Ping * Simon Pirani * Charles Post * Nina Power * Gonzalo Pozo-Martin * Lucia Pradella * Tim Pringle * Toni Prug * Muriel Pucci * Besnik Pula * Thomas Purcell * Sam Putinja * Uri Ram * Gene Ray * Jason Read * John Rees * Oliver Ressler * Felicita Reuschling * Larry Reynolds * John Roberts * John Michael Roberts * William Roberts * Ed Rooksby * Sadi dal Rosso * Christina Rousseau * Giorgos Sagriotis * Spyros Sakellaropoulos * Gregory Schwartz * David Schwartzman * Ian J. Seda-Irizarry * Ben Selwyn * Richard Seymour * Greg Sharzer * Greg Shollette * Jan Sieber * Oishik Sircar * Murray E.G. Smith * John Smith * Jeffrey Sommers * Panagiotis Sotiris * Michalis Spourdalakis * Kerstin Stakemeier * Julian Stallabrass * Guido Starosta * Engelbert Stockhammer * Robert Stolz * Ted Stolze * Kendra Strauss * Bronislaw Szerszynski * Jeff Tan * Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor * Kampagiannis Thanassis * Tzuchien Tho * Martin Thomas * Peter Thomas * Peter Thompson * Hillel Herschel Ticktin * Vladimir Tikhonov * Oxana Timofeeva * Bruno Tinel * Tania Toffanin * Massimiliano Tomba * Stavros Tombazos * George Tomlinson * Samo Tomsic * Jan Toporowski * Alberto Toscano * Nicos Trimikliniotis * Ben Trott * Pei Kuei Tsai * Alan Tuckman * Deborah Tudor * Lori Turner * Alexej Ulbricht * Steve Vallance * Giovanna Vertova * Marina Vishmidt * Keith Wagner * Hilary Wainwright * Gavin Walker * Andrew Warstat * Ben Watson * Michael Watts * Mike Wayne * Alexis Wearmouth * Jeffery R. Webber * John Weeks * Brian Whitener * Evan Calder Williams * Frieder Otto Wolf * Xinwang Wu * Wu Xinwei * Galip Yalman * Faruk Yalvaç * Eddie Yuen * Rafeef  Ziadah * Mislav Zitko *

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)

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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Encountering Althusser

Louis Althusser

ENCOUNTERING ALTHUSSER

 

International Conference

9^th – 11^th October 2009

Jan Van Eyck Academie

Academieplein 1 Maastricht

The Netherlands

http://www.janvaneyck.nl

The work of Louis Althusser and his associates constituted an important attempt to rethink the political and philosophical potential of Marx’s thought, in tension with its ‘orthodox’ reading in Stalinism. In his work in the 1960s and 1970s, Althusser proposed to negate the metaphysical categories of subject, substance, telos, and end. He further explored these themes in the late 1970s and 1980s in terms of the event, the encounter and contingency. The late Althusser’s “materialism of the encounter” both provides many points of contact for a productive dialogue with thinkers associated with post-structuralism, while at the same time seeming to maintain a stronger connection to the Marxist tradition, particularly in terms of his continuing affirmation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. One of the purposes of this conference will be to attempt to gain an overview of the development of Althusser’s thought and to pose the question of its legacy for contemporary debates in radical political thought.

It is not only the legacy of Louis Althusser that will be of our interest here, however, but rather how to encounter and deal with the more unrecognised or suppressed points in his thought that remain enigmatic, and at the same time productive for further research in politics, economy, philosophy (and ideology). Many contemporary discussions ranging from Badiou and Zizek to Balibar, Laclau and Butler revolve around some topics that were traced or started by Louis Althusser, mainly on ideology, linking Althusser to Lacan or politics. In this conference, we would like to focus on some points that have not yet been discussed or have not yet been given the attention they deserve.

In the Althusserian spirit of philosophy working by attacking established positions on an occupied Kampfplatz, we outline four different fields of investigation to which panels will be dedicated: ruptures in philosophy, politics, political economy and politics and philosophy in the late Althusser. In each field, we intend to subject established interpretations of Althusser’s thought to critique and to attempt to determine productive areas for future research. Beyond such scholarly and philological debates, however, our guiding concern will be to pose the question of the extent to which an encounter with Althusser today has the potential to promote critical energies and perspectives that are capable of intervening effectively in the contemporary conjuncture.

PANEL DISCUSSIONS:

* Ruptures in Philosophy: Dis/continuities in Althusser’s Thought

* The Primacy of Politics: Singularity, Dictatorship of Proletariat, Class Struggle

* The Critique of Political Economy and the Legacy of Althusser

* Politics and Philosophy in the Late Althusser: The Philosophy of the Encounter and Aleatory Materialism

PARTICIPANTS:

Giorgos Fourtounis, Geoffrey Goshgarian, Slobodan Karamanic, Katja Kolsek, Marko Krzan, Mikko Lahtinen, Rasto Mocnik, Vittorio Morfino, Ozren Pupovac, Jason Read, Panagiotis Sotiris, Maria Turchetto, Caroline Williams, Frieder Otto Wolf

ORGANIZERS:

Katja Diefenbach, Gal Kirn, Peter Thomas

After1968: http://www.after1968.org

For further details, see: http://www.after1968.org/index.php/lectures/view/20

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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