Bartleby: a Negativism Beyond all Negativity

This week we will explore the disturbing, disruptive, and tragic refusal of Hermann Melville's character of Bartleby, from his story "Bartleby the Scrivener".  The Melville text is here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/827051/melville-herman--bartleby-the-scrivener.pdf

We offer four optional commentaries on the text, which people can read at their will, and raise during the discussion.

-Agamben "Bartleby or On Contingency" (in: Potentialities, p. 243-271)

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Agamben_Bartleby.pdf

-Rancière "Deleuze, Bartleby and the Literary Formula" (in: The Flesh of
Words. The politics of writing, p. 146-164)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/827051/Ranciere%20-%20The%20Flesh%20of%20Words.pdf

-Deleuze "Bartleby; or 'The Formula'" (in: Essays: Critical & Clinical, S. 68-90)
 https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/827051/Deleuze%20-%20Essays%20critical%20and%20clinical.pdf

-Zizek: "Notes towards a politics of Bartleby: The ignorance of chicken" (in: Comparative American Studies 4(4), p. 375-394

http://archive.totalism.org/Zizek%20-%20Notes%20Towards%20a%20Politics%20of%20Bartleby%20-%20The%20Ignorance%20of%20Chicken.pdf

Thursday Oct. 17: Race and urban guerilla groups

What role does social death and anti-Blackness play in militant politics? This week's reading, written by an American Afropessimist theorist, juxtaposes three urban guerrilla groups (the German Red Army Faction, the Black Liberation Army, and the Irish Republican Army). It attempts to think their difference from the point of view of race, social death, and the 'capacity' or incapacity to enact a dialogical play of recognition with the State and civil society.
Text:
Imp
Read

For a bit of background on the Afropessimist perspective on the significance of the legacy of slavery and Blackness for contemporary radical political theory, the same author has a well-known essay from 2003, entitled "Gramsci's Black Marx: Whither the Slave In Civil Society?"
A read version is here,
A zine version here.

Meeting 8pm, Tempest Library

3rd of October: Tiqqun´s Sonogram of a Potential

Since we were only a few people to discuss this a few meetings ago, and only got through half of it, we´re going to discuss this Tiqqun text again that relates to feminism and queer theory:

Text is available here https://sonogram.jottit.com/

Reading for Thursday the 19th - Critique and Historical Transformation

Pdf available: Moishe Postone - Critique and Historical Transformation

September 5th: Tiqqun Sonogram of a Potential

PDF available here

August 15th: Negativity in Deleuze and the politics of active nihilism

Reading available here.
Meeting at 8pm, Tempest library.

August 1st: A Theory of Shattered Fragments

Text on the fragmentation of Berlin´s radical left into groups and factions, by Club Für Sich.
Reading available here.

Meeting at 8pm, Tempest Library.