"Creative Philosophy: Theory and Praxis"

Call for Papers for Angelaki special issue on "Creativity"

Co-editors Felicity J. Colman (University of Melbourne) and
Charles J. Stivale (Wayne State University)

This Angelaki issue on "Creativity" seeks essays with collaborative, hybrid, and polyvocal research, linkages, and models of creativity in philosophical thought and artistic practices (e.g. literature, architecture, music, visual arts, new media, cinema). The thematic of creativity asks how creative interfaces operate, what forms of generic skills and community resources inform contemporary relations between ideas and creative expression and representation, and how and where creativity is produced.

"The Collaborator and the Multitude:

An Interview with Michael Hardt"

Caleb Smith and Enrico Minardi, the minnesota review

A major event in political and critical theory, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire (Harvard, 2000) turned orthodox thinking about imperialism around, proposing a decentered global network and redescribing capital, in the poststructuralist terms of Deleuze and Guattari, as a dynamic pattern of breaks and flows. The book is one fruit of the continuing collaboration of Hardt, a literature professor at Duke, and Negri, an Italian radical theorist; previously they co-authored Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State Form (Minnesota, 1994) and most recently they have written Multitude (Penguin, 2004), which develops a concept of cooperative resistance to the reimagined global order as an alternative to the idea of national liberation.

Before joining the faculty at Duke, Michael Hardt did his graduate work at the University of Washington. He is also the author of Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy (Minnesota, 1993) and numerous pieces of political journalism and criticism. In addition, he has translated Negri’s The Savage Anomaly (Minnesota, 1991) and coedited Radical Thought in Italy (with Paolo Virno; Minnesota, 1996) and The Jameson Reader (with Kathi Weeks; Blackwell, 2000). Relevant to this interview, see also Michael Hardt's essay "Prison Time" in the Yale Review 91 (1997): 64-79. This interview took place on 5 March 2004 in Hardt’s office at Duke. It was conducted by Caleb Smith, a doctoral student in English at Duke, and Enrico Minardi, a lecturer in Romance Studies.

Smith: Most people will know you as Antonio Negri's collaborator in the authorship of Empire. Your new project, again with Negri, grows out of that book and the promises made in its final chapters. Did you have the sense from the beginning that Empire was unfinished?

NOT BORED! writes:

New Situationist Translations

In the midst of and at the end of the "orientation debate" — which involved the exclusion or resignation of almost all of the members of the Situationist International (SI) — Guy Debord wrote two very important texts: "Remarks on the SI Today" (written on 27 July 1970) and "Document Beyond Debate" (written on 28 January 1971).

Those who don't read French have had to rely on the excerpts translated by Ken Knabb, who published them in "The Situationist International Anthology" in 1981. In the course of translating the other documents involved in the "orientation debate," we have discovered that "excerpts" isn't the right word to describe Knabb's versions of these two important texts by Debord. In both cases, Knabb has dropped out more than half of the text, even though neither one is very long. Knabb's deletions clearly weren't made in service of brevity or clarity. No, they were made in the service of an agenda: without fail, Knabb removed all the comments or anecdotes concerning "internal" matters, events and personalities. We can't imagine why.

Loren Goldner writes:

New York City Study Group on Marx

Beginning October, 2004

"It is not enough for theory to seek its practice;
practice must also seek its theory." — Karl Marx, 1844 Manuscripts

I am forming a class/study group in Karl Marx's
critique of political economy for
theoretically-inclined activists in the New York City
area.

The group will meet once every two weeks from October
until May 2005, and can of course continue thereafter
if enough people want it to.

Its purpose will be to give conceptual tools from
Marx's work to people interested in understanding and
changing the world, tools which make sense of current
world economic and political developments, shed light
on current possible intervention, and clarify what a
society beyond capitalism will look like.

NOT BORED! writes:

"Orientation Debate
of the Situationist International"

In April 1968, the members of the Situationist International (SI) began to prepare for an internal ("private") debate on their organization, that is to say, on the way in which the SI was organized. But, as Guy Debord said later, the occupations movement of May 1968, "which was obviously more pleasant and instructive than this debate, forced us to postpone it." The debate resumed in the Fall of 1968, but became truly serious in the wake of the September 1969 meeting of the SI, which was widely perceived in the organization to be less than satisfactory. The "organization debate" was accompanied by a slew of exclusions -- Alain Chevalier (French section, October 1969), Robert Chasse (American, January 1970), Bruce Elwell (American, January 1970), Claudio Pavan (Italian, Spring 1970), Eduardo Rothe (Italian, Spring 1970), Paolo Salvadori (Italian, Summer 1970) and Rene Riesel (French, September 1971) -- and resignations -- Francois de Beaulieu (French section, 1970), Patrick Cheval (French, 1970), Raoul Vaneigem (French, November 1970), Jon Horelick (American, December 1970), Christian Sebastiani (French, December 1970), Tony Verlaan (American, December 1970), and Rene Vienet (French, February 1971). The debate/carnage continued until April 1972, when the remaining members of the SI -- Guy Debord, Gianfranco Sanguinetti and J.V. Martin -- announced their decision to disband and tried to explain what had happened to the SI to their readers.

