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

 

**END**

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

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

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

Identity, Alterity, Monstrosity: Figures of the Multitude

Monsters

IDENTITY, ALTERITY, MONSTROSITY: FIGURES OF THE MULTITUDE

Identity, Alterity, Monstrosity: Figures of the Multitude (I)

The process of construction of identity, both individual and collective, and the genesis of political subjectivity, are largely grounded on concurrent ideological mechanisms that define otherness: subjectivity, alterity and identity are the complex outcomes of one intellectual and cultural process, historically produced by the encounter with the Other, whether real or imagined.

Notwithstanding the effort in conceptualising this encounter in the global and multicultural context of contemporary societies, its historical genealogy is often underestimated: a genealogy that is rooted in the theoretical definition of the concepts of normality, abnormality, and monstrosity. Developed in the early modern age, these concepts have produced and keep producing their cultural, social, and political effects.

The main objective of this seminar is to reconstruct the genealogy of the modern problem of identity, subjectivity, and otherness through an historical analysis of the idea of monstrosity within scientific, philosophical, and literary discourses of early modernity.

During the first semester of this seminar we will focus on the radical alterity represented since the 17th century by the theoretical figure of the multitude. Hobbes, for example, develops the idea of the Leviathan’s sovereign body through the homogeneous unity of the people. By definition, the people is opposed to the conflictual multiplicity of the multitude in the state of nature. In contrast, Spinoza grounds the idea of a free State on the multitude’s conatus – its drive to actualize its own nature – and its right of resistance against the sovereign. This right is irreducible and monstrous, thus introducing the natural dimension into the State rather than excluding it from society.

While Hobbes confined the multitude to the edges of the political map, with Spinoza it takes centre-stage, becoming the beating and conflictual heart of political life. Starting with the indirect dialogue between these two authors, we will focus this year on radical and monstrous alterity – the sense of otherness and how that is defined – in early modern and contemporary thought.

Organised by Filippo Del Lucchese (Brunel University, London and Collège International de Philosophie) and Caroline Williams (Queen Mary, University of London). For more information, contact:
Filippo Dellucchese <Filippo.Dellucchese@brunel. ac.uk>
Caroline Williams <c.a.williams@qmul.ac.uk>

Location: QMUL, ARTS TWO (room TPC) 5:00pm
Dates: 26th February, 26th March, 14th May, 11th June

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: 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

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

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

Brunel Social and Political Thought Research Group Seminar Series – 2013/2014

Teaching Marx

BRUNEL SOCIAL AND POLITICAL THOUGHT RESEARCH GROUP SEMINAR SERIES – 2013/2014

Re/Dis/Order

Following successful seminar series and international conferences in the last years, the Brunel Social and Political Thought research group will organise another seminar series in 2013/14: ‘Re/Dis/Order’. This seminar series aims to explore the different ways in which the constitution, transformation and negation of political order have been understood by some of the key theorists of modern political thought, from the early modern period to contemporary social and political theory. Seminars are open to all.

Term 1

Wednesday 30th October 2013, 4:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

State and Capital

Andrea Bardin (Brunel University) ‘Mechanising the Organic: Hobbes and the Epistemological Revolution in Civil Science’

Matthijs Krul (Brunel University) ‘Neoliberal Visions of Order: Theories of the State in the New Institutional Economic History’

Wednesday 13th November 2013, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Fabio Raimondi (University of Salerno) ‘Althusser, Machiavelli and the Problem of Political Power’

Wednesday 27th November 2013, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Sara R. Farris (Goldsmiths, University of London) ‘From the Jewish Question to the Muslim Question’

Wednesday 11th December 2013, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Fillippo del Lucchese (Brunel University) ‘Machiavelli and Constituent Power’

Term 2

Wednesday 8th January 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Peter D. Thomas (Brunel University) ‘“We Good Subalterns”: Gramsci’s Theory of Political Modernity’

Wednesday 29th January 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 210

Banu Bargu (SOAS) ‘Sovereignty as Erasure’

