The Institute of Art and Ideas

Karl Marx

THE INSTITUTE OF ART AND IDEAS

Watch / Think / Share – Philosophy for Our Times

Cutting edge debate and talks from the world’s leading thinkers, free for everyone

Includes Why Marx was Right – a video by Terry Eagleton: http://iai.tv/video/why-marx-was-right

“Once the darling of the intelligentsia, Marxism has been out of fashion for at least a couple of decades. Philosopher and critic Terry Eagleton makes the case for Marx’s resurrection, challenging objections and explaining why his thought remains as relevant as ever” (IAI website).

IAI website: http://iai.tv/

 

**END**

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

‘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

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

 

Glenn Rikowski’s paper, Critical Pedagogy and the Constitution of Capitalist Society has been published at Heathwood Press as a Monthly Guest Article for September 2012, online at:

http://www.heathwoodpress.com/monthly-guest-article-august-critical-pedagogy-and-the-constitution-of-capitalist-society-by-glenn-rikowski/

 

Heathwood Press: http://www.heathwoodpress.com 

Discourse, Power & Resistance in Education – Conference 2013

Education

DISCOURSE, POWER & RESISTANCE IN EDUCATION – CONFERENCE 2013

Discourse, Power, Resistance: DPR 13      

DISCOURSES OF INCLUSION AND EXCLUSION
9 – 11 April, 2013 – University of Greenwich, United Kingdom

Power can be a wonderful thing, as Terry Eagleton told the DPR conference in 2008: wonderful and essential for the achievement of our best and most generous purposes. But it can also be abused.

A widespread abuse of power is to organise the social world into groups that are included and others that are excluded, using the discourse of the powerful group, like subtly barbed wire, to distinguish the insiders from the outsiders on the grounds of gender, ethnicity, age, wealth, sexuality, class and other grouping. Communities may then disintegrate. The excluded members may seek to be admitted to the privileged group by learning and adopting its discourse; or they may resist this assimilation and celebrate their difference in defiant counter-cultures of their own.

What is the scope of research, learning and teaching in this contested space? What knowledges and methodologies should be included or excluded, and why? These are the issues the conference will consider.

Exchanging words and papers is a powerful academic practice at the heart of DPR. But the conference is about the discourses of inclusion and exclusion, so images, music, performance, display, story-telling – the variously imaginative ways of sharing our understanding – must have their space. DPR13 will include the contributions of the creative and performing arts so that the conference tells and shows a freshly inclusive vision.

Preparations and plans for DPR13 are already well under way with over 60 abstracts accepted and more coming in daily. The Second Call for Papers is Friday 21 December. This is not a deadline but we strongly encourage delegates planning to offer papers, workshops, posters or exhibition work to send abstracts as soon as possible. Details of 12 projects and seminars already in preparation are posted on the website.

Further proposals are being developed and will be posted soon. For further information or to discuss ideas, please contact Jerome Satterthwaite by email at jnsatterthwaite@gmail.com

Conference website for full details and registration: dprconference.com

Power and Education journal: www.wwwords.co.uk/POWER

 

**END**

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

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

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

Terry Eagleton and Alex Callinicos on Marx

Karl Marx

TERRY EAGLETON AND ALEX CALLINICOS ON MARX

THURSDAY 1 MARCH AT KINGS COLLEGE, LONDON

Socialist Worker Student Society is hosting a speaking tour with Terry Eagleton (author of Why Marx Was Right) and Alex Callinicos (author of The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx).

They will be speaking at Kings College, London (Room S-2.08) on Thursday 1 March at 6pm.

All are welcome and admission is free.

**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

‘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

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

Oxford Radical Forum 2012

Oxford

OXFORD RADICAL FORUM 2012

OXFORD RADICAL FORUM 2012: 2 – 4  MARCH 2012

http://orf2012.wordpress.com/
http://www.facebook.com/events/179785195464536/

>> Speakers from the Middle East & North Africa Revolutions >>
>> Skype Link-up with Occupy Wall St. Activists >>
>> Terry Eagleton on his New Book: Why Marx was Right >>

…and much more at this year’s…

>>OXFORD RADICAL FORUM >>
>>2 – 4  MARCH 2012>>

In the last year, as the global economic crisis has deepened, we have seen revolutions sweep dictators from power across the Middle East and North Africa and resistance to austerity spread across Europe and the US with the Occupy Movement. There have been a number of general strikes in Greece and mass strikes in Britain.

