Precarity: A Savage Journey to the Heart of Embodied Capitalism

Thanks Flora Worley for alerting me to this piece from the fine folk at Transversal:   10 2006 Precarity: A Savage Journey to the Heart of Embodied Capitalism Vassilis Tsianos / Dimitris Papadopoulos A. Introduction There is an underlying assumption to the current debates about class composition in post-Fordism: this is the assumption that immaterial [...]

A new book from Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in 2012: AN AESTHETIC EDUCATION IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION – harvard uni press

AN AESTHETIC EDUCATION IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION During the past twenty years, the world’s most renowned critical theorist—the scholar who defined the field of postcolonial studies—has experienced a radical reorientation in her thinking. Finding the neat polarities of tradition and modernity, colonial and postcolonial, no longer sufficient for interpreting the globalized present, she turns [...]

Trinketization #Libya

So, with the trajectory of a screaming scud missile, SKY News hones in on the zero-degree-point of trinketization and renders ‘The Fall of Tripoli™’ as a pantomime circus. Pleased as I am with my hats, these guys have rendered the geopolitical as farce better than SZ or KM or BBC et al. How NATO saves [...]

AK-47

Trinketization (aims): ➤ to note a certain fascination with objects has often meant an aversion to theory. ➤ take up the call of Adorno for an ‘Arcades orthodoxy’ (pace Benjamin) in that the description of objects is mediated, requiring a theoretical contextualization of things. ➤ take up case studies, trinkets, objects, material culture in a way that [...]

ALTERNATIVE, AUTONOMOUS ACCREDITATION

From The Public School in New York. ALTERNATIVE, AUTONOMOUS ACCREDITATION proposed by thomasgokey “HULK BELIEVE IN HEALING POWER OF LOVE. HULK ALSO BELIEVE IN HEALING POWER OF SMASH. HULK VAST. CONTAIN MULTITUDES.” –FEMINIST HULK Since 2007 we’ve seen a renaissance of self-organized spaces where knowledge is freely produced and shared, such as hackerspaces, alternative and artist-run [...]

To the Zoo with Philosophy – Stiegler, Bears, Marx and Monkeys

Sadly, but perhaps sensibly, my section on Animals in Bernard Stiegler’s work had to be ruthlessly cut back for lack of space in the journal it was destined for (New Formations). The rest of the article will be available in the new year (its on Marx and Steigler, a critique of Stiegler’s use of ‘proletarianization’) but [...]

Shopping Žižek – a commentary on a commentary (an addendum to ✪ 11 more notes 12&3 on #LondonRiots etc)

Slavoj Žižek’s commentary on the #LondonRiots indented, with my intemperate interjections interspersed in smaller italics (not indented). i – i – i – i. What I have done is copied the entire text from his LRB article (available free) and entered that here, in original order, nothing excised, so I could then add my own commentary, in italics, between [...]

✪ 11 and still more Notes on the ‘Disturbances of London’, and England #riot #LondonRiot etc.

First 11 here, Second 11 here. 23. Abandoning rule by law the unrepresentative Government flaunts due process and encourages excessive penalties so as to ‘send a message’ to the youth, since its school holidays for two more weeks, and because they love the repressive apparatus as a Plan B when the bourgeois civil compact of [...]

Film screening “Vincent Who?” – Sept 12 2011 Amnesty International – The Human Rights Action Centre

Asian Pacific Americans for Progress & Islington Chinese Association proudly invite you to the London Premiere of “Vincent Who?” A documentary on Asian American political empowerment   Monday, Sept. 12, 2011 7-9 pm Amnesty International – The Human Rights Action Centre  17-25 New Inn Yard  London EC2A 3EA Free Admission (Ticket reservation on http://www.amnesty.org.uk/events_details.asp?EventsID=1930)   In [...]