Wednesday 5th February 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Nathaniel Boyd (Brunel University) ‘Organising the Body Politic: Hegel’s Corporate Theory of State’

Wednesday 19th February 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Jamie Pitman (BrunelUniversity) ‘Castor and Pollux? The Marx-Engels Relationship’

Ebubekir Dursun (Brunel University) ‘“Stubborn, Insociable, Froward, Intractable”: the History of the Excluded in Hobbes’s Leviathan’

Wednesday 5th March 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

John Roberts (Brunel University) ‘Beyond Flows, Fluids and Networks: Social Theory and the Fetishism of the Global Informational Economy’

Wednesday 26th March 2014, 1:00pm, Gaskell Building Room 239

Mark Neocleous (Brunel University)

Book Launch: ‘War Power, Police Power’ (Edinburgh University Press, 2014)

All seminars take place at Brunel University. Directions to the campus can be found here:
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/campus/directions

For further information, please contact:

Peter Thomas at PeterD.Thomas@brunel.ac.uk

Visit the Brunel SPT Research Group webpages:

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/modern-political-thought-violence-and-revolution-ma
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/sss/politics/research-groups-and-centres/social-and-political-thought
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brunel-University-Modern-Political-Thought/205393026150272?sk=wall

 

Other Brunel SPT Activities in 2013/14

Film Screening Series
(Organised in Collaboration with the Isambard Centre for Historical Research)

Paths of Shame: WWI in Cinema

1st October: S. Kubrick, Paths of Glory (1957)

15th October: R. Bernard, Wooden Crosses (1932)

29th October: J. Losey, King and Country (1964)

12th November: J. Renoir, La Grande Illusion (1939)

26th November: F. Rosi, Many Wars Ago (1970)

10th December: D. Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun (1971)

All screenings in Gaskell Building Room 239 @ 5:30pm

Organised by Alison Carrol and Filippo del Lucchese

For more information, contact:
Alison Carrol <Alison.Carrol@brunel.ac.uk>
Filippo Dellucchese <Filippo.Dellucchese@brunel.ac.uk>

 

Identity, Alterity, Monstrosity: Figures of the Multitude (I)

The process of construction of identity, both individual and collective, and the genesis of political subjectivity, are largely grounded on concurrent ideological mechanisms that define otherness: subjectivity, alterity and identity are the complex outcomes of one intellectual and cultural process, historically produced by the encounter with the Other, whether real or imagined.
Notwithstanding the effort in conceptualising this encounter in the global and multicultural context of contemporary societies, its historical genealogy is often underestimated: a genealogy that is rooted in the theoretical definition of the concepts of normality, abnormality, and monstrosity. Developed in the early modern age, these concepts have produced and keep producing their cultural, social, and political effects.
The main objective of this seminar is to reconstruct the genealogy of the modern problem of identity, subjectivity, and otherness through an historical analysis of the idea of monstrosity within scientific, philosophical, and literary discourses of early modernity.
During the first semester of this seminar we will focus on the radical alterity represented since the 17th century by the theoretical figure of the multitude. Hobbes, for example, develops the idea of the Leviathan’s sovereign body through the homogeneous unity of the people. By definition, the people is opposed to the conflictual multiplicity of the multitude in the state of nature. In contrast, Spinoza grounds the idea of a free State on the multitude’s conatus – its drive to actualize its own nature – and its right of resistance against the sovereign. This right is irreducible and monstrous, thus introducing the natural dimension into the State rather than excluding it from society.
While Hobbes confined the multitude to the edges of the political map, with Spinoza it takes centre-stage, becoming the beating and conflictual heart of political life. Starting with the indirect dialogue between these two authors, we will focus this year on radical and monstrous alterity – the sense of otherness and how that is defined – in early modern and contemporary thought.

