New Year Readings: Death, Negativity, Alienation, Life!

For the next meeting on January 5th we will be reading:

Tiqqun - The Theory of Bloom

http://ifile.it/2igpmyb

and

Aaron Asphaar and Amanda Silbernagel - Angst, the glimpse, and revolution

http://aaronasphar.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/amanda-silbernagel-me-on-angst-the-glimpse-revolution/

8pm, Tempest Library.

December 15th reading: The Persistence of the Negative

Benjamin Noys´critique of the "affirmationist bloc" of contintental theory, and thesis on the necessity to think the negative in our conceptualizations and actions of resistance to capitalism.
Read what you can of the introduction and conclusion. Text will be circulated via the mailing list.
Meeting 8pm, Thursday the 15th, Tempest Library.

Participatory Economics vs. Economic Democracy

For the next session we'll take a look at two sketches for a post-capitalist society. Michael Albert promotes his view of 'Participatory Economics', while David Schweickart would rather see 'Economic Democracy'. Both have written a book on their ideas; the first is Parecon: Life After Capitalism and the other is After Capitalism by Albert and Schweickart respectively.

====The Material====

Participatory Economics/Parecon, by Michael Albert:

Video: http://www.zcommunications.org/alternative-economy-cultures-documentations-by-michael-albert
Texts: http://www.zcommunications.org/topics/parecon

Economic Democracy, by David Schweickart:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT4cNwC-aGQ&feature=related
(90 minutes of video, with bad audio quality)
Texts: http://www.luc.edu/faculty/dschwei/articles.htm
(see http://www.luc.edu/faculty/dschwei/democracy.pdf)

also:...

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et91gXGMLwA&feature=related
(first of a series of 5 videos, which don't explain much on their own, but can be interesting to check out after having an idea what these guys are about)

Reading for Thursday 17th November - "Debt: The First Five Thousand Years", by David Graeber

We're reading Debt: The First Five Thousand Years, by David Graeber

Thursday November 3:rd reading - Machinic Capitalism and Network Surplus Value

Continuing on the machine-line, we're reading the text Machinic Capitalism and Network Surplus Value: 
Towards a Political Economy of the Turing Machine by Pasquinelli.

Reading for Thursday 20:th - Machines

We're reading the Grundrisse excerpt The Fragment on Machines

And also a text by Virno discussing this fragment:
http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpvirno10.htm

Reading 6th of October - The Mass Psychology of Fascism

The first two chapters of The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Wilhelm Reich.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/archivos_pdf/masspsychology_fascism.pdf

Thursday 15:th - Bitcoin

Bitcoin - the decentralized digital currency.

A discussion of technical and political aspects of decentralized currency.

Reading suggestions: (feel free to add your own in comments)

• http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/11/06/22/1737237/Amir-Taaki-Answers-Your-Questions-About-Bitcoin
• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ
• http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.com/2011/06/bitcoin-is-economic-singularity.html
  
  

1st of September meeting: The UK riots

Let´s discuss the recent UK riots and the possibilities for left politics. Not focusing on one text in particular but here is some recommended reading:

The Commune - Don´t moralise, don´t judge, don´t take pictures - it´s time for the riot to get radical: http://thecommune.co.uk/2011/08/09/don%E2%80%99t-moralise-don%E2%80%99t-judge-don%E2%80%99t-take-pictures-%E2%80%93-it%E2%80%99s-time-for-the-riot-to-get-radical/

Socialism and/or Barbarism - On open letter to those who condemn the looting
Part 1: http://socialismandorbarbarism.blogspot.com/2011/08/open-letter-to-those-who-condemn.html
Part 2: http://socialismandorbarbarism.blogspot.com/2011/08/open-letter-to-those-who-condemn_10.html

University for Strategic Optimism - #riotcleanup or #riotwhitewash?
http://universityforstrategicoptimism.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/riotcleanup-or-riotwhitewash/

Slavoj Zizek- Shoplifters of the World Unite http://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/08/19/slavoj-zizek/shoplifters-of-the-world-unite

And some interesting videos and more texts can be found here: http://www.metamute.org/en/news_and_analysis/riot_round_up

Some questions that we might like to discuss around:

What are the possibilities for the radicalization of the riots when class is no longer functioning as a point of collective resonance for mass action? Are consumerist subjectivities and desires too entrenched, even (or especially) amongst the working and underclasses, to shift into something else; revolutionary collective desire? Is the Left in the UK too weak to build on the possibilities of the hegemonic rupture created by the riots; too hesitant to seek productive connections and alliances with the anger of the rioters, and lacking the coherence necessary to present an offensive front against the dominating right-wing discourse? What can be done about the huge repressive power of the state (in the form of police, army, weapons, courts and prisons) when it comes to mass uprisings?