This year’s Oxford Radical Forum (ORF) will be held from 2-4th March. This will be the fifth anniversary of the forum, run by students, lecturers and local activists based in the city. This year it is bigger than ever, with almost thirty sessions over a host of colleges and venues during the weekend.

The forum opens with ‘the MENA Revolutions: One Year On’, with Nadine El-Enany (activist from Cairo), Gilbert Achcar (SOAS), Anne Alexander (Cambridge) and Firoze Manji (Pambazuka Press). This will be followed by a discussion between Terry Eagleton and Alex Callinicos on ‘Why Marx was Right’.

Over the weekend, we will bring together Occupy activists from New York via live link-up with activists from Occupy London, for reflections on how the movement has changed politics and on how it can develop. International perspectives will also be brought by sessions on political struggle from Latin America to the Eurozone to China. A meeting on sexual liberation will be joined by Ghassan Makaram, a Lebanese LGBTQ activist. On Saturday, Greg Philo will join Moshe Machover and Daphna Baram for a meeting on Palestine and the Media.

This year’s line-up also reflects rising levels of resistance to austerity in Britain. We will bring together trade unionists from public and private sectors, students and community activists. Our session on the future of education will discuss this government’s decision to withdraw its Higher Education Bill with John Holmwood (Campaign for the Public University) and others. We will also have important sessions on ‘Defending the Right to Protest’, ‘Race, Racism and Resistance’, and even ‘Radical Science’.

As always the event is entirely FREE, but we welcome and encourage donations towards the costs of putting on the Forum.

We hope you will join us at the event. Spread the word!

Further information on speakers and timetables will be available and updated here:
http://orf2012.wordpress.com/

Contact Us: 2012oxfordradicalforum@gmail.com
Twitter: @orf2012
#oxfordradicalforum

Facebook (event): http://www.facebook.com/events/179785195464536/
Facebook (group): http://www.facebook.com/groups/10571655629/

**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  

‘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

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

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

The Spectre of Utopia: Utopian and Science Fictions at the ‘Fin de Siecle’ – by Matthew Beaumont

 

Utopia

THE SPECTRE OF UTOPIA: UTOPIAN AND SCIENCE FICTIONS AT THE ‘FIN DE SIÈCLE’ – BY MATTHEW BEAUMONT

PETER LANG – International Academic Publishers are pleased to announce a new book by
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Matthew Beaumont 
THE SPECTRE OF UTOPIA: Utopian and Science Fictions at the “Fin de Siècle”

Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2012. XII, 307 pp.
Ralahine Utopian Studies. Vol. 12
Edited by Raffaella Baccolini, Joachim Fischer, Tom Moylan and Michael J. Griffin

pb. ISBN 978-3-0343-0725-3
CHF 63.00 / €(D) 47.50 / €(A) 48.80 / € 44.40 / £ 40.00 / US-$ 66.95
€(D) includes VAT – only valid for Germany  /  €(A) includes VAT – only valid for Austria  

In the late nineteenth century, a spectre haunted Europe and the United States: the spectre of utopia. This book re-examines the rise of utopian thought at the “fin de siècle”, situating it in the social and political contradictions of the time and exploring the ways in which it articulated a deepening sense that the capitalist system might not be insuperable after all. The study pays particular attention to Edward Bellamy’s seminal utopian fiction, “Looking Backward” (1888), embedding it in a number of unfamiliar contexts, and reading its richest passages against the grain, but it also offers detailed discussions of William Morris, H.G. Wells and Oscar Wilde. Both historical and theoretical in its approach, this book constitutes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the utopian imaginary, and an original analysis of the counter-culture in which it thrived at the fin de siècle.

Contents: 
Utopian fiction – Science fiction – Disaster fiction – Radical publishing – Feminism – Socialism – Occultism.