Organised by Filippo Del Lucchese (BrunelUniversity, London and Collège International de Philosophie) and Caroline Williams (Queen Mary, University of London). For more information, contact:

Filippo Dellucchese <Filippo.Dellucchese@brunel.ac.uk>
Caroline Williams <c.a.williams@qmul.ac.uk>

Location: QMUL, ARTS TWO (room TPC) 5:00pm

Dates: 26th February, 26th March, 14th May, 11th June

 

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/brunel-social-and-political-thought-research-group-seminar-series-2013-14-re-dis-order.-starts-30-october

 

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: 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

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

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

Anarchism and Autonomism – Call for Interventions

Autonomia

ANARCHISM AND AUTONOMISM – CALL FOR INTERVENTIONS

Call for Interventions: Anarchism & Autonomism, for the ASN 2.0 Conference ‘Making Connections’ at Loughborough University September 3rd – 5th, 2012
Coordinator: Stevphen Shukaitis (Autonomedia / University of Essex)

Over recent years anarchist and autonomist traditions of politics and analysis have proliferated in multiple and overlapping forms. While these currents are often conflated they emerge from distinct political trajectories, at times diverging over key questions.

This workshop is designed to tease out and compare the convergences, divergences, and productive tensions between these approaches. The goal is not to endlessly rehash debates between anarchism and marxism that seek to establish the superiority of one to the other, or to create a conceptual division of labor where anarchism handles ethics & tactics while marxism takes care of economics & strategy, but rather to create a space for transversal encounters ideas and practices.

Possible topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:
– The meaning and practice of autonomy today
– Communization & the commons
– Class composition & workers’ inquiry
– The refusal of work & the work of refusal
– Escape & the imperceptible politics of the undercommons
– The multitude & its dark side
– Affective labor & social reproduction
– Convergences / divergences between anarchism and autonomism
– Dialectics versus immanence
– Precarity & the autonomy of migration
– Schizoanalysis & class formation
– Anarchist and autonomist approaches to aesthetics

Send proposals of 200-500 words (along with bio and affiliation if applicable) to Stevphen Shukaitis (stevphen@autonomedia.org) by March 24th. Proposals for forms of intervention other than the reading of papers are highly encouraged.

Anarchist Studies Network: http://anarchist-studies-network.org.uk
Minor Compositions: http://www.minorcompositions.info

Stevphen Shukaitis is an editor at Autonomedia and lecturer at the University of Essex. He is the editor (with Erika Biddle and David Graeber) of Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization (AK Press, 2007). His research focuses on the emergence of collective imagination in social movements and the changing compositions of cultural and artistic labor.

**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

‘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

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

PhD Scholarships in Social Sciences at Brunel University

Radical Thinkers

PhD SCHOLARSHIPS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AT BRUNEL UNIVERSITY

The School of Social Sciences of Brunel University has recently announced nine PhD scholarships. Scholarships include fees, a living allowance, and teaching experience. More information is available here: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/sss/research/phd-scholarships

The Brunel Social and Political Thought Research Group is keen to encourage applications for these scholarships. 

The BSPT Group’s research explores different traditions and currents in critical social and political thought. Our individual and collective work covers the full range of modern social and political thought, from the Renaissance through to the twentieth century. We have a focus on the European context and tradition. 

Particular research strengths include early modern political thought, the critique of political economy, the history of Marxism and theories of war and conflict. We are also engaged in debates in contemporary political theory and European philosophy, including state theory, the critique of security, critical IPE, concepts of the political and notions of monstrosity. As a group we have specialist knowledge of a diverse range of political theorists, including Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Burke, Hegel, Marx, Gramsci, Schmitt, Althusser, Polanyi, Foucault and Negri. The Group is particularly keen to welcome research students working in these and related fields.