Dan Cull ‘Riot Pron and links’

Dan Cull has done the round-up, found thanks to a ping-back, its well worth circulating, for the record, so to speak. Thanks Dan. More news anyone? Look out for the next round up which surely has to be of prisoner support, and 10,000 articles condemning the Cameron-Clegg-Milliband-Robocop repression… . riot pron and links In lieu of [...]

‘sthaniya sambaad‘ (‘spring in the colony‘), Goldsmiths Tuesday Sept 6th, 2011

This feature film by Arjun Gourisaria and Moinak Biswas is well worth seeing. ‘sthaniya sambaad‘ (‘spring in the colony‘), (105 min. 2009, 35 mm, cinemascope, EST). Q & A with one of the directors. 6.15pm Tuesday Sept 6th, 2011 – Goldsmiths Cinema RHB Small Hall please take a look at  www.springinthecolony.com and also the blog www.sthaniya.wordpress.com for responses to the film. [...]

Politicians, Cops, Judges and Journalists don’t wear jeans: Uniformity v. Levis.

OK, it is ironic since blue jeans are also a uniform, its commercial pap from a megacorp, it is like saying the real thing is coke and meaning the fizzy drink, it is a trinketized and aestheticized cash-in on the atmosphere of dissent in present-day London, and it is an advert that has already been [...]

More on that UfSO #riotcleanup or #riotwhitewash spike

Sofia Himmelblau responds to her critics AUGUST 12, 2011 by flashbank Postscript – A Response to Comments Dr. Sofia Himmelblau (This was written as a response to various comments made regarding my previous post and has also been reposted there) My previous post appears to have sparked a huge amount of controversy…. Keep reading Dr Himmelblau’s response here. Yesterday’s [...]

A few more things…

…to read: Socialism or Barbarism: here. and the UfSO sweeps the pool here. though should get into a debate: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/cago3o about this: http://twitpic.com/645wg2/full . so as to emphasize things: here.

✪ 11 more notes on ‘the disturbances™ in London’

The first 11 notes were here. 12. It is too easy to complain that the ‘rioting’ youth are merely obsessed with trainers and plasma TV. To say this misses the point, but it is more difficult for journalists to parse the process by which circulation, valorization, exchange, value extraction, surplus labour, alienation, and the fetishism that [...]

6.30pm from The Anchor, Deptford High Street, to Lewisham Town Hall 10 August 2011

Tonight (Wednesday), 6.30pm Emergency demonstration against the cuts which caused the riots 6.30pm from The Anchor, Deptford High Street, to Lewisham Town Hall, Catford. Called by a peoples’ assembly on the streets of Deptford last night. Saturday, 1pm Give Our Kids a Future! A North London Unity Demonstration 1pm from Gillett Square, Dalston to Tottenham [...]

Bouna Toure, Zyed Benna, chased by Police, and dead – comment by Abdellali Hajjat

On October 27 2005 in Paris, 15 year old Bouna Trouré and 17 year old Zyed Benna were electrocuted after taking refuge in a power station while being chased by Paris Police. “On October 27th, Bouna and Zied died of electrical burns when they fled from the police. Riots broke out in Clichy-sous-Bois and other housing estates [...]

Mao: Its Terrible or Its Fine.

In Report from Hunan Mao praises the ‘Movement of the Riff Raff’ (Mao Vol 1 p29). The ‘riff raff’ are the ‘utterly destitute’ lumpen peasantry who we find in China as: “completely dispossessed … People who have neither land nor money, are without any means of livelihood, and are forced to leave home and become [...]

Cameron Go Back – your policing tips are not wanted here.

✪ 11 notes on ‘the disturbances™ in London’

1. Punitive and class biased courts and police which condemn and kill the public while bonus-fat-cat bankers, expense-account scheming piggy-pollies and eavesdropping shop-your-mother-for-a-story journalists get away with it. 2. Massive jumpity-jump in hyper-profits and wealth of the super-rich while we get cuts to services, community support and local facilities, which means DIY street entertainment as [...]