- No upcoming events available
« April 2024 »
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| 28 | 29 | 30 | | | | |
|
"The Micro-Physics of Theoretical Production and Border Crossings"
Angela Mitropoulos
Reviewing:
Jason Read, The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Pre-history of the Present
(New York: SUNY Press, 2003)
"The encounter between the flows of money and those who have nothing but their labour power to sell is constitutive of and constituted by new desires, new habits and new subjectivities." — Jason Read, The Micro-Politics of Capital
1. If for Althusser it seemed necessary to read "to the letter" — by which he did not mean a kind of punctilious scholasticism but alertness to both overt meanings and hesitations — it was just as important to declare what sort of reading one is guilty of. This is as much a review of a book that brilliantly puts that approach to work reading a number of theorists as it is a reading with regard for particular struggles and debates. What interests me here, given that I share the theoretical perspectives which inform The Micro-Politics of Capital, are what I see as the more troublesome details of those perspectives as they are brought to bear on political practices, specifically recent struggles around border policing and the writing of them.
'The Take': Labor Revolt in Argentina
Stephen Hunter, Washington Post
Someone who actually, you know, knows something will have to
issue a policy statement on the politics of "The Take," a
radical Canadian documentary that celebrates what could be
called, equally, an act of liberation or an act of theft.
Purely from an artistic point of view it's a well-made,
straightforward (from the leftist vantage point) examination
of an Argentine phenomenon that could have meanings beyond
Argentina. The filmmakers, Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein, lay
their cards on the table in the opening second by sweeping
across a vista of shuttered factories and saying, "Welcome to
the globalized ghost town."
"Witches of the 'First International'"
Steven Colatrella
Reviewing Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch:
Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation[Autonomedia, 2004]
During the 16th and 17th century, hundreds of thousands of women were burned as witches across Europe. This holocaust, unprecedented in the history of any society before or since, is at the center of this brilliant new book by Silvia Federici, an early opponent of the IMF's role in Third World countries and veteran feminist theorist. This book is the most important new work on the origins of capitalism to appear in thirty years, since Immanual Wallerstein's The Modern World System. For activists today, Caliban and the Witch is more relevant and useful to our anticapitalist struggles and movements. For the inspiration for the book came from the author's years in Nigeria where she witnessed and participated in struggles against IMF and World Bank structural adjustment and privatization of land and resources. The book is part and parcel of the anticapitalist globalization movement (or global justice movement) and links the struggles at the dawn of the capitalist era with those in Chiapas, in Bolivia, in the oil fields of southern Nigeria, in the forests of Indonesia, against privatization of communally owned land and wealth.
Anthony McIntyre
Reviewing:
Moody
By Wensley Clarkson
The Blanket
When Gerard Tuite escaped in 1980 from Brixton prison it was a fillip for morale in the H Blocks. Seven men had passed the fifty-day stage of their hunger strike for political status and an end of some sort was imminent. Although Tuite was accompanied on the escape by two other remand prisoners, for the population of the H-Blocks Tuite's was the only name we cared for. He was the sole IRA escapee. The names of the other two men meant absolutely nothing to us. So concerned were we in the contentious crucible of the prison to assert our distinctive political motivation some in our number even wondered what Tuite was doing escaping alongside hoods. Most just envied him and hoped he would evade the security dragnet that would inevitably seek to pull him back inside.
"All Nietzscheans Now?"
John Moore
Reviewing:
Nitezsche Contra Rosseau: A Study of Nietzsche’s Moral and Political Thought
Keith Ansell-Pearson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
Why We Are Not Nietzscheans
Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, eds.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)
The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
Stanley Rosen
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
In his rancorous polemic Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism, Murray Bookchin rightly identifies Nietzsche as one of the major influences on some of the most vital anarchist thinking of our day, even though Bookchin libels this thought with the grab bag label of ‘lifestylism.’ This fact in itself should indicate that Nietzsche is worth investigation from an anarchist perspective. Unfortunately, the three titles under review here add relatively little to such a perspective. Many interpreters of Nietzsche — Bookchin is a good example — nostalgically try to locate an ideological coherence in the work of the German philosopher which is inappropriate in the case of an anti-systemic thinker. Lamentably, these three texts, to one degree or another, fall for this red herring.
"American Psyche"
Thomas Frank, New York Times
Reviewing:
The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America.