Key members of the research group in the School of Social Sciences include:

Dr Gareth Dale, author of Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market (Polity Press, 2010)

Dr Filippo Del Lucchese, author of Conflict, Power and Multitude in Machiavelli and Spinoza (Continuum Press, 2009)

Prof Mark Neocleous, author of Critique of Security (Edinburgh University Press, 2008); The Monstrous and the Dead: Burke, Marx, Fascism (University of Wales Press, 2005)

Dr John Roberts, author of The Competent Public Sphere: Global Political Economy, Dialogue and the Contemporary Workplace (Palgrave, 2009)

Dr Peter D. Thomas author of The Gramscian Moment. Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (Brill Academic Press, 2009)

For more information, visit our web pages:

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/sss/politics/research-and-research-centres/social-and-political-thought

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/modern-political-thought-violence-and-revolution-ma

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brunel-University-Modern-Political-Thought/20539302615 0272?sk=wall    

For enquires regarding the scholarships, please contact:

Filippo Dellucchese: Fillippo.Dellucchese@brunel.ac.uk

Mark Neocleous Mark.Neocleous@brunel.ac.uk

Peter Thomas PeterD.Thomas@brunel.ac.uk

Peter D. Thomas
Politics and History
Brunel University
Uxbridge
Middlesex UB8 3PH
United Kingdom

Office: MJ 229

Office hours: Tuesday 14.30-15.30; Thursday 11.30-12.30 

Phone: +44 (0)18952 67573
Work Email: PeterD.Thomas@brunel.ac.uk
Personal Email: thomas_p_au@yahoo.com.au

Staff Page: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/sss/politics/staff-profiles/peter-thomas

Brunel Social and Political Thought Research Group: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/sss/politics/research-groups-and-centres/social-and-political-thought

MA in Modern Political Thought: Violence and Revolution: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/modern-political-thought-violence-and-revolution-ma

Historical Materialism: http://historicalmaterialism.org/

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

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

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The Many: History, Theory and Politics – International Conference

Multitude

THE MANY: HISTORY, THEORY AND POLITICS – INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

Call for Papers

THE MANY – HISTORY, THEORY AND POLITICS
International Conference
Faculty of Human and Social Sciences of the New University of Lisbon
18-20th April 2012

The definition of a collective subject of politics constituted one of the most important questions in modern political thought, history and social sciences. All these disciplines tried to answer the question: who makes politics? As part of a wider questioning on: what is politics? In the last decades, however, the names given to collective political subjects – such as people, nation, class or masses – became the object of an ever growing questioning regarding their adequacy, thus creating a conceptual crisis.

This crisis’ first consequence was the downgrading of any notion of politics as a collective affair. The view that individuals were both the base and object of politics became dominant. According to such a view, the collective should be seen as a mere aggregation of individualities. Nevertheless, this conceptual crisis also opened up to other possibilities. Recent years were also marked by the quest for new concepts or for a renewal of old concepts in order to name the collective subject of politics. Such a quest, in its many guises, entails a strategic notion of politics where the plurality of a singular subject always exceeds the sum of its parts. Such debates around the names of the collective political subject have been taking place in domains as diverse as philosophy, history, economics, political science and anthropology.

This conference aims to gather a set of contributions to the question of the collective subject of politics. The conference welcomes papers that present theoretical contributions to the debate as well as case studies gathered from any geographical space and from all historical periods. It is mainly – but in no way exclusively – directed at researchers from different disciplinary areas working on political thought and social movements. The working language of the conference is English. A limited number of papers presented in Portuguese, Spanish or French may also be accepted. Those interested in presenting a paper at the conference should submit an abstract no longer than 300 words before the 31st of December 2011. An answer will be issued before the 10th of January 2012.

Abstracts (and a brief CV) should be sent to:
jose.neves@fcsh.unl.pt  and politicsofthemany@gmail.com

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Boaventura de Sousa Santos is Director of the Center for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and Global Legal Scholar at the University of Warwick. His books include Toward a New Legal Common Sense: Law, Globalization and Emancipation and The Rise of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond.

James C. Scott is Professor of Political Science and Anthropology at Yale University. His books include The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts and Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.