“Matthew Beaumont is one of the most brilliant of the younger generation of English critics. His work on late Victorian culture puts him among the most suggestive and original scholars of the period. While focused on Bellamy, this wide-ranging study encompasses a rich variety of authors and intellectual currents, all dealing with the elusive but utterly essential idea of utopia. In its theoretical sophistication and historical depth, Beaumont’s work is both innovative and illuminating” (Terry Eagleton, Distinguished Professor of English at Lancaster University and author of ‘Trouble with Strangers’ and ‘Why Marx Was Right’)

“So much has been written about Looking Backward and late nineteenth-century utopian literature that one wonders if these topics can ever come to us fresh again. Beaumont answers this question by placing Bellamy’s utopia within significant yet rarely studied publication and reception contexts, such as the London Bellamy Library books series designed to educate working-class readers, and by presenting utopia as a constructively troubling spectre, a ghost evaluating the readers’ present by haunting them with a sense of the absence of a suppressed better world existing somewhere between possibility and impossibility. Thus Beaumont does refresh utopia for us” (Kenneth Roemer, Piper Professor, University of Texas at Arlington and author of ‘The Obsolete Necessity: America in Utopian Writings, 1888-1900’ and ‘Utopian Audiences’)

“This is a rich and provocative book in which Beaumont challenges conventional readings of utopian writing at the turn of the twentieth century. Written with insight and clarity, it provides fresh perspectives and unsettles old certainties. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with the cultural context of the time” (Ruth Levitas, Professor of Sociology, University of Bristol and author of ‘The Concept of Utopia’)

Matthew Beaumont is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at University College London.

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You can order this book online. Please click on the link below:
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Direct order: http://www.peterlang.com?430725
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Or you may send your order to:
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PETER LANG AG
International Academic Publishers
Moosstrasse 1
P.O. Box 350
CH-2542 Pieterlen
Switzerland
Tel +41 (0)32 376 17 17
Fax +41 (0)32 376 17 27
e-mail: mailto:info@peterlang.com
Internet: http://www.peterlang.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)

‘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

38th Annual Association of Art Historians Conference and Bookfair

Books

38th ANNUAL ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS CONFERENCE AND BOOKFAIR

The Open University, Milton Keynes
29 – 31 March 2012

Association of Art Historians (AAH) Conference: Aesthetics and Politics (Again?)

Session Convenors:

Alexander García Düttmann, Goldsmiths College, ADuttmann@aol.com

James Hellings, Teeside University j_hellings@hotmail.com

34 years ago New Left Books published Aesthetics and Politics, collecting together ‘the key texts of the classic debate within German Marxism’ by Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Brecht and Lukács. The collections editors (Rodney Livingstone, Perry Anderson and Francis Mulhern), assembled texts with coherent (if almost entirely antagonistic) inter-relationships – in what they refer to as an incomparable ‘tradition of major aesthetic debate’, held between the 1930s and 1950s in ‘Germany (…); the classical land of aesthetic thought inEurope’. The editors subtitles are fantastically revealing of perceived conflict; ‘Bloch against Lukács / Lukács against Bloch’, ‘Brecht against Lukács’, subtle condemnation; ‘Adorno on Lukács’, ‘Adorno on Brecht’ conviviality; ‘Benjamin with Brecht’, and conciliation; ‘Adorno to Benjamin / Benjamin to Adorno’.

Ideological differences over art (and its histories: Realism, Expressionism, Modernism) were the order of the day. But what’s happened to political aesthetics, Marxist or otherwise, since this golden age? Can we still speak of an ‘aesthetic field’ conditioned by ‘the two recurrent poles of all culture still subject to capital’, being either ‘autistically advanced or collusively popular’.

In recent years, Rancière has done most to ‘widen participation’ by opening up Left aesthetics to encompass the people and places who disrupt this either/ or – but (speaking with Eagleton) ‘how are we to receive and appropriate these polemics today?’ Potential contributors are asked to address the tenor of contemporary inter-relationships of aesthetics and politics by re-interpreting the ideas and authors of this past. The panel-session seeks to stage a dialectic of (dis-)agreement.

 

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

Representing Capital

Capitalism

REPRESENTING CAPITAL

REPRESENTING CAPITAL: A READING OF VOLUME ONE
BY FREDRIC JAMESON
PUBLISHED 14TH AUGUST 2011
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“Jameson’s [is an] almost impossibly sophisticated variety of Marxist cultural criticism… the best of Jameson’s work has felt mind-blowing in the way of LSD or mushrooms: here before you is the world you’d always known you were living in, but apprehended as if for the first time in the freshness of its beauty and horror” — LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS

“One of the great writers of our time, not just one of the most formidably gifted critics and cultural theorists.” — Terry Eagleton
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The recent financial crisis, which traumatised the world’s economies, inspired a resurgence of interest in the grandfather of all left-wing critiques, Karl Marx’s DAS KAPITAL (CAPITAL). Many have been returning to or discovering Capital through thinkers such as David Harvey whose video lectures on Capital have been viewed over a million times online. The book itself became a bestseller in several countries in late 2008, after the crash.

