6 December reading: Karen Barad

"'Subjects' and 'objects' do not preexist as such but are constituted through particular practices… in contrast to [Judith] Butler's more singular focus on the human body, the framework of agential realism does not limit its reassessment of the matter of bodies to the realm of the human. In fact, it calls for a critical examination of the practices by which the differential boundaries of the human and nonhuman are drawn, for these very same practices are always already implicated in particular materialisations"

Karen Barad is a theoretical physicist who applies concepts from physics to feminism & cultural studies. Follow link for a download of her article "Getting Real: Technoscientific Practices and the Materialisation of Reality" (1998):

http://www.mediafire.com/view/?ps4449nzw92qi6t

15th November reading: Nietzsche and Philosophy

                     "Into all abysses I still carry the blessings of my saying yes" (Zarathustra)

Following on from our discussion on nihilist politics in the last meeting we will be reading some sections from Nietzsche and Philosophy (1962) by Gille Deleuze:

Chapter 5 "The Overman: Against the Dialectic",  from section 9 "Nihilism and Transmutation: the focal point", until the end of that chapter (around 20 pages).
The book is available at aaaaarg.org.

This short text by Guerre au Paradis on nihilism in relation to anarchist movements would also be interesting to read alongside the Deleuze text:
http://stormheaven.wordpress.com/lifeasagamble/considerations-on-nihilism/