Pablo Sánchez-Leon is Professor of History at the University of the Basque Country. His books include Absolutismo y Comunidad: Las Orígenes Sociales de la Guerra de los Comuneros de Castilla and La Guerra que nos han contado: 1936 y nosotros (with Jesús Izquierdo).

Peter Hallward is Professor of Philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University London. His books include Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment and Badiou: A Subject to Truth.

Sandro Mezzadra is Professor of Political Theory and Sociology at the University of Bologna. His books include Crisis in the Global Economy – Finantial Markets, Social Struggles and New Political Scenarios (edited with Andrea Fumagalli) and Diritto di Fuga: Migrazioni, Cittadinanza, Globalizzazione.

Organization
Institute for Contemporary History of the New University of Lisbon
Complutense University of Madrid – Department for the History of Thought and Social and Political Movements
Birkbeck College of the University of London – Department of Iberian and Latin American Studies.

Conference fees
60€

Convenors
Bruno Peixe Dias (University of Lisbon), Diego Palacios Cerezales (Complutense University of Madrid), José Neves (New University of Lisbon), Luís Trindade (Birkbeck College), Ricardo Noronha (New University of Lisbon) and Victor Pereira (University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour).

 

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

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

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

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

The Labor of Multitudes

Mountain Walk

THE LABOR OF MULTITUDES

Free/Slow University of Warsawannounces Open Call for Contributions: international conference “The labor of multitudes? Political economy of social creativity”
Warsaw 20th – 22nd of October 2011
More information: http://www.wuw-warsaw.pl

Addressing the issue of social economy of creativity we seek to enlarge the spectrum of creativity’s political economy. Creativity refers to many things: it is both a means of production and a fetish of consumption, a sheer ideology of the capitalism which calls itself post-industrial and an efficient device of social and industrial management, it reflects the elitist privilege of the ruling elite as well as the aspirations of the underprivileged rabble. If it is true that contemporary capitalism has made an ecisive shift in its modes of producing value then creativity and in particular collective creativity becomes a central category for the society as a whole. And artistic and cultural modes of production (along with scientific ones) are no longer merely supplementary fields of capitalistic social infrastructure. They become central sectors of production to which other fields of social labor remain subordinated in economical as well as in symbolic way. They not only accumulate most of the value but also are laboratories for social innovation. Consequently they should also provide a playground and battlefield for new social struggles, re-emerging capitalistic contradictions and new forms of appropriation and exploitation. Or maybe the new paradigm is just a humbug that covers up the overall crisis of the existing one. Maybe we still linger under the rule of the old law of value based rather on living labor then creative networking. In this case the new social economy of the creativity would be a powerful symptom of a present crisis and it could be analyzed as such. Either of the approaches are welcome.

We are calling for theoretical contributions or artistic interventions in the five following fields:

1. Ideological appropriations: cognitive capitalism and creative industries.
2. The future of work: the changing forms of labor and its remuneration.
3. Property and value.
4. Peripheries of cognitive capitalism – continuation or redefinition.
5. Politics in the age of immaterial labor.

List of confirmed speakers: Luc Boltanski, Neil Cummings, Diedrich Diederichsen, Matteo Pasquinelli, John Roberts, Giggi Rogero, Martha Rosler, Hito Steyrl.

Forms of contribution: a paper delivered in 15-20 minutes during the conference’s sessions. The language of conference is English. We’re planning to publish a peer-reviewed, bi-lingual (PL-ENG) summary of the conference with selected papers.

Applications and inquiries:  please send a short proposal (up to 300 words) with bio to Szymon ¯ydek: szymon@funbec.eu, who will also respond to all other inquiries.

Deadline for submissions: 15th of September 2011

Fees / scholarships: The conference is free of charge. FSUW is capable of providing a limited number of travel (up to 200 Euros) and accommodation grants to free lancers, independent artists and 
theoreticians who are not affiliated with Academies or other Institutions. If you are interested in receiving a FSUW scholarship, please indicate so in your proposal and estimate your travel costs to 
Warsaw.