The many new readings and interpretations of CAPITAL following the financial crisis had in common a focus on globalisation, and it is in terms of globalisation that CAPITAL reveals its increasingly urgent relevance to modern structures of labour. But as well as being a timeless work of economic analysis, Capital is also an audacious attempt to solve a philosophical and representational problem.

Now, in REPRESENTING CAPITAL, renowned theorist and cultural critic Fredric Jameson looks at Marx’s magnum opus as the attempt to capture and express the concept of global capital – an entity so complex that it is beyond the imaginative grasp of even the financiers who pretend to be its masters.

In the face of this overwhelming complexity, Marx’s ingenious response to this challenge is to create a text that is in constant conceptual motion. As Jameson puts it, “Marx remains as inexhaustible as capital itself…with every adaptation or mutation of the latter his texts and thought resonate in new ways”.

Thus, both capital and CAPITAL are not merely static things to be explained and understood, but fluid and infinitely adaptable processes. Jameson guides the reader through Capital, transforming its dilemmas and contradictions into new points of departure. In doing so he captures the secret of capitalism’s power: it’s endless ability to self-correct to sustain itself.

Capitalism is an infernal mechanism, characterised most dramatically by the waste and damage it leaves behind; and in our time that damage is realised most powerfully in endemic unemployment. In REPRESENTING CAPITAL, Jameson shows that CAPITAL is essentially a book about unemployment, and thus a book for our times.
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FREDRIC JAMESON, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University and Director of the Graduate Programme in Literature and the Centre for Critical Theory, was a recipient of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize. His books include POSTMODERNISM, OR, THE CULTURAL LOGIC OF LATE CAPITALISM, A SINGULAR MODERNITY: ESSAYS ON THE ONTOLOGY OF THE PRESENT, THE IDEOLOGIES OF THEORY, ARCHAEOLOGIES OF THE FUTURE: SCIENCE FICTION AND OTHER UTOPIAS and THE HEGEL VARIATIONS all from Verso.
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ISBN: 978 1 84467 454 1 / $24.95 / £14.99 / $31.00 CAN / Hardback / 168 pages
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For more information about REPRESENTING CAPITAL or to buy the book visit: http://www.versobooks.com/books/551-representing-capital
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Visit Verso’s website for information on our upcoming events, new reviews and publications and special offers: http://www.versobooks.com

Become a fan of Verso on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Verso-Books/205847279448577

And get updates on Twitter –  @VersoBooks http://twitter.com/VersoBooks

 

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

Marxian Analysis of Society, Schools and Education SIG of the American Educational Research Association (MASSES)

Education Crisis

MARXIAN ANALYSIS OF SOCIETY, SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION SIG OF THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATION (MASSES)
CALL FOR PAPERS

2012 Annual Meeting – Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Friday, April 13 – Tuesday, April 17, 2012
http://www.facebook.com/l/7ba756tNF7qOe9ItKjSdc1iil3A/www.aera.net/

*Why Marxism? Whose Marxism? Let’s Begin from the Beginning.*

*Rethink Class, Race and Gender Inequalities and Education*

The current global momentum is a profound paradox. On one hand, our era has been witnessing huge and dramatic transformations propelled by the biotech movement including genetic and biotechnological discoveries, as well as, the electronic revolution of communications and information both of which have had a huge impact on the way knowledge has been produced and reproduced.

Despite such progress, on the other hand, global societies have been experiencing, among other things, the shocking exacerbation (and in some cases the return) of horrendous social evils, namely, the return of slavery, legitimization of human genocide, new pandemics, the return of high vulnerability to old sicknesses that seemed to have been eradicated and now appear to be linked to new pandemics like HIV/AIDS, and naturalization of war, the domestication of revolting social inequalities (cf. Sousa Santos, 2005), the need of a more predatory capitalism to sustain neoliberal capitalism, the emergence of a new economy propelled by the need to fight terror(ism) (cf. Giroux, 2011).