"Anarchism, Marxism and the Bonapartist State"

Saul Newman, Anarchist Studies, [Volume 12, #1, 2004]

This paper explores the question of state power and sovereignty in radical political theory through an examination of the classical anarchist critique of Marxism. It draws on the Bonapartist moment in Marx's thinking, seeing this as laying the groundwork for the development of a theory of the state as autonomous from class, suggesting that the implications of this argument are only fully realised in anarchism. Anarchism was able to develop a wholly autonomous and specific theory of state power and political authority — one that was irreducible to the Marxist class and economic analysis. I will argue that this had crucial consequences for contemporary radical political theory as it allowed the political dimension to emerge as a separate field of antagonism, demanding its own specific forms of analysis. I then explore the implications of this theoretical terrain through Agamben's analysis of biopower and state sovereignty, and Laclau and Mouffe's 'post-Marxist' understanding of
hegemonic political identification, suggesting that there are important links here with anarchism that could be developed.

NOT BORED! writes:

Operation Censor:

A New Translation of a Situationist Text

In August 1975, ex-Situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti, with the help of Guy Debord, another ex-Situationist, executed an exemplary prank: they created an author (a powerful industrialist called "Censor") and wrote for him an anonymous pamphlet on Italian politics, and printed up copies and sent them to 520 of the most powerful people in the country. The very cynical pamphlet was very well received -- no one suspected a fake. Finally, in December 1975, two months after the pamphlet was reprinted, Sanguinetti revealed himself, and a major scandal ensued.

Here, for the first time in English, is Sanguinetti's December 1975 statement. It contains links to the other important texts involved in "Operation Censor."

"Tandem Surfing the Third Wave:

Critical Art Ensemble and Tactical Media Production"

Ryan Griffis, Lumpen

This interview (from 2001) with Critical Art Ensemble was the first part of a series of investigations into collaborative/group artistic practice taking place in, and critical of, the e-conomy. Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), a collective of five artists working since 1987, produces cultural products ranging from books to Web projects to performances that investigate moments in art, technology, activism, and critical theory.

Ryan Griffis: How did CAE come to be a working group?

Critical Art Ensemble: It's too bad CAE has no heroic formation story about a grand international like the one the Situationists are often mythologized as having. CAE's story is much more mundane. We were students looking to develop a network that would have a cultural impact-some way of organizing that would give us enough financial, hardware, and labor resources that we could begin to construct a platform for a public voice. Collective activity seemed (and still seems) to be the best option.

"Emancipation"

Brian Holmes

"L'amour est la seule passion qui se paye d'une monnaie qu'elle fabrique elle-même." ( "Love is the only passion that pays for itself in a currency of its own fabrication.") — Stendhal

The "world market." Never have two words encompassed such promise. Power. Pleasure. Ubiquity. Freedom. And it's no illusion. The world market can get you that — if you obey its injunction. To distinguish yourself from the others. To stand apart. To rise above. To become the sovereign individual.

What is the paradox of the market individual? To conform — through uniqueness and originality — to the perverse law of value which gives rarity its price. Within the world market, amidst the abundance of power, pleasure, ubiquity and freedom, each rare and precious individual has a price — on their head.

dr.woooo writes:

"Europe and the New Movements"

An Interview With Andre Grubacic

From what I can tell Europeans are pretty ignorant of
events in the U.S. left, but, even more so, the U.S.
left, including myself, is horrendously ignorant of
events in Europe. Maybe you can help us do something
about the latter problem. I would like to try to find
out some of the trends you see developing in movements
in Europe, and your view of their virtues and flaws.

Grubacic: You know, I was just reading one essay, a
rather old one, from Barbara and John Ehrenreich, the
pivotal essay for a most excellent book titled
Between Labor and Capital. In this essay, the
authors describe the relation of what they call the
"professional managerial class" to the movement of the
1960's. It strikes me as remarkable how simillar this
is to the main relevant trends of the 'new movement'
we have in Europe.