 

**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)  

 

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

Feminism of Multitudes

Feminism

FEMINISMS OF MULTITUDES

Dear All

We would like to make you aware of a Call for Papers which may be of interest.

The panel Feminisms of Multitudes is part of the Association of Art Historians UK Conference in March 2012, for which the paper proposal deadline is 7th November 2011.

More details are available here: http://feminismsofmultitudes.wordpress.com/

Please circulate widely

All the best
Angela Dimitrakaki, Vicky Horne, Harry Weeks (University ofEdinburgh)

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

Self Organising III: Community

Antonio Negri

SELF ORGANISING III: COMMUNITY

Friday May 6th  2011
Venue: Lock Keepers Cottage, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End, E1 4NS
Nearest Station: Mile End
Time: 5-7pm
Self-Organising: http://www.self-org.blogspot.com/

An encounter to muse and think together about external dynamics, political discourse and outreach; the role of the organizer when working with constituencies; issues of politicization, outreach, involvement and negotiation.

Conversations will be triggered by:

Doina Petrescu (Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée, Paris)

Doina Petrescu is an architect, co-founder together with Constantin Petcou of atelier d’architecture autogérée (aaa) in Paris and Professor of Architecture and Design Activism at the University of Sheffield. Her publications include Trans – Local – Act: cultural practices within and across (2010), Agency: Working with Uncertain Architectures (2009), Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space (2007), Urban Act: a handbook for alternative practice (2007), Architecture and Participation (2005). During our session, Doina will speak about metropolitan commons and self-organised spaces.

Jane Wills (QMUL, London)

Jane Wills has research interests in low paid employment, migration, trade unionism and new forms of labour organisation, the living wage, community organising and political-economy. Her new co-authored book on low paid migrant labour in London entitled Global Cities at Work: new migrant divisions of labour was published by Pluto in 2010. Jane is convenor of the MA Community Organising and an active member of London Citizens.

RESOURCES:

C. Petcou, D.Petrescu, Acting Space
Published in Multitudes 3/ 2007, Urban/Act and included in the disobedience archive
http://www.disobediencearchive.com/texts/index.html

D. Petrescu, Jardinieres du commun
published in Multitudes 44/2010
http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Jardinieres-du-commun

and Trans-Local-Act.
C. Petcou, D.Petrescu, At the Ground Level of the City
Published in Multitudes 20/2005
http://multitudes.samizdat.net/Au-rez-de-chaussee-de-la-ville

and The Right to the City (Sydney, 2011)
What makes a biopolitical place?
A Discussion with Toni Negri, Constantin Petcou, Doina Petrescu, Anne Querrien, Paris – September 17, 2007
Published in Multitudes 3/ 2007 – In English: http://www.peprav.net/tool/spip.php?article59

***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)  

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

Mediations: Volume 25 Number 1

Mediation

MEDIATIONS: VOLUME 25 NUMBER 1

‘Marx, Politics … and Punk’

Mediations 25.1 is out. The web site has some minor improvements, the PDF edition some major ones. If the links below don’t work, just navigate to mediationsjournal.org.

Please distribute widely!

MARX, POLITICS… AND PUNK

Volume 25, No. 1Fall 2010

Editors’ Note

Contributors

ARTICLES

Fredric Jameson: A New Reading of Capital

Is Capital about labor, or unemployment? Does Marxism have a theory of the political, or is it better off without one? Fredric Jameson previews the argument of his forthcoming book, Representing Capital.

Anna Kornbluh: On Marx’s Victorian Novel

As out of place as Marx himself might have been in Victorian England, Capital is less out of place than one might have thought among Victorian novels. But this does not have to mean that its mode of truth is literary. Anna Kornbluh explores the tropes that propel Capital in order to establish the novel relationship Marx produces between world and text.

Roland Boer: Marxism and Eschatology Reconsidered

The variations on the thesis of Marxism’s messianism are too many to count. But is it plausible to imagine that Marx or Engels took up Jewish or Christian eschatology, in any substantial form, into their thought? Roland Boer weighs the evidence.