Writing exercise for 18th of August - reading our own texts

Some of the people who attend the group will write short texts and we'll discuss them during the meeting. Everyone is invited to write! It doesn't need to be an amazingly original and exceptional text.

Formulate problems that are interesting for you, speak about some texts/authors/things that inspire or bother you, or maybe just pose a series of questions. The texts may or may not be published in this blog before the meeting. In case they don't, they will be distributed during the meeting.

UPDATE

Here two of the texts:

The Reproduction of the Inaction

Two Exercises of Imagination

Reading for 4th of August

Breivik's manifesto! I suggest we just read the introduction, until page 37 of the pdf. I don't know if there's any key passages in the book that one shouldn't miss, but the intro seems to contain an analysis of the Frankfurt school and deconstruction that might be interesting to look at.

http://rymdkoloni.se/2083.pdf

There's also a video manifesto that seems to be a sort of summary of the 1500 page text; it's just 12 minutes so I suggest we have a look at that as well to get a general idea of Breivik's ideas.

http://publicintelligence.net/utoya-gunman-anders-behring-breivik-video-manifesto/

Reading for 21:th of july

PRELIMINARY NOTES TOWARDS AN ACCOUNT OF THE “MOVEMENT OF POPULAR ASSEMBLIES”

8 pm at Tempest Library @ Reichenberger str 63a.

Reading for 16th of June

"Navigating Movements" (2002) Interview with Brian Massumi
Available here: http://www.brianmassumi.com/english/interviews.html

Reading for Thursday 2:nd

“I am sure that you are more
pessimistic than I am . . .”: An Interview
with Giorgio Agamben

Agamben - Rethinking Marxism Interview

Edit: now with direct pdf link

Reading 19th of may - Change the World Without Taking Power

Chapters one to three of Change the World Without Taking Power - John Holloway.

http://libcom.org/library/change-world-without-taking-power-john-holloway

Reading for 5:th of may - Marching for Whose Alternative?

Escalate collective has a new very interesting text up on the protests in the UK, how to relate to the media, the cops and the established unions in the ongoing process of finding new forms of resistance and ways of building collective power.

This will be the reading for next meeting, in addition to our first of may experiences of course!

http://escalatecollective.net

Reading for Thursday 21:th - Communisation

Communisation is not any peaceful experimentation with new ways of life, but the revolutionary answer by the proletariat to an acute social crisis. The text below offers a few observations on this connection in the light of the current crisis.

Text available in English and Swedish.

Meeting as usual
Tempest Library, 63a @ Reichenberger str - 8pm

no reading group 31:th of mars

Slavoj Žižek will give a lecture at the FU, the 31 March, entitled 'Is It Still Possible to Be a Hegelian Today?'

http://www.fu-berlin.de/presse/fup/2011/fup_11_053/index.html

Reading for Thursday Mar 17

The essay of Louis Armand - Wittgenstein on the Beach

"If thought/consciousness is not a little person inside our heads, then what is it? And where is does it take place?"


available at aaaaarg.org

Meeting will take place at 8pm at Tempest Library, Reichenbergerstr. 63a.

Reading for Thursday Mars 3:rd - Language!

What is this thing called language and how does it work? Some interesting views from Manuel DeLanda on language as an assemblage.

Deleuze: History and Science

chapter: Assemblage Theory and Linguistic Evolution.

Available on aaaaarg.org

Meeting will take place 20:00 at Tempest Library, Reichenbergerstr. 63a.

Reading for Thursday Feb 17

Second chapter of The State of Exception by Giorgio Agamben available at aaaaarg.org or here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?dz9w1zzw7t5b3py

Reading and discussion relating to the developments in Egypt and surrounding countries.

February 17:th 20:00 @ Tempest Library, 63a Reichenbergerstr.

February 3:rd - State of emergency

Egypt has been living under a almost constant state of emergency since the Israel-Egyptian war in 1967 (one 18-month break) [source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_emergency#Egypt]

What we are reading is the first chapter of The State of Exception by Giorgio Agamben available at aaaaarg.org or here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?dz9w1zzw7t5b3py

February 3:rd 20:00 @ Tempest Library, 63a Reichenbergerstr.