Despite the fact that we never had a society that produced as much knowledge as today’s society, the fact is such production not only has been incapable of building a fairer and just society, but also as it has just served to increase and multiply social inequality. Such shocking paradoxes bring to the fore the vitality of (neo)Marxist analyses, as the ‘most rigorous, comprehensive critique of capitalism ever to be launched’ (Eagleton, 2011).

The 2012 Marxian Analysis of Society, School and Education SIG program asks scholars and educators around the globe, profoundly committed with the struggle for social and cognitive justice, to rethinking not only class, race, and gender inequalities and education, but also if the reinvigoration of the (neo)Marxist analyses and contributions to society and education implies the need to ‘begin from the beginning’ (Zizek, 2009). We asked scholars to critically address questions such as why (neo)Marxism and whose (neo)Marxism is a key to rethink and understand the current global disruption of capitalism and its implications of the daily live of teachers and students.

AERA: http://www.area.net

MASSES Yahoo Group (Marx and Education SIG): http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MarxSIG/  

 

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

Marxism 2011 Timetable

Karl Marx

MARXISM 2011 TIMETABLE

Central London 30 June – 4 July

Final timetable out now: www.marxismfestival.org.uk/2011/timetable.html

Book online: www.marxismfestival.org.uk/2011/bookonline.html

 

New speakers and sessions now confirmed:

* Kamal Abu Aita of the Egyptian tax collectors’ union will join the general secretary of the PCS civil service workers’ union Mark Serwotka and striking workers at the opening rally, which takes place on the evening of a day of coordinated strike action by up to a million workers

* Panos Garganas of the Greek Socialist Workers Party will speak on “Greece & the Eurozone Crisis”

* Laurie Penny (Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism) will join Nina Power (One Dimensional Woman) and Judith Orr (Sexism and the System) to discuss “Women, Class & Capitalism”

*Mireia Rosello of the Spanish “indignados” movement will join Sean Vernell of the lecturers’ UCU union to speak on “Youth, Anger and Revolution in Egypt, Spain, Britain…”

* Omar Bargouti, Mohammed Tonsi & Wassim Wagdy will participate on the panel “Eyewitnesses to the Arab Spring”

* Gilbert Achcar (The Arabs and the Holocaust and The Clash of Barbarisms) will debate Simon Assaf on the Libyan intervention

 

Other highlights:

* Owen Jones launches his acclaimed book Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class

* Terry Eagleton (Why Marx was Right) speaks on the Communist Manifesto

* John Bellamy Foster (The Ecological Rift) on “Marxism and Ecology”

* Tariq Ali speaks on “The Arab Intifada and American Power”

* Iain Sinclair (Hackney: That Rose-Red Empire) on “London and the Olympics”

* Graham Turner (No Way to Run an Economy) asks “Where is the Global Economy Going?”

* Peter Thomas (The Gramscian Moment) on “Gramsci and us: Building Socialist Hegemony Today”

* Danny Dorling launches Bankrupt Britain

* Alberto Toscano (Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea) on “University Struggles then and Now”

* Ben Fine (From Political Economy to Economics) on “Reading Marx’s Capital”

* Peter Hallward (Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment) on “Marx against Fatalism”

* Owen Hatherley speaks on his book A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain

* Stuart Christie and Andy Durgan debate the Spanish Revolution

* Authors China Mieville and Max Schaefer discuss “Committed Fictions: Politics and Writing”

* Ronnie Kasrils launches The Unlikely Secret Agent

* Guglielmo Carchedi (Behind the Crisis) on “Marxism and Crisis Theory”

* Alex Callinicos (Bonfire of Illusions) on “Crisis and Revolution after the Arab Revolts”

* Istvan Meszaros (Beyond Capital) on “The Structural Crisis of Capitalism”

Join thousands of others at Europe’s biggest festival of radical ideas—featuring over 200 meetings, debates, film screenings, and musical performances.