Reiichi Miura: What Kind of Revolution Do You Want? Punk, the Contemporary Left, and Singularity

What does punk have to do with Empire? What does singularity have to do with identity? What does the logic of rock ‘n’ roll aesthetics have to do with a politics of representation? What does the concept of the multitude have to do with neoliberalism? The answer to all these questions, argues Reiichi Miura, is a lot more than you might think.

Alexei Penzin: The Soviets of the Multitude: On Collectivity and Collective Work: An Interview with Paolo Virno

One of the principle conundrums that confronts the theorization of the multitude is the relationship it entails between individual and collective. Alexei Penzin, of the collective Chto Delat / What Is To Be Done? Interviews Paolo Virno.

BOOK REVIEWS

Nataša Kovačević: New Money in the Old World: On Europe’s Neoliberal Disenchantment

What is left of the promise that was Europe? Does anything Utopian remain of the European project, or is it destined to become just another neoliberal power? Nataša Kovačević reviews Perry Anderson’s The New Old World.

Kevin Floyd: Queer Principles of Hope

In the “marketplace of ideas,” Marxism and queer studies are often presumed to be divergent and even opposed discourses. Contemporary work in both fields makes the case for a convergence. Kevin Floyd reviews José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utoptia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity.

Madeleine Monson-Rosen: Under a Pink Flag

Is there a feminine relation to copyright in the contemporary period? Madeleine Monson-Rosen reviews Caren Irr’s Pink Pirates: Contemporary Women Writers and Copyright.

—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

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

SSPT Annual Conference: 16-17 June 2011, University of Sussex

World Crisis

SSPT ANNUAL CONFERENCE: 16-17 JUNE 2011, UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX

‘FORMS OF DOMINATION AND EMANCIPATION’

STUDIES IN SOCIAL & POLITICAL THOUGHT (SSPT)

[T]he fact above all which so demoralizes the modern world [is] that the greater the efforts made, the more terrible are the new forms in which the old social problems reappear- C. L. R. James

Research students and scholars working in philosophy, social, political or theory more broadly construed are invited to submit an abstract of up to 400 words on any topic related to the conference theme ‘Forms of Domination and Emancipation’. Please ensure the abstract is prepared for blind review. Presentations will likely be 20-30 minutes in length.

Keynote speakers include Chris Arthur (ex-Sussex) on “Dialectic of Domination and Emancipation” and Stathis Kouvelakis (Kings College London) on “The Actuality of Revolution?”

Papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in the Winter 2011 issue of Studies in Social & Political Thought.

The deadline for submissions is 15 April 2011

Notification of acceptance will be sent out within two weeks.
Abstracts or questions should be addressed to: sspt@sussex.ac.uk

Possible topics include but are not limited to:
Forms of domination – Capital; (neo-)Liberalism; Patriarchy; Imperialism and (neo-)Colonialism; Hegemony; Ideology; Biopolitics; Discipline; Governmentality; Psychology and Psychoanalysis; Legality and Legitimacy.

Forms of emancipation – Communism and Communization; Radical Democracy; the State; Politics of Difference, Otherness, Non-Identity; Anarchism; Multitude; Psychology and Psychoanalysis; New Social Movements.

Possible thinkers include but are not limited to:

Alain Badiou; Walter Benjamin; Judith Butler; Gilles Deleuze; Frantz Fanon; Michel Foulcault; Antonio Gramsci; G.W.F. Hegel; C.L.R. James; Freud and Lacan; Henri Lefebvre; Rosa Luxemburg; Karl Marx; Antonio Negri; Evgeny Pashukanis; Jacques Rancière; Edward Said; Early Frankfurt School; Neue Marx-Lektüre; Value-Form Theory; Théorie Communiste.

Some participants might also like to consider the relations between different thinkers and forms of domination and emancipation.

END

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

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

World Crisis