By John Sperling, Suzanne Helburn,
Samuel George, John Morris and Carl Hunt. Illustrated.
272 pp. PoliPoint Press. $39.95.
The Uncivil War: How a New Elite Is Destroying Our
Democracy.
By David Lebedoff.
191 pp. Taylor Trade
Publishing. $24.95.
Who We Are Now: The Changing Face of America in the
Twenty-First Century. By Sam Roberts.
293 pp. Times
Books/ Henry Holt & Company. $27.50.
Myths of Free Trade: Why American Trade Policy Has
Failed. By Sherrod Brown.
228 pp. The New Press.
$24.95.
That we are a nation divided is an almost universal
lament of this bitter election year. However, the exact
property that divides us — elemental though it is said
to be — remains a matter of some controversy. One
thing is certain in the search to unravel the mystery
of the ''great divide'': we know for sure the answer
isn't class. We can rule that uncomfortable subject out
from the start.
hydrarchist writes:
"Italian Operaismo Face to Face"
Enda Brophy
A Report on the ‘Operaismo a Convegno’ Conference, 1–2 June 2002, Rialto Occupato, Rome, Italy
The ‘Operaismo a Convegno’ conference took place
in Rome last summer during what was a transitional
moment in several respects. (1) The ‘movement of
movements’ seemed to be pausing, with its Italian
contingent caught between digesting the lessons of
Genoa and the need to consider objectives and
strategy in view of the European Social Forum which
was due to be held in Florence at the beginning of
November. In the meantime, the escalation of global
violence and rapid geopolitical swerves demanded
at the very least a rethinking of the theoretical and
practical categories that had seemed to suffice until
September 11. Adding to the sense of timeliness was
‘autonomist’ Marxism’s strong resonance outside of
Italy, due to the success of Michael Hardt and Toni
Negri’s Empire and the ability with which other
practitioners of the perspective (in North America and elsewhere) have
documented and translated its explanatory power. (2) Considering this, it was fitting that the legacies and contemporary directions of the diverse and dynamic
political tradition be rediscussed in its country of origin.
"Labour History as the History of Multitudes"
Marcel van der Linden, Multitudes
Reviewing:
Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker,
The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
(Boston: Beacon Press 2000)
Labour hisorians study the working class to examine its development, composition, working conditions, lifestyle, culture, and many other aspects. But what exactly do we mean when we use the term "working class" ? Over the past half-century, the answer to this seemingly simple question has changed continuously.
In the 1950s and 1960s it usually denoted male breadwinners who earned a living in agriculture, industry, mining, or transport. In the 1970s and 1980s objections from feminists instigated a fundamental revision that broadened the focus beyond the male head of the household to include the wife and children. Occupational groups that tended to be overlooked in the past, such as domestic servants and prostitutes, started to receive serious consideration.
The chronological and geographic scope of the research expanded as well. Labour historians became interested in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, and took a closer look at pre-industrial wage earners. Our overall perspective on the working class has undergone a paradigmatic revolution. The signs indicate that this first transition is merely a harbinger of a second one. 1
"After the Empire"
Scott McLemee, Chronicle of Higher Education
Reviewing:
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (Penguin).
In 2000, Michael Hardt, an associate professor of literature at Duke University, and Antonio Negri, a legendary figure on the Italian left, published a volume bearing the grand, stark title Empire. Even before it was listed in the Harvard University Press catalog, the appearance of the book was keenly anticipated among antiglobalization activists. Rumor had it that Empire would provide a definitive analysis of the new world order. It would be the theoretical bridge between postmodernist academics and a mass movement that was making it ever harder for international financial institutions to meet in peace.
Days of Crime and Nights of Horror
Ramor Ryan
A review of:
Days of War, Nights of Love: CrimethInc for Beginners (CrimethInc Workers’ Collective, 2001).
Days and Nights of Love and War by Eduardo Galeano (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983).
A STORMY NIGHT….
The wild Pacific Ocean pounds the shore of the tiny Guatemalan port town of Champerico. Overrun by gangs and drugs, Champerico gets one line in the guidebook: sweltering, dilapidated, dangerous—best avoided. My kinda town. Here, among the ghosts of Guatemala’s terrible recent history and the tumultuous daily life of a lawless, desperado town as far removed from shopping mall America as can be imagined, is a good location to begin considering the two books in question.
|
|