For more go to: http://www.marxismfestival.org.uk

 

**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

The Idea of Communism

Zizek

THE IDEA OF COMMUNISM

Edited by SLAVOJ ZIZEK AND COSTAS DOUZINAS

Published 7th February, 2011

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ALAIN BADIOU

JUDITH BALSO

BRUNO BOSTEELS

SUSAN BUCK-MORSS

COSTAS DOUZINAS

TERRY EAGLETON

PETER HALLWARD

MICHAEL HARDT

JEAN-LUC NANCY

ANTONIO NEGRI

JACQUES RANCIERE

ALESSANDRO RUSSO

ALBERTO TOSCANO

GIANNI VATTIMO

SLAVOJ ZIZEK

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‘The long night of the left is coming to a close’ write Slavoj Zizek and Costas Douzinas in their introduction to The Idea of Communism. The continuing economic crisis which began in 2008, the shift away from a unipolar world defined by American hegemony, and the ecological crisis mean that growing numbers of people are keen to explore an alternative, and to re-discover the idea of communism. This volume, which emerges from the landmark ‘Idea of Communism’ conference in 2009, marks the theoretical beginning of that re-discovery.

Bringing together an all-star cast of radical intellectuals, including Alain Badiou, Slavoj Zizek, Terry Eagleton, Michael Hardt, and Antonio Negri, The Idea of Communism explores the historical, philosophical, and political dimensions of the communist ideal, in order to clarify its meaning and relevance today. The volume brings together their discussions from the landmark conference, highlighting both the idea of communism’s continuing significance and the need to reconfigure the concept within a world marked by havoc and crisis.

The contributors argue that multiple crises of the modern world lay bare the limits of mainstream liberal capitalist ideology. Blending astute analysis with compelling theoretical sophistication, The Idea of Communism complements the themes and arguments in other works in Verso’ ‘Pocket Communism’ series, including Badiou’s The Communist Hypothesis, Boris Groys’ The Communist Postscript, and Bruno Bosteel’s forthcoming The Actuality of Communism.

The collection opens with an exhilarating call to arms by France’s greatest living intellectual, the ‘last man standing’ of ’68. The iconic Badiou examines the link between the communist idea and political practice, highlighting what he calls “the anonymous action of millions of militants, rebels, fighters” who, although “unrepresentable as such”, have throughout history represented, “elements of the Idea of Communism at various stages”.

Capturing the sense of intellectual confidence and excitement in renewing the communist ideal, Slavoj Zizek concludes the collection with a characteristically wide-ranging contribution taking in Lenin, Bill Gates and Samuel Beckett. He addresses the question, ‘how to begin from the beginning?’ and posits an answer by way of identifying new revolutionary subjects which correspond to today’s ‘post-industrial’ capitalism.

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Praise for SLAVOJ ZIZEK:

“Zizek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation.” New Yorker

“A great provocateur… Zizek writes with passion and an aphoristic energy that is spellbinding.” Los Angeles Times

“The most dangerous philosopher in the West.” New Republic

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SLAVOJ ZIZEK is today’s most controversial public intellectual. His work traverses the fields of philosophy, psychoanalysis, theology, history and political theory, taking in film, popular culture, and literature to provide acute analyses of the complexities of contemporary ideology as well as a serious and sophisticated philosophy. The author of over 30 books, SLAVOJ ZIZEK’S provocative prose has challenged a generation of activists and intellectuals. His latest book is LIVING IN THE END TIMES. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

COSTAS DOUZINAS is a Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London. He is the author of numerous works, including HUMAN RIGHTS AND EMPIRE, THE END OF HUMAN RIGHTS, and LAW AND THE IMAGE: THE AUTHORITY OF ART AND THE AESTHETICS OF LAW.

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ISBN -13: 978 1 84467 459 6 / $26.95 / £14.99 / $33.50 / Paperback / 240 pages

ISBN -13: 978 1 84467 455 8 / $95.00 / £55.00 / $118.50 / Hardback / 240 pages

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Marx and Philosophy Society Review of Books: Update 12th January 2011

 

Karl Marx

MARX AND PHILOSOPHY SOCIETY REVIEW OF BOOKS: UPDATE 12th JANUARY 2011 

New reviews just published online in the Marx and Philosophy Review of Books:
· Tally on Jameson
· Blackledge on Marxism and World Politics
· Gray on Re-reading Marx
· Versieren on Everling
· Verikukis on Eagleton

New comments and discussion
And a new list of books for review, all at: http://www.marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/

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Professor Sean Sayers,
Editor, Marx and Philosophy Review of Books
School of European Culture and Languages
University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NF, UK
Tel +44 1227-827513; Fax +44 1227-823641
http://www.marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/

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Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But were afraid to ask Hitchcock)

 

 

Zizek

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT LACAN (BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK HITCHCOCK)

NEW EDITION

Edited by SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK

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Radical philosopher, polymath, film star, cult icon, and author of over 30 books: Slavoj Žižek is one of the most controversial and leading contemporary public intellectuals, simultaneously acclaimed as the ‘Elvis of cultural theory’ and denounced as ‘the most dangerous philosopher in the West’. He regularly features on lists of the top public intellectuals and remains a thorn in the side of both the right and the liberal left.

Hitchcock gets onto the analyst’s couch in this extraordinary volume of cinematographic case studies. The wide range of contributors bring to bear an unrivalled enthusiasm and theoretical sweep to the entire Hitchcock oeuvre, analyzing movies such as REAR WINDOW and PSYCHO.

An extraordinary landmark in Hitchcock studies, this new edition features a brand-new essay by Slavoj Žižek, psychoanalyst, philosopher and presenter of THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA. The contributors include Fredric Jameson, the leading American literary critic and Marxist political theorist.

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CONTENTS

FOREWORD TO THE SECOND EDITION

INTRODUCTION

Alfred Hitchcock, or, The Form and its Historical Mediation – Slavoj Žižek

PART ONE – The Universal: Themes

Hitchcockian Suspense – Pascal Bonitzer

Hitchcock’s Objects – Mladen Dolar

Spatial Systems in NORTH BY NORTHWEST – Fredric Jameson

A Perfect Place to Die: Theatre in Hitchcock’s Films – Alenka Zupaničič

PUNCTUM CAECUM, or, Of Insight and Blindness – Stojan Pelko

PART TWO – The Particular: Films

Hitchcockian SINTHOMS – Slavoj Žižek

The Spectator Who Knew Too Much – Mladen Dolar

The Cipher of Destiny – Michel Chion

A Father Who Is Not Quite Dead – Mladen Dolar

NOTORIOUS – Pascal Bonitzer

The Fourth Side – Michel Chion

The Man Behind His Own Retina – Miran Božovič

The Skin and the Straw – Pascal Bonitzer

The Right Man and the Wrong Woman – Renata Salecl

The Impossible Embodiment – Michel Chion

PART THREE – The Individual – Hitchcock’s Universe

‘In His Bold Gaze My Ruin Is Writ Large’ – Slavoj Žižek

What’s wrong with THE WRONG MAN? – The Hitchcockian Allegory – From I to A – PSYCHO’S Moebius band – Aristophanes reversed – ‘A triumph of the gaze over the  eye’ – The narrative closure and its vortex – The gaze of the Thing – ‘Subjective destitution – The collapse of intersubjectivity

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Praise for SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK

“The most formidably brilliant exponent of psychoanalysis, indeed of cultural theory in general, to have emerged in many decades.” Terry Eagleton

“The most dangerous philosopher in the West.” Adam Kirsch, NEW REPUBLIC

“Slavoj Žižek has put the Soul back into philosophy.” TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

“He is the closest thing philosophy currently has to a superstar.” Hermione Eyre, INDEPENDENT

“Žižek is the undisputed spritz master of international cinema studies.” VILLAGE VOICE

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SLAVOJ ZIZEK is a professor at the European Graduate School , Intern ational Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College , University of London , and a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana , Slovenia . His other books from Verso include LIVING IN THE END TIMES, FIRST AS TRAGEDY, THEN AS FARCE, IN DEFENSE OF LOST CAUSES, THE SUBLIME OBJECT OF IDEOLOGY, WELCOME TO THE DESERT OF THE REAL, THE PLAGUE OF FANTASIES and DID SOMEBODY SAY TOTALITARIANISM? He has also appeared in the films ZIZEK! and THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA.

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ISBN: 978 1 84467 621 7 / $26.95 / £16.99 / CAN$33.50 / Paperback / 304 pages

ISBN: 978-1-84467-622-4 / $100.00 / £55.00 / $125.00 / Hardback / 304 pages

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For more information and to buy the book visit:

http://www.versobooks.com/books/466-466-everything-you-always-wanted-to-know-about-lacan-%28but-were-afraid-to-ask-hitchcock%29

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ACADEMICS BASED OUTSIDE NORTH AMERICA MAY REQUEST AN INSPECTION COPY – PLEASE CONTACT tamar@verso.co.uk

ACADEMICS BASED WITHIN NORTH AMERICA MAY REQUEST AN EXAMINATION COPY – PLEASE CONTACT clara@versobooks